Nimitz Class (13 page)

The Committee of Inquiry had already been formed by the time the President arrived. It would be based in San Diego while the preliminary data were established and damage to other ships was assessed. The C-in-C Pacific Fleet would be its chairman and he had already asked that Captain Art Barry be flown home to California at the earliest possible time from Diego Garcia. Captain Barry had replied via the satellite and requested that he bring his Watch Officer with him, since he had witnessed most of what little there was to see. All such requests were given an immediate go-ahead.

The President was briefly introduced to those around the table, and he took considerable care to greet everyone he knew by name. When he was introduced to Lieutenant Commander Baldridge he
walked right around the table and clasped the hand of the young nuclear weapons expert. “My God, Bill, I can’t tell you how upset I was to hear about your brother. I guess you know our parents have known each other for many years…please remember to pass on my deepest sympathy to everyone.”

Baldridge was keeping his emotions under iron control. This was without doubt the most important gathering he had ever attended. Probably the most important he ever would attend, and he was trying to concentrate while haunted by the fact that he would never see Jack again.

He was listening to Admiral Dunsmore explain how far they had come. New information trickling in from the Middle East was confirming what was already suspected. More nuclear particles detected on the ships, no detection of sound on the sonars of any impact, or of a ship breaking up or sinking. Just the great muffled thunder of an underwater eruption. Everything pointed to the fact that the source of the explosion was
inside
the great ship, somewhere deep below the waterline where the big nuclear warheads and missiles were stored. One weapons storage area right above the keel was about a hundred feet for’ard from the twenty-two-foot-high propeller. It was five stories high, the size of a large apartment house.

“If one of the warheads in there went off, that would be sufficient to vaporize the entire carrier,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “I’m inclined to think that our accident occurred in that particular part of the ship.”

“What could make a nuclear warhead explode like that?” asked the President, suddenly. “How do these damn things work?”

“I think Lieutenant Commander Baldridge might be the best person to answer that,” Admiral Dunsmore replied.

“Well, sir, it takes some kind of an electrical impulse. The parameters for impulse need to be set deliberately. The simplest of them work on a timing device with a small, rather sophisticated clock. They are not designed to detonate on impact, not like a regular bomb.

“For instance, a nuclear warhead used in a torpedo would be set to explode at a certain time, precalculated from the torpedo director’s
best predictions of the position of the weapon and its target. All intended to ensure the warhead goes off in the approximate direction of its quarry.

“Quite honestly, sir, I have a real hard time trying to think of a way one of them could ever explode without some very heavy man-made assistance.”

“Does this bring us to the possibility of sabotage?” asked the President quickly.

“Well, sir,” replied Baldridge, assuming the question was still directed at him, “I have an even harder time dealing with that. Those weapons are under the most unbelievable strict guard. Even to get into the area you need a special pass signed by God knows how many people. Then you have to get past the two Marines who guard the entrance, and then you would be escorted into the area you are visiting by about three ordnance men, including one officer. Anyone tried to get in there illegally, well, my guess is those two Marines would shoot you down like a prairie dog. No questions asked.”

“Does
anyone
have access to go in there alone?” asked the President.

Admiral Arnold Morgan interjected. “Nossir, no one may enter alone, ever. It would be unheard-of for anyone, the captain, the admiral, whoever, to visit the ordnance area without at least one, or maybe even more, accompanying officers who are formally cleared for access. It would be like you wandering around the boiler room in the White House by yourself.

“Kind of too bizarre to contemplate. And anyway it would require two real experts to prime a warhead, and they would need signed passes. Unless there was a lunatic conspiracy among the top brass of the ship to blow themselves and all of their colleagues to pieces, I would personally regard the entire notion of sabotage as out of the question.”

“So would I,” said Admiral Dunsmore. And there was a murmur of agreement from all around the table.

“There is no evidence of anything really,” added Dunsmore. “Just the deep eruption and the disappearance. I do not think we
need pursue the sabotage theory. But I suppose we should consider the possibility that the ship was hit by an unknown enemy.”

The table went completely silent, until, after twenty seconds, Lieutenant Commander Baldridge broke it. “Well, we know the carrier was sunk by nuclear forces, of a magnitude that produced so much heat, the atoms of the ship just vaporized, leaving very possibly no trace. So if you would like to deliberate that theory it might be wise to work out just how that warhead arrived.”

“There are only three ways it could have arrived,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “In a guided missile delivered from an aircraft; in a seaskimming guided missile delivered from a ship; in a torpedo delivered from a submarine.”

Admiral Albie Lambert, C-in-C Pacific Fleet, himself a former Carrier Battle Group commander, now stepped into the discussion, somewhat to the relief of the CNO. “I would consider it impossible that a missile could have come in from an aircraft, and utterly unlikely that it could have come in from a surface ship or a submarine.

“To blow the aircraft theory out of the water, as it were, we need only to know that there were at least five guided missile warships sweeping the skies with their radar at the time, and three and a half hours before, Hawkeye had reported nothing within three hundred miles in any direction. No one can hide from
him
. In the event of an incoming long-distance missile, the ships could not have missed it. They would have taken it out in thirty seconds. Besides, who could have fired it? No one in that part of the world has such a capability.”

“I actually think the likelihood of a ship-to-ship missile is even more out of the question,” said Admiral Dunsmore.

“We know there was not another warship within hundreds of miles of the group. If there had been, Zack Carson and Jack Baldridge would have warned it off. Even if it had been completely invisible, they would have spotted an incoming missile on five different screens. Those guys detect seagulls, never mind nuclear warheads.”

“Well,” said the President. “What about a submarine?”

“Bill?” said Admiral Dunsmore, referring to the lieutenant commander, who he knew had spent all of his early career as weapons officer in a nuclear subsurface boat.

“Possible, but highly unlikely unless you have been trained here, or in Britain,” said Baldridge. “Torpedoes are famous for their stupidity. They are very hard to program and it is not that easy to fit them up with nuclear warheads. When you do, you have a great chance of missing the target. You have to prime them, make a real accurate guess as to when it is going to arrive at the target, then set the clock for the exact correct time. You’ve gotta get in close for accuracy, real close, around five thousand yards, but no closer because you have a very good chance of blowing yourself up as well.

“In my judgment it’s near to impossible to get it right, unless you are very highly trained. The issue is getting an attacking submarine in close enough to the Battle Group without being seen. I’d say about a million to one, but there will be gentlemen at this table far better qualified than I am to talk about the likelihood of getting in that close. I wouldn’t want to try it myself.”

“As an ex–Battle Group commander,” said Admiral Albie Lambert, “I believe the carrier to be just about impregnable. She is surrounded by so much detection, surveillance, and radar. And yet we do know of instances of other boats, during exercises, getting in much closer than we would have thought possible. I once knew a Royal Navy submarine admiral who told me one night he
could
get into the defenses of a U.S. Battle Group. And probably sink the carrier.

“Actually he was the same chap who bamboozled a Carrier Battle Group in the Arabian Sea by pretending to be a goddamned Indian. He was commanding a surface ship then. But I believe he was the best submariner the Royal Navy ever had. Ended up in charge of Her Majesty’s submarine service. Just shows though. Nothing’s impossible.”

“I think for the purpose of this meeting,” said the CNO, “we should reserve judgment on the possibility of a nuclear hit against us until we receive the full surveillance reports from the other ships
in the group. We should get the damage report of the other ships first thing in the morning. I suggest we reconvene at 1400, right here if the Chairman agrees. And meanwhile we continue to pursue the most likely, and by far the most convenient, theory, both politically and professionally, that we are dealing with a major nuclear accident, the cause of which our top scientists are still deliberating.”

The President looked up and nodded his assent. Dick Stafford leaned over and said, “Let’s not encourage these guys to look for anything sinister when there probably is nothing. One leak of such a discussion would send the media berserk.”

The President nodded again, and added, “Right now we don’t even have a serious enemy. I’m glad Scott wants to stay with the accident scenario.”

And so the meeting dispersed. Cars awaited the visiting brass ready to whisk them to hotels. Bill Baldridge glanced at his watch before heading to the garage, and then set off along the endless corridor accompanied by Dick Stafford, the President, and Sam Haynes. The President fell into step with the younger scientist from Kansas. “Well, Bill, as accidents go I consider that one about as bad as any of us will ever know,” he said.

“Matter of fact, sir, I consider the accident theory to be pure, copper-bottomed bullshit.”

“You what?” said the President, startled, stopping in his tracks.

“That warship was hit, by a big missile with a nuclear warhead,” he said. “Nuclear weapons don’t go off bang all by themselves, by accident. That is not just unlikely, sir. That is
impossible
. Someone, somehow, hit your ship, Mr. President. No doubt in my mind.”

4

D
ICK STAFFORD COULD SEE THE PRESIDENT IN CONVERSATION
with Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge. They were walking quickly, just out of earshot. Stafford saw them stop momentarily—causing everyone else to stop as well, backing up the otherwise deserted E Ring second floor. Then the President turned around. “Dick, I want to talk to Lieutenant Commander Baldridge some more,” he said. “He can ride back with me. You and Sam come with us. Have someone bring Bill’s car over to the White House, will you?” Baldridge tossed the keys high, and Stafford caught them expertly left-handed way over his head. “Shortstop, University of Nebraska Huskers ’61,” he said.

Five minutes later, the Secret Service led the three-car Presidential motorcade back through the night, east toward the Potomac. “Okay, Bill. How can you be so certain the nuclear blast was
not
an accident?” the President insisted.

“I’m not ‘so certain,’ Mr. President. I am 100-percent certain. Someone has to prime those weapons and set up an electric impulse to start the explosive process. It’s a very delicate operation, setting off a chain reaction involving atoms, neutrons, and electrons.

“These weapons are specifically designed to
prevent
the process happening by accident. We’ve had one dropped in the deep ocean from a crashing aircraft, and it
still didn’t go off
. You could throw a small bomb into the weapons storage area, and that wouldn’t do it either. The entire ordnance area of the ship is again
specifically designed
to be able to take quite severe damage, without dealing itself a nuclear death-blow.

“If you launched a torpedo with a nuclear warhead in it, and the detonation system failed, for whatever reason, it would fail-safe…just keep on running until its fuel was finished. Then it’d sink to the bottom and remain entirely safe indefinitely. Once we actually
recovered
a nuclear bomb the Air Force dropped in the sea by mistake.

“When those babies go off, it’s for one reason only—because someone fixed ’em to go off. That’s why you never ever hear of nuclear bombs going off by mistake. They go off when they are told to go off.”

“Jesus,” said the President. “And you rule out sabotage?”

“Sure do, sir. You can’t get in the ordnance area, for a start. And if you did, you sure as hell could not be alone. And it would take two men and some very sensitive equipment to prime a nuclear warhead. It could not happen, unless everyone in the High Command was deranged and made a conscious decision to kill everyone in the ship. And even if that did happen…my brother Jack would have stopped it…I know he would.”

For the first time, the lieutenant commander’s control seemed to be slipping, and the President patted him on the shoulder. “No doubt of that, Bill,” he said. “He was a great man, and I cannot tell you how sorry I am.” Baldridge was glad of the dark because he did not want anyone to see him this upset, but the tears streaming silently down his cheeks were almost as distressing for the President as they were for him.

They rode in silence for a few minutes until the President said softly, “Bill, is there a nuclear warhead powerful enough to vaporize an aircraft carrier that would fit into a torpedo?”

“Oh, no trouble, sir. Remember that hunk of semtex that blew up the Baltic Exchange, plus a couple of streets, in London a few years back?”

“Uh-huh. IRA terrorists, right?”

“That’s it. Well, I’d guess that small hunk of semtex was the equivalent of ninety tons of explosive. A nuclear warhead inside a twenty-one-inch torpedo of the size that sank the
Belgrano
—an old Mark 8 two-star—might be the equivalent of sixty thousand tons of explosive, enough to knock down New York City.”

“Jesus Christ.”

The cars swung into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a little after 2:30
A
.
M
. The President asked Dick Stafford to arrange a breakfast meeting for 8
A.M.
in the White House. “This is political. I want you, Sam, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Admiral Morgan, and no one else from the Navy…except for Bill here for technology assistance. And get a couple of CIA guys in who know something about the Middle East.”

The President went inside to his bedroom on the third floor, and Bill somewhat thankfully climbed into his faithful Mustang and headed down the drive, back out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. He drove up to Washington Circle and made a left for the short run down to Senator Chapman’s apartment at the Watergate. As he did so he felt the car slow uncharacteristically. There had been very few occasions in his life when he had resisted the opportunity of hours of sexual diversion in the skilled hands of Mrs. Aimee Chapman. Tonight was going to be one of them. He just didn’t want to be alone. He hoped she’d understand. About Jack and everything, and the huge gap in his life his lost brother would leave.

The senator’s wife turned out to be a model of understanding. She led him into her husband’s study, and then left him, while he called Jack’s widow Margaret in San Diego. No one would be sleeping anywhere in the Baldridge family. Not this night. Bill was on the phone for almost a half hour, and Aimee could only guess at the
trauma with which he was dealing on the other end of the line. She heard his voice rise only once, and she caught his muffled words…“Mags, you’ve gotta get outta there…as soon as you can…San Diego’s gonna be like a ghost town…please call Mom…she’ll fix everything.
Mags…you must take the girls to Kansas
.”

Aimee saw the light flicker on the phone as Bill made a second call, to his mother. And when he finally emerged, she noticed his tearstained face. She poured him a drink, and that night she did not bother to coerce her longtime lover into anything less chaste than a good-night kiss. She held him in her arms until he slept, just as she had done in the nights after his father had died, years previously.

Aimee had been Bill’s girlfriend at seventeen, when he first went to Annapolis, his mistress through the years when he had very nearly married Admiral Dunsmore’s daughter. And his lover again after she had married her wealthy but somewhat disinterested politician, who quickly rose to the Senate, but not to much else.

Jack Baldridge had always thought Bill should have married Aimee. She was very beautiful, petite and dark like her French mother, and she had adored the tall, lean Midwesterner since they first met at a party at the U.S. Naval Academy. Like many other young Washington undergrads she found him irresistible with his deep and thoughtful intellect, his athletic frame honed by long summer months wielding a sledgehammer, mending fence posts out on the ranch.

As a Navy midshipman, that cowboy toughness served him well. He could outrun, out-train, and out-think most of his class. He probably could have played wide receiver for the Navy if he had taken football seriously.

But he never did. He was always too unorthodox, too likely to shrug it all off, decline to compete, as if being an outsider to all men was his mission in life. It had prevented him from getting on the “captain’s ladder” in the Navy. And it had prevented him from making a lasting commitment to any girlfriend. He was still single, risking God knows what, by sleeping in the Watergate, in the apartment of a wife of a U.S. Senator, a few hours before he was to have breakfast with the forty-third President of the United States.

Nevertheless, Bill Baldridge was a fairly remarkable young officer.
His personal background put him on a first-name footing with some of the highest in the land. His professional Naval knowledge and high academic achievements made him stand out among his peers. And his personal characteristics enabled him to bring these two advantages together, to punch a high weight, far beyond his rank.

In the final reckoning, Bill Baldridge was a renegade. He looked like a younger, thinner Robert Mitchum, with the kind of piercing blue eyes you often find with deep-water yachtsmen, or plainsmen. But it was still hard to categorize him. In uniform he cut the relaxed figure of a six-foot-two-inch Naval officer. But back home in Kansas you would place him as a lifelong cowboy who had never left the Plains.

The morning newspapers seemed to contain nothing but the story of the stricken aircraft carrier. The
Washington Post
ran its front page ringed in a black border—
U
.
S
.
AIRCRAFT CARRIER LOST IN NUCLEAR BLAST
—6,000
DEAD
—
NAVY MYSTIFIED
.

Bill Baldridge merely glanced at the story, straightened his tie, and fled for the Mustang, slinging his bag in the backseat, and heading back to the White House.

Breakfast had been prepared for the ten men in a White House West Wing conference room. The President said he wanted no serious note-taking, just a very private chat with very trusted people.

He sat at the head of the table flanked by the Defense Secretary, Robert MacPherson, and the Secretary of State, Harcourt Travis. Dick
Stafford, Sam Haynes, and Admiral Morgan completed the left-hand side of the table. There were seats on the right for Admiral Schnider, the head of the Naval Intelligence Office, the two CIA Middle East experts, and Bill Baldridge, who arrived just ahead of Sam Haynes.

Bill’s immediate boss, Schnider, seemed somewhat surprised to see him. Even more so when the President looked up and said cheerfully, “Hi, Bill. Sleep okay? Good to see you.”

With the two waiters dismissed, the President began, “Gentlemen, this is an off-the-record discussion. And I want to put my cards on the table even before we think of talking to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I believe it is possible that the
Thomas Jefferson
was actually hit by an enemy torpedo armed with a nuclear warhead.”

He paused, let his words sink in. Then he said, “In Bill Baldridge here we have one of the best nuclear physicists in the country—a Naval officer with a doctorate from MIT. Bill has told me he believes it is
impossible
that a nuclear warhead could ever detonate accidentally, much less while it is stored, dormant, in the ordnance area of an aircraft carrier. So what’s left? Only the possibility of a hit against us. And for the purpose of this discussion, I want you to tell me, by whom, how, and why?”

“Well,” said Secretary MacPherson, “not many of the nations in that area have such a capability. Our intelligence says no terrorist group could make such an attack without significant help from a nuclear weapon state.”

“Bob, I’d be happier with elimination. Start by telling me who could have, but probably wouldn’t want to.”

“Forget the Brits. Forget France. Forget Pakistan. Forget Israel. They all have nuclear weapons, but would not use them, nor make them available to anyone else. Forget India. Their weapons are pretty basic, and they are not particularly fanatical about protecting their oceans. That only leaves the Russians, who are a possible source of weapons, and the Chinese, who we dismiss for several reasons. We are not of course sure about nuclear-weapon security in Russia and the Ukraine.

“But the weapon which may have destroyed the carrier had to be
compatible to the system which launched it. That means the Russians would have to have supplied both.

“How about little guys with submarines—Algeria, Rumania, Poland,” interjected Admiral Morgan. “Not to mention Iran.”

“Yeah, how about those guys?” said Dick Stafford. “I guess they count as potential enemies of the USA.”

“May I have first who, then how and why?” asked the President.

“Sir,” said Harcourt Travis, another tall, steel-haired ex-Harvard professor. “The
Jefferson
was operational in the Arabian Sea, and she was probably going to enter the Gulf at least once. We should look at which nations would like America out of the Gulf, for whatever reasons. I suggest the answer must be both Iran, which wants to dominate the area, and Iraq, for more obvious reasons—insane regime, plus known animosity toward the U.S.A. I cannot think of any other nation which hates us sufficiently to try to pull off something close to genocide, which the sinking of a carrier is.”

Admiral Morgan interrupted. “I am assuming you all consider this must have been achieved by a submarine, rather than a surface ship.”

“I guess that would be the Navy thinking right now,” said the President, recalling the previous night’s discussions. “They believe the Battle Group would easily have stopped, and at the very least reported, any incoming missile delivered from an aircraft or surface ship. We’d know.”

“I am certain that is true,” said Admiral Morgan. “Also, sir, I checked this morning—no foreign ships were anywhere near the carrier on any of the radar screens. We have those reports in-house, sir. Captain Barry is in the air himself now, on his way to San Diego. He should be in Washington by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay. No advances on the submarine theory?”

“Well, sir, if I may speak as an ex-weapons officer in a Boomer,” said Baldridge, “I would think an incoming warhead would have been delivered in a torpedo rather than an air-flight missile. Fired from a range of say five thousand yards. I think I mentioned last night, get much closer to the bang, you got a real shot at blowing yourself up, as well as the target.

“Also it’s impossible for a big nuclear submarine to get anywhere near the center of a CVBG without being detected. We’ve tried. At high speed we pick ’em up passive in the deep field. If they’re slow—our active sonars pick up all big hulls. Period. In fair conditions the CVBG’ll get ’em at around thirty miles, no sweat. It wasn’t a nuke. It must have been a really quiet, modern, ocean going diesel boat.”