For five days and five nights the Barracuda ran deep beneath the windswept waters of the Gulf of Alaska. Captain Badr never let her speed rise above six knots, nor her depth above 500 feet. She tiptoed past the menace of the U.S. Navy's SOSUS arrays and stuck to the shallowest water she could find at that depth.
A lot of very large oil tankers rumbled overhead on the high-octane highway to and from Prince William Sound and the terminal at Valdez. But no one heard the near silent thrum of the Russian turbines, carrying the marauders from the Middle East toward the spectacular archipelago of Alaska's southeastern islands and fiords.
On Thursday afternoon, February 28, the submarine arrived in 500 feet of water, west of miniscule Forester Island. Ben Badr's log book read 54.47' N 133.45' W. The Barracuda was thirty miles off the coast of Prince of Wales Island, the third-largest in all the Americas, and that includes Hawaii.
The Commanding Officer put his ship into a slow racetrack pattern, moving at only three knots through the water, now 300 feet below the surface. As it grew dark, there was heightened activity in the missile compartment, as eight big RADUGAs were moved into firing position.
Two decks above, in the navigation area, Shakira Rashood was locked into her charts, preferring the sprawling Admiralty layouts to the smaller neater versions that appeared on the computer screens. She used dividers, a three-foot-long clear plastic ruler, a protractor, and calculator. Ravi stood next to her, mildly amused at his wife's capacity to turn his own broad outlines and objectives into careful details. She was, he thought, at heart, a natural-born civil servant, which was unusual for a terrorist.
From the moment he had explained to her his objectives, she had set about turning ideas into concrete plans. She had studied the success/failure rate of the RADUGA and the defenses, both probable and certain, of the targets in the United States. She plotted routes, changed them, suggested positions for the launch platform, and finally presented her work in carefully drawn diagrams, in thin blue lines on her charts.
As far as Ravi could see, her strategy, and geographic understanding were without flaw. For weeks he had put up with a lot… How far is this?… What about this?… What about that?… Too far… Too direct… No possibility of working… Absolutely not… There's a U.S. listening station right here… You can't take a submarine in there, they'd hear you… It's too shallow… Too busy… Too close to the shore… Too far out… too near the main tanker lanes… too near this Coast Guard patrol area…
Shakira was tireless. Thorough, intelligent, and cautious. But still tireless. Grand strategy was not her game. It was the minutiae that absorbed her. And long ago, Ravi had considered that minutiae might keep them safe from discovery and attack.
She had no personal ambition to be seen as brilliant. Indeed, she checked with her beloved Ravi every step of the way. Shakira's ambition was to help produce a perfectly executed operation, eliminating mistakes, catching miscalculations, listing snags, drawbacks, and dangers.
Ravi had never met a better executive working in a confined area like maps and missiles. And during that long Thursday evening he watched her, working with the Missile Director, the two of them checking the distances, the flight trajectories, and courses. And he thanked God for the long weeks his missile team had spent in Petropavlovsk, mastering the big cruises that would now strike a blow for Allah deep in the heart of the Great Satan's Power base.
Even if all failed, and they should be caught and eliminated by the U.S. Navy, nothing could now prevent the strike. The power grid of the West Coast of the United States was at their mercy.
At ten o'clock that evening, Ravi ordered the Barracuda to alter course to ninety degrees, to face east, toward Mecca, across the great frozen prairies of Canada to the Atlantic. And then he took the ship's broadcast system and asked every man to spend a few moments in prayer. Those who could, knelt in the Muslim fashion.
He reminded them their immediate actions may bring about the coming turmoil, and that they would hear the Angels sound the trumpet three times. And that when God read the Angel's reports, the righteous would cross the bridge, into Paradise. And that surely all of His children now dwelling in this great weapon, built to carry out Allah's will, would be among the righteous.
'I have turned my face,' said Ravi, 'only toward the Supreme Being who has created the skies and the earth, and I am not one of those who ascribes a partner to God. To you be glory, and with this praise I begin this prayer. Yours is the most auspicious name. You are exalted and none other than you is worthy of worship.'
He prayed for guidance in their great adventure and he ended with these lines from the Koran…
At which point he ordered the ship back around to the west, and he summoned the Missile Director to the control room, checking one last time the prefiring routines and settings. The program was immaculate. Only missile malfunction or unexpected enemy action could stop them now. The big RADUGAs, the guidance programs preset, were ready to go, straight along the route Shakira Rashood had masterminded.
At eleven o'clock, Ravi gave the order. 'STAND BY TUBES ONE TO EIGHT.'
Then, seconds later… 'TUBE ONE LAUNCH!'
The first of the opening salvo of four nine-foot-long steel guided missiles blew out of the launcher, arrowed up to the surface, and ripped out of the water as its engine ignited.
It roared upward into the black night sky, with a fiery trail crackling out behind it. At 200 meters above the surface, its cruise altitude, the missile adjusted course to 290 degrees and hit flying speed of 600 knots. The gas turbines cut in, eliminating the telltale trail in the sky. And the RADUGA was on its way.
Right behind it, the second one was in the launch process, out of the tube and on its way to the surface. The third was only seconds from ignition, and the fourth was already under the control of the launch sequencer.
There would be variations in each of the four designated indirect routes to Valdez, but they would arrive on target twenty seconds apart, no matter what. And now they fanned out, streaking above the night waves of the Gulf of Alaska, growling surprisingly softly as they sliced through the wind and scattered low clouds.
The initial 860 miles took the salvo ninety minutes, and it took them more than 200 miles past the natural right turn up into Prince William Sound on longitude 146.20' W. It also took them far south of the U.S. Navy radar that sweeps the Sound night and day.
It took them to a point high above St. Augustine's Island at the gateway to the Cook Inlet, which leads up to Anchorage. At the island, the missiles made a sharp adjustment, swerving right onto a northerly course of thirty- five degrees, straight up the wide Inlet, and then over the Alaskan mainland for 375 miles.
Shakira had programmed a complete about-face at this point. And the missiles now made a 150-degree turn to the south, hurtling still at Mach 0.7 toward Valdez from a direction no one could reasonably predict.
Harry Roberts, and his hunting buddy, Cal Foster, ought not to have been driving. It was pitch black, the lights on their old truck had seen brighter days, and they had drunk about nine pints of Alaska Ambler apiece.
Both of them were twenty-one, the legal drinking age in the state with the highest level of alcoholism in the country. Fortunately, the highway was just about deserted at this time of night, which left Harry to execute a few free swerves and steering corrections without actually killing anyone.
They were around four miles from the town of Glennallen, when Cal announced from the passenger seat that he had a desperate need to unload a half gallon of Alaska Ambler, and the truck had to pull over right away.
Harry understood the feeling, and drove onto the hard shoulder, narrowly avoiding driving headlong into the ditch. They both stumbled out of the cab and positioned themselves for one of the great pees of their young lives.
Cal held his head back and belched luxuriously into the night, unleashing a shattering bark that could have petrified a bull moose. He reopened his eyes and it was then that he saw it, coming toward him, high above in the clear skies. At first he thought it was a shooting star, then he realized it was an aircraft of some type. Then it went by, directly overhead, with that soft growl, and a swiiissshh of disturbed air.
