Zone, more than 900 miles east nor’east of the island of Montserrat. She was making a beeline for the Canary Islands.
When he went deep again after his transmission, Ben Badr would order a reduction in speed down to nine knots in 600 feet, above the somewhat noisy waters of the Ridge. He would cut it further as they continued eastward, running softly over the quiveringly sensitive underwater wires of SOSUS.
“Well, Admiral,” he said, “At least we know where the little bugger is headed. You want to call the Big Man, or will I do it?”
“You go ahead, Jimmy…I’m just looking over the comms plan for the command ship…We’re using the
He referred to the 17,000-ton Austin-class former Landing Platford Ship, which acted as Flagship Middle East Force in 1980. The
Commissioned in 1970, she had undergone three major conversions in a long life. A massive rebuild in the late 1990s saw her emerge virtually brand new. They turned her well deck into offices, with a three-deck command facility, and accommodation for four Flag Officers.
She was twin-shafted, driven by a couple of turbines that generated 24,000 hp. All her combat data systems were state-of-the-art, including an automated planning air-control system and wide-band commercial. She used Raytheon SPS-10P plus G-Band for surface search, and carried two helicopters.
After the turn of the century, the
At nine o’clock that morning, the CNO Adm. Alan Dickson announced from the Pentagon that Rear Adm. George Gillmore, a former hunter-killer nuclear submarine CO, had been appointed Search Group Commander, Task Group 201.1. He would report only to Adm. Frank Doran (CTF 201—CINCLANT), who now represented the Front Line contact, through which Arnold Morgan would remain close to all developments off the Canaries.
Admiral Gillmore had been the outstanding submariner of his year, along with Capt. Cale “Boomer” Dunning, a fellow Commanding Officer from Cape Cod. When he took his first surface ship command aboard the frigate
He had all the right qualities, including the ability to concentrate for hours at a time, the sharpness to react instantly to even a sniff of an underwater contact, and the courage to act decisively when he was sure he’d found one. His long years underwater served him well. Admiral Gillmore could always recollect what he would have done, had he been the hunted rather than the hunter. And he had an almost uncanny knack of being correct in his predictions. Bad news for Admiral Badr and his men.
A tall, bearded disciplinarian, George was based in the Atlantic Fleet, and he had already sailed for the Canaries from Norfolk in the small hours of Wednesday morning two days previously, several hours before President McBride left the White House. It was the fact that such an act of open defiance towards a sitting President had been necessary that had convinced Admiral Morgan and General Scannell that McBride simply had to go.
Admiral Gillmore’s overall task would be to coordinate the search frigates, helos, and the Carrier Battle Group ships in an intense and complicated operation that might explode into action at any moment. He would have a staff of more than one hundred men, eighteen officers.
Right now, as the announcement was made, Admiral Gillmore was familiarizing himself with the new systems on board the
The Navy Press Office issued a release to the media announcing the appointment of Admiral Gillmore, but a few doors down the corridor, in the Office of the CNO, there was a major disturbance. They had just received a communique from the French. On no account would they close down the European GPS. They cited the consequences to the world’s shipping, the obvious hazards to yachtsmen, and the prospect of beached freighters and tankers. They could not, in conscience, agree to such a course of action.
Immediately, Admiral Dickson prepared to go to Plan B, which would entail Admiral Morgan speaking to — or yelling at — the French Foreign Minister on a direct line to Paris.
Admiral Dickson was quite certain that the American Admiral was capable of frightening the French into submission, which, under the circumstances, would be a wise course of action. There was no question in Alan Dickson’s mind that Arnold would blow the Helios satellite clean out of the stratosphere if there was not immediate cooperation from France.
As the evacuation process continued, it quickly emerged that Washington’s treasures posed a huge problem, mainly because the capital city was entrusted with the preservation of the national heritage, and all that the nation holds dear. Of the 750,000 residents of Washington, D.C., 70 percent were employed by the Federal Government, which meant that a broad structure was already in existence for easy dissemination of information and execution of the evacuation plans.
The greatest concern by far, in the city itself, was the vast range of fine art, documents, and items of priceless value that record the birth, development, and history of the nation.
Across the Potomac, a Special Ops Room was established inside the Pentagon in the U.S. Navy department. A large computerized screen occupied an entire wall, and two Lieutenant Commanders were marking out the west-nor’westerly direction of the incoming tsunami as it would come driving forward off the Atlantic. So far as they could tell, the one certainty was that the initial impact would be borne by the peninsula of land stretching south from Salisbury.
The path of the tsunami would proceed straight across the outer islands, on to the eastern shore of Maryland, a 150-foot wave taking out Salisbury completely. From there it would roll clean across the flatlands, drowning the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and into the wide estuary of Chesapeake Bay. Speed: approximately 300 mph, causing massive flooding all the way north up the main channel and causing a tidal surge up the Potomac of 120 feet minimum, IF the jutting headland of Pautuxet was able to remove some of the sting from the wave. By now it would have leveled probably fifty small towns and villages.
Minutes later, the great city of Washington, D.C., would go under water. Scientists on the line from the University of California were telling the Pentagon Ops Room they could expect a rise of at least 50 feet throughout the course of the Potomac River as far upstream as Bethesda, where it should begin to decrease to maybe 20 feet, up near Brunswick.
The waters would, of course, recede within a few days, but the damage would be inestimable, and on no account should anything be left to chance. Washington itself was particularly low-lying; indeed, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials were built on land that was formerly a swamp. Some of the great city buildings might survive, but not many, and no human being should risk standing in the way of the tidal wave.
The Treasury, the Supreme Court, the Department of Defense, and the FBI were effectively out of action for any new business. The CIA, perilously situated just north of the Georgetown Pike, on the west bank of the Potomac, where the river sweeps downstream to the right, was beginning a massive salvage operation of some of the most sensitive documents in the country, not to mention the kind of high-value equipment and files that could cause a world war, should they wash up in the wrong place.
Like their colleagues in Federal Government offices, the CIA were packing and dispatching computers, hard drives, documents, archive material, and other valuable records. Departmental staff were packing the stuff into military cases, all numbered and recorded, before making the journey under armed guard to Andrews Air Force Base over in Prince George’s County. From there they would be flown under guard in the giant C-17 transporters to carefully selected U.S. Air Bases beyond the reach of the floodwaters. Those cases would be stored in Air Force hangars, closely guarded around the clock by Federal troops with orders to shoot intruders on sight.
Over on Independence Avenue there was a major operation in the Library of Congress. Things had been relatively calm in there since they moved into their new building in 1897. But the Library was no stranger to catastrophe, having twice burned down when it was located in the Capitol in the first half of the nineteenth century. Today, the activity was close to frenzied, as troops from the Air Force Base joined the staff, trying to pack up more than 84 million items of information, in 470 languages.
This was the world’s largest library; its books, pamphlets, microfilm, folios of sheet music, and maps were all stored in three great stone centers of learning, each one named after three of the Founding Fathers who all were
