“Perfect,” said Arnold. “Lemme just call the President. He’d better sit in on this. Since he has been C in C of the armed forces for all of four hours.”
He called upstairs to the private residence, and within five minutes, Paul Bedford was back in the Oval Office, listening to the rundown of the Navy situation. He had never forgotten his days as a frigate Lieutenant, and he often recalled the excitement of being a young officer, racing through the night at the helm of a U.S. warship.
And predictably, he asked questions no civilian would ever dream of. “Frank, these Oliver Hazard Perry frigates. They were brand-new when I was serving, and I haven’t kept up…good ships?”
“Excellent, sir…3,600 tons, 41,000 hp…couple of big gas turbines, single shaft, 4,500-mile range at 28 knots, need refueling when they reach the ops area. But that’s no problem. They pack a pretty good wallop too…four McDonnell Douglas Harpoon guided missiles, homing to 70 nautical miles at Mach zero-point-nine…plus ASW torpedoes.”
“Beautiful,” said President Bedford. And he really meant it. “That little son of a bitch comes to the surface, he’s history, right?”
“Just so long as we can see him,” replied Admiral Doran. “And we are putting a lot of faith in the helicopters…You know, each frigate carries two of those excellent Sikorsky SH-60R Seahawks…They got state-of-the-art LAMPS Mark III weapons systems. They’re just great machines, 100 knots, no sweat, up to 10,000 feet.
“They’re exactly what we need…airborne platforms for antisubmarine warfare. That Barracuda shows up where we think he’ll be, we got him. Those helos have outstanding dipping sonar, Hughes AQS-22 low frequency.
“They all have USY-2 acoustic processors, upgraded ESM and Integrated Self-defense. Plus APS-124 search radar…and twenty-four sonobuoys. Those helos carry three Mk-50 torpedoes, an AGM-114R/K Hellfire Missile, and one Penguin Mark-2.”
“I just hope the French cooperate,” said the President.
“They will ultimately not be a problem,” said Arnold Morgan. “If they won’t shut the damn thing off, we’ll shut it off for them. I was not joking when I first said that. We’ll shoot it down, because we don’t have any choice.”
“This means,” said the President, “you have entirely abandoned the idea of a wide search out in the Atlantic, west of the islands?”
“Again, no choice,” replied Arnold. “With a hundred ships out there in deep water, we could still miss him easily. It’s too vast an area, hundreds of thousands of square miles of water.
“So we’re sticking to a small force of just twelve frigates, plus the carrier group. Perhaps, Frank, you could let the President know where we are with the fleet right now?”
“Sure,” said Admiral Doran, flicking the pages of his notebook. “We just diverted two ships from the Gulf of Maine on a southwest course to the Canaries, that’s USS Elrod, under the command of Captain CJ Smith, and USS Taylor, under the command of Captain Brad Willett.
“The Kauffman and the Nicholas were both in the North Atlantic, and have been heading south for the past three days. Comdr. Joe Wickman’s Simpson was off North Carolina, and we sent him east two days ago. Tonight, seven more frigates are due to clear Norfolk by midnight.
“That’s the old Samuel B. Roberts, commanded by Capt. Clay Timpner — rebuilt, of course, since she hit a mine in the first Gulf War; USS Hawes under Comdr. Derek DeCarlo, the Robert G. Bradley, under a newly promoted young Commander, John Hardy, from Arizona. Then there’s USS De Wert, commanded by Capt. Jeff Baisley.
“My old ship, the Klakring, will be ready next. She’s now commanded by Capt. Clint Sammons, from Georgia, who’ll probably make Rear Admiral next year. The Doyle’s already on her way under Comdr. Jeff Florentino. And the USS Underwood, commanded by Capt. Gary Bakker, will be the last away. She only came in yesterday morning.”
“How about the helos for the carrier deck?”
“We’re sending the Truman out from Norfolk with fifty Seahawks on board — they’ll transfer to the Ronald Reagan flight deck as soon as possible, then bring the fixed wings home.”
“So that’ll give us over seventy Seahawks active over the datum?”
“Correct, sir. We’ll be flying a lot of patrols around the Islands, as from midnight on October 7. He sticks that mast up for more than a few seconds any time in the next two days, we’ll get him. If he doesn’t have any satellites, he’ll need time to get an accurate range.”
“How accurate does his damn missile have to be?”
“If it’s nuclear, which we’re sure it will be, he can hit within a half-mile of the Cumbre Vieja, and the impact would be terrific. But I think he’ll try to bury those babies right in the crater. Remember, he’s trying to blow the volcano wide open. He’s not trying to knock the cliff down…because that won’t be enough. He’s vowed to erupt the Cumbre Vieja, and he’ll need time to set up for an accurate fix. And that’s our chance…while his periscope’s jutting out of the water, and we’re sweeping the surface with radar.”
“There’s a lot riding on this, Frank,” said the President. “A whole lot riding on the skill and sharpness of your boys.”
“Yes, sir. But if it can be done, they’ll do it. Of that I’m in no doubt.”
President Bedford and Admiral Morgan refused all requests for interviews via the White House Press Office. There was a hot line established between the National Security Agency and the Oval Office. And Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe was constantly combing the myriad of U.S. intercepts for anything that might give a clue to the whereabouts of the phantom Barracuda.
At eleven o’clock on the first morning of Paul Bedford’s Presidency, he got one — vague, coded, and not much use to anyone. But the U.S. listening station in the Azores had picked up something that arrived from the satellite of the Chinese Navy’s Southern Fleet. A short signal transmitted at 0500 (DST) on Tuesday morning…a cruel sea for the songbirds.
There was something about it that caught Ramshawe’s attention. He stared at it, pondered its possible meaning. Cruel sea…a cruel sea…the cruel sea…novel about the Navy…Nicholas Montserrat! Holy shit! On the day the island volcano blew.
Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe did not have the slightest idea of the different spelling. This may have been a message from anyone, to anyone. But it was in English, and it was on the Chinese Navy satellite. And it must have meant something to somebody.
So who’s the bloody songbirds? He did not waste any more time thinking. He picked up the phone to his boss, Admiral George Morris, and recounted the signal. George thought slowly. Eventually he spoke. “Jimmy,” he said. “That’s very interesting. Especially if those songbirds turned out to be canaries.”
“Hey! That’s a beaut, sir. You got it. Can’t be sure what it means, but it surely suggests the bloody Barracuda is on its way to La Palma.”
Neither of them knew that a new signal had just hit the Chinese satellite. Again brief…RAZORMOUTH 71.30N 96.00E. General Rashood, operating from Bandar Abbas, did not yet think that the Americans had already cracked the Barracuda/Razormouth code many months previously. And in any case, the Americans, who picked up the new signal, would not understand the coded global positions. The code 71.30N 96.00E put the submarine somewhere in the landlocked foothills of the North Siberian Plain.