to take the strain as the lines went taut and then increase speed very slightly. The high water helped to lift the bow as soon as Gepard had moved six feet. And then it was twenty feet, then fifty, and suddenly she was floating for the first time in more than twelve hours.
She dipped her bow as the water deepened, and as the stern slipped off the sand, she sagged down in the calm sea, and then came up on the tide. McKeown ordered more power, and the huge submarine dipped forward, along the surface. The danger was that too sudden a pull may have caused her to run faster than Sutherland and blunder into her stern. But wily McKeown did nothing sudden. With immense skill he maneuvered her to the edge of the channel and signaled for the towlines to be unhooked and to drop the anchor into eighty feet of ocean.
Only then did the Royal Marines and the Faslane submariners give permission for the Russian rods to be pulled, firing up Gepard ’s nuclear reactor in readiness for her long journey home . . . almost two thousand miles, north around the gigantic coastline of Norway, into the Barents Sea, with a sharp right turn down the White Sea to the shipyards of Severodvinsk, where she was originally launched in 1999.
Without even a comment on her plight, the Russian Navy would order her immediately into the enormous workshops on the south shore near Archangel—to repair whatever damage the Faslane technicians may have done to her electronics. Thus far, no one had issued any form of a reprimand, which was unusual for Russia’s normally grim Northern Fleet commanders.
By midnight, the saga was over. Line astern with HMS Sutherland, Gepard had cleared the lighthouse on Cape Wrath, where her escort departed. The Russian submarine now dived to two hundred feet, heading north, past the Orkney Islands and into some of the deepest water in the world. On the far side of the GIUK Gap, where the North Atlantic flows into the Norwegian Sea, the ocean is more than thirteen thousand feet deep—that’s almost two and a half miles, straight down.
Angus Moncrief had gone home and recorded the day’s events in his harbormaster’s logbook. The Chinook transporting the submariners and
Royal Marines had already landed at Faslane and was on its way to the Helensburgh base. All was peaceful around the great Scottish lochs, except if you happened to catch the television news, during which you would have thought World War III was about to start.
There were Russians, Americans, British politicians, admirals, ex-admirals, a couple of future admirals, ambassadors, ex-ambassadors, naval attachés, military experts, quasi experts, and various frauds, all nattering away about the threat to world peace that had broken out beyond Angus Moncrief’s harbor.
Desperately, Admirals David Ryan and Mark Rowan tried to play it all down. Even the Russian naval attaché tried to assure London’s Channel Four there was, so far as he could see, no harm done. It was a minor accident and, if anything, had cemented even more agreeable relations between the Royal Navy and Russia’s Northern Fleet.
But the journalists and anchormen had even less interest than normal in the lost art of listening. All they wanted was news of irate complaints . . . emergency meetings with the United States . . . this shocking breach of security . . . possible expulsion of Russian diplomats . . . spying, espionage, nuclear danger, warheads, retaliation . . . anger . . . fury . . . and, of course , the inevitable midnight crisis meeting, United Nations Security Council in New York.
And in the end the media won the day. There could not have been a member of the public anywhere in the free world who did not have the distinct impression that some kind of truly diabolical international incident had taken place.
Which, of course, it had.
9:00 A.M., TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2018
Rotunda Conference Room
The Kremlin, Moscow
The president of Russia, a powerfully built former member of the secret
She dipped her bow as the water deepened, and as the stern slipped off the sand, she sagged down in the calm sea, and then came up on the tide. McKeown ordered more power, and the huge submarine dipped forward, along the surface. The danger was that too sudden a pull may have caused her to run faster than Sutherland and blunder into her stern. But wily McKeown did nothing sudden. With immense skill he maneuvered her to the edge of the channel and signaled for the towlines to be unhooked and to drop the anchor into eighty feet of ocean.
Only then did the Royal Marines and the Faslane submariners give permission for the Russian rods to be pulled, firing up Gepard ’s nuclear reactor in readiness for her long journey home . . . almost two thousand miles, north around the gigantic coastline of Norway, into the Barents Sea, with a sharp right turn down the White Sea to the shipyards of Severodvinsk, where she was originally launched in 1999.
Without even a comment on her plight, the Russian Navy would order her immediately into the enormous workshops on the south shore near Archangel—to repair whatever damage the Faslane technicians may have done to her electronics. Thus far, no one had issued any form of a reprimand, which was unusual for Russia’s normally grim Northern Fleet commanders.
By midnight, the saga was over. Line astern with HMS Sutherland, Gepard had cleared the lighthouse on Cape Wrath, where her escort departed. The Russian submarine now dived to two hundred feet, heading north, past the Orkney Islands and into some of the deepest water in the world. On the far side of the GIUK Gap, where the North Atlantic flows into the Norwegian Sea, the ocean is more than thirteen thousand feet deep—that’s almost two and a half miles, straight down.
Angus Moncrief had gone home and recorded the day’s events in his harbormaster’s logbook. The Chinook transporting the submariners and
Royal Marines had already landed at Faslane and was on its way to the Helensburgh base. All was peaceful around the great Scottish lochs, except if you happened to catch the television news, during which you would have thought World War III was about to start.
There were Russians, Americans, British politicians, admirals, ex-admirals, a couple of future admirals, ambassadors, ex-ambassadors, naval attachés, military experts, quasi experts, and various frauds, all nattering away about the threat to world peace that had broken out beyond Angus Moncrief’s harbor.
Desperately, Admirals David Ryan and Mark Rowan tried to play it all down. Even the Russian naval attaché tried to assure London’s Channel Four there was, so far as he could see, no harm done. It was a minor accident and, if anything, had cemented even more agreeable relations between the Royal Navy and Russia’s Northern Fleet.
But the journalists and anchormen had even less interest than normal in the lost art of listening. All they wanted was news of irate complaints . . . emergency meetings with the United States . . . this shocking breach of security . . . possible expulsion of Russian diplomats . . . spying, espionage, nuclear danger, warheads, retaliation . . . anger . . . fury . . . and, of course , the inevitable midnight crisis meeting, United Nations Security Council in New York.
And in the end the media won the day. There could not have been a member of the public anywhere in the free world who did not have the distinct impression that some kind of truly diabolical international incident had taken place.
Which, of course, it had.
9:00 A.M., TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2018
Rotunda Conference Room
The Kremlin, Moscow
The president of Russia, a powerfully built former member of the secret
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