Scimitar SL-2

gigantic military base south of Alexandria, right on the severely threatened west bank of the Potomac. Emergency treatment centers, staffed by the Army, were already operational in Whitehaven Park, Constitution Gardens, and the Washington Hospital Center.

A small fleet of U.S. Marine helicopters was on standby to ferry serious cases to a brand-new military field hospital set up in a safe area out near Dulles Airport. Treatment centers in the city would remain open until they received the message that the Hamas missiles had hit home on the faraway island of La Palma. At which point the Marines’ Super Stallion helicopters would evacuate everything and everyone directly to the Dulles area.

The Police Department in downtown Washington was possibly the busiest place in the city. All leave was canceled, officers were working around the clock, mainly on the streets, patrolling in groups of three and four, especially in areas where widespread evacuation had already taken place. This was not confined just to shops and department stores; the police were vigilantly patrolling and checking on all private homes. The Oval Office, backed by the Pentagon, had made it clear to the public that looters would be shot, if need be.

“Otherwise this whole damn thing could get right out of hand. We’ve got a bastard of an enemy out there, certainly we do not deserve to fight enemies within. If it comes to that, they can expect no mercy…” Arnold Morgan was not joking.

And, of course, the hard-pressed police department knew that as the evacuation gained momentum, the traffic problems would multiply. They were already providing information and advice, and escorts for large convoys. Overhead, police helicopters were constantly reporting and issuing a general overview of traffic movement within the city, and helping to direct resources to where they were most needed.

They were already getting support from thousands of National Guardsmen, who were out on the streets not only assisting with logistics, transportation, and vehicle recovery, but also watching the streets and observing the movements of Washington’s citizens closely. This was, one way or another, a bad time to be an American criminal working the nation’s capital.

The various fire departments were under orders to stay open and active, providing cover until the very last moment, but reducing their manpower wherever possible. All fire-fighting vehicles were already in working order, so the whole fleet could be withdrawn en masse down the specially cleared highway at the first news that Ben Badr had struck the volcano.

By far, the most troublesome point of the Pentagon’s evacuation plan was the prisons and the moving of highly dangerous criminals elsewhere in the country. General Scannell had detailed three companies of National Guardsmen — three hundred men — to assist in preparing a disused military base in West Virginia.

Right now, working under newly installed security lights, they were building high perimeter fences and fitting out accommodation huts. This part of the camp was for prisoners judged to be a menace to the public, and they would be under constant surveillance by armed Army personnel.

Other less dangerous prisoners would be moved to normal jails with spare capacity, but there was little room for brutal convicted killers, and no one had yet taken Admiral Morgan’s advice to “put the whole lot of them in front of a goddamned firing squad and have done with it.” He’d said it only half-jokingly.

Meanwhile, out in the real battleground, U.S. warships were arriving on station, and by midnight, the USS Coronado had steamed into her holding area 40 miles northwest of the coast of Lanzarote. Admiral Gillmore immediately opened communications with the Elrod and the Taylor, which were positioned north of Tenerife, some 60 miles to the west of the Coronado. The first orders issued by the new Task Group Commander were for these two frigates to patrol close inshore around the islands at first light — tomorrow, that is. Monday, October 5, four days before H-Hour—H for Hit.

Admiral Gillmore did not expect to stumble across the Barracuda by accident. Indeed, he did not believe the Hamas submarine to be in the area yet. But in the next day or so, they needed to familiarize themselves with the local charts. The Admiral wanted more reliable underwater fixings. They needed to identify anomalies and problem spots among the permanent characteristics of this part of the eastern Atlantic basin — areas of water swirl, thermal layering, fish concentrations, rocks, reefs, and ridges — all the myriad subsurface elements that can confuse a sonar operator.

Nonsubmarine contacts do one of two things: vanish completely, if they are, for instance, fish shoals, or, if they are rocks, remain solidly in place. Submarines are apt to get moving, giving strong signals with marked Doppler effects.

The initial task of the inshore group was to conduct a comprehensive search of the whole area, mapping the ocean floor as they went. They would use depth charges if anything suspicious came up, and even if no contact was located, their active sonar, sweeping through the depths, would almost certainly drive a marauding submarine out into deeper water, possibly at speed.

And out into that deeper water, Admiral Gillmore was sending six towed-array frigates, ultrasensitive to the slightest movement, the merest hint of an engine. Their task was to prowl the surface, probing the depths, waiting, listening. This offshore group, effectively a second line of attack, would be working in 30 fathoms or more, 25 miles out from the island beaches.

The USS Samuel B. Roberts, USS Hawes, the Robert G. Bradley, the De Wert, the Doyle, and the Underwood. These were the six submarine hunters designated by Admiral Gillmore to guard the offshore areas, and at the same time watch for the Barracuda if it tried to run in from out of the west.

The Kauffman and the Nicholas, two of the earliest arrivals in the Canary Islands from the North Atlantic, would take the western half of the inshore patrol, moving into the waters close to the islands of Tenerife, Gomera, tiny Hierro, and, to the north, La Palma itself.

Because Admiral Gillmore believed the Barracuda was most likely to take a southerly route into its ops area, he felt it was most likely to be detected east of the big islands closest to the shores of North Africa — Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. That’s where he wanted his two first-choice ships, the Elrod and the Taylor.

These frigates were commanded by two very senior Captains he had known well for many years, Sean Smith and Brad Willett, both dedicated ASW men, sub-hunting specialists like himself, with months of service in the still suspect Atlantic waters up by the GRIUK Gap.

Like Admiral Morgan, and his immediate boss, Adm. Frank Doran, George Gillmore had arrived at an irrevocable conclusion…the terrorist submarine would have to launch its missiles from a point where it could rush for cover from the tsunami. Before the Barracuda’s comms room discovered the satellites were down, they would surely try the area off the western Sahara for a long-distance launch, and then race for the cover of the eastern shore of Fuerteventura.

When they did discover there were no GPS satellite coordinates, they would need to creep to the south of Grand Canaria, in the area the Elrod and the Taylor patrolled, before running toward the south coast of Tenerife, and then into the inshore waters around Gomera. From there they would need to regroup, then get a good visual fix and then move in towards La Palma for the launch.

The Elrod and the Taylor had a chance of detecting the Barracuda as it made its way in from the open ocean, running south of all the islands towards the North African shore. They definitely had a shot at an early detection while the men from Hamas had a mast up while trying to access the GPS. And there would be another opportunity if and when the Barracuda began a move west towards Gomera.

The U.S. sea operation consisted of four ships inshore, and six standing off, 25 miles out. Admiral Gillmore had done his geometry. Each TA frigate would need to patrol in a radius of 10 to 20 nautical miles…the area measured from the volcano itself to cover the entire band out to 25 miles from the work of the inshore group. The distance around such a circle is about 150 nautical miles. And this would allow the six frigates to cover the entire area continuously. If the Barracuda somehow strayed into those waters, life could quickly become extremely tense for Ben Badr and his men.

This left Admiral Gillmore with two other frigates, Capt. Clint Sammons’s Klakring and Comdr. Joe Wickman’s Simpson. He would use these to extend the search area whenever it might become necessary, or to prosecute nearby towed-array contacts, or even to thicken up radar coverage inshore. In such a complex operation, George Gillmore knew better than to leave himself without