'Hold on,' said Harcourt. 'You can't just do that. There'd be about twenty shipwrecks on the first day. Huge merchant freighters and tankers don't have the first idea how to navigate without GPS.'
'Tough,' replied the President.
'To whom shall I tell them to address the billions of dollars' worth of lawsuits, all aimed at the man who turned off the navigation system that lights up the world?'
'Fuck,' said the President. 'I think you got me.'
'Sir, I know you can't cancel GPS worldwide for the reasons Harcourt just succinctly put forward. Couldn't even put it back to one hundred fifty meters without due warning— there'd be people drowning all over the globe. But it is a problem. We should look at it. Because that's how this bastard in the submarine is finding his targets with such complete accuracy.'
'If he'd had only one hundred fifty meters accuracy, would he have missed the refinery?'
'Probably most of it,' replied Arnold Morgan. 'I doubt he would have nailed the big fractioning towers, and that would have reduced the damage by around ninety percent.'
'I guess that's one more thing for which we have to thank my predecessor,' said the President thoughtfully.
'Absolutely,' said Arnold Morgan.
'Liberal shithead,' confirmed the President.
11
By midnight on that Friday, Admiral Vitaly Rankov had not returned yet another call from Admiral Morgan. It was now plain that no one was telling the United States of America whether the second Barracuda was operational, or where it was, or indeed whether Russia still owned it.
Arnold Morgan was not pleased. And in the small hours of the following morning he summoned to the encrypted telephone the sleeping Chief of the CIA's Russian desk.
'Tommy, hi. Morgan here. We still got that good guy in Murmansk?'
Tom Rayburn, an old friend of the Admiral's, was quickly into his stride. 'Hi, Arnie. Just. But he's about to retire. Probably coming to live here.'
'Think he'd have time for one more mission? Nothing dangerous. Just inquiries.'
'Oh sure. Old Nikolai's always been expensive but cooperative.'
'Okay. I'm looking for a nuclear submarine. A Sierra I, Barracuda Class. Type 945. Hull K-240. We think it was never quite completed, never went to sea, and was subsequently laid up in the yards at Araguba, north of Severomorsk. I need to find out whether it's still there, in a covered dry dock. Apparently, they were using it for spare parts for the one Barracuda that was operational. That's Hull K-239.'
Tom Rayburn took his notes carefully. 'Where's that one, just so we don't get confused?'
'I'm not sure,' replied the Admiral. 'But you may assume it's a fucking long way from Murmansk.'
The CIA man guffawed. Arnold Morgan's manner had not changed in the twenty years he had known him. 'OK, boss,' he said. 'I'll get on it. You want to know whether the Barracuda's still in Araguba, and if not, where it is?'
'And especially whether they've sold it.'
'You got it. Gimme twenty-four hours.'
At precisely the same time, 1:00 a.m. in Fort Meade, Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe was poring over a report from the office of the Energy Department detailing progress from the undersea repair team north of Graham Island.
The pipeline valves had been turned off, and after the tremendous crude oil leakage into the sea, they had successfully capped the breach in the line at the Overfall Shoal. It was difficult, but made easier by the shallowness of the water. The operation had entailed lifting both damaged sections of the pipe on cranes and making the repair onboard a service ship, before lowering the entire section, using two ships, back onto the seabed.
It was then, of course, necessary to open several valves to make sure the repair, made on one of the major couplings, was tight. When the oil flowed again, the frogmen reported no leakage and everything seemed fine. However, to their horror, three hours later, another huge slick was seen developing about a half mile to the north. And this was much more difficult to repair because the water was much, much deeper.
All valves were turned off again, but this time they needed to send down an unmanned minisubmarine to inspect the further damage, which no one had known about. And this was again terrible news because the television photographs being relayed to the surface showed a shattering rupture in the pipe, nowhere near a coupling joint. This meant they would need to lift two entire sections off the floor of the ocean, using two giant 'camels.'
This would be an immensely expensive and challenging operation. The Dixon Entrance is in a remote part of the world, and in early March sea conditions can be very rough. They were looking at possibly six weeks to two months when no oil would be carried down the pipeline from Yakutat Bay. And neither did it matter much whether the crude oil arrived in mainland United States or not, since the refinery at Grays Harbor was destroyed. And neither would there be any tankers heading south out of Prince William Sound, where there were currently no crude supplies whatsoever.
If this fight between General Rashood's Fundamentalists and the American West Coast's oil industry had been fought under Marquess of Queensberry Rules, the referee would have stopped it.
Jimmy Ramshawe stared at the report, and contemplated the colossal damage. He also pulled up and checked out the inflammatory words of Professor Jethro Flint of the University of Colorado… They will never have tested that pipeline with those kind of real-life pressures… When you subject something to stresses it's never undergone before, it can rupture… They've overloaded the pipeline, somewhat thoughtlessly, and it's come unraveled.
'Wrong, professor. Wrong,' muttered Jimmy. 'If you were right, the pipeline would have ruptured at the joint, its weakest part, and that would have released the pressure instantly, with the bloody oil gushing out in a huge jet, underwater. There would have been no second breach, especially right in the middle of the pipe away from the joints.
'I am afraid, old mate, your bloody academic theory is right up the chute. That wasn't pressure that bust the pipe, that was a couple of terrorist bombs, delivered by frogmen from a submarine.'
He drafted off a hard-copy note to Admiral Morris, pointing out the obvious and fatal flaw in the argument of Professor Flint.
He ended with a flourish. 'Would you like me to circulate these findings on the E-mail to the FBI, CNO, Bob MacPherson, and Admiral Morgan? Because they sure as hell just blew Fred Flintstone out of the water, right?'
Admiral Morris answered in the affirmative.
It was the weekend, and the markets were closed. Which left the media to run riot all over the world, piecing together the undeniable truth that there had been three massive accidents in the Alaska oil industry. Were they really accidents? Are they connected? Is this industrial sabotage on the grandest scale? If so, who? Is there someone out there trying to bring the United States to its knees?
These were scare stories way up there on the Richter scale. And there were seismic shocks in every area of public life. Gas was already at $6 a gallon at many West Coast stations, and every newspaper and television screen from San Diego to the Alaskan coast was trumpeting about the fuel oil shortages that must begin to bite immediately.
The further north the city, the bigger the headlines, as the newspapers cited all of their usual sources of doom for maximum disquiet among the populace. They forecast power stations grinding to a halt… hospital emergency equipment without electricity (people may die)… no gasoline… senior citizens dying of cold and starvation… schools closed… government offices blacked out… no power… no computers… no Social Security pensions… no baseball games… floodlights… traffic lights… strobe lights… neon lights.
The list was hysterical and endless. Hysterical, and accurate, bang on the money. This was a pending crisis the likes of which no one had ever imagined. Because not only was Grays Harbor, the largest refinery in the country,
