Moving at a normal pace, the small group kept to the road, which finally ended at a square intersection and a railway station. Here they turned northeast and took the road that paralleled the tracks. Further up the line, they hurriedly crossed where there was sufficient railside cover. Once safely over the multiple lines, they made their way past cultivated fields and outlying dwellings on the western perimeter of a broad valley, before heading north into the foothills of the lower Hamgyong Mountains.
8
When K449 slipped her moorings and sailed out of Rybachiy under cover of darkness into the northwestern Pacific, Captain Vladimir Sergeyevich Grosky had felt a little uneasy; something about the whole thing did not quite feel right. On board was North Korean Admiral Park Hyok, Iranian submarine Captain Asad Kamani, and Kamani’s executive officer, Lieutenant Hamid Zaha. It was an unusual situation that did not sit well with the Russian submarine captain. Grosky, a brusque, no-nonsense submariner of the old school, was grateful to be back at the helm of the vessel he’d spent so much time in. He was in his early fifties, but was still fit and wiry, and yearning for action. The captain had all but given up hope of ever going to sea again when the Delta III was mothballed then, much to his delight, Eastern Command had ordered him to take K449 back into the Pacific to undertake sea trials for the new owners. His operational orders would be given to him by the Korean admiral once at sea. The order from command was again highly unusual, he had to admit; but K449 had been maintained in very good condition in case of emergencies and both he and the remaining crew needed the operational pay. They also needed the stimulation and excitement of entering international waters once more.
On leaving Rybachiy, Captain Grosky had opened the sealed envelope containing his orders and was shocked to read that he was required to take K449 to a remote island deep in the southern Indian Ocean, maintain radio silence all the way and once there leave the vessel with his crew. He was to rendezvous with a surface vessel, then hand over the command of the submarine to the Korean admiral. He began to suspect this was less to do with sea trials and more to do with a clandestine operation. The double provisioning had also added to his suspicions. Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russian submarines never stayed out on patrols for months on end, due to the greatly reduced budgets that halved normal provisioning and forced them to keep mainly to the Bering Sea and northern regions of the Pacific. This mission was indeed unusual.
The course he’d been instructed to follow would take them west across the Bering Sea, through the Aleutian Island string at Unimak Pass and then deep down into the southern Pacific roughly on the 135th line of longitude west until reaching the Antarctic Circle. Once there, they would head due west along the line of latitude 53 degrees south until reaching an island deep in the Indian Ocean. This very oblique course would at least avoid the Aleutian Trench to a large extent, heavily wired with the U.S. Navy’s sensitive deep-water long-range Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and patrolled regularly by U.S. submarines. He knew they had to be extremely careful anywhere in the northern Pacific. The Americans could get very trigger-happy at unidentified submarines moving around in what they regarded as their own backyard. He definitely did not want his career to come to an abrupt halt at the bottom of this vast ocean and was therefore not unhappy with the designated course.
Just after K449 had entered the Bering Sea via the remote stretch of water between the Russian Komandorskiye group of islands and the Alaskan Near group of islands situated at the extreme western end of the Aleutian Archipelago, they encountered their first spot of trouble. Keeping as close to the Komandorskiyes as they possibly could to stay clear of the U.S. listening station on Attu, the main island of the Nears some 600 miles to the southeast of their position, they were ‘pinged’ by active sonar, maybe from another submarine or perhaps a surface vessel. However, it was brief, suggesting the emitter may well not have detected them; nevertheless, they took evasive action by diving deeper and changing course. This meant that American or British warships were in the area and they would need to proceed with extreme caution.
For 1,000 miles through the southern Barents, they stayed deep, quiet and slow. Their gateway into the most northern part of the Pacific lay through the Unimak Pass, that narrow stretch of seaway bisecting the Aleutian Archipelago between Unimak and Akun Islands. Here they would have to negotiate the shallow waters of the Pass under the ever-watchful eyes of the U.S. listening station on Unimak Island overlooking the twenty-mile stretch of seaway at Cape Sarichef. To achieve this, Captain Grosky would do what he and many other Russian commanders had done in the past: go through in the wake of a large surface ship.
On arrival at the entrance to the Pass, twelve miles off the northern headland of Akutan Island, they waited at periscope depth, in a slow circular pattern for a suitable ship to follow. They dared not raise the periscope for fear of discovery until the very last moment to ensure the vessel was of sufficient size to cover and enable them to line up with the stern after it had passed over. They remained in this holding pattern for several hours and at 0830 sonar reported a large surface contact bearing down on them from the northwest at ten knots. The captain waited until it was less than a 1,000 yards away before ordering the periscope up for a brief scan. The weather was bad; heavy rain squalls and mist, visibility down to little more than a mile in rough seas, but he was able to confirm a large container ship thrusting its way into the Pass. For the next few minutes, using sonar, they manoeuvred into position and then, with one last peek to line up the stern, they slipped into the turbulent wake of the vessel, praying for a safe passage out into the Pacific beyond.
The Unimak Pass was negotiated without incident and once through they parted company with the commercial vessel. Slowly, at a depth of 600 feet, K449 crossed the eastern end of the two-mile deep Aleutian Trench and on into the Gulf of Alaska, gingerly making its way at no more than dead-slow speed to avoid SOSUS tripwires and any U.S. submarines that might be lurking in this part of the Pacific. They reached the 135th line of longitude and turned south. Once in the lower regions they would no longer have to worry about U.S. underwater surveillance or the U.S. ROI satellite system; there was hardly any in the northeast Pacific Basin and none at all in the southern oceans, including complete absence of warships from any nation.
In the small cramped bunk area he shared with his XO, Captain Asad Kamani reflected on the last few months. Once the submarine deal had been successfully completed, al-Qaeda’s all powerful connections within the Iranian governing regime had arranged for his release and that of Lieutenant Zaha’s from naval duties. Both men had been preparing for this moment for a very long time and when the order finally came, the two eagerly flew from Tehran to Pyongyang. From there they took a flight up to Nikolayevsk at the top of Sakhalin Island, then over the Sea of Okhotsk to Petropavlovsk at the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula. After spending more than a week crawling all over K449 in the sub pen at Rybachiy and inspecting as much of the vessel’s systems as they could under dock conditions, the Delta III finally set out on her mission.
Captain Kamani had reached the zenith of his career. At fifty-two, he was small in stature, slim and possessed handsome Arabic features with thick, dark hair. He was supremely ready for the task ahead. From a young age he had wanted to be a submariner after an almost continuous diet of American Cold War submarine movies. He was bright and ambitious, and, coupled with his Islamic fervour, had little trouble in entering the Iranian Navy where he quickly demonstrated his ability to master the complexities of the Russian Kilo-class diesel/electric submarines purchased by the Iranians. It was not long until he succeeded as captain to one of the five hunter-killer submarines operating out of the naval base at Bandar Abbas. For Kamani, the future was nuclear power and he managed, through exchange and marketing programmes, to serve time as an auxiliary officer in France’s Triomphant-class and China’s Xia-class nuclear submarines. Both classes were similar in many respects to the Russian Delta III he was now in and soon to command once the exchange was completed. To his superiors he was the most appropriate man to lead this mission for Islamic supremacy, due to his experience and to his strong, fundamental Islamic beliefs coupled with an undying hatred of everything Western. He was humbled at the opportunity to punish America and her allies, whom he believed were undermining the sacred values of Sharia. To him, Western culture and all it stood for exposed the vulnerable youth of the Muslim world to corruption and greed. Single and with hardly any family commitments, Kamani wanted to play a part in destroying this creeping malevolence. He thus offered his services to al-Qaeda and was eventually absorbed into its worldwide network to await the call, which, after many years of waiting, had finally come.