Overlord Page 17

  Ahmadinejad remained stoic as he held the general’s eyes. “That is something we shall see about right now.”

  As the two men watched a large glass doorway parted and the lead physicist stepped out. The giant, round, mostly glass and strange steel power plant was still and dark behind him as other technicians scrambled on and over it. The man used a white towel to wipe his hands. He angrily removed the white lab coat he was wearing and tossed it aside. He rummaged in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of American cigarettes. He caught himself just before he lit up and looked at the dark eyes staring at him. He cleared his throat and apologized, then placed both cigarette and lighter back into his pocket.

  “Well, what happened to the test?” Ahmadinejad asked, still eyeing the bald man.

  “We had a power spike from the blasted power plant itself.”

  The two men just stared at the physicist.

  “The power we were supplying it was too much; the damn thing seems to be correcting its output on its own. The technical advancement of this engine is so far beyond our understanding. It’s like it is healing itself after being inactive for so long. It’s actually correcting the adjustments we had made to it.”

  “Talk straight, man,” Ahmadinejad said angrily.

  “It has made an adjustment entirely on its own that actually made it more efficient. It went out of control momentarily and didn’t target anything on this planet. There was no ground strike, it just dissipated into space … we assume.”

  “Will the machine work in the manner we need it to?” Yazdi asked. “I have half a million men with their lives hanging in the balance if it doesn’t work, you fool.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, very much so,” the man said, wishing for a cigarette in the worst way. “We now know what to look for and will prevent the power plant from spiking. We’ll adjust our input of power to compensate for what the engine provides.”

  “Will it work?” Ahmadinejad asked as he leaned forward into the scientist’s face.

  “Yes, the targeting will be accurate to the foot.”

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finally dipped his head. He turned and faced the general. “Make final preparations to eliminate the key government personnel we have selected—seal the capital off, General.”

  The taller man came to attention as the once and now future president of Iran turned to the shaking physicist.

  “Correct your machine and make it operational within the hour. No more delays.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man shakily answered.

  “A complete strike package will be delivered to you in one hour. Target: Tel Aviv.”

  SSN SUFFREN

  NORTH SEA

  The boat was new. She was on her third shakedown cruise deep in the North Sea as the French navy unveiled its latest attack submarine: the Barracuda-class Suffren. Her design and construction had been done in secret and the French people had been shocked when news leaked of the Barracuda class of boats. Protests from Paris to Toulon took up every available minute of news time on television. The anger stemmed from the program’s prohibitive cost, for the six new boats of the Barracuda class would cost the people of France eight billion Euros—roughly twelve billion dollars. The citizens could not grasp the need for such an expensive weapons platform when the world—so it was thought—was drawing down from the war on terror. It seemed to the French nation that military spending was on the rise just as it was in other countries. Every western nation along with China was trying to quietly bring on new and expensive weapons platforms for no apparent reason or perceived threat. Riots in every western nation soon followed the discovery of new weapons programs that no nation on earth could possibly afford after the costly war on terror. The anger stemmed from not having a justification for the buildup.

  Captain Jean Arnaud, a veteran of every class of submarine the French navy had produced since the end of the Cold War, sat at his elevated station just above the navigation console. Arnaud was close to his retirement from the sea and was preparing to drive a desk after the Suffren had been thoroughly put through the ringer on this, the last of her shakedown cruises.

  As he looked around the silent control room he wondered if the protests back home would eventually shut the most expensive naval program in the history of France down before the second boat, the Duguay-Trouin, could be launched early next year. He shook his head in wonder at the way civilians thought. He knew the program was needed, but he had to admit that in this day and age it was hard to justify the expense of such a massive weapons system when the terrorists of the world were on the run and the old Soviet Union didn’t exist. As far as the Chinese went, they had been silent for the past four years on anything concerning their military. Rumors of a massive Chinese buildup could be the force factor in the West’s rearming.

  At the moment the Suffren was running a standard station-keeping drill in the thermal cline a thousand feet below the surface of the roiling North Sea. If the new boat could keep still at the thermal cline—which was a layer of current that separated deep water from shallow and had varying degrees of current and temperature—her shakedown would be complete. Thus far the Suffren had not moved three feet in either direction. Her thrusters kept her nearly motionless in the dark waters as the rough current tried to push her first one way, and then the other.

  “Very nice. Enter the specs into the computer along with the time and note it. Gentlemen, let’s bring her up to five hundred feet at a bearing of 237 … let’s take her home.”

  He saw the relief on the faces of the young French sailors as the order was given and the shakedown was officially closed. The Suffren had passed all of her tests. Even his officers were relieved to learn they were headed back to L’Ile Longue submarine base.

  “Sonar, do you have anything in the vicinity?”

  “Conn, sonar, no close-aboard surface contacts and nothing below.”

  The captain nodded his head and then started to relax.

  “Five hundred feet and zero bubble, Captain.”

  Arnaud heard the chief and smiled. “Gentlemen, push the fish out of the way and let’s get back home with our newest fleet boat. Watch commander, all head two-thirds.”

  “All ahead, two-thirds, aye, Captain.”

  The Suffren and her new power plant pushed her silently and efficiently through the frigid waters of the North Sea.

  HMS AMBUSH

  TWENTY-SEVEN NAUTICAL MILES EAST OF SUFFREN

  The French navy was not the only nation in Europe with the latest in attack submarines. The Royal Navy was in the middle of producing its own—the Astute-class submarines would lead the empire into a future of subsurface warfare that was on a par with the United States and her Virginia-class line of superboats. The Ambush was the second keel to have been laid down at the shipyard and her crew was well aware that theirs was the leading class of attack boat in the entirety of the Royal Navy.

  “It looks as if our French friends may be satisfied. It seems they are headed home, Captain.”

  Captain Miles Von Muller took the report from the sonar officer, examined it, and handed it back.

  “I see old Arnaud worked out the station-keeping problem they had with their thrusters.”

  “Yes, sir,” Von Muller’s first officer, or number one, said as he folded the report. “It looks as though the Marine Nationale have a keeper on their hands.”

  Von Muller nodded his head. “For now we’ll await them to egress from the North Sea. Then we’ll come shallow and report to the admiralty that the Suffren is now a viable asset for our friends across the channel.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the first officer answered.

  Von Muller started to rise from his chair. “Until then, match speed and course and let’s follow Suffren a while, and collect what we can from her power plant noises. Keep her at fifteen knots and three hundred in depth. Let’s stay above the thermal cline for the moment.” He smiled, “No sense in letting our friends know we’re near and interested.”

  “Very good,
Captain.”

  “I think I’ll take some tea and settle in for a while. You have the conn, Number One.”

  “Number One has the conn.”

  Von Muller started to move aft, patting men on their shoulder and nodding his head in thanks at their performance.

  “Conn, sonar, we have a light contact bearing two-three-seven. Contact is intermittent at this time.”

  The captain immediately stopped and looked back at his first officer. He watched the man take the 1MC mic from its stanchion.

  “What do you mean intermittent?” The first officer thought a moment and then clicked the mic to life once more. “Either the Suffren is there or it’s not.”

  “Sir, this is not the Suffren. The Frenchies are slowing to five knots. I think they see and hear the same thing we are.”

  The captain strode quickly back into the control room and nodded his head, indicating that he would take it from there—his tea would wait.

  “Captain has the conn,” his first officer said as he turned and sped for the sonar shack.

  “All stop, quick quiet,” came Von Muller’s order.

  “Captain, sonar,” his first officer called from the aft compartment, where the Thales Underwater Systems Sonar 2076 was located. The Thales system was the newest and latest in British technology and the men were well aware of its sensibilities. If she said there was something out there you could bet your mother’s pension check that there was indeed something in the tree line. They all felt the massive submarine decelerate as she came to a full stop. “I believe we have a contact two kilometers to the south. It comes shallow and then goes deep. We have a hard time tracking her below the layer. Captain, there is something out there.”

  “Americans?” the chief of the boat asked the captain in a low tone.

  “No, the Americans know the way the game is played. They bloody well invented shakedown tracking. They have other things to concern themselves with in the South China Sea, with the Koreans. This is something else. What is the Suffren doing?”

  SSN SUFFREN

  Arnaud had ordered all stop as his sonar was below the thermal cline and thus had much better information than their British counterpart. They could see the object at one half mile away holding perfect zero-bubble station—as if it were waiting. Arnaud noticed that the target was sitting right in the middle of the swiftest current in the North Sea and she refused to budge one inch in any direction, up, down, sideways, or backward—the object was anchored like a rock at six hundred feet.

  “What are the dimensions?” Arnaud asked as he leaned over the operator’s shoulder to see the multicolored waterfall display on the screen.

  “We may be having an issue here, sir. We think it may be as much as six hundred feet…” The young operator paused. “In diameter, Captain.”

  “Diameter? You mean this thing is—”

  “It’s round Captain. That is not a submarine. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a normal submersible.”

  Captain Arnaud turned to face his second-in-command and leaned toward him, as he looked like a man wanting to say something. “What are you thinking?”

  “The alert we received from Fleet before leaving on our first shakedown last month. Any abnormal contacts beneath the surface are to be reported immediately when contact has been confirmed not to be a submarine.”

  “We don’t even know that yet. We cannot report a partial contact no matter what mysterious orders we have from Fleet. We need—”

  “Captain, contact is now active and it’s moving straight toward us at high speed,” the operator said.

  “What is their speed?”

  “No speed estimate at this time; the computer is having a hard time keeping up.”

  “Bring the crew to battle stations, submerged.” Arnaud hurried back to the control room. “Weapons,” he called back to his first officer. “Load tubes one through four with war shots.”

  “Aye, Captain, tubes one, two, three, and four with Sharks.”

  The Black Shark, as the Italian-made torpedo was known, was a heavyweight in the world of submerged warfare. The fiber-optic-controlled weapon could speed out of the tubes at over fifty-five knots. She could punch a hole in most anything even without her powerful warhead detonating.

  Arnaud entered the control room to face the uneasy faces around him.

  “Range to target?” he asked as he studied the sea and its surroundings.

  “Target aspect change, it’s now slowing, slowing … It’s stopped dead in the water again, Captain.”

  “Stopped where, sonar?”

  “One moment, conn … Conn, contact is at one hundred meters to our bow. Target is holding station.”

  Arnaud looked to his first officer. “The goddamn thing is nose to nose with us. What in the hell are we dealing with here?”

  “Captain, we are close enough to use the camera in the sail. Bring the exterior tower floodlights up and see if we can get a look at this thing.”

  Arnaud nodded his head. “Weapons, standby, we may have to shoot from the hip.” He smiled in false levity for the benefit of his young crew. “As our American gunslinging friends might say.”

  The lightness the captain displayed brought some uneasy smiles to the men manning their stations, but no real relief.

  “Lights are up 100 percent, camera coming online.”

  Most submarines of modern navies are equipped with cameras hidden behind high-pressured glass located in the tall sail structure. It was used for driving boats under the ice and close-in situations where radar and sonar could only give you numbers, while high definition and ambient light cameras gave you real-life viewing.

  Captain Arnaud took a few steps toward the twenty-seven-inch monitor as the picture started to clear. The bright floodlights illuminated the bow of the new submarine, and through the bubbles rising from her steel, sound-absorbing skin Arnaud saw the object. His eyes widened and he looked at his first officer.

  “Jesus Christ, what in the hell have we here?” Arnaud asked as curious eyes tried to get a glimpse of the thing blocking their way home. “Maneuvering, back us off to five hundred feet—dead slow.”

  “Dead slow astern, aye.” And a few seconds later: “She’s answering two knots astern, Captain.”

  They all felt the slight movement as the Suffren slowly eased back from the saucer-shaped object. Arnaud watched as the distance grew between the two very different vessels.

  “Conn, sonar, target shows no aspect changes at this time. It’s not following.”

  “Orders, Captain?”

  “We already have our orders, Number One.” His eyes met those of his younger first officer. “Directly from Fleet at L’Ile Longue. I’m beginning to believe someone knows something very peculiar that they’re not telling us. Well, I guess that’s beside the point now, our orders are to report immediately so that’s just what we’ll do.”

  “I assume those orders don’t include not defending ourselves if we have to?”

  “Orders sometimes can be very ambiguous.” He smiled at his first officer. “Weapons officer, if that thing so much as blinks put four Sharks down its throat—I don’t care how close it is. Set your safeties on the fish accordingly.”

  “Aye, Captain, fish are warmed and ready, safeties set to three hundred feet,” came the call over the overhead speaker.

  Every sailor who heard the command knew that the distance was not far enough to avoid blasting open the hull of their own boat if the warheads detonated that close.

  “Give me ten degrees up bubble—bring her up slow like she was made of glass, Number One. Periscope depth, please,” he said.

  The hull pops and creaks meant the boat was slowly coming shallow.

  “Standby radio room for flash traffic to fleet.”

  “We can—”

  The cannon fire from the saucer flashed three times and the bolts of blue-green light smashed into the sonar dome of the Suffren’s rounded bow. The heavy submarine rocked as its nose was blown f
ree of the boat. Water cascaded into the forward spaces faster than anyone could react to close all hatches. The nose of Suffren went down and the French navy’s newest sub started heading for the bottom of the sea two miles below.

  “All back full, blow ballast, blow everything! Weapons, match bearings and fire!” Arnaud called out as loudly as he could. Even with the noise of the fast-sinking warship the captain could feel the four successive jolts as the high-pressure air sent the four Shark torpedoes flying from their tubes. One of the fish caught on the wreckage of the bow and snagged but the other three raced to the target. The flying saucer moved down and the resulting wash of the sea broke the fiber-optic cables guiding the Shark torpedoes. The weapons spun off into three differing directions as the guidance to the Suffren was severed.

  “Put the reactor into the red, we’re going down stern first. Full power!” Arnaud shouted. “We need—”

  Another salvo of green-blue light struck the Suffren amidships as she spun counterclockwise in her race to the bottom. The cutting beams smashed into the sound-reducing hull and penetrated into the pressure vessel itself. Before anyone could scream, the Suffren came apart.

  The fall of the French navy’s newest boat would take a full two hours to reach the bottom of the sea two point seven miles beneath the surface.

  HMS AMBUSH

  Captain Von Muller’s eyes widened as he listened to the recording of the attack. At least he was assuming it was an attack.

  “Target is moving off at high speed, Captain.” The sonar operator looked up with an uneasiness he wasn’t accustomed to. “One hundred and twelve knots’ speed. Target is now off the scope.” They saw the sonar rating’s face go white.

  The first officer looked from the operator and then leaned over to a switch on his console just as the sonar technician removed his headphones and lowered his head as the sounds of men dying came across the speakers. On the acoustic display and on the sound system inside the sonar room they heard the most horrible noises any submariner could ever hear while submerged. It was the bursting sound of twisting steel and clanging metal.