The Kilo can run, unseen, beneath the surface at speeds up to seventeen knots, on electric motors powered by her huge battery. At low speeds, the soft hum of her power unit is almost indiscernible. In fact the only time the Russian Kilo is at any serious risk of detection — save by active sonar — is when she comes to periscope depth to recharge her battery.
When she executes this operation, she runs her diesel engines — a process known as “snorkeling,” or, in the Royal Navy, “snorting.” At this point she is most vulnerable to detection: she can be heard; she can be picked up on radar; the ions in her diesel exhaust can be “sniffed”; and she can even be seen. And there is little she can do about it.
Just as a car engine needs an intake of oxygen, so do the two internal combustion diesel generators in a submarine. She must have air. And she must come up to periscope depth, at least, in order to get it. A patroling Kilo, in hostile waters, will snorkel only when she must. She will snorkel only at night — to reduce the chance of being seen — and for the shortest possible time — to minimize the chance of being heard and pinpointed for attack.
Running slowly and silently, the Kilo has a range of some four hundred miles before she needs to recharge. She can travel six thousand miles “snorkeling” before she needs to refuel. It takes a crew of only fifty-two, including thirteen officers, to run her as a front-line fighting unit. She carries up to twenty-four torpedoes, as well as a small battery of short-range surface-to-air missiles. Two of the torpedoes are routinely fitted with nuclear warheads.
Today the Kilo is rarely seen on the world’s oceans. At least she is rarely seen anymore flying the Russian flag. Since the shocking demise of the Soviet Navy in the early 1990s, the Kilo has mostly been confined to moribund Russian Navy yards. There are only two Kilos in the Black Sea, two in the Baltic, six in the Northern Fleet, and some fourteen in the Pacific Fleet.
And yet this sinister little submarine still serves her country. She is now being built almost entirely for export, and no warship in all the world is more in demand. The huge income derived from the sale of the Kilo pays a lot of bills for a near-bankrupt Russian Navy and keeps a small section of the Russian fleet mobile.
The Russians, however, have demonstrated a somewhat alarming tendency: to sell the Kilo Class submarine to anyone with a large enough checkbook — they cost $300 million each.
While no one particularly minded when Poland and Romania each bought one, nor indeed when Algeria bought a couple secondhand, a few eyebrows were raised when India ordered eight Kilos. But India is not seen as a potential threat to the West.
It was Iran that caused worry. Despite a bold attempt at intervention by the Americans, the ayatollahs managed to get ahold of two Kilos, which were mysteriously delivered by the Russians. Iran immediately ordered a third, which has arrived in the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.
This buildup, however, pales when compared to the activities of a new and deadly serious player in the international Navy buildup game. This nation built the world’s third largest fleet of warships in less than twenty years — a nation with 250,000 personnel in her Navy yards, and an unbridled ambition to join the superpowers.
This is a nation with a known capacity to operate submarines, and a known capacity to produce a sophisticated nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a torpedo.
A nation that suddenly, against the expressed wishes of the United States of America, ordered ten Russian-built Kilo Class diesel-electric submarines.
China.
PROLOGUE
The four-car motorcade scarcely slowed as it turned into the West Executive Avenue entrance to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Guards waved the cars through, and the four Secret Service agents in the lead automobile nodded curtly. Behind followed two Pentagon staff limousines. A carload of Secret Service agents brought up the rear.
At the entrance to the West Wing, four more of the thirty-five White House duty agents were waiting. As the men from the Pentagon stepped from the cars, each was issued a personal identification badge, except for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself, Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore, who has a permanent pass. From the same limousine stepped the towering figure of Admiral Joseph Mulligan, the former commanding officer of a Trident nuclear submarine, who now occupied the chair of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the professional head of the US Navy. He was followed by Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan, the brilliant, irascible Director of the super-secret National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The second staff car contained the two senior submarine Flag Officers in the US Navy — Vice Admiral John F. Dixon, Commander Submarines Atlantic Fleet, and Rear Admiral Johnny Barry, Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet. Both men had been summoned to Washington in the small hours of that morning. It was now 1630, and there was a semblance of cool in the late afternoon air.
It was unusual to see five such senior military officers, fully uniformed, at the White House at one time. The Chairman, flanked on either side by senior commanders, exuded authority. In many countries the gathering might have given the appearance of an impending military coup. Here, in the home of the President of the United States, their presence merely caused much subservient nodding of heads from the Secret Service agents.
Although the President carries the title of Commander in Chief, these were the men who operated the front line muscle of United States military power: the great Carrier Battle Groups, which patrol the world’s oceans with their air strike forces and nuclear submarine strike forces.
These men also had much to do with the operation of the Presidency. The Navy itself runs Camp David and is entrusted with the life of the President, controlling directly the private, bullet-proof presidential suite at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, in the event of an emergency. The Eighty-ninth Airlift Wing, under the control of Air Mobility Command, runs the private presidential aircraft, the Boeing 747 Air Force One. The US Marines provide all presidential helicopters. The US Army provides all White House cars and drivers. The Defense Department provides all communications.
When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs arrives, accompanied by his senior Commanders, they are not mere visitors. These are the most trusted men in the United States, men whose standing and authority will survive political upheaval, even a change of president. They are men who are not intimidated by civilian power.
On this sunlit late summer afternoon, the forty-third US President stood before the motionless flags of the Navy, the Marines, and the Air Force to greet them with due deference as they entered the Oval Office. He smiled and addressed each of them by first name, including the Pacific submarine commander whom he had not met. To him he extended his right hand and said warmly, “Johnny, I’ve heard a great deal about you. Delighted to meet you at last.”
The men took their seats in five wooden captain’s chairs arrayed before the great desk of America’s Chief Executive.
“Mr. President,” Admiral Dunsmore said as he sat down, “we got a problem.”
“I guessed as much, Scott. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s an issue we’ve touched on before, but never with any degree of urgency, because basically we thought it wouldn’t happen. But right now it’s happening.”
“Continue.”
“The ten Russian Kilo Class submarines ordered by China.”
“Two of which have been delivered in five years, right?”
“Yessir. We now think the rest will be delivered in the next nine months. Eight of them, all of which are well on their way to completion in various Russian shipyards.”