Power Play (8 page)

Except for this Monday morning, when Robert McCarver, the local milkman, had called him at home just before five thirty to say he’d just seen a
spaceship
out on the water.

Harbormaster Moncrief did not trust McCarver one inch and assumed he was still drunk. But duty was duty. So he drove out onto the 550-yard span of the Skye Bridge with its wondrous views out toward the open ocean. The sun comes up early in Scotland during August, and the long pink rays, which lit up the waters out past the Crowlin Islands, were a sight that always gladdened the heart of the veteran Scottish seaman.

The morning sun had already cast its pale light high over the broad chain of heather-strewn mountains, which stand guard in the East over the great Alsh Loch and its attendant seaways. It cast its rays over the still tidal waters.

It also lit up, on this day, perhaps the most astounding sight Angus had seen in his entire life—jutting maybe twenty feet out of the water, jet-black in color, was a huge, squarish shape, possibly seventy feet long, rounded at the edges, and tapering back like a ski run, to the water level. Directly behind it was a bulbous protuberance.

Angus stopped the car, grabbed his binoculars, and walked swiftly to the seaward rail of the bridge. The Shape was perhaps a thousand yards away north, and through the glasses Angus could see that both in front and behind, there was a black line in the water.

Angus Moncrief had seen enough. Right here, in the middle of the huge sandbank that guards the starboard side of the channel that flows under the bridge, was a very large submarine, hard aground, and releasing a plume of white steam from its nuclear power source.

The huge fin was a revolution to him, slanting away aft toward the
large, round cylinder, which Angus knew must house an enormous electronic towed array.

“Mother of God,” breathed the harbormaster. “That’s got to be close to ten thousand tons, and it’s not British . . . not at all British.” For a few moments he stood staring, adjusting his eyes to the brightening gleam of the rising sun on the waters.

Angus was no layman when it came to warships. He knew what Royal Navy submarines looked like. He’d been a guest at the Faslane Base on the Gareloch, 120 miles south on the Firth of Clyde. He’d recognize the tall sail on a Royal Navy Trafalgar Class attack submarine anywhere; the mighty Vanguards were a recognizable boat from five miles distant, and the new Astute Class, with their slightly tapering sail, like a medieval watchtower, would never be confusing for Angus Moncrief.

But this was a major attack submarine, and it was neither British nor American, because they would have alerted everyone if they were visiting. Angus knew not many nations owned a submarine of this size. He also knew the sheer weirdness of the bloody thing almost guaranteed it was Russian.

Angus would not be surprised if the navy impounded the damn thing, took command of the ship, towed it to a harbor, probably Faslane, and took the wee bastard apart. Russia was trespassing in sacred waters, trespassing no different from a common thief, and Angus took a very poor view of that, especially on his bailiwick. He sprinted back to his car and gunned it back over the bridge. He hit the harbormaster’s office like a runaway train.

It was not yet six o’clock, and there was no one in the harbor. Angus hit the emergency line to Royal Navy HQ, Faslane, and told the duty officer, “This is Harbormaster Angus Moncrief at Kyle of Lochalsh. I wish to speak to the commanding officer, Admiral Ryan, on a matter of extreme urgency . . .

“Of course he knows me, laddie . . . Do you think I would have called him at this time in the bloody morning if it wasn’t urgent? Wake him up.”

David Ryan was on the line instantly. “Hello, Angus, what’s hot . . . ”

“Sir, there’s a damn great Russian submarine hard aground, right outside the loch, about a thousand yards from the Skye Bridge. The tide’s falling. What do you want me to do?”

“Christ, Angus. You sure it’s Russian?”

“Nearly, sir. It’s not British, and it has to be ten thousand tons, and a lot more than three hundred feet long, with a strange-shaped sail, tapering aft. There’s a towed array sticking out of the water ’bout a hundred feet back. Between them, I can just see the pressure hull.”

“Any markings, ID numbers?”

“Nossir. Except for a small red-painted area on the front of the sail. Could have been a name. I couldn’t see from my angle.”

“That’s Russian. No one else has anything that big afloat right now, and no one else has that oddball sail. Sounds like one of their new Akula II Class. She’s a nuclear boat with cruise missiles, submerge launch. And you’re right about her size. She’d displace close to ten thousand tons dived.”

“Well, right now, sir, she’s not going anywhere. There was no one on the bridge at the top of the sail. I’ve a Royal Navy tug in harbor right now. I suppose we could pull her off, right before the tide late this afternoon.”

“Angus, look. There’s going to be hell to pay over this. First off, why didn’t we catch her? Second, what the hell was she doing? Third, should we take command of an obvious intruder in our home waters? I’ll have to alert navy security, the coast guard, the Admiralty, and God knows who else. Keep your cell switched on. And be prepared for everyone to get very jumpy.”

“Sir, should I take one of the harbor boats out and see if I can raise anyone?”

“No. We’ll have a team of Royal Marines in there within the hour. I don’t want you to go out there unaccompanied.”

“Very well, sir. I’ll keep watch from a distance and stay in touch.”

 

Admiral Ryan dressed in a hurry and put an instant call through to FPGRM (First Protection Group Royal Marines). This is a five-hundred-strong group organized into three rifle squadrons and a headquarters guard unit, based at HM Naval Base Clyde (Helensburgh) right on the Firth, west of Glasgow at the south end of the Garelock.

The prime task of this highly trained, classified force is to protect nuclear material anywhere in the area from any form of attack. They are fast-reaction specialists, armed to the teeth with heavy-duty emergency transport to any of the highly sensitive Scottish waters. Their core task is to undertake final denial access and to stand by, in support of nuclear convoy protection.

A specially trained team, within the marines’ Helensburgh front-line unit, is available 24/7 to be deployed at short notice in support of the Royal Navy, worldwide. Admiral David Ryan’s call represented a five-alarm call to action stations.

Almost before he was off the phone, forty-four fully armed Royal Marines were racing out of the door toward an all-weather, heavy-lift Chinook Mark 3 helicopter, its twin rotors splitting the early-morning air across the sprawling Clyde Estuary. Within minutes they were in the air, climbing to five hundred feet and making 140 knots over the densely wooded mountains of Argyll, up toward Kyle of Lochalsh.

Meanwhile, Admiral Ryan was on the phone to headquarters, commander in chief (fleet), at Whale Island, just north of the main Royal Navy Dockyard in Portsmouth. His words would have frozen the heart of a lesser man, but Admiral Mark Rowan, like every other holder of his great naval office, was one of the toughest commanders in the Senior Service.

The full catastrophe flashed before his mind—the humiliation, Parliament, the Admiralty Board, the rage of the short-fused first sea lord, the ranting of the imbecilic tabloids, the
why oh whys,
the public righteousness: “How could this have happened?”

“Mad question,” muttered Mark Rowan to no one in particular.
Everyone in the navy or in politics knows precisely why this has happened. Because our beloved ministers cut the navy budget to the bone, and we haven’t got enough fucking ships. Next!

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that, Mark.”

“Oh, nothing. I was just getting used to sitting a few hundred yards from Admiral Nelson’s flagship and being told we’ve been fucking invaded by a ten-thousand-ton Russian nuclear boat, and we didn’t even know the bastard was there until it came blundering into some godforsaken Scottish loch. And it’s somehow going to be my fault.”

Despite himself, David Ryan was compelled to laugh. “I’d be laughing a whole hell of a lot more, Mark, if we weren’t in the fertilizer up to our eyebrows,” he added, by way of mutual encouragement.

“At least we know what will happen,” said Admiral Rowan. “The politicians will rush shamelessly for cover behind a smoke screen of lies and evasions about their own roles in this. And then they’ll blame the Royal Navy for not spotting this intruder and probably suggest that since we’re so utterly useless, they’d better cut our budget again.”

“Don’t joke, Mark, for Christ’s sake. You speak the godawful truth.”

“Sound the alarm. Alert everyone who needs to know. I’ll speak to the boss, alert Naval Intelligence, and touch base with 30th Commando.”

“Right away, sir.”

By this time, the sun was up, crowds were beginning to form near the Skye Bridge, and the Royal Navy was moving very fast. Information was now flooding in. Menwith Hill’s satellite links in Yorkshire had a clear picture of the Russian boat on the sandbank and could hardly believe their eyes.

There was an emergency signal from the Garrison Headquarters of 30th Marine Commando in Plymouth, the specialist group that controls the ISTAR program (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance
).
For years the Royal Navy’s lord high admiral, the Duke of Edinburgh, served as its captain-general. And this latter office was not a mere honorarium. Prince Philip was heavily and professionally qualified.

Once voted the outstanding naval cadet of his entry at Royal Navy College, Dartmouth, he served as second in command of HMS
Wallace,
a wartime destroyer, at the astoundingly young age of twenty-one. During the Sicily landings in 1943, with the
Wallace
under heavy bombardment, Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten was credited with great brilliance and probably saved the ship.

For years afterward, when he became consort to Queen Elizabeth II, there were Royal Navy admirals who still referred to him as “Commander Mountbatten.” And many senior officers continue to believe he would have risen even more quickly to the very top of the Royal Navy if he had been allowed to make a full-time career of it.

The ISTAR operation was quickly into its stride on this Monday morning, and by 0700 had identified the intruder, the ninety-six-hundred-ton Akula II Class attack submarine
Gepard
(hull number K-335), stationed in the Northern Fleet and claimed at various times by the Russians to be the quietest submarine in the world.

This was a formidable boat, double hulled, single shafted, with noise-cancellation techniques all over the hull. She carried heavy antiship missiles, submerged launch and surface, plus forty wire-guided torpedoes. According to ISTAR, she had been on exercises just north of Murmansk and must have slipped through the eastern side of the GIUK Gap in the past few days.

Certainly, she had not been observed, and this may well have been because she had been nowhere near any Royal Navy patrolling submarine. More nerve-racking, she may have been the most stealthy submarine in all the world, which would now cause both the Americans and what remained of the British submarine service some severe headaches.

By now, all the lines of communication were up—Menwith Hill to the National Security Agency in Maryland, the RN Fleet commander to US Navy HQ in Norfolk, Virginia. At 0200, COMSUBLANT’s duty officer could hardly believe his eyes:
An Akula II hard aground in a Scottish loch. Now there’s an opportunity to take a real hard look at the damn thing.

Every submarine professional in the US Navy was aware of the claims made on behalf of the new, improved Akulas. Now was a chance to investigate. The US Navy would be urging the Brits to get hold of the
Gepard
and tow it into a dry dock at Faslane for a thorough going over.

Of course, there was the problem of what spying success the Russians had achieved. No one knew how long she’d been snooping around, no one knew what electronic signals she’d picked up and stored, and no one knew what kind of a handle they’d managed on the very latest UK-US sonar systems.

The American duty officer who sat staring at the signal from London considered the Royal Navy would be well within their international rights to grab the
Gepard
and conduct whatever tests they wished on her hull, her propulsion units, her weapons, and her electronics. “Jesus,” he muttered.

With the naval intelligence agencies of the Western world now in full cry, it was left to Admiral David Ryan to contact Russian Northern Fleet Headquarters in Severomorsk on the White Sea and inquire formally whether
Gepard
was in fact carrying nuclear weapons. By now the Russian Navy most certainly knew its submarine was aground near the Skye Bridge and was obliged to confirm or deny the existence of nuclear weapons inside the hull.

Despite the relentless way both submarine services stared at each other, relations between them were cordial. The commander of the Northern Fleet did indeed confirm
Gepard
was carrying no nuclear warheads. They also requested permission to allow one of their own warships to come in from the North Atlantic and enter the wide seaway down to the inner sound where the
Gepard
was parked.

He hoped to tow her off the sandbank and obtain permission from the Royal Navy for safe passage back north out of the sound and into open ocean, from where she would proceed under her own steam to Murmansk. This permission was not forthcoming, and Faslane politely informed the Northern Fleet commander it was rather more likely that
Gepard
’s commanding officer would be arrested and charged with spying, after due consultations with the American Navy.

The Russians did not love that. In fact, the Russians were more worried than the Royal Navy, since they worked for a government considerably more vindictive than either London or Washington. Russian submarine COs running headlong onto a Scottish beach would not be well received back home in the tundra. The commanding officer of the
Gepard
stood a fighting chance of returning to Murmansk as a deckhand rather than a decorated naval captain.