It was a little over two miles to the French Embassy, located on Reservoir Road on the northern border of Georgetown University. And Arnold Morgan awaited the arrival of the ambassador with growing impatience. Finally, Gaston Jobert showed up at 2:20 P.M. and Kathy ushered him into the Oval Office, where he was greeted by both Admiral Morgan and the President.
Kathy brought them some coffee, and M. Jobert sat and listened to the chronology of events from beginning to end. Arnold left out nothing, from the missiles identified at Mount St. Helens to the blasting of Montserrat. He explained the Hamas demands, the impossibility of complying with them, and then he explained the strategy of the United States Navy. Above all, he specified the critical nature of the GPS satellites.
“Generally speaking,” said Arnold, “he’ll send his missiles in under guidance from our own satellites. If he cannot locate them, he’ll search for the European one. And if he locates that, he’ll use that.
“If he runs into a blackout situation, he’ll have to come inshore for a visual firing. And that’s when we’ll get him. Needless to say, I am mystified at the attitude of your Government, and I have invited you here essentially in order for you to make them see sense.”
“Does my Government know the full history — the submarine, the missiles, and everything?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, I have understood with much…er, clarity…I see it would be very bad for France…if we were seen…to, er…have stopped you catching this submarine before it destroys your coast, and part of ours as well. That would be absolutely crazy…”
“Well, M. Jobert, we know that, but I am afraid your Foreign Minister has not understood as well as you have,” said the President.
M. Jobert, a debonair man of around fifty, slim, dark, Gallic in attitude, replied, “This was M. Jean Crepeau?”
“That’s him,” said Arnold. “A very anti-American little man, actually, which is somewhat absurd in the world today. Can you imagine us refusing to help you in this way, if Paris was under threat of a major terrorist attack?”
“No, Admiral Morgan. No. I cannot. But I have lived here for many years. I am very fond of the Americans, and this rather embarrasses me, as it will, in the end, embarrass my government.”
M. Jobert paused for a moment and sipped his coffee. “As a diplomat, I am going to speak out of turn. But you have been frank with me. M. Crepeau is a man whose political ambitions are very much greater than his abilities. And our Prime Minister is not much better. But in the President himself, Pierre Dreyfus, you have a man of far greater stature and far more sense…a little too proud for his own good. But a man of intelligence and judgment.
“Most people in my government are afraid of him…On the other hand, I am not, mainly because he’s married to my sister, Janine. I’ve known him since we were both about fifteen years old.
“I have already discussed this with him. And I think a call direct from President Bedford tomorrow morning will sort this out fairly quickly. In the end, France has no option, because in the end, you would shoot our satellite down, n’est-ce pas?”
Admiral Arnold smiled grimly. “You would leave us very little choice,” he replied. “The cities of Washington and New York, against your little sputnik Helios? No contest.”
M. Jobert stood up to leave. “You may leave it with me, gentlemen,” he said. “I will speak to the President at length this evening. I’ll tell him it’s too much trouble to refuse your request…I believe the phrase was ‘a pity for the sake of turning out the fucking lights for a couple of days…’ ”
“Nicely put,” said Arnold Morgan.
11
Adm. Ben Badr held course zero-six-zero as they moved across the black depths of the Cape Verde Plain. Young Ahmed Sabah, Shakira’s brother and Hamas officer, had become a trusted confidant of the Barracuda’s CO, and the two men were studying the charts of the eastern Atlantic with Lt. Ashtari Mohammed, the British-born Iranian navigator.
Nothing is real until it faces you, and what had once looked like a simple run into the Canary Islands now looked to be fraught with peril. They both understood that the threat that General Rashood had issued to the Pentagon had been made public. Plainly, the United States was taking major steps to locate and destroy them, and the nearer they crept towards the Canary Islands, the more dangerous the waters became.
Neither officer had the slightest idea what form the U.S. defense would take, but Admiral Badr, a former submarine and surface CO himself, felt confident that they would not resort to a submarine hunt.
“They won’t risk firing at each other, Ahmed,” he said. “I think it is much more likely that the Americans will go for frigates or destroyers with towed arrays. As long as we stay dead slow and deep, we’ll be almost impossible to find. The one worry I do have is the satellites. We need them for guidance of the Scimitars — and the GPS is just about entirely American.
“If they believe we are going to wipe out their East Coast, they may just shut down the whole system. Which would be pretty bad for us. Because that would leave only the European system and I’m not sure we can log on to it. Whereas everyone has access to the U.S. system.”
“Do you think the Americans could persuade the Europeans to shut down at the same time? Well, the Brits would cooperate. But the French might not. My own view is that they will somehow not get both systems to shut down at the same time…”
“But what if they do?” Ahmed was wide-eyed and very worried.
“Then we have no alternative. We’ll go inshore, take a visual range and bearing, and open fire on the Cumbre Vieja. The SL-2 has one advantage…Its nuclear warhead does not need the critical accuracy of the SL-1 non-nuclear. We bang that thing in there within a half-mile, we’ll split that volcano in half. The burning magma will do the rest.”
“How close do we need to be?”
“Around 25 miles. So long as we can see enough through the periscope to get a good visual fix on the volcano.”
“Where do we fire from?”
“We’ll have to see. If the satellites work, we’ll launch from a range of 250 miles…from this point here, about 30 miles south of the most easterly island, Fuerteventura. That would put us in very deep water around 30 miles off the coast of the western Sahara.
“The moment we fire, we turn north and make all speed for the eastern coast of Fuerteventura…right here, see…off the city of Grand Tarajal. That’s going to take us one hour from the point of launch. But the missile will take twenty-five minutes to get there. The main explosion causing the landslide will take an estimated ten minutes, and then the tsunami wave will take another 30 minutes to reach the west coast of our island…not the east coast where we will be sheltering…The wave will go right past us. And we’ll just hang around under the surface until everything calms down.”
“How about they do get the satellites shut off? What do we do then?” Ahmed was fast realizing the enormous risks they were taking.
“Then we would have to come inshore, from the southwest…making for this point here.” Ben Badr pointed to the chart at a spot 20 miles off La Palma, in very deep water, 8,000 feet. “Right here we take our visual fix, we range these two points here on the chart…two lighthouses, Point Fuencaliente, right here on the southermost headland of the island…and then, nine miles to the north, Point de Arenas Blancas. We’ll see them both clearly through the periscope, right?”