Depth) to confirm he was well out of the way of the fishermen. Big mistake. The Barracuda's periscope came thrusting out of the icy water, just for a few seconds, and was instantly picked up by shore-based American radar on Akutan Island. Just a fleeting contact, three sweeps on the screen.
As it happened, they put it down to debris from the trawler's catch. But five minutes later, Ben Badr himself wanted to take a look at the surface picture — and this time the contact was spotted on radar, and logged by the Americans… transient… insufficient data for positive identification. But it was sufficient to be recorded formally as a possible intruder.
They waited with new vigilance for it to appear again. But it never did, and the Barracuda continued toward the Unimak Pass. The mighty Los Angeles Class hunter-killer submarine USS Toledo, cruising through the Aleutian Trench, was too far away to detect them.
The Barracuda was just a few miles short of the seaway through the islands early on the morning of Wednesday, February 20. They took up a position ten miles off the flashing beacon on the northern headland of Akutan Island. They were not able to see it, but the GPS had them accurately placed. Up ahead was the beginning of a 'safety fairway,' drawn up by the Admiralty in London, for all shipping using the Pass.
In those lanes, the chart informed them, there was no impediment to safe navigation. Not even man-made… no artificial island or structure, fixed or permanent. It added that it was not mandatory to use the 'fairway,' but recommended.
'Thanks, old chap,' said Ravi, in a sudden spasm of homesickness. 'I'm with you all the way.'
But Ravi's chart showed there was a shallow area, two miles long, in the middle of the fairway, under eighty feet at its worst, and fine for surface ships. But it was not fine for submarines that wished to stay undetected. It was possible, because most of the sandbank was ninety feet deep, but it was not advisable. Without putting a mast up, the Barracuda was fifty-five feet high from the top of its sail to the keel. Ben Badr would want twenty-foot clearance from the seabed, because to hit the bottom would be a crisis of diabolical proportions.
It was simply begging for trouble to make a slowish run at periscope depth, with the mast jutting out of the water, probably in the slavering teeth of powerful U.S. radar. Ben Badr did not like it, and was actually considering making a fast run for it, on the surface, in the dead of night, and then heading for deep water.
General Rashood, however, considered this had an edge of hysteria to it, and was quite certain it would have given any ultracautious SAS Commanding Officer a heart attack. He said quietly, 'Ben, I have been taught to back off, any time I find myself weighing up a risk that will threaten my 'mission critical.''
'So have I,' said Ben. 'But in this godforsaken place, we must have a ninety percent chance of getting away with a fast surface run, for maybe five minutes. They'd probably think we were a fishing boat, or a freighter.'
'Don't like the odds,' said Ravi. 'Forget it. Anyway, I think I have a better plan.'
'I should hope so,' replied Captain Badr, grinning. 'You're in charge.'
'When I was in Araguba, a Russian officer, who I think had drunk a little too much, told me, and he probably shouldn't have, about a Russian submarine — he thought it was a Kilo Class boat — that went right through the Bosporus submerged, and was never detected by heavy Turkish radar.'
'He did? That's incredible,' said the CO. 'Every submariner knows the Bosporus is impossible, with all that fast freight traffic, and terrible currents, sandbanks, wrecks, and God knows what.'
'I know. But this Russian told me it was done. And you know what? He told me how it was done.'
'He did?' said Ben, eyes wide open.
'Yes. Dead simple, really. He went through in the wake of a big freighter, right up his backside. The stern wake confused the radar so badly, they never saw the periscope.'
'Is that right?' said Ben Badr, even more incredulously. 'But I wonder what would have happened if the surface ship had stopped?'
'Funny. That's what I asked. But the old Russian just smiled and told me a good submarine captain would be on high alert for that. No problem.'
'Are you saying that's what we should do, Ravi?'
'Why not? We'll hang around waiting for a big freighter, and follow it through. Much less dangerous here — the channel's wide, and just about deserted. If that Russian could follow a ship through the confined area of the Bosporus, we ought to be able to chase one through a safety fairway, in the middle of a seaway nearly ten miles wide.'
'Yes. I suppose we could. I'm not sure how long we'll have to wait. We'll come to PD every half hour and see what's going on, keep our speed right down, and then get in close.'
The trouble was, throughout the day, there were several small ships moving through the Pass, but no big ones. It was quite late in the afternoon, almost dark up here in those latitudes, when the veteran Kilo CPO, Ali Amiri, Chief of the Boat, called from the periscope:
'Captain, sir… I have a possible… three-three-zero… twelve thousand yards… I'm about thirty on his starboard bow… He's got a commercial nav radar… '
'I'm turning toward it for a better look — before the light gives out on us.' Captain Badr was all business now.
'UP PERISCOPE. All-round look.'
Seconds later—'DOWN!'
'Bearing?'
'Three-three-five… bearing that. Range that… on twenty-four meters… seven and a half thousand yards, sir… Put me twenty-five on his starboard bow… target course… one-two-zero… distance off track three thousand five hundred yards.
'Come right to zero-six-zero… down periscope… make your speed five knots.'
The Barracuda moved forward in the water, running slowly toward the track of the oncoming freighter. They took another look closer in, and assessed her as a 6,000-tonner, Japan registered, heading straight into the Pass, nicely on a steady relative bearing as it approached.
For the next ten minutes they hectically worked the periscope up and then down, until finally Captain Badr ordered a gentle starboard turn, falling in hard behind the freighter.
With her bow right behind the merchantman's prop, range locked on the stern light, the Barracuda matched speed precisely with the leader.
Eighty-five revolutions… speed over the ground 8.8 by GPS… 8.3 through the water, sir.
Only 100 yards of choppy, foaming water separated the two ships as they made their way down the narrow safety fairway. No one, obviously, in the Japanese ship had the slightest idea they were being closely tracked by a nuclear submarine. A rogue submarine at that.
The team in the Barracuda kept station to the nearest few yards, watching the angle between the horizon and the freighter's stern light, knowing if it increased they were too close. If it decreased, they were falling behind, out of the broiling wake that was protecting them from U.S. radar.
The Japanese ship held a far steadier course than the last one they had encountered, the Mayajima. It set its speed and held course for mile after mile. It probably drew only around twenty feet, so it was not in any way neurotic about ocean-depth, just kept rolling through the Pass, on course to a distant land. 'Probably full of computers,' said Ravi. 'Though I can't imagine where they were coming from up there in the Arctic. Unless it was Prudhoe Bay… they've got a lot of electronic kit up there.'
It was twenty-five miles to the shallowest point of the Pass, and it took two and a half hours. And all the way across the shoal, Ben Badr's men kept calling out the depth of water beneath the keel. It only once went under twenty feet— all the way to fourteen feet, which made the CO somewhat nervous. But within fifteen minutes they were hearing the ocean bottom was shelving down again.
Ninety feet, sir… now one hundred…
They were positioned at 54.15' N 165.30' W — and no longer required their Japanese escort. Sixty miles southeast of Sanak Island they made a course change to due east, running deep now, straight along the 54th parallel, away from the great volcanic arc of the Aleutian Islands, into the Gulf of Alaska.
9
