Authors: Patrick Robinson
He shook hands with the Commandant, and he and Ahmed climbed aboard. The young bodyguard had not removed his AK-47 from the rear seat and it had not been touched. It was still loaded.
The three drivers started their engines, and in convoy, they made their way to the main entrance. The entire place was plunged into darkness immediately before the great doors smoothed their way back into the rock. All three trucks were on dipped headlights now, but no other light came flooding out into the pitch dark of Kwanmo-bong.
They drove straight out into the rain and headed for the gates, which were open and held back. The duty guards saluted as they rumbled out onto the southward track and drove noisily away from the underground factory.
Despite the presence of two good-sized, utterly illegal nuclear warheads, encased behind him, the General felt quite righteous as they began their journey. He might be planning something diabolical, but his people had a just cause and were prepared to fight and die for their beliefs, for the right to self-government for the ancient peoples of Palestine and other oppressed nations in the Middle East, which were currently forced to march to the beat of an American drum. On the other hand, the North Koreans were just racketeers. They had no plans, no loyalties, no morals, no higher creeds or beliefs, no allies. They just wanted cash for arms—arms of the worst possible type for whoever wanted to commit crimes against humanity.
The great Allah had proved to be on the side of the Hamas warriors. And He had shown it many times. Ravi knew He would accompany them on all of their great missions against the West. Of that he had no doubt.
The three trucks roared and skidded their way downwards, lurching around bends where the track attempted to follow the contours of the mountain. The surface was rough and the gradients uneven, and the rain never let up. Nor would it, all the way to the junction where the forbidden track to Kwanmo-bong joined the east coast highway.
But the gates were open, ready for them at each checkpoint, and they were not stopped by the guards. They just drove straight on through and turned south, where the rain stopped almost immediately. Heading to the capital city of Pyongyang, they swerved around south of the metropolis before picking up the new expressway to the seaport of Nampo, 25 miles to the southwest. General Ravi was disappointed not to see the urban sprawl of Pyongyang, but he understood there was something bizarre about pulling into the tourist area along the Taedong River, with three trucks filled with nuclear warheads and missiles.
Instead, the little convoy kept going, driving through the night towards the shores of the Yellow Sea. It was almost dawn now, and the sun was fighting its way towards the horizon. Daylight came as they passed through the gates into the dockyard at Nampo, the largest port on the west coast. Ravi and Ahmed, tired and hungry, were astounded at the size of the jetties, all occupied by major container ships, moored beneath great overhead cranes. Most of them flew the flags of countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, but there were three from the Middle East and one from Europe. Freighters had no difficulty entering and exiting the port of Nampo, regardless of their size, since the construction of the enormous West Sea Floodgates significantly elevated water levels and dramatically improved berthing capacity.
Ravi’s convoy pulled up alongside a much smaller ship, an old 500-tonner, dark blue with rust marks all over the hull. The number
81, just visible beneath the paint, gave little away, but the thirty-six-year-old freighter was in fact a converted ASU-class auxiliary ship originally built for the Japanese Navy, a twin-shafted diesel that now looked to be on its last legs.
The for’ard superstructure was in dire need of a few coats of paint, as was its one broad funnel. The aft area was flat and carried a hefty-looking crane, which had once lifted Japanese Naval helicopters. There had also been a small flight deck, now converted for short-haul freight.
The red-painted hull letters on its port bow were barely legible in either Korean script or English—
Yongdo
. Ravi had no idea what that meant. But she flew the broad maroon stripe and single star of the North Korean flag on her stern, stretched out hard in the gusty morning breeze.
The jetty was staffed entirely by military personnel, and it was not until the three army trucks came to a halt between carefully painted markings, and they all disembarked the trucks, that General Ravi noticed they were in a sealed area. A large iron gate had already been closed behind them. There was obviously no way out, and there sure as hell was no way in.
Awaiting their arrival was the ship’s commanding officer, North Korean Navy Captain Cho Joong Kun.
“Welcome to Nampo,” he said in English. “Please come aboard immediately. I have arranged breakfast and cabins. We sail tonight on the tide around midnight. As you know, it’s a two-day voyage.”
Ravi glanced down at the officer’s sleeve insignia—two black stripes on gold, with a downward line of three silver stars. In this Navy you needed to make Commodore to get four stars.
“Good morning, Captain Cho,” he said. “I’m glad to see you. We’ve been driving all night.”
“Yes, I was told. You may sleep most of the day if you wish. By the time you awaken we’ll be loaded. That crane over there will be ready for us in about three hours. It will take some time. You have a rather delicate cargo.”
“Very delicate,” replied Ravi. “And expensive.”
1900, Thursday, May 28 (Same Day)
27.00N 124.20E, Depth 400, Speed 25.
Barracuda II
moved swiftly north, through 460 fathoms of ocean, 80 miles northwest of Okinawa, and now clear of the long chain of the Ryukyu Islands, where the ancient territories of imperial Japan had finally come to an end.
They were running up towards the line of the Japan current, which effectively provides China with a frontier for the Pacific end of the East Sea. The newly promoted Rear Adm. Ben Badr intended to stay out in the deeper water on the Japan side of the current as long as he could. Like most Middle Eastern and Eastern submariners, he preferred to run deep whenever he could, away from the prying eyes of the American satellites.
It was of course unusual for a Rear Admiral to serve as Commanding Officer, but Ben would have a full-fledged Captain on board for their next mission, and his own authority in this ship was tantamount. Anyway, the Hamas were not hidebound by the traditions of other people’s navies. They were in the process of establishing their own.
The
Barracuda
had cleared Zhanjiang, headquarters of China’s Southern Fleet, on Tuesday evening, on the surface, in full view of anyone who was interested. They went deep just before the Luzon Strait, which separates Taiwan and the Philippines, and were now around halfway through their 2,400-mile journey to the North.
This was the second of the two
Barracuda
s, which the Hamas organization had purchased from Russia in utmost secrecy. And while the Americans may have harbored serious suspicions about who actually owned it, they only knew three things: for one, Russia did not admit to selling this particular
Barracuda
to anyone; two, China did not admit to owning it; and three, neither did anyone else.
The fate of the first
Barracuda,
destroyed in Panama, was known to the Americans, but it was a highly classified subject,
and Washington was as close-mouthed as Beijing and Moscow.
Adm. Ben Badr knew that the sight of
Barracuda II
, steaming cheerfully out of Zhanjiang, bound for God knows where, would most certainly have attracted the attention of U.S. Naval Intelligence. And in Fort Meade, the same old question was doubtlessly about to rear its irritating head again:
Who the hell owns this goddamned thing?
The
Barracuda
, an 8,000-ton, 350-foot-long Russian-built hunter-killer, was on its way to its first mission. Its initial destination was the ultrasecret Chinese Navy Base of Huludao, way up in the Yellow Sea, the cul-de-sac ocean where China prepared and conducted the trials of its biggest Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile submarines.
“Come right 10 degrees
,” called the CO. “
Steer course three-zero. Make your speed 25, depth 200.”
The Yellow Sea was notoriously shallow, and the last part of the journey, through China’s most forbidden waters, would have to be completed on the surface right below the American satellites.
Admiral Badr wished to conduct the voyage with as little observation as possible, nonetheless, but, in the end, so what? A Russian-built submarine headed for a Chinese base, mostly through international waters—no one was obliged to tell Washington anything. The Pentagon did not, after all, own the oceans of the world. China and Russia were perfectly entitled to move their underwater boats around, visiting each other’s ports.
Admiral Badr smiled grimly…
Just as long as they don’t find out where we’re going in the end
, he thought.
Generally, he was pleased with the handling of the big submarine. Her titanium hull, which had originally made her so expensive, helped give her low radiated-noise reduction, but she had proved very costly to complete and would be even more so to run.
Essentially she had never been to sea until a year ago. She’d made one long, unhurried, and uneventful journey halfway around the world, and been in a long and thorough overhaul in
the yards of China’s Southern Fleet ever since. She handled like a new ship, her nuclear reactor running smoothly, providing all of her power, enabling her to stay underwater for months at a time if necessary.
When armed, the
Barracuda
could pack a terrific bang. She was a guided-missile ship and fired the outstanding Russian “fire and forget” SS-N-21 Granat-type cruises from deep beneath the surface. Right now her missile magazines were empty, a situation that would be rectified as soon as she reached Huludao.
Admiral Badr, Iranian by birth and son of the C in C of the Ayatollah’s Navy in Bandar Abbas, was an accomplished handler of a nuclear submarine. And he aimed
Barracuda II
north, crossing the line of the Japan current on the 30th parallel, running into waters around 300 feet deep—friendly waters patrolled by his Chinese buddies.
So far as Ben Badr was concerned, this was a pleasant cruise, among colleagues he knew well, alongside whom he had fought and triumphed in
Barracuda I
. He looked forward to the coming months with immense anticipation. And the words of his father were always fresh in his mind…
Stay as deep as possible, as quiet as possible, and when danger threatens, as slow as possible. That way your chances of being detected in that big nuclear boat are close to zero
.
It was almost 2300 hours now on the pitch-dark and rainswept East China Sea, and the
Barracuda
held to course three-five-zero some 300 miles due east of Shanghai. They were headed more or less directly towards the beautiful subtropical island of Jejudo, the 13-mile-long remnant of a long-extinct volcano situated off the southwesternmost tip of South Korea.
Ben Badr intended to leave this sun-kissed tourist paradise, “Korea’s Hawaii,” 60 miles off his starboard beam as he continued north into the Yellow Sea, where life would become a great deal more testing and staying alert paramount.
The southern part of the Yellow Sea was a particularly busy spot. A veritable highway for tankers and freighters out of the big
westerly ports that serviced Seoul, and the other great seaport of Kunsan, and the heavy tanker and freight traffic in and out of Nampo. In addition, there was constant fishing-boat traffic, also from South Korea, not to mention the ships of the Chinese Navy from both the Eastern and North fleets. The sonar of any submarine commanding officer had to be permanently on high alert through here.
Now, as the four bells of the watch tolled the midnight hour inside the submarine, the Korean freighter
Yongdo
was just clearing the West Sea Floodgates outside Nampo harbor 420 miles to the north, her elderly diesel engines driving her twin shafts in a shudder that might easily have been a protest.
It was a stark contrast to the silk-smooth hum of the
Barracuda
’s turbines, driving the submarine swiftly into the Yellow Sea, now only 100 feet below the rainswept surface of the ocean.
General Ravi and Ahmed had slept much of the day, dined with the CO and his first officer, and were now on the bridge of the
Yongdo
as honored guests. You don’t sell a shipload of guided missiles and two hugely expensive nuclear warheads every day. Not even in North Korea.
The
Yongdo
’s journey would be a little more than 400 miles, and somewhere in the northern reaches of this forbidden sea, she would be passed by the
Barracuda
, which was scheduled to dock in Huludao early on Saturday evening. Ravi wondered if he would see her come by, since she would most certainly be on the surface. It was strange to think of his old shipmate and great friend Ben Badr charging up the same piece of ocean as he and Ahmed.
They could see little in the dark, but there was a considerable swell, and the freighter soon began to pitch and yaw. Captain Cho said not to worry, it never got much worse, but General Rashood nevertheless had a fleeting feeling of dread. It would be a real drag if his precious cargo went down. For obvious reasons it could scarcely be insured, and the terms were ex-factory. Those missiles hit the seabed and the losses would be born by the new owners.
They were 240 miles west to the Bohai Haixia—the Yellow Sea Strait—and here navigation was extremely tricky. The narrow seaway between the Provinces of Shandong to the South and the seaward headland of Liaodong Province to the North was guarded by the Chinese, much like the White House is protected by the Americans.
This was the choke point containing two large areas completely prohibited to shipping and the one place where the Chinese Navy can apprehend an intruder with ease. Not even the most daring submarine CO would attempt underwater passage, through the middle, where the water was less than 80 feet deep.