Admiral Morgan chuckled. He really liked Frank Doran and his unexpected humor. The task that faced them both was truly overwhelming, and they had to fight against letting it take over. They had a chance to nail the Barracuda—both men knew that — if it came to periscope depth. And if it didn’t, and just fired straight at the volcano, they had a chance to nail its missiles, surface to air. Failing that, there was one final line of defense — the steel ring of Patriot Missiles around the rim of the Cumbre Vieja, which would hit back. If they had time.
Failing those three options, life would not be the same on the East Coast of the U.S.A. for a very long time.
“Okay, sir, I’m out of here. I’ll put the evacuation plan for the Gulf of Mexico into operation right away. If it floats and it steams, that’s where every ship is going. I think we better get those ICBMs to sea and headed south as quickly as possible. But we might have to commandeer a few commercial freighters to vacate the submarine support station. There’s a million tons of missiles and other material in there. And it’s absolutely vulnerable — right on the Atlantic coast, protected by nothing more than a couple of sandbanks.”
“Don’t tell me, Frank. I used to work there,” said Arnold, shaking his head. “Is this a goddamned nightmare or what?”
Admiral Doran walked to the door of the Oval Office. “You coming back tomorrow?” asked Arnold.
“Uh-uh. In the morning. We might have some better news by then.”
Ravi and Shakira were back in their home on Sharia Bab Touma. Adm. Mohammed Badr had decided that satellite signals between the Iranian Naval Base at Bandar Abbas and the Barracuda were too vulnerable to American interception, so their expertise and advice wasn’t needed right now. All they could do was wait.
The Americans could intercept anything, with the National Security Agency’s Olympian ability to eavesdrop on anything, anywhere, anytime, and very little was transmitted from the Navy bases of potentially troublesome countries without Fort Meade knowing about it, chapter and verse.
So General and Mrs. Rashood had evacuated their lush guest quarters in Bandar Abbas and flown home to Damascus. And there, high up in the rambling house they had lived in when they first were married, was a state-of-the-art satellite transmitter, and a state-of-the-art receiver. But the path of the signals was Damascus-satellite-Tehran-satellite-Zhanjiang-satellite-Barracuda.
On the way back, it was precisely the same in reverse, all coded. Ravi made his way back down the stairs holding the latest message from Ben Badr, which simply read: 72.30N 76.00E. The Hamas General quickly decoded the true position and marked the spot on his map of the Atlantic.
Ben had made almost 10 knots since Tuesday morning, covering 700 miles across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The Barracuda was now almost on the line of the Tropic of Cancer, creeping at only five knots over the SOSUS wires. They were roughly 775 miles short of their ops area, which at this speed—120 miles a day — was six and a half days away. Ravi’s fingers whipped over the buttons on his calculator. It was now around midday on Friday where the Barracuda steamed, and they should arrive at the Canaries firing zone around midnight next Thursday, October 8.
“Right on time for the hit,” said Ravi to himself. “Just pray to Allah the Scimitars work again.”
“I’m hearing a certain amount of mumbling here,” said Shakira, who had just appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Would you like some tea, to calm your nerves?”
“Thank you. That would be perfect,” said Ravi. “By the way, I’ve just received a signal from the Barracuda, and it’s good news. They report no illness or casualties, they’re right on time, right on course, in mid-Atlantic, 775 miles short of La Palma.”
“I was just watching CNN on the television,” said Shakira. “The Americans are very concerned. The President has broadcast twice, and an evacuation of the East Coast is in full swing. They seem to have accepted the reality of our threat.”
“Are they saying anything specific about their defensive measures…You know, a deployment of ships around the islands?”
“Nothing much, only that they’ll be starting an extensive search for the Barracuda soon.”
“Hmm,” replied Ravi. “They’ll have a lot of search power out there, but I don’t think they’ll be able to catch Ben. He’s firing from 300 miles out, way to the southeast…and so far as I can see, there’s no way they’ll catch him in that deep water…not if he stays slow and deep, and launches from 200 or 300 feet below the surface.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever missed anything,” said Shakira, thoughtfully. “You think our luck will hold?”
“This isn’t luck. It’s planning,” said Ravi. “Planning over a long period of time.”
“You think they know it’s definitely a submarine, definitely launching missiles at the volcanoes from below the surface?”
“Hell, yes,” said General Rashood. “They know that.”
“Well, what would you do, if you were them?”
“Evacuate,” said Ravi. “As fast as I could.”
“Nothing Military or Naval — no aggressive action?”
“Well, I’d certainly send ships out to hunt for the submarine, but the Atlantic’s a big place. I would not hold my breath.”
Shakira was still thinking. “You know, my darling,” she said, “I spent a lot of time plotting and planning with the missile guidance systems. They do work from the satellites, you know.”
“Just on the regular Global Positioning System.”
“How about if the Americans somehow interfered with that. Made it nonoperational?”
“Well, I believe there’s nearly thirty satellites up there, and I’ve always thought they were involved in television, telecommunications, and all kinds of things. And every ship in the world is entirely dependent on them for navigation. I don’t think even the Americans could somehow turn off the entire communications and navigation system for the whole world. They’d be too afraid of the lawsuits that would probably amount to billions of dollars.”
“Let’s hope they are,” said Shakira, pouring tea into two glasses with little silver holders. “Otherwise, Ben will miss our target.”
The Fort Meade code breakers had almost done their job. Admiral Morris had taken the first signal off the Chinese Navy’s satellite and drawn a large circle on a chart of the North Atlantic.
“That’s where we think the Barracuda is,” he said. “In there somewhere. We are nearly certain this signal with the numbers 71.30N 96.00W is reporting her precise position. Try to come up with something, will you?”
Shortly before noon on the previous day, the code room had come up with a close solution. “On the first number, we think they just subtracted 50…or maybe 49 or 48. No more. On the second number, the W for West, means E for East. And we are nearly certain they just cut the number 96 in half. Which would give us 21.30N 48.00W, and that’s right about in the center of the circle.”
Admiral Morris and his assistant were delighted with that. And they were waiting anxiously for a new signal. At 12:30 P.M. Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe located something on the Chinese satellite…OLD RAZORMOUTH 72.30N 76.00E.