Bob Mayer
The Omega Missile
Prelude: JANUARY-JUNE 1998
Chapter One
There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the air temperature in the eastern end of the Mediterranean was eighty degrees. The temperature of the water was a comfortable seventy-two. The surface of the sea was so smooth and flat that any disturbance of the water could be spotted easily. The moon was almost full and it reflected off the mirror surface, giving sixty-five percent illumination, aiding any prying eyes.
The American submarine lay eight kilometers off shore, due west of southern Lebanon. It was dead in the water a hundred feet down. On the back deck, just behind the conning tower, a hatch opened in the hull, leading to a pressurized compartment, the dry deck shelter — DDS — which was bolted onto the deck.
The two men climbing through the hatch into the DDS wore wet suits and carried their gear in waterproof rucksacks. As soon as they were inside, the hatch was closed behind them and sealed.
The two men ran through the pre-operations checks on the vehicle tied down inside the DDS: the Mark IX SDV (Swimmer Delivery Vehicle). The Mark IX was a long, flattened rectangle with propellers and dive fins at the rear and a Plexiglas bubble at the front for the crew to see through. A little over nineteen feet long, it was only slightly more than six feet wide and drew less than three feet from top to bottom.
After five minutes both men were satisfied with the craft. The batteries were at full charge and all equipment was functioning properly.
The divers slid inside the SDV, closing the hatches behind them. They hooked the hose from their mouthpieces directly to the interior air valves to breathe from the vehicle's tanks.
The man on the right spoke into the radiophone which was connected by umbilical to the sub. "Amber, this is Topaz. We are ready to proceed. Over."
"Roger, Topaz. We read all green here. Over."
"Request flood and release. Over."
"Flood and release will be initiated in twenty seconds. We'll leave the porch light on. Umbilicals cut in five. Good luck. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."
The radiophone went dead. With a heavy gurgle, water began pouring into the dry dock shelter. The pilot worked at keeping the SDV at neutral buoyancy as the chamber filled. Water also flooded into the crew chamber inside the SDV where the two divers lay on their stomachs peering out the front canopy. The Mark IX was a "wet" submersible meaning that the only waterproofed sections were the engine, battery, and navigational computer compartments. The two crewmen could feel the warm water seep into their wet suits and they forced out small pockets of air, trying to get as comfortable as possible in their confined space.
Once the chamber was full, the large hatch on the end of the DDS slowly swung open. The pilot activated the twin, three-bladed propellers and the SDV cleared the DDS. The long length of the submarine lay beneath them for another two hundred feet. Once in open ocean, the pilot directed the Mark IX up and down and from side to side using stabilizers, both horizontal and vertical, that were aligned to the rear of the propellers. A throttle controlled the speed of the blades, and thus the speed of the sub.
The second diver was the navigator and he was currently punching in numbers on the waterproofed panel in front of him.
"Fixing Doppler," he announced over the internal communication link between him and his partner. The computerized Doppler radar navigation system was now updated with their current location, received from the submarine prior to departure, and would guide them on their underwater journey, greatly simplifying a task that previously was a nightmare in pitch-black seas. The SDV also boasted an obstacle-avoidance sonar subsystem, which provided automatic warning to the pilot of any obstacles in the sub's path — an essential given that at their current depth they could see little more than a foot in front of them and would be "flying" blind, trusting the Doppler and their charts for navigation. The SDV had a pair of high-power halogen lights facing forward, but they were not an option on this mission.
"Course set. All clear," the navigator announced.
The pilot increased power to the propellers and they moved away from the sub, heading due east.
"What do you think, Chief?" the pilot finally asked, now that they were alone and out of the presence of higher-ranking officers. They both wore dive masks and mouthpieces, with transmitters wrapped around their necks. When they spoke, their voices sounded strangely garbled because the mouthpiece was held with the teeth while the speaker articulated with his throat.
The navigator, satisfied that everything was running smoothly, finally looked up from his panel at his cohort. "The politicians and bureaucrats ought to get their heads out of their asses and go public with this crap. That's what I think, Captain," Chief Petty Officer McKenzie replied.
"Always the big view," Captain Thorpe said with a low laugh that sounded like gargling to McKenzie. "I meant what do you think about our chances of spotting the transfer, if there is one?"
"They'd be a lot better if we went in with a big hammer right from the start and knocked these shit-birds on the head," McKenzie said. "I hate this sneaking andpeeking crap. What I really want to know is why I'm the navy guy and you're the army guy, but you're the one driving this sled?"
"Brains," Thorpe said. "Brains over muscle. You SEALs can do push-ups until the sun goes down but I'm a Green Beret. We got the brains and the looks."
"Yeah, right," McKenzie growled. "If you're so smart, how come you're in here with me?"
That was a good question, Thorpe silently acknowledged. Although they were from different branches of service, as McKenzie had pointed out, they, along with several dozen other members of the military's elite special operations forces, had been co-opted to form covert Department of Energy SO/NESTs teams — Special Operations Nuclear Emergency Search Teams.
At least that was the official jargon on their orders and the explanation given to the congressional oversight committee. In reality, he and McKenzie represented the spear point of much more than simply a search team.
They were actually part of the unit the Department of Defense used to patrol the world to keep the cauldron of nuclear weapons and materials from boiling over. Regular DOE SO/NEST teams were designed to clean up the mess after a nuclear problem occurred. They were reactive. DOD SO/NEST teams were proactive. People like McKenzie and Thorpe searched out potential nuclear problems before they escalated and a mess had to be cleaned up. So far they had been successful, but all it took was one failure and no one on the teams dwelled on that. The pressure was intense and men serving on SO/NEST rarely lasted more than a couple of years before they burned out.
Thorpe had been with SO/NEST for six months. McKenzie was the senior man in the group, with over four years of experience. The stress had aged him.
"You ever think about the insanity of what we do?" McKenzie suddenly said.
Thorpe was startled. That wasn't exactly the sort of question one asked on the inbound leg of a dangerous operation. "It's our job," he replied.
"Job?" McKenzie said. "Cutting grass, now that's a job. Being a doctor, that's a job. A doctor does an operation that saves somebody's life everybody thinks he's a god. He gets paid like one, too."
"We save millions of lives and what do we get? Shit, that's what we get. Hell, we don't even get hazardous duty pay."
"We don't get hazardous duty pay," Thorpe said, "because then the Department of Defense would have to tell Congress what we do in order to authorize it. And what we're doing is not exactly legal in the eyes of U.S. or international law. Not only are we not supposed to be operating overseas like this, it would scare the piss out of the civilians if they knew how close things get sometimes."