Hunter Killer

frozen to minus 160 degrees. The liquid gas was compressed 600 times from normal gas and formed, without doubt, the deadliest cargo on all the world’s oceans.

“Jesus Christ,” murmured Captain Schnider. “That sonofabitch could blow up Brooklyn.” And he made himself a promise: that no submarine in all of history had ever vanished from the datum faster than U.S.S. Hawaii would in the split second after he had loosed off her sub-Harpoons.

Meanwhile, the Moselle, which had cleared Qatar’s north gas field at the beginning of the week, had passed through the Strait of Hormuz the previous Thursday, three days in front of the Voltaire. Right now she had completed her crossing of the Gulf of Aden and was positioned to the left of the flashing light on Mayyun Island in the narrowest part of the Bab el Mandeb, heading north.

Captain Schnider’s orders were as succinct as Capt. Bat Stimpson’s had been in the North Carolina the previous day: SINK HER. And the only thing concerning the CO of the Hawaii was the temperature of his target.

“Since the Harpoons, in their final stages, are heat-seeking,” he told his missile director, “how the hell are they going to find a target frozen to one-hundred-sixty degrees below zero? I mean, Jesus, that’s as cold as a polar bear’s ass. Like trying to find the heat in a goddamn iceberg.”

The missile director, Lt. Cdr. Mike Martinez, laughed. “Sir,” he said, “I promise you there’s a ton of temperature in that ship. The refrigeration plants alone generate enormous heat, and the engines, situated toward the stern, generate twenty-three-thousand horsepower. Our missiles will go straight into the hull, probably at one of the refrigeration plants. We don’t want to hit the domes, because they are seriously reinforced. But they won’t be cool. The dome walls are too thick. The Harpoon explosions will be below the deck, right in the heart of the ship.

“And we don’t need to slam one into the side of the dome: the sheer power of the TNT below decks will probably split at least one, maybe two, of them in half. And immediately on contact with the hot air, the liquid gas will flash off into normal gas, the most volatile cargo on the ocean. One spark will turn the Moselle into something like Hiroshima. And I just hope to hell we’re well underwater and moving away fast at that time.”

Captain Schnider smiled and said, “Mike, we’re firing from five miles off her starboard quarter, because she’s going straight up the Red Sea to Suez, and ’most all fully laden tankers moving straight through take the left-hand lane going north. We’ll be so far away when that sucker goes off bang it’ll be like we never existed.”

It was actually quite hard to believe they existed now, while the Hawaii cruised two hundred feet below the surface, making just five knots, and leaving no trace of a wake on the surface. All through the night they had stayed on their deep, lonely station listening to the roar of ships’ propellers churning away overhead, traveling both north and south. But not one of those ships, neither merchantman, tanker, nor warship, had the slightest inkling that beneath their barnacled keels lurked the most dangerous attack submarine on earth.

Two more hours went by after Captain Schnider had outlined his getaway plan to Lt. Commander Martinez. And then, at 0730, as soon as they slid up to periscope depth, they spotted her. It was the Moselle, moving at a steady seventeen knots north up the channel, heading slightly toward her left, just as David Schnider had forecast.

At 80,000 tons she was small enough to make the transit through the Suez Canal, and from there it was a six-day run up to the huge underground terminal for liquid petroleum gas in the port of Marseille.

U.S.S. Hawaii had spotted her on radar ninety minutes previously, but there had been three other paints on the screen at that time. Only now, at 0730, with the sun climbing out of the desert to the east, was it possible to make a POSIDENT. The red hull of the Moselle was bright in the morning light, and the sun glinted off those huge bronze holding domes.

“We got her, sir,” called the XO, as he ordered, DOWN PERISCOPE. And then, We’re about a mile off her starboard bow. Steer course two-seven-zero until we can read her name.

The ESM mast slid down, and the comms room confirmed there were no further signals on the satellite. The orders were unchanged.

As the North Carolina had done on the previous day tracking the Voltaire, the Hawaii moved in closer, but only a few hundred yards, because the light here was much better. The periscope went up one final time, and it was possible to see the huge white letters on her hull, L N G. Right below the safety rail on her starboard bow was the word, MOSELLE.

Temporarily, the Hawaii turned away, back south at twenty knots. But only for six minutes. Then she returned to PD for her final visual check. And the Moselle was still on course.

“Missile Director final checks,” ordered Captain Schnider.

“Both weapons primed, sir. Pre-programmed navigation data correct. Course three-three-zero. Launchers one and two ready.”

“FIRE ONE!” snapped David Schnider. “FIRE TWO!”

Seconds later, the two Harpoons came hurtling out of the calm water, one hundred yards apart, swerved as they hit the air, and then settled onto their course, both making a direct line toward the Moselle, one hundred feet above the surface.

Thirty-five seconds later they slammed into the starboard hull of the Moselle, around twenty feet above the waterline. The steel plates on this side of the double hull, both layers, were blasted apart and there was a firestorm of sparks and explosive inside the ship.

The reinforced aluminum of number two dome at first held, and then ruptured, and 20,000 tons of the most flammable gas in the world, packed with methane and propane, flooded out into the air — air that was two hundred degrees Celsius warmer than its refrigerated environment. Instantly it flashed off into vaporized gas, and exploded with a deafening W-H-O-O-O-O-M! Dome three split asunder, both from where the Harpoon had smashed into its shell and from the enormous explosion from dome two. This blew the for’ard dome, and before the Captain of the tanker could even issue a command, the entire ship was an inferno, flames reaching 1,000 feet into the sky, the entire front end of the ship a tangled wreckage of ruptured, melting steel.

Again, as in the tanker, the crew was, to a man, in the aft section, in the control room, the engine room, and the accommodation block. The Captain issued the totally unnecessary order to abandon her within one minute of the blast. He had not the slightest idea what had happened, and the crew who were able would have to leave in the two lifeboats on davits at the stern.

The whole length of Moselle’s starboard side was a blowtorch of gas, rising up off the water and fed by thousands of tons of liquid petroleum cascading out of the hull from the aft dome, which had not yet exploded but was somehow setting fire to the Red Sea.

The sheer size of the fire was already causing other ships to move in for a search-and-rescue operation, and a few men who failed to make the lifeboats were jumping off the stern, like in a scene from Titanic. But the waters were clear, warm, and deep, and the tide was carrying the gas on the surface to the north, away from them. Almost every one of the seamen who had crewed the Moselle would survive.

But the inquiries would be long and painstaking. She was the only LPG carrier ever to have a serious fire, except for one in the Persian Gulf a few years earlier that had hit a contact mine.

By the time the order to abandon ship was given, the Hawaii had gone deep, 400 feet below the surface, making twenty-five knots away from the staggering scene of maritime destruction. Captain Schnider had only two miles at this depth and this speed, after which he would slide into the regular south-running shipping lane, and make his secretive exit through the Strait, only 100 feet below the surface at six knots.

His satellite signal to SUBLANT in Norfolk, Virginia, would not be transmitted until they were safely in the much deeper water of the Gulf of Aden. Just one word: GASLIGHT.

MONDAY, APRIL 12, 0900 (LOCAL)

FOREIGN OFFICE