Scimitar SL-2

signature of big ballast tanks being blown.

“Christ!” he snapped. “This is a goddamned submarine…and it sounds like it’s sinking or in collision!”

The underwater sounds continued on and off for about a minute. The operator summoned his supervisor in time to see the submarine’s ballast. But just as suddenly, everything went quiet again. Making only five knots, the Barracuda vanished, humming through the pitch-black, ice-cold depths of the Bering Sea.

“That was a transient, sir. Don’t know who the hell it was, but it was a submarine, and not American. We got nothing up here…with luck we’ll hear it again.”

They did not. The Barracuda, holding its five-knot speed as it moved away from Attu Island, was careful not accelerate.

Nonetheless, the Americans were suspicious, and they posted the information on the nets…“161750JUL09 Transient contact north of Attu Island station western Aleutians approximately 175.01E 53.51N…Nuclear turbine, possibly Russian Delta. Contact included ballast blowing and high engine revs for one minute. Not regained…No submarine correlation on friendly nets.

The signal was relayed through the normal U.S. Navy channels and would be read that afternoon in the National Security Agency in Maryland. Meanwhile Admiral Badr kept moving slowly east north of the islands towards the mainland of America’s largest state.

They were not detected again, all along their 720-mile route to the gateway to the Unimak Pass, through which they would try to make safe passage behind a freighter to the southern side of the Aleutians and then turn left into the Gulf of Alaska. The journey to the Pass took them until midnight on Wednesday night, July 21, by which time the surface weather was brutal, with a northeasterly gale and driving rain, plus a blanket of fog that refused to move despite the wind. They took up the same safe position they had occupied the previous year, 10 miles off the flashing beacon on the northern headland of Akutan Island.

Visibility on the surface was less than 300 yards, and they faced a long and frustrating wait, trying to locate a sufficiently large merchant ship or tanker, astern of which they could follow at periscope depth, their mast obscured by the wake of the leading ship, the typical sneaky submariner’s trick.

That Wednesday night was quiet. They finally detected two medium-sized freighters moving towards the Pass, but they were not big enough, and they were heavily laden, going slowly, hardly leaving a wake. Ben Badr wanted a major container ship or a giant tanker in a hurry to cross to the Gulf of Alaska.

But traffic remained light all night. The watches slipped by, sailors slept and ate, and the reactor ran smoothly. Ravi and Shakira retired to their little cabin at 0200, after two fruitless hours of waiting. The General ordered the COB CPO Ali Zahedi to call him instantly if anything was sighted, but nothing was, and the Barracuda continued in a slow racetrack pattern, occasionally coming to PD for a GPS check, observation, then back under the surface.

The weather, if anything, worsened. The fog had cleared, but the rain was still lashing down, visibility at maybe only a couple of miles. At 0915, sonar reported a likely contact approaching from the northwest. Taking a swift look through the periscope, Ali Zahedi spotted a serious crude oil tanker churning down into the Pass, the great 10-mile-wide seaway between the islands.

“Here he is, sir,” he called. “A real possible…three-zero-zero…but it’s close…only 3,000 yards…I’m 35 on his starboard bow…”

“PERISCOPE DOWN!”

Admiral Badr moved in. “Lemme look, Ali—”

“PERISCOPE UP!”

“Three-three-five,” he called.

“Now bearing that…range that on 24 meters…. What are we, 2,500 yards?…Put me 25 on his starboard bow…target course…one-two-zero.”

“DOWN PERISCOPE!”

“Come right to zero-six-zero…dead slow…”

“Here she comes, sir…”

“UP PERISCOPE!”

And for the next three minutes, they worked the mast up and down, finally accelerating in behind the freighter, with a burst of 12-knot speed, before slowing down to the freighter’s nine knots and becoming invisible in her wake.

“She’s Russian, sir,” called Ali Zahedi. “Siberian crude, I imagine.”

Over in the U.S. listening station at Cape Sarichef, the seaward northwesterly point of Unimak Island overlooking the approaches to the Pass, the American radar picked up the periscope mast of the accelerating Barracuda, 18 miles away to the west.

But just as quickly, the “paint” vanished after only three sweeps, leaving behind a mystery. Had they picked up the periscope of a submarine? Or was it just flotsam in the water? And if it was a periscope, did it belong to the same submarine the Attu Station had heard and reported last Friday night?

In the normal course of events, the Unimak Station would not have reported any of the random radar paints picked up on a commercial thruway like the Pass. But there was something about this contact, the stark clarity of the paint, its sudden appearance from nowhere, and its equally sudden disappearance. Plus the report from Attu last Friday.

They decided to put the information on the nets…221127JUL09 Possible transient radar contact detected Unimak Station. Five seconds, three sweeps on screen. Further to Attu Station submarine contact 161750JUL09…Unimak detection consistent with slow five-knot submarine progress from Attu to Unimak Pass.

It was a signal that would, in a very few hours, send off alarm bells inside the head of Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe in Fort Meade. And it would cause his mind to whirl in hopeless search for the missing Barracuda. Though even he would have to admit that he couldn’t say, even within 10,000 miles, where it might be. But it would not be the first time he had wondered about a clandestine submarine passage along the route north of the Aleutian Islands. And right now, he would have given almost anything to know the precise whereabouts of that mysterious underwater ship and who its owners were.

Meanwhile, Admiral Badr had his ship perfectly ranged behind the Russian tanker, the whole operation one of geometry rather than navigation. They were separated by about 100 yards of swirling white water, and they had a beam ranged on the mast light of the merchant ship.

The correct angle was around 13 degrees. If it decreased, they were falling behind, out of the wake that protected them from the U.S. radar. If the angle increased, it meant they were getting too close. And the tanker, blissful in its ignorance of the nuclear arsenal following in its wake, kept steaming forwards. Captain Mohtaj, the XO, personally took the helm during this most intricate part of their journey, and steered them dead astern of their leader.

“Ninety-five revolutions…speed over the ground 9.2 by GPS…8.6 through the water, sir…”

When they reached the GPS position, 54.15N 165.30W, they no longer needed to be a shadow. They broke away and went deep to 300 feet, heading for a point 60 miles southeast of Sanak Island, where Ben Badr ordered a course change to due east. They had turned away at last from the long sweeping arc of the Aleutians and were making 8 knots along the 54th line of latitude, straight into the Gulf of Alaska.

Down in the navigation area, General Rashood was sharing a pot of coffee with Shakira and Ashtari Mohammed. The Arabian Lieutenant Commander and the Navigator were poring over the big charts, trying, as always, to second-guess the United States’ defenses.

General Ravi was sitting at a high desk with a pile of notes illuminated by an adjustable reading light. In great detail, sectioned off in colors, numbered and bound, they contained details of geological strata, depths of rock, likely weak points in certain areas of the earth’s crust. Lists of volcanic activity. Lists of “modern” volcanoes likely to erupt. There were detailed maps of great mountains that could develop interior lava in the next five years. There were estimates of potential damage, endangered areas, and a special section on inland volcanoes, plus two entire eighteen-page chapters on seaward volcanoes.

Ravi had compiled the document himself; he had typed up, filed, and cataloged every specific section, cross-