Authors: Patrick Robinson
They formally thanked Tilton for coming, and then Admiral Morgan stood up and escorted him from the room. Two young
Naval officers were waiting to walk him out to the helicopter pad for the five-minute journey to Andrews, and the flight back to Puget Sound.
Back on the second floor of the Pentagon, the group was listening to the summing up of the Air Force psychiatrist who had been examining the long letter from Hamas. His conclusions were very clear…“While the demands of the letter are plainly outrageous, I detect no sign of hysteria or dementia of any kind. This letter was not written by a disturbed person. It was written by an educated man, whose natural language was most certainly English.
“I do not detect one instance of difficulty or confusion in writing past and present tenses—the classic sign of a foreigner trying to write in another language. Nor, indeed, one instance of a discordant word, nor a colloquialism that we would not use. Or even the slightest distortion of a common colloquialism. Also, there is no sign of heightened excitement anywhere in the writing. The language is straightforward, even in its demands…‘
immediate steps’…‘immediate undertakings.’
He talks of
‘entering the final stage.’
He wants to see
‘clear signs.’
“There is one sentence in which he points out that if he and his men can explode ‘
the biggest volcano in the United States, we can probably arrange a large rockfall into the deserted ocean.’
“The key word here, gentlemen, is ‘probably.’ Because it represents
irony
, perhaps the most elusive of thought patterns, the ability to understate, yet have equal effect. People think Americans sometimes lack this subtlety. The educated British seem to practically live on it.
“And I would remind you of the phrase ‘
intimated in my communiqué’—
those are the words of a trained military officer or even a diplomat. That sentence could have been written by anyone in this room.
“Gentlemen, this letter was written by a very serious person. Very sane. Very cold-blooded. I suggest we ignore this guy at our peril. And for what it’s worth, if the writer of this letter told me he
just blew up Mount St. Helens, I’d have no reason to disbelieve him.”
The psychiatrist was followed by Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe, who outlined the problem of the missing
Barracuda
, then pointed out the most recent sightings and detections, and gave his conclusion that the boat was probably on its way down the west coast of South America.
General Scannell then steered the meeting towards the demands of the terrorists, and he requested General Hudson of Readiness Command to outline the deployment of personnel, plus stockpiles of equipment and munitions in the Gulf.
The General immediately distributed a single sheet of paper to each man around the table, and read from his own, for everyone’s benefit:
“Bahrain. Headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, and 4,500 personnel. This is the nerve center for all U.S. warships deployed in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Sea.
“Kuwait. U.S. Army Command, approximately 12,000 military personnel. We have a large training base at Camp Doha, which is now our top-favored desert-training area. We’re building another near-identical facility at Arifjan. The U.S. Air Force flies from Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jabar air bases.
“Saudi Arabia. Reopened. U.S. Air Force Command, approximately 10,000 personnel. Combat aircraft, including fighter and reconnaissance. We have E3-AWACs and air-refueling aircraft based at Prince Sultan air base, protected by two Patriot missiles batteries.
“Qatar. Around 4,000 personnel. Al Udeid air base, which has the region’s longest runway, is available to us. We’ve built aircraft shelters there, and we operate the KC-10 and KC135 air-to-air refueling aircraft. Central Command (CENTCOM) of all forces in the Gulf has been established at Camp Sayliyah.
“Oman. We use the docks and Al-Seeb International Airport as transit points for onwards movement, either to Afghanistan or to the Gulf. Approximately 3,000 personnel are based there.
“United Arab Emirates. We have 500, mostly Air Force personnel, based here.
“Djibouti. Way down there on the Gulf of Aden. Up to 3,000 U.S. Special Forces, Marines, and Air Force personnel, all part of the counterterrorism task force. This is the base for the CIA unmanned Predator aircraft.
“Diego Garcia. There’s around 1,500 U.S. personnel there. It’s our base for the upgraded B-52 heavy bombers and the B-2 stealth bombers.
“In addition, we’ve always got three Carrier Battle Groups in the area, on a rotation basis, depending on the political climate.”
General Scannell interjected, “Which adds up to one hell of a lot of people and equipment to move out of the area on the sole demand of one Middle Eastern freedom fighter.”
“Unless,” added Admiral Morgan, “that freedom fighter really does have the capability of destroying the entire East Coast of the United States. Then, of course, the evacuation of our military in the Middle East would be a very small price to pay.”
“It cannot be possible. It simply cannot,” said General Boyce.
“ ‘If we can explode the biggest volcano in the United States, we can probably arrange a large rockfall into the deserted ocean,’ ”
intoned Admiral Morgan.
And for just a few seconds, the entire table went silent. Then Admiral Morgan spoke again. “Gentlemen, let’s face it, we have to start from the basis that this guy is not joking. And our options are very limited. Priority number one is to catch and destroy the fucker. Right?”
He glared around the table. No one dissented. “Therefore, number two is to produce a fleet deployment plan. Number three is to appoint a Commander in Chief to that fleet. Number four is to try to get the President, the Commander in Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces, to agree to such a deployment. The last one is the most difficult, by a very long way.”
“You want an educated forecast?” asked Admiral Morris.
“Always,” replied Arnold Morgan.
“He is not going to agree, now or ever, to put this country essentially on a war footing to deal with what he believes is a crank letter. And he will not listen to us. Now or ever.”
A silence enveloped the table. “Then we may,” said General Scannell, “have to go without him.”
“Which would be a bit unorthodox,” said Admiral Dickson.
“Maybe,” replied the CJC. “But we cannot, knowingly, let the people of this nation down, when we all believe there is a real danger someone could wipe out the East Coast of the United States. I believe Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe has issued everyone with a short and concise report on the experts’ assessment of the volcano on the island of La Palma.”
“I guess there’s no stopping the tidal wave once it develops?” asked General Boyce.
“Apparently not,” replied Arnold Morgan. “Because when that develops, we’re looking at probably the greatest force on earth, traveling along the seabed at the speed of a jet aircraft. Less than nine hours to New York, the waves building all the way.”
“Jesus Christ,” replied the General.
“So far as I can see,” said the Admiral, “we have two chances. The first one slim, the second one better, but not foolproof. We set sail for the Canary Islands with a 100-strong fleet and search for the missing
Barracuda
, which we probably won’t find. Not if the driver’s as smart as I think he is.
“Secondly, we position a defensive screen of surface warships to the west of La Palma, primed to hit and destroy the missile, or missiles, in mid-flight. It would help, of course, if we knew roughly where they’re going to fire it from. But we don’t.”
“Well, regardless, we’ll have to move the entire East Coast fleet the hell out of all our Navy bases,” said Admiral Curran. “A wave like that would wipe us out. We can’t leave any ship in port. We have drafted a rough plan that I think Admiral Dickson would like everyone to see…that is, if we are unanimous about the reality of the threat. And are we unanimously agreed that we must go ahead with a fleet plan to counteract that threat, regardless
of the opinions of our political masters? Right hands please.”
Nine right hands were solemnly raised high.
“No choice,” said General Scannell. “Absolutely no choice.”
“Okay. Now today’s the twenty-fourth,” said Arnold Morgan. “That means we have forty-seven days to get things into line. I suggest we invent some forthcoming fleet exercises in the Atlantic and start getting ships at least on standby for deployment. I presume the Middle East is sufficiently quiet for us to move the Carrier Groups into the Atlantic without causing a huge amount of fuss? Alan?”
“No problem.”
“Good. Now perhaps we should hear the preliminary plan I understand Alan and Freddie have been developing for the past couple of days…”
Admiral Curran handed out a single sheet of paper to each man. Then he told them, “As a submariner, I have been asked to explain the first part of the plan before I turn things over to Admiral Dickson. I am sure you know there are innate difficulties in conducting underwater hunts with submarines because of how they are apt to shoot each other if we’re not damned careful.
“My recommendation is we take a ‘box’ 500 miles north to south, running up and down the La Palma coastline, by 500 miles west out into the Atlantic. That’s a colossal area of 250,000 square miles, and from somewhere in there, we expect the
Barracuda
to fire her missiles at the cliff.
“It is not impossible that she could fire from even farther west, perhaps up to 1,000 miles out from La Palma. But I personally doubt that. Her Commanding Officer will know we’re out there in force looking for her, and will probably be keenly aware of our excellent surface-to-air missile defense systems and probably will not want to have his birds in the air for too long.
“If I had to guess I’d say he’ll launch from under 300 miles from the La Palma coast. But we cannot take that chance. We need to cover the outer limits of his range.”
“How many missiles do you think, Freddie?” asked Arnold Morgan.
“Possibly twenty SLCMs, to be sure of knocking the cliff down. Unless he goes nuclear. Then he’ll only want two.”
“Can he go nuclear?”
“I don’t think so,” interrupted Admiral Morris. “Simply because I can’t imagine where he’d get ’em. They have to be especially fitted for the
Barracuda
, and the Russians are not about to help him to that extent. They won’t even admit selling the
Barracuda
to anyone except China. And the Chinese will not even admit to owning it.
“Certainly they are unlikely to admit compliance with a bunch of terrorists trying to wreck the East Coast of the United States of America. The Chinese might be cunning and they might be devious, but they’re not stupid.”
“They might be able to buy ’em at that place in Bosnia,” said Arnold Morgan. “But I’d be surprised if a European country would agree to that, especially one in NATO, or the EU.”
“How about North Korea?” said Admiral Morris.
“Possible. Though I’m not sure if they have developed the sophistication to build a nuclear-headed missile that would fit into a big Russian submarine.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Admiral Dickson. “But I guess in the end it doesn’t matter where they got the warhead. We have to stop it, whether it was made in Korea, Belgrade, or Macy’s.”
“Okay,” said Arnold, “let’s hear that outline from Freddie on the deployment of the fleet.”
“We’ll definitely need to use a ‘box’ system for our submarine force,” said Admiral Curran. “And my recommendation is, we form a screen from the 500-mile mark moving inshore to perhaps 300. Each one of fifteen boats taking a square of around 40 miles by 40 miles, each of them with a towed array, trying to pick up every sound in the water. Altogether, that should take care of an area of 24,000 square miles.
“My personal view is that the
Barracuda
will not hang around
in the ocean west of La Palma, firstly because he’ll guess we’re in there, thick and fast, and secondly, because he’ll be coming in from farther south and may have a great distance to cover at a slow speed. Our best chance is to catch him coming in, though I have no real confidence he’ll make the kind of mistake we need to detect him.
“I then recommend we take five more submarines and position them in boxes 40 miles long, right inshore. The water’s very deep, and there is just a chance the
Barracuda
will move in quietly at night in order to launch with a visual look as well as the GPS.
“I do not say this is any more likely a scenario than any other. But it would be ridiculous to have our defensive screens way offshore, while our enemy creeps underneath us, in two-mile-deep ocean, and opens fire from close range, giving us restricted time to set up for the intercept.”
General Hudson apologized but requested permission to interrupt, reminding the group that there plainly had to be a Patriot missile-shield positioned at the top of the cliff, and around the rim of the volcanoes. “We can only hope he launches something that flies high, rather than a sea skimmer,” he said. “Just to give us a real shot at it.”
Admiral Curran nodded in agreement. He suggested the submarine force should answer directly to SUBLANT headquarters, wherever that might be. It was becoming ominously certain that they were looking at a general evacuation of all Naval and Military command posts on the East Coast of the U.S.A., as the October 9 deadline approached.
Adm. Alan Dickson very briefly discussed the deployment of the surface fleet, recommending that another eighty ships would be required for the offshore vigil that might save the East Coast. “We’re looking at a force of maybe forty frigates—modern missile ships with towed arrays—listening in the water throughout that central area between the two submarine forces.
“We’re talking maybe a 200,000-square-mile patrol area with
eighty ships—that’s 2,500 square miles each, a 50-mile-square box—and they’ll search it end to end, night and day, waiting for the intruder. If he’s good, we may never hear him. If he’s careless, just once, near any of our ships, he’s rubble.