Power Play (50 page)

Mack himself was affected. He didn’t even know how many personnel were still alive on the
Koryak,
but they were all going to drown, and that made him uneasy. He had, after all, issued the commands that would end their lives. All he could do was to recall the final words spoken to him by the SEAL C-in-C, Admiral Carlow. “Mack,” he’d said, “this is not going to be easy. But the people on that ship are collectively planning to launch a murderous strike against the United States. They intend to wipe out thousands of innocent Americans, many of them servicemen, some of them friends. And it’s taken millions of dollars of our resources to buy a chance to stop them.

“You are the man chosen to pull the trigger and save our world. So don’t shy from it, old friend. And don’t doubt the rightness of our cause. The goddamned Russian operation had to be stopped. We could not bomb the ship publicly. So you must blast it privately. Mack, however it may seem, this is a mission to rescue Fort Meade from a near-unstoppable attack, a massacre. Just imagine the heartbreak if it happened. The place would never recover. I know you won’t let anyone down.”

And so Mack Bedford sat with his team, sipping hot cocoa and reflecting on the long journey he had traveled since first Rani Ben Adan had contacted him. Mack knew how much the Israeli would have loved to be here, right now, to see the culmination of his very brilliant assessment of Russian villainy, risking so much to hear the observations of Lieutenant Commander Chirkov.

He could hear the ship slowing, and he could feel it making a hard port-side turn. He stood up and moved out to the deck, followed by almost all of the SEALs who had taken part in the operation. They spread out, along the rail, and Mack checked his watch: 2258.

It was difficult to see the
Koryak
now, except through night glasses.
There were no deck lights, and most of the electronics inside had been wrecked by hand grenades, especially the one that smashed the comms system on the bridge. That had ruptured a main cable.

Mack’s watch flicked to 2259. And just about every SEAL on deck was glancing back and forth from the dial of his watch, particularly Barney Wilkes. The seconds ticked on, and there was a sudden muffled yet thunderous jolt as if coming from the ocean floor . . .
BAH-BOOM!

Four seconds later came the fourth, a stupendous underwater
THUMP!
that shuddered the
Róisín
’s hull.

“That one’s for you, Nikolai,” said Mack, staring up into the starless night. Through his night glasses he could see the
Koryak
already beginning to sink, bow down, as thousands of tons of green water gushed into the keel deck.

Moments later there was another mighty explosion, and the flash from this one lit up the interior of the tank deck. Mack could see the blazing white light, as Brad Charlton’s “sticky” blew the hell out of Admiral Ustinov’s dark-blue wall, the one that hid the TELARs and the Iskander-Ks.

“Nice shot, Brad,” said Mack.

“Thank you, sir,” replied the master chief. “No mistakes, right?”

“No mistakes.”

No one went inside. Everyone just stood there watching the death of the
Koryak,
watching it sink lower and lower in the water. Soon there was just the upper works, and she tilted inexorably for’ard, and the bridge dipped under the ocean. And then, for a split second, her stern rose up, and, just briefly, her twin screws could be seen above the surface.

With what sounded like a mighty sigh, the Russian freighter plunged forward, spearing into the surface of the ocean. Then she was gone, taking what remained of her crew and their notorious cargo to the oblivion of the ocean bed.

There was nothing more to see. The
Róisín
turned to her new southeasterly course, steering one-four-zero, at fifteen knots, the short Atlantic chop right on her starboard bow. They’d enter the mouth of the Shannon estuary, 230 miles away, at around three tomorrow afternoon, Thursday.

With midnight approaching, there was little else to do except sleep,
and the SEALs who had fought the action were monumentally grateful for the opportunity. There were bunks, sleeping bags, and cots for all forty Americans, and no one begrudged them one inch of their space. Some of the young Irish crewmen were in awe of these ruthless SEAL combatants from across the ocean and would have sat up all night talking to them if anyone had been able to stay awake.

By first light, they were running only 70 miles off the coast of County Clare, but still several hours from the Shannon. The first land they would see would be the Aran Islands on the port side, since Captain Farrell intended to come inshore and then swing south down to Loop Head, which guards the estuary. That way, they’d leave the Arans on their port quarter and the Cliffs of Moher on their beam.

All morning they lounged about the ship with Mack Bedford, listening to every news bulletin they could pick up on the Irish news radio channel. But there was no mention of the vanished Russian freighter. They came in from the northwest and passed the lighthouse just after three and steamed into the mouth of the Shannon.

It was 10 miles up to the choke point that lies between Kilcredaun and the cliffs of Kilconley, and another 20 miles up to the old seaplane port on Foynes Island, which lies on hilly land on the south side of the Shannon River. These days Foynes is a major deepwater seaport, and space had been allocated to bring in the Irish warship, direct orders of the prime minister.

They came alongside at half past five, and swiftly disembarked, each SEAL with his own bag and combat gear. The area had been cleared and deserted save for the big luxury Volvo coach on the dockside. They climbed wearily aboard for the short journey around the estuary and over the Limerick town bridge, to Shannon Airport, where a US Navy Hercules awaited them, engines running.

By seven SEAL Team 10 had taken off, climbing west above the Shannon River toward the open Atlantic, bound for US Naval Air Station North Island, which adjoins their Coronado base in San Diego. It was a nonstop direct flight home to the West Coast for Mack Bedford’s SEALs: a very secret mission accomplished.

No mention was made of any disaster in the North Atlantic on any of the international airways. No one reported an explosion, or a sinking, or anything unusual. The US National Security Agency combed every possibility for even the suspicion of a missing ship, and thus far there was zero.

 

 

Koryak
’s call-sign was “FOM-2,” bestowed upon her in anticipation of overwhelming victory. She was treated by the high command as the most dangerous and important Russian ship on the Seven Seas. And, like the gigantic Typhoon Class nuclear submarines, with their embarked ICBMs, she was required to check in every twenty-four hours.

The Typhoons, of course, needed to make a special trip to the surface, to make satellite contact, reporting course, speed, and position. The
Koryak,
which could be contacted anytime since she was already on the surface, was under ironclad orders to make no communications to anyone. Fleet HQ, probably Admiral Ustinov in person, would come on the satellite link every afternoon around five o’clock (local Severomorsk) for the briefest confirmation of her speed and whereabouts.

The
Koryak
’s was a near-silent voyage, and at five on Wednesday, April 10, her check in took a total of twelve seconds. On Thursday, April 11, however, eighteen hours after she was sunk, the silence was deafening. The sat/comms operator in Severomorsk could not raise her. Over and over he went through on the link, requesting the same thing:
Freighter “Koryak,” come in, please, FOM-2 calling . . . Report your position . . . Repeat, report your position.

Nothing. This was disturbing, but not yet a five-alarmer. Submarines can vanish completely, but not surface ships, at least not without an absolute uproar involving air-sea rescue, coast guards, various navies, and heaven knows what else.

And a lot of things could have gone wrong. The
Koryak
could have an electronic problem. There could be a glitch on her satellite mast, maybe a stalled generator, perhaps even her duty-comms officer missing for a half hour. She was, after all, a civilian ship now, and they did not necessarily follow the strict codes of military discipline.

The trouble was, in Northern Fleet HQ, everything to do with the
Koryak
was on a hair trigger of nervousness. The comms operator was terrified of reporting anything to Admiral Ustinov except good news. The admiral regarded the blue freighter in the same worshipful light he regarded the gigantic 272-foot
Mamaev Kurgan
figure, with its mighty raised sword representing Mother Russia, in his home city of Volgograd.

By the operator’s calculations, the
Koryak
should be 250 miles southwest of her last-known. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered, because that was a shockingly long way by anyone’s standards. The question was, should he raise a major alarm by announcing the ship had vanished? Or take it calmly and announce there were electronic problems aboard the
Koryak
?

He went for the former, on the basis that if he settled for option two, and the ship really had vanished, he would be blamed for not making everyone aware of the crisis at the first possible moment.

Subsequently, Admiral Alexander Ustinov practically had a heart attack.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, VANISHED?”
he bellowed.

“Er . . . not really there, sir.”

“I don’t know, sir. But I cannot get a reply from her.”

“Have you checked . . . ”

“I’ve checked everything, sir.”

“I’m not quite sure, sir.”

“Have you checked the international airwaves, coast guards, and every other damn thing, to find out if anyone’s seen anything?”

“Not yet, sir. It wasn’t my place to raise an alarm on that scale.”

Admiral Ustinov was nothing if not very smart. And the phrase involving alarms, and raising them, struck home with him. The last thing he wanted was a public panic involving the Russian Navy looking for a civilian ship, especially one carrying illegal nuclear warheads.

His attitude softened, and he said, “Listen, kid, give me your opinion. Is there any point waiting twenty-four hours, see if she makes contact with us at five—in case they’ve put the fault right?”

“Sir,” said the young operator, “we have no satellite photographic cover in that part of the Atlantic up to the coast of Ireland. But, as you know, there are three or four ways to make contact with a surface ship. I’ve tried them all, including the cell phone the captain has for emergencies, the only mobile on the ship. It’s dead—not unavailable, or busy, or switched off. Dead. Nothing. In my view, that ship has sunk.”

Which left the admiral just a few seconds to gather his thoughts before making the worst phone call of his life—the one that would alert Admiral
Vitaly Rankov to the undeniable fact that FOM-2 had died, and with it the exultant hopes and dreams of President Nikita Markova.

The greater tragedy was, no one could share the problem. There was no one to help solve it, or investigate it. Both he and the commander in chief would have to suffer silently, and Ustinov imagined the coming fury, which must surely emanate from the Russian Navy’s Main Staff HQ in St. Petersburg.

But nothing much happened at all. Admiral Rankov went very quiet, and, since they could do nothing about it, not even discuss it with anyone else, he accepted their fate. The dream of FOM-2 was over. Vitaly had his suspicions, but he chose, right now, to keep them to himself.

 

Meanwhile, the US cleanup phase of the mission continued. In the Far North of Russia, at nine o’clock on the following morning, Friday, April 12, the nine-thousand-ton Los Angeles Class submarine
Cheyenne
suddenly surfaced 120 miles northwest of the Murmansk Inlet, in full sight of two Russian warships, one of which was the eleven-thousand-ton guided-missile cruiser
Varyag,
which the Americans had been tracking for five days.

The US crew knew precisely who she was and was fully aware this Northern Fleet–based ship had also served in the Pacific and had, not so long ago, visited San Francisco on a goodwill tour. And right now the Americans were out on the casing, waving to the men from Severomorsk, asking if they wanted to come over for a cup of coffee.

The Russians gave serious thought to this, and especially to the inevitable Boston cream doughnuts, but decided they’d better get back to base before dark and cheerfully yelled their farewells from the upper decks . . .
Da svidanya! Da svidanya, Yankees
! Da svidanya, “Cheyenne”!

The
Varyag
’s logbook would, of course, record that at 0900 in the Barents Sea, they had spotted a US submarine, the
Cheyenne,
heading northwest around the Norwegian coast and been respectfully greeted.

As for the
Cheyenne,
she pressed on down the long seaway that washes past a thousand Norwegian islands, and then continued through the GIUK Gap, across the fifty-fifth parallel, and made a hard left turn into Donegal Bay.

On April 19 she became the first US submarine to pull into the covered dock at US NAVFAC Donegal, right alongside the Irish cutter
Róisín.
And there they transferred the hottest cargo in all the world: four nuclear warheads, lifted across from ship to sub, and lowered with the
Cheyenne
’s davits deep into her hull, ready for immediate passage across the Atlantic to New London, Connecticut.

Thus, the US Navy had heeded the advice of Admiral Morgan, who considered it would be “goddamned rude” to embarrass the Irish prime minister by unloading live nuclear warheads onto Irish soil. The republic was, after all, reputed to be strictly neutral during all forms of conflict between international powers.