Catardi clicked to the next slide, a profile drawing of the Kilo with the new fast reactor and generator module plugged in. It made the Kilo longer, but the Kilo was a stubby submarine in its original configuration. With the reactor module installed, the submarine looked like it had been meant to have a nuclear reactor.
“The reactor is of key interest to us. The Russians seem to have vaulted ahead in technology with this unit. As you may know, liquid metal reactors have one big problem. At a temperature below 123 degrees Celsius, the metal coolant freezes. It ‘rocks up’ and can’t be melted again without damaging the nuclear fuel modules and making the thing hellishly radioactive, and ruining it permanently. The Russians added something to the mix that makes the coolant stay in liquid form at ambient temperature. That’s ambient temperature in freezing Murmansk, people. And whatever it is that the Russians added to the coolant, it doesn’t become radioactive at a level any higher than the lead-bismuth itself.”
Romanov spoke up. “If this unit is new and secret, why are they giving it to the Iranians to test? Why wouldn’t they test it on one of their own prototype submarines after trying it out in a controlled lab setting?”
“Question of the hour, Madame Navigator. We only have theories. There’s no intelligence about this reactor being tested on land or sea. There are those who think that this thing being a fast reactor — that is, critical on fast neutrons — could go supercritical and become uncontrollable. A reactor runaway on this unit could even go prompt critical and experience a rapid disassembly.”
“Prompt critical rapid disassembly,” Romanov said slowly.
“Explosion, you mean,” Quinnivan said. “You mean just blowing itself apart and scattering radioactivity all over God’s green earth? Or a nuclear explosion?”
Catardi shrugged. “Odds are, just the dirty, radioactive blowing-apart scenario, but there is the possibility it could have a small nuclear yield in the five to ten kiloton level. About half of a Hiroshima bomb.”
Quinnivan whistled.
“So,” Seagraves said, that slight smirk appearing on his face. “Let me guess.”
Catardi began to smile. “Don’t steal my thunder, Commander. That’s right, officers of the project submarine USS Vermont, the United States Navy wants you to steal this submarine. You’ll be keeping the SEALs you had embarked for the narco-sub operation for this op. And you’ll take the Panther the same way you took the narco-sub.”
“So that whole narco-sub mission, that was just a dry run for this?” Romanov asked.
“Goddamn, you’re smart,” Catardi said, his brilliant smile finally appearing. “You got any sisters at home?”
Romanov blushed. At least Catardi’s sarcasm hadn’t been too biting.
“The only difference is you’ll be breaking into a submarine that’s definitely manned, not computer controlled. Which means, to sail it out of the gulf and the thirteen thousand miles back here, you’ll need to man the Panther with some of your officers and sail home short-handed. Commander Seagraves, I leave it to you to decide how to man the stolen Panther to sneak it submerged out of the Gulf of Oman and sail it back to AUTEC on the same route you took to get there. Once here at Andros, we’ll bring in a crew and run it through the Tongue of the Ocean test range, then it’ll go to a facility we’re hastily putting together here for us to rip it apart. Normally, we’d take it to a naval shipyard to peek at this unit’s guts, but given the dangers of this particular nuclear reactor, we’re going to analyze it right here on uninhabited Andros Island. If it does blow up like a nuke, it’ll only damage the DynaCorp complex. And officers, as before, there will be no written op-order. This is the operation order, our discussion in this room.”
Seagraves took a glass from the center of the table and filled it with an inch of water. He looked at it. “You know Admiral, hearing all this, I could really use something stronger than water in this glass.”
“You read my thoughts exactly,” Catardi said, standing, smiling at the Vermont’s officers. “I want you to convene your wardroom at the AUTEC officers’ club at eighteen hundred. Drinks and dinner are on me tonight. Bring the SEAL officers with you. And I want to see young Pacino again before I fly back.”
“Absolutely, Admiral, and thank you.”
Catardi stood and reached for his hat. “I’m going to grab a room at the Q,” Catardi said, referring the bachelor officers’ quarters, BOQ, or just, ‘the Q.’ “Uniform for the O-club tonight is ultra-casual. As for me, I’ll be in jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt.”
Ten minutes later on the walk back to the pier, Romanov looked at Seagraves. “Do you think there will be any more information coming our way about this Panther submarine?”
Seagraves shook his head. “For now, we sail with only the tactical files we have, but it wouldn’t surprise me if our systems get an update when we reach the Gulf of Oman.”
Romanov nodded and grimaced. For fuck’s sake, she thought. Stealing an improvised drug sub was one thing. Stealing an Iranian nuclear submarine, now that was quite another.
12
The knock came to Robert Catardi’s BOQ room door as he was changing out of the Grateful Dead T-shirt into the Harley shirt displaying a skeleton in flames zooming in a crazy speed demon’s motorcycle, the bike trailing flames as well. Somehow it just seemed more appropriate to his mood, he thought.
He pulled on the shirt and opened the door. It was Wanda Styxx, done up in tight jeans and full combat makeup, with tall black boots and a tight red top that dipped low into her décolletage, but she needn’t have bothered. Catardi knew his aide liked him, but that was not to be. Navy Regulations aside, she wasn’t his type. Styxx had that athletic dancer’s body, Catardi thought. He liked voluptuous women with lots of curves. The kind of woman who, when she entered a room, conversation stopped. Like his ex-wife. Damned shame they’d broken up, he thought. Before she had turned into a rage-filled bitter lunatic, she’d been perfect for him.
“Admiral,” Styxx said breathlessly, shaking her long hair off one shoulder. “You’ve got to see this.” She held out her tablet, opened to a Satellite News Network article and pointed to it with a manicured fingernail.
National Security Advisor Brady-Hawlings Dismissed—
Under FBI Investigation for Corruption
SNN — The White House released a statement late Friday that National Security Advisor and former Illinois Senator Dana Brady-Hawlings had been asked to leave the staff, just an hour after FBI Director Rita Molotov announced Brady-Hawlings was under investigation for corruption charges related to her dealings with failed oil company EndoNat.
“Wow,” Catardi said, handing her the tablet after scanning the text of the article, but Styxx forced it back into his hands.
“You’ve got to read the last paragraph, Admiral.”
He paged the article down to the last sentence.