The Elrod and the Taylor had a chance of detecting the Barracuda as it made its way in from the open ocean, running south of all the islands towards the North African shore. They definitely had a shot at an early detection while the men from Hamas had a mast up while trying to access the GPS. And there would be another opportunity if and when the Barracuda began a move west towards Gomera.
The U.S. sea operation consisted of four ships inshore, and six standing off, 25 miles out. Admiral Gillmore had done his geometry. Each TA frigate would need to patrol in a radius of 10 to 20 nautical miles…the area measured from the volcano itself to cover the entire band out to 25 miles from the work of the inshore group. The distance around such a circle is about 150 nautical miles. And this would allow the six frigates to cover the entire area continuously. If the Barracuda somehow strayed into those waters, life could quickly become extremely tense for Ben Badr and his men.
This left Admiral Gillmore with two other frigates, Capt. Clint Sammons’s Klakring and Comdr. Joe Wickman’s Simpson. He would use these to extend the search area whenever it might become necessary, or to prosecute nearby towed-array contacts, or even to thicken up radar coverage inshore. In such a complex operation, George Gillmore knew better than to leave himself without flexibility. At this stage, his task orders were, of course, extremely narrow — sink the Barracuda, however, wherever, whenever, but soon.
Situated 20 miles to his east was the Ronald Reagan CVBG. The massive aircraft carrier was preparing to rendezvous with the Harry S. Truman, and essentially exchange its fixed-wing aircraft for ASW helicopters. The Battle Group arrived with two LA-class nuclear submarines, but Frank Doran was not anxious to use them in any kind of an underwater hunt.
Admiral Gillmore was aware of that, and both men felt the destruction of the Barracuda would be achieved by the ASW helicopters. The Truman was expected to arrive on Monday morning, and the exchange operation would begin immediately. As the sun came blazing out of the clear African skies to the east, there was still no sign of the second carrier, but they knew it was under 100 miles away. And the Elrod and the Taylor were already on their way to their inshore search areas.
By 0900, the Truman had made its Atlantic crossing and was 30 miles off the northwest coast of La Palma, steaming east towards the rendezvous with the Ronald Reagan. The sea was calm, and a brisk, warm southeast wind blew off the coast of Africa. In the next three hours, this was forecast to shift southwest and bring in a succession of rainsqualls throughout the afternoon. Which was not perfect for the large-scale carrier-to-carrier transfer of aircraft, scheduled to begin at 1400.
Shortly before 1030, Admiral Gillmore completed his deployment of ships for the offshore operation, and, led by USS Hawes, under Comdr. Derek DeCarlo, the six frigates set off for their respective search circles in the wide band of ocean between the islands of La Palma and Hierro and the 25-mile outer limit of their operations area.
The Kauffman and the Nicholas made their way into the inshore waters of La Palma and Hierro, where they would move slowly around the coastlines, mapping the ocean bottom and recording the appearance of sudden shoals of fish or the perfectly stationary sea ridges. Then they would move on to Gomera and Tenerife, always watching the computer screen, which would betray a creeping nuclear submarine.
The Barracuda still ran slowly, at just under six knots, still 500 feet under the surface, transmitting nothing. Adm. Ben Badr checked their position and noted that they were 240 miles out from the most westerly Canary Islands, La Palma and Hierro, around 18.50W. They were on a due easterly course, which would take them 20 miles south of the seven volcanic islands that jutted up separately from the ocean bed.
So far, they had heard no searching submarines, no warships. They had twice ventured to periscope depth to make certain the GPS was in sound working order, and found no problems. They had two more days to run before they slid quietly into the area that Admiral Gillmore’s ships were currently combing.
As soon as the Barracuda slipped by its first landfall, the island of Hierro, it would be within 19 miles of the Nicholas, unless Capt. Eric Nielsen had already moved on to the southern coast of Tenerife, into the waters once scanned so thoroughly by the honeymooning Admiral Arnold Morgan.
If the Nicholas moved, the chances of the Barracuda remaining undetected were doubled, because even the south shore of Tenerife lay 25 miles farther north than Hierro. This would put the Barracuda 44 miles south of the nearest U.S. warship, but the day, and the game, were both still young.
Three and a half thousand miles away on the U.S. East Coast, the sun was battling its way out of the Atlantic into cloudy skies. And it was not just the big cities that were trying to empty themselves, but all along the seaboard, rural communities were frantically making their preparations to escape the wrath of the coming tidal wave.
It was cold on the rocky, tree-lined islands off the coast of Maine, and most of the summer people had stored their boats and vanished south to escape the notoriously chilly Maine fall. Inland, the cold was, if anything, worse. There’s usually snow in the outfield by the first week of November at the University of Maine baseball park, home of the Black Bears.
The islands were effectively left to the Maine lobstermen, one of the most intrepid breed of cold-water fishermen in the world. Yet there was not a single safe harbor along this coast.
It was essential to either haul the lobster boats and get them to higher ground or, more daringly, anchor them in the western lee of one of the 3,000 islands that guard the downeast coast. These rocky, spruce-darkened islands are mostly hilly — great granite rises from the ocean, which may not stop a tidal wave but would definitely give it a mild jolt. On the sheltered side it was just about possible that the tsunami might roll right by, perhaps leaving a high surge in its wake, but not dumping and smashing large boats on beaches 10 miles away.
The seamen of the Maine islands were accustomed, more than any other fishermen on the East Coast, to terrible weather. And for three days now, they had been moving the endlessly scattered fleet of lobster boats to anchorages out of harm’s way.
Boats from Monhegan, North Haven, Vinalhaven, Port Clyde, Tennants Harbor, Carver’s Harbor, Frenchboro, Isleboro, and Mount Desert headed inshore, their owners praying that if the giant wave came, the islands, with their huge granite ramparts, would somehow reduce the power of the waves.
Similar prayers on precisely the same subject were almost certainly being offered by somewhat less robust people — librarians, politicians, and accountants, 600 miles south in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress was also made out of granite from the Mount Desert area. So was the House of Representatives and the Treasury Building.
Out in the deep water, 15 miles from the coast, the three great seaward guardians of Maine’s stern and mighty shoreline — the remote and lonely lighthouses of Matinicus Rock, Mount Desert Rock, and Machias Seal Island — were left to face the coming onslaught single-handedly. According to local scientists, the mega-tsunami would sweep more than 100 feet above them. Whether they would still be there when the water flattened out was anyone’s guess.