Scimitar SL-2

understood that they would need several separate sorties to periscope depth. To try to achieve their mission with just one, or even two, extended visits to the waters right below the surface would be tantamount to blowing their own brains out.

Their only chance of success and escape was to come to PD fleetingly to make their visual setup to get a fix on the land and the high peaks of the Cumbre Vieja mountains. And then to vanish, to return for a final fleeting range check, then to fire the two missiles in quick succession. At no time should they spend more than seven seconds above the surface. Not if they hoped to live.

By 1600 on that Thursday afternoon, they were in relatively shallow water, 2,500 feet, running 600 feet below the surface, four miles off the east coast of Gomera. Captain Mohtaj was in the navigation room assisting Lt. Ashtari Mohammed as he plotted a northerly course to a point 6 miles off Point del Organo. From there it was a straight 16-mile run-in to the proposed launch zone, 25 miles off the volcanic coast of La Palma. Subject to enemy intervention, they aimed to fire from 28.22N 17.28W.

Every man in the ship knew that the U.S. defenses would grow tighter and tighter with every mile they traveled. But no one had ever put a firm fix on the Barracuda, as far as they knew. Its crew was now generally aware of the prospect of imminent death, but they also felt a sense of security in their deepwater environment. They had just journeyed several hundred miles under the brutal surveillance of the U.S. Navy, and no one had located them yet. They still had a chance.

By 1800, it was still broad daylight as they crept along the Gomera coast, and Lieutenant Ashtari advised they now had a clear range in front of them, straight to La Palma. Admiral Badr had already rolled the dice in his own mind. He was determined to accomplish the mission, determined to get a correct fix on the Cumbre Vieja, determined to fire his two missiles straight into the crater, or as near as he possibly could. For the escape, everything was in the hands of Allah. But Admiral Badr knew that the odds heavily favored the Americans.

Lieutenant Ashtari checked the ship’s inertial navigation system (SINS), a device beyond the purse of most commercial shipping lines and, in the end, way beyond the purse of Russia’s cash-strapped Navy. But the Barracuda had one, and it had measured course, speed, and direction every yard of the way since they had left the submarine jetties in Huludao in the northern Yellow Sea three months ago.

The system was developed especially for submarines in the 1950s, and had been progressively refined in the years that followed. It had one objective: to inform navigators precisely where they were in the earth’s oceans, even after not having seen the sun, moon, or stars for weeks on end. Both U.S. nuclear boats, the Nautilus and the Skate, had used the system when they navigated under the polar ice cap in 1958.

The Barracuda’s SINS was vastly improved from those days — and phenomenally accurate — calculating regular accelerations but discarding those caused by gravitational attraction, pitching, and rolling. All the way across the North Pacific, all the way down the endless west coast of Canada and the U.S.A., around South America and up the Atlantic, the SINS had provided a continuous picture of the submarine’s precise position. Given the pinpoint certainty of their start point, the system would be accurate to between 100 and 200 yards at the completion of a round-the-world voyage.

In recent years, the ease and brilliance of the GPS had somewhat overshadowed the old inertial navigation processes, but every submarine navigation officer kept one quietly onstream. Indeed, most senior Navy navigators instinctively checked one against the other at all times.

Lt. Ashtari Mohammed knew precisely where he was, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Air Force in Colorado to confuse the life out of him. The SINS screen now put him at 26.17N 17.12W. They were off the north coast of Gomera in 125 fathoms, still 500 feet below the surface.

This would be the final visual fix before they headed into the firing zone, and Lieutenant Mohammed requested a 7-second look through the periscope to take a range and bearing on the towering basalt cliffs of Les Organos, a little over 5 miles to their southwest, and still visible in the late afternoon light, now a little after 1830.

Ben Badr agreed to head for the surface at slow speed, and he did so knowing their target above the coast of La Palma was dead ahead, 41 miles, west nor’west. The periscope of the Barracuda slid onto the azure surface of the water on a calm afternoon. The Admiral was staring at a stopwatch ticking off the seconds. He heard them call out the fix on two points of Gomera’s coastline — Les Organos and the great curved headland north of the village of Agula.

“UP PERISCOPE!”

“All round look…”

“DOWN!”

“UP! Right-hand edge — MARK! DOWN!”

“Two-four-zero.”

“UP PERISCOPE! Left-hand edge — MARK! DOWN!”

“One-eight-zero.”

“UP!”

“Organo anchorage light…two-two-zero…”

“DOWN! How does that look, Captain Mohtaj?”

“Excellent fix, sir. Course for launch position…two-nine-zero…distance 16 miles.”

Admiral Badr heard the comms room accept a signal from the Chinese naval satellite, and then he snapped: “Okay, that’s it, five down…600 feet…Make your speed 7 knots. Make a racetrack pattern when you’re on depth…”

Ben Badr knew there was little point making a three-hour lowspeed run through the night into the launch zone, and then hanging around until daybreak right on the 25-mile line from La Palma’s east coast. The place would be jumping with U.S. warships, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft.

Right here, off Gomera, no one was looking quite so intensely. Generally speaking, Ben Badr preferred to run in silently, arriving at first light and setting up his visual fix with the sun rising to the east directly behind him. That way he could come to PD, essentially out of nowhere, and he’d surely be able nail down his fix without detection, 7 seconds at a time.

He called for the satellite message, which he knew was from General Ravi. Ben, the thoughts of both Shakira and myself are with you at this time. If Allah is listening, as He surely must, His humble warriors will be safe. The prayers of all Muslims right now are only for you…to wish you the safest journey home after the Scimitars have done their holy work. Ravi.

2300, Thursday, October 8

The White House, Washington, D.C.

Admiral Morgan and President Bedford were gathered with senior Naval Commanders in the Situation Room in the lower floor of the West Wing. A huge, backlit computer screen showed a chart of the Canary Islands, a sharp red cross in a circle signifying the last two sightings that the Navy believed were of the Barracuda. A brighter white cross in a circle showed the spot Adm. Frank Doran on the Norfolk link now believed the Barracuda to be.

He had it already on the 25-mile radius line from the La Palma coast. Which was slightly jumping the gun. Admiral Badr had not yet made his final commitment to the run-in to the launch zone. And would not do so for another half hour. The U.S. Admirals’ estimates were about 16 miles ahead of themselves, which is a fair long way in a remote and deserted ocean.

Admiral Morgan was personally bracing himself to read a report from a hastily convened meeting in London of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. This august gathering meets only about every twelve to fifteen years, explicitly to draw up the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea, more generally known as the Rules of the Road.

Before him was the Convention’s first report of a day without GPS. And the opening instance of disaster, the very first serious wreck, astounded him. A Liberian-registered crude carrier of some 300,000 tons had somehow mistaken the southern shores of the entrance to the Strait of Magellan for the Isla de la Estada, turned sharp right making 20 knots, and driven the tanker straight onto the beach at Punta Delgada.

“Five hundred miles off course! In a calm, nearly landlocked bay, and he thought he was on his way through the roughest goddamned ocean waters in the world, on his way to Cape Horn!

“Jesus Christ!” said Arnold. “Jesus H. Christ.”