“Yes, sir, Admiral.”
“In between those two points is the Cumbre Vieja. We have all the data we need on its precise spot, satellite photographs. We then take a third point, a mountain peak…and we take range and bearing…it’s a regular three-point fix. And even if the satellites are down, we can come back to that exact spot in the ocean, anytime we wish, with just a fast glance through the periscope.
“The next time we come back, we launch the Scimitar SL-2 straight at the volcano, and this missile cannot miss…because it doesn’t have to be accurate…Even allowing for errors caused by wind direction, wind speed, turning circle, height adjustments…it still can’t miss…The warhead is so enormous, even if it is swept a half-mile off course, it will still blow the volcano.”
“Admiral, have you given any thought about how we get away afterwards?”
“Yes. I have. So has your brother-in-law. Somewhere in the South Atlantic, somewhere lonely, we bail out and board an Iranian freighter. The submarine will blow itself to pieces a half hour after we all leave. We have to scuttle her in the deepest water we can find. So she’ll never be discovered. Then we sail home on the freighter, disembarking a few men at a time, at various ports, all the way to Iran.”
“So right now you want to steer a course more easterly?” interrupted Lieutenant Ashtari. “Presumably we’re going to our long-range launch position…to see if we can still get a fix on the overheads?”
“Exactly. But we don’t need to make much of an adjustment…two degrees right rudder. I’ll speak to Ali Zahedi…just so long as he keeps our speed to 5 knots.”
The Barracuda was moving quietly beneath the surface, some 540 miles short of its ops area. Sometime in the next three days, Ben Badr expected to pick up the beat of a U.S. warship. But so far, they had been in deserted waters, way south of the much busier North Atlantic shipping lanes.
On this Saturday morning, the nearest U.S. ship to the Barracuda was Comdr. Joe Wickman’s guided-missile frigate, the Simpson, currently steaming southeast towards the northwest point of the Canaries — La Palma.
Capt. Sean Smith had his frigate, the Elrod, already in the island area, moving east across the Canary current to a position north of Tenerife. There, he was awaited by Capt. Brad Willett’s USS Taylor, which had arrived shortly after midnight.
The Kauffman and the Nicholas, commanded by Capts. Josh Deal and Eric Nielsen, were scheduled to arrive on station sometime in the next two hours, in a holding area 20 miles off Tenerife’s jagged northern headland of Los Roques de Anaga.
The seven-frigate fleet out of Norfolk was proceeding in a long convoy across the Atlantic. They were the last to leave and were not expected on station until Sunday night. The Ronald Reagan Carrier Battle Group was currently approaching Gibraltar and was expected to arrive at her ops area northeast of Lanzarote by Sunday afternoon.
Adm. George Gillmore, on board the electronic wondership the USS Coronado, was already 2,500 miles out from the Norfolk Base, and less than 1,000 miles from his ops area. They were expected to arrive around midnight on Sunday.
The last arrival would be the carrier Harry S. Truman, laden with helicopters, and currently pushing through a storm system out over the Atlantic Ridge, escorted by two destroyers and a nuclear submarine, hull 770, the USS Tucson.
They were all to the north of the Barracuda, unknown to Adm. Ben Badr and his men, who expected trouble but probably not as much as this. You’ll always be safe, if you stay deep and stay slow. The words of his father rang clearly in Ben’s mind. And still, somehow he felt vulnerable without Ravi and Shakira.
This weekend, he was due to open one of the timed safes on board the submarine that held a sealed letter written, but not signed, to him as Commanding Officer from the learned Ayatollah who presently ruled the Islamic Republic of Iran. It had been his father’s idea to give Ben a sense of true purpose. It would provide confirmation that he wielded the curved sword of the Prophet Mohammed when he launched his missiles.
Adm. Mohammed Badr had told his son what the envelope would contain. And he was most anxious to read it. He had tried twice already this morning, but the timing device was still locked, and Ben planned to give it another try in just a few hours.
Meanwhile, back in the Oval Office, Admiral Morgan had received another setback from Paris. A communiqué from the President had stated that despite a long conversation with his Ambassador in Washington, he remained undecided about the validity of the Hamas threat and the need to turn off the GPS.
The French President said he would like to “sleep on the problem” and would give his decision on Monday morning. He continued, like his Foreign Minister, to believe that the Americans were exaggerating the importance of a terrorist attack on the volcano. He did not particularly wish to join the U.S. in alarming the entire world unnecessarily and being responsible for any death that might happen as a result of closing down the world’s global navigation system. He could see no merit in providing further fuel to world anti-American opinion, if the threat turned out to be spurious.
Arnold Morgan was furious at the word “spurious.” “How could the damned threat be ‘spurious’?” he raged. “Who the fuck does this jumped-up fucking despot from some fourth-rate town hall in Normandy think he is? Answer that, someone?”
“I guess he does,” said President Bedford, who happened to be the only other person in the room at present. “Does this mean I have to speak to him?”
“It used to,” said Arnold. “Not anymore…KATHY! CONNECT THIS OFFICE TO THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE RIGHT NOW!”
“For President Bedford?” she inquired, standing in the doorway, and still not absolutely certain why her husband felt the need to yell through closed wooden doors rather than pick up the phone.
“Tell him that,” growled Arnold. “Then put the little son of a bitch through to me.”
Kathy shook her head and instructed the White House switchboard to make the call to the Palace Elysée in the northwest corner of central Paris, and to stress the urgency of the matter.
Three minutes later, the French President was on the line…slightly confused…“Mais je le pense le President Bedford?”
“Mr. President,” said Arnold Morgan. “I am sitting here in the White House right next to the President of the United States of America…and for three days now, we have been asking your co-cooperation in stopping what might be the worst terrorist threat this world has ever faced. Am I to understand you are not yet ready to give us your help? That, by the way, is a oui or a non.”
“Well, I have not yet decided as to the merit of the case.”
“Is that a non, Mr. President?”
“Well, I think we could work something out, possibly in a few days…”
“Mr. President, this is a highly charged military action. We do not have time for your vacillation. Either you shut down the satellite when we tell you to shut it down, or that satellite will not even exist this time tomorrow morning…”
The line between Washington and Paris froze. “Admiral Morgan, are you threatening me?” asked the President.
“No. I am absolutely promising you. I want that satellite down for forty-eight hours at midnight on Wednesday, your time. And that’s what I’m going to have. Either you do it the easy way and have it blacked out. Or you can have it the hard way, and we’ll get rid of it for you.