Gambit

Prologue

Ukraine, Friday, March 29th

Snow had fallen overnight, and a chill early morning wind reached inland from the Black Sea under a battleship grey sky. The Admiral asked his driver to pull over and stop. He looked through the back window of the twelve-cylinder chaika staff car to make certain that the huge flatbed truck behind them followed suit. Reassured, he turned to his companion in the sedan’s rear seat, KGB General Georgiy Alexandreyevich Krapotkin, and offered his flask of vodka. The General drank deeply, then leaned forward and offered a drink to the sergeant driver, who took a quick pull and passed the flask back to the Admiral. The Admiral held the flask up in a toast to each of them in turn and said, Today is the easy part. Let’s just try not to get shot. He took a drink and put the flask back in his pocket. The driver hit the horn lightly to signal the truck, and both vehicles drove back onto the empty road. Ten minutes later they pulled up at the heavily guarded main gate of the Combined Army and Strategic Rocket Forces

Nuclear Arsenal ninety kilometers north of Sevastopol in the newly independent Republic of Ukraine.

Tell your Commanding Officer we’ve arrived, ordered the Admiral to the GRU staff sergeant in command of the gate’s guard force. I have special orders for his immediate attention. The staff sergeant, who had seldom seen Navy or KGB officers of such high rank visit the Arsenal before, much less without advance warning, saluted and replied nervously that his C.O. was in Sevastopol for a long weekend, but that the Deputy Arsenal Commander, a Major Kriesky, would be called at once. The Admiral turned and winked at his colleague, pleased that their intelligence regarding the C.O.’s whereabouts this Friday had proven correct.

When the GRU Major arrived, he immediately recognized and greeted the Admiral, introduced himself to the General, and accompanied them to the Arsenal’s administration building, where he ushered them into his C.O.’s office. Then he took his time reading the special orders given him by the Admiral. The orders were for the recall of a number of strategic nuclear weapons, two of which were from his Arsenal. These weapons were said to have been manufactured with a faulty batch of trinitrotoluene, the conventional explosive used to detonate fissile material. This was not the first time such a recall had been made while the Major was serving as Deputy C.O. of the Arsenal. It had happened once before, he told them, several years earlier, and for the same reason. When TNT exceeds certain tolerances in its manufacture, it tends to become unstable over time. If two of the weapons in his Arsenal were faulty, he said he would be only too happy to get rid of them. After all, if anything in here blew up, it could turn the whole of the Ukraine into a second Black Sea!

The orders named the Admiral, Alexey Sergeyevich Rostov, as the Senior Officer in charge of the recall, and indicated the execution of the orders should be immediate, providing they were accompanied by separate orders of confirmation from the KGB and the GRU. The Major looked up from the papers toward KGB General Krapotkin, who promptly drew the KGB confirmation order from his pocket and handed it over to the Major, together with two detailed receipts for the two weapons in question. Admiral Rostov and I will sign these receipts for you as soon as the weapons are loaded on the truck, said the General pleasantly.

One other thing, said Admiral Rostov. We’re going to be leaving both weapons’ transport casings. In fact, we have an extra, empty casing aboard the truck that we’ll leave with you as well. All we need are the weapons themselves. Once we replace the conventional explosives in each of their warheads, we’ll return all three weapons here.

The KGB orders specified a particular radio frequency to reach GRU Commonwealth Headquarters in Minsk in order to obtain coded release authorization for the two weapons. The Major gave instructions by phone to his radio operator, who came up on that frequency and gave the proper coded query. A few minutes later, the radio operator reported receiving the correct GRU coded release.

The Major acknowledged that all was in order, and led the two senior officers through the snow to the entrance of the main nuclear arsenal set into the mountainside. He ordered their truck into position beneath an overhead rail crane, then went through the elaborate security procedures to open the enormous steel door that led into the mountain. Both the Admiral and the General had visited Navy nuclear arsenals frequently in the course of their careers, but neither were prepared for the size of this Combined Forces Arsenal. Motors hummed, the guards stepped back and the massive door slid slowly to one side. The overhead rail on which the crane traveled extended into the darkness of the interior as far as the eye could see. When the fluorescent lights came on one after the other, Rostov and Krapotkin were both stunned by the enormity of the destructive power contained in this one facility. Four long rows of MIRVs extended from the entrance a hundred meters into the vast cave. Each weapon was about three meters high, the nosecone at the front end of an ICBM rocket. These were 176 former Soviet strategic weapons—each containing eight nuclear warheads—that the Ukraine authorities refused to return to

Russia. Rostov saw Krapotkin look at him and raise his eyebrows in exclamation. The Admiral turned to the Major and said casually, It’s an impressive sight no matter how many times one sees it. You and your men have an awesome responsibility in these difficult times!

The Major, clearly pleased by such recognition coming from a famous Hero of the Soviet Union, briskly ordered his men to load the two MIRVs onto the truck after off loading the extra transport casing. The Sergeant in charge of the Arsenal detail entered into his computer the identifying codes for each of the two MIRVs to obtain their locations in the Arsenal, and fed the resulting data to the rail crane computer. He then put the crane into manual mode, guided it over the flat bed of the truck and picked up the spare casing. From that point on, everything was automatic. The crane’s computer memory had stored the precise location and height of the truck. On the Sergeant’s command, the crane deposited the empty casing on the Arsenal floor, traveled down the overhead rail to the first MIRV, picked it up by the ring at the top of its transport casing, and traveled the rail back to set it gently on the truck, with several men from the Arsenal detail guiding its placement by hand. The procedure was repeated for the second MIRV. The crane lifted off both transport casings once they had been unbolted and deposited them on the floor next to the first.

Each of the two weapons contained eight independently targetable nuclear warheads, stacked like grapes—one at the top, then a layer of three, and finally a layer of four, all grouped around a central stem that electronically armed and ejected them one at a time after a missile the size of a silo lifted the cluster into the ionosphere in a great ballistic curve above the earth. With two such weapons, Rostov had a total of sixteen warheads, each of which could destroy a city the size of Sevastopol.

Rostov ordered his truck driver to place tarpaulins over the weapons and to secure them well. He turned back to the Major, asked for and signed the two receipts, and presented them to General Krapotkin for countersignature. Once the releases were back in the Major’s hands, the Admiral declined his invitation to share a bottle of the Arsenal’s favorite cognac, shook hands, and joined the General in the staff car. Both officers returned the salutes from the Major and the guards as their car led the truck back out through the main gate.

The snow had started again. I congratulate you! said Krapotkin as soon as they were out of sight of the Arsenal.

Perhaps, said Rostov, ruminating in a corner of the back seat. But I’ll bet you a bottle of American scotch that the Major is already on the phone to Moscow.

Moscow? You mean Minsk. You’re probably right about the Major, though. But the documents we used are impeccable, they came from our master forger. And it’ll take them months to work out how we finagled that radio transmission. If our plan holds, we’ll have these warheads out of the country within 72 hours.

I’m not worried about Minsk as much as I am about the bad apples in Moscow, countered the Admiral. With these two weapons—sixteen nuclear warheads—now out of the Armory and no longer in GRU custody, the temptation for the GRU bad apples to find and steal them will be tremendous. They’ve already sold three tactical nuclear warheads in the Middle East. Sixteen strategic nukes would translate into wealth beyond their dreams.

You mean that you’re worried the crooks will think of doing precisely what we intend to do! Face it, Alex, as of twenty minutes ago, you’re no longer a Hero of the former Soviet Union. Now you’re just a rogue like me! Rostov managed a smile. His relief at their success with this part of the plan was tempered by a bittersweet sadness. He knew that Krapotkin was right.

By late the following Sunday afternoon, Rostov was pleased by what he saw. Or at least as pleased as a former Soviet Admiral could be in the former Soviet Union. Everything was former these days. He felt former. The institutions and precepts to which he had devoted a lifetime career in the Soviet Nuclear Navy were now largely overcome by events.

A big man, well over six feet, fit and trim, with a mane of black, curly hair, Rostov was looking the worse for wear today. He had dark circles under his eyes and had relaxed his usual ramrod posture. Not wearing a uniform, he had on the blue jumpsuit without insignia that submariners sometimes wore on work detail. But there was no chance he would be taken for anyone other than the head of the Nuclear Navy, for he was known to every officer and sailor afloat. These days he was arguably the most popular man in the country, though he had no interest whatever in politics. Born in the town of Rostov at the mouth of the River Don on the Sea of Azov, the Admiral’s grandfather had been one of the Don Cossacks, whose opposition to Communist rule in 1917 had triggered the Civil War.

He stood on the dock of the Sevastopol Naval Base looking at the two prototype submarines he had designed and helped build. He was not a vain man. But he could not hide the profound, almost visceral pride he felt in seeing them here together. They represented a technological breakthrough no other Navy in the world had achieved.

Low, sleek, streamlined, and lethal, these were not huge, clumsy SSBNs carrying dozens of nuclear missiles. Nor were they standard hunter-killer nuclear attack submarines using tons of electronic equipment and teams of highly trained experts to seek out and hunt down their prey. These were killers, pure and simple. They were two of the smallest subs to be built by the USSR in almost three decades. With their new technology, these experimental Azov Class nuclear-powered submarines were the fastest in the world. At least he believed they would prove to be when they were fully tested.

He had just finished overseeing the unloading of the two submarines’ nuclear-tipped torpedoes and their return to the little Sevastopol Navy Base Arsenal. He attended the informal change-of-crew ceremonies, sent the old crews and their commanding officers off on well-deserved leaves, and welcomed the new crews to the now essentially disarmed subs, presenting each of the two new Captains with his sealed orders. The first sub would leave on its mission within the hour, in daylight, and on the surface, for an overt and declared transit from the Black Sea through the Dardanelles, across the Mediterranean, past Gibraltar and on into the Atlantic. On the second sub, twenty-three wooden crates and numerous cartons of provisions for the forthcoming cruise were being carefully stowed aboard, with a clandestine departure scheduled during the moonless night in order to complicate American satellite surveillance.

The Admiral’s Georgian supply officer, a longtime colleague, walked across the dock and saluted sharply. He reported that the special materials the Admiral had ordered—the paint, canvas, floats and lumber—had arrived and been stowed temporarily out of sight in the warehouse. Alexey Sergeyevich, the officer added, it’s about time you told me what you need all this stuff for.

As soon as it’s dark, Rostov replied, we’re going to build ourselves a submarine!

Ignoring his supply officer’s obvious surprise, Rostov directed him to arrange for a heavy duty rubber hose to bring live steam from the electric plant down at the end of the quay up along the dock to the second submarine. Then he boarded the sub to wait. In the wardroom, he found Krapotkin, who had for many years served in the Navy as his political officer before eventually transferring to the KGB and securing a series of rapid promotions. Krapotkin remained the Admiral’s closest friend, partner, and now co-conspirator. They were soon joined by the submarine’s Captain, who handed each of them a mug of coffee, served himself, and sat down with them. Rostov tipped his chair backward to reach the wardroom door and turned the lock.

How are we doing, Georgiy Alexandreyevich? he asked.

It looks like we’re ready, Krapotkin replied. "The crates are stowed below. The other sub will depart in about twenty minutes, just as the American satellite comes over the horizon, and make an overt transit on the surface toward the Dardanelles at ten knots. Then, as soon as it’s dark, this sub will depart, submerge, catch up with the first one, and position itself precisely underneath it until they are both well out into the Atlantic.

No port calls. All seven of the deliveries en route will be at sea. It will take brilliant navigation if it’s all going to work. But then you trained both subs’ navigators so I have every confidence."

Rostov turned to the Captain. Are you still comfortable with all of this? he asked.

Yes, replied the Captain. I expect it will take the full ninety days you’ve allotted to complete the mission, and I appreciate the extra few weeks’ margin at the other end if we run into problems. To a man, every member of my crew is fully committed and understands the risks. My only regret is that you and the General can’t be with us.

When you make the eighth delivery, responded Rostov with a smile, we’ll both be there to meet you!

We have about six hours before departure, said Krapotkin. As long as we have to wait, I have a question to ask you. I’d transferred from the Navy to the KGB by the time you got to build these two subs, Alexey Sergeyevich. If our future, such as it is, depends on them, I’d like to learn more about how you designed them. I’m sure the Captain would too.

Before we get to that, Rostov responded, I want to confirm that we’ll need every member of the crew we can get to help build the decoy as soon as it gets dark. I’ve never built a fake sub before! The damn thing has to be convincing. If it sinks, we’ve lost our cover.

Understood, said the Captain.

Good. As to your interest in the history of these subs, Rostov continued, "it’s a story close to my heart. Back in 1958, as a young Captain-Lieutenant, I was appointed to the Sevmashzavod Naval Factory that built our first nuclear submarine. The idea was that the commissioning crew could learn the submarine best by helping construct it. But during those months in v58 and v59 spent working ashore, I got to thinking about alternative ways to design and build a submarine. By 1985 I had become a Rear Admiral. When my old mentor was chosen to become Admiral of the Fleet, he created the new position of Deputy Chief of the Soviet

Nuclear Navy, and promoted me into the job. I finally had both the authority and the opportunity to put some of my ideas to the test…"

The Admiral described how, with Navy engineers and architects, he had drawn up plans for a new kind of attack submarine. Until then, Soviet attack subs, the hunter-killers, were all built along the same lines, 73 to 113 meters long, designed to hunt, find, and kill NATO submarines in order to protect the much larger Soviet ballistic missile and cruise missile subs.

He’d set out to build a small attack submarine whose primary advan-tage—and primary defense—was speed. He designed the new sub to eliminate weight. Instead of using a heavy keel as the primary structural element, he designed a sub built like a honeycomb, with no keel. In the absence of a keel, stability was achieved by enlarging the stern diving planes to the size of short wings, and by adding stabilizers to the trailing edges of the diving planes to serve the same purpose as ailerons on the wings of an airplane. Like a fighter jet’s wings, the stern diving planes were retractable for high speed.

Then, still in the design stage, he reduced the size of the submarine by half, to 48 meters in length. He managed this by changing the nature of the sub. Instead of a hunter-killer, he designed a killer, period. He eliminated most of the cumbersome hunter aspects, most of the elaborate sonar and listening equipment that an attack submarine uses to seek and find the enemy. By doing so, he was able to reduce the crew size by half, and therefore eliminate all of the working, sleeping, and living space that they had required.

But you designed a blind submarine, observed Krapotkin. If the hunter capability is eliminated, what good is the killer?

The new sub wasn’t blind, explained Rostov. It still retained modest navigation sonar and radar capability. What they had gotten rid of was a lot of elaborate and heavy equipment, a bunch of people and all the space devoted to finding and tracking other subs at great distances. They were able to do this because they could rely on a significant advance in

Soviet satellite technology to perform the hunting and tracking functions for them.

Rostov described how the Navy had developed a satellite that could detect and track submarines by picking up three telltale emissions that every sub produces: heat, light, and sound. Extremely sensitive infrared detectors picked up the heat of a submarine’s power plant. They could even see the cook’s stove in the galley! Polarized and computerized optical sensors picked up very faint ripple patterns that a sub inevitably produces on the surface of the ocean, even if it is traveling at considerable depth—though the ripples did not indicate where the sub was, but rather where it had just been. And third, highly sensitive acoustical receivers screened out all sound except the spectrum of cavitation noise that was made by a submarine’s screws and the unique signature of its passage through the water.

What if a sub is stationary, or running on batteries? asked the General.

It still produces detectable heat. Only diesel subs run on batteries, and they’re so damn noisy that the loud cavitation and the surface ripple effects are all that’s needed to find them. In other words, the combined capabilities of these satellites can detect a sub almost anywhere, even under the arctic ice pack where the heat signature alone is a sure telltale. And we’ve now placed three of these geo-synchronous satellites over each of the three great oceans, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian. With them, we can triangulate the position of any submarine and track it accurately in real time.

Can the satellites communicate directly with our subs? asked Krapotkin.

ULF, replied Rostov, ultra low frequency radio signals that go right through water. The two killer subs each had a small pod on a stalk that sticks up from the stern. Inside the pod is a retractable wire about 200 meters long. The stalk lifts the wire away from the screws. The wire trails along behind the sub and serves as an antenna to enable reception of the ULF transmissions while submerged. When the sub comes into port the wire is simply reeled into the pod.

So you designed and started to build this new sub back in 1985? asked Krapotkin.

No, said Rostov. It had been designed in 1985, he recounted. But when he’d presented the concept to his boss, nothing happened. It was interesting, but there was no compelling reason to build it because standard hunter-killer subs were adequate to the task. Then, in 1988, Rostov was called to Moscow to discuss the concept again. By that time, things had changed. With a good number of hunter-killers being decommissioned because of age, and a dozen others sunk because of horrendous nuclear accidents, they just weren’t being replaced fast enough to maintain overall capabilities. The problem was constrained resources. Money. The defense budget had been cut drastically, and the Fleet Admiral had seen the writing on the wall.

A way had to be found to manage with significantly fewer attack subs. If there were fewer of them, they had to be a lot faster because they had to cover a much larger area. When that realization struck home, the Fleet Admiral dug out Rostov’s old concept and designs and called him to Moscow to give him the green light. Construction of these two identical prototypes began almost immediately at the old Sevmashzavod plant near Leningrad.

But they quickly ran into a major problem. When models were tested in a wind tunnel they knew they had a truly streamlined design. They improved upon it considerably by essentially eliminating the conning tower, reducing it to today’s slight and streamlined four-foot-high bulge. But when the redesigned model was tested in a water tunnel, the water itself became the limiting factor to speed.

Water molecules have an affinity for each other. They tend to stick together. That’s what creates surface tension in water. And under water that characteristic creates great resistance to an object passing through it at high speed, no matter how streamlined the object is. So they began studying the physics of sea water, its molecular viscosity. They discovered that certain chemicals reduce the bonding of water molecules to each other. For example, when trisodium phosphate was added to the water tunnel the resistance to the model was greatly reduced.

A chemical was clearly not the answer to the problem, but it put them on the right track. They had to discover a way for the submarine itself to reduce water resistance. Rostov worked at the problem night and day for a week, and came up with nothing better than a hangover. Then he figured out the solution while sitting in a dentist’s chair! Instead of the old mechanical drill, the dentist had been using a Cavitron, an ultrasound probe using extremely high frequency, tightly focused sound waves. When the dentist left the room, Rostov started playing with the new probe, holding it over the water cup. He noticed that he could reduce the surface tension of the water by holding the probe above it. As he moved the probe closer, the water became agitated just beneath it and actually moved away from it.

They developed and refined the concept to the point where they tried an ultra-high frequency emitter in the bow of the model. It reduced the molecular affinity by energizing water in a narrow cone around the model’s bow. The model actually moved forward on its own because the water pressure at the bow was reduced relative to