Goliath

“I’ve spoken with the president. He’s agreed to offer you a full presidential pardon and reinstatement with back pay if you’re willing to help us stop Covah.”

Gunnar smirks. “The United States government sentences me to ten years, and now they want to pay me to play soldier again. That’s rich.”

“No one said anything about playing soldier. There’s a lunatic out there commanding the most powerful weapon in history. You designed its weapon systems. All we want is your help in finding a way to stop it.”

“No you don’t. What you really want is for me to return to active duty, to lead an assault.” Gunnar turns, his blood boiling. “With all due respect, sir, you can tell Edwards he can shove his reinstatement up his ass.”

He pushes past Bear and out the door.

“Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.”

—Joseph Stalin

“Our countries will continue working together to our advantage.”

—General Leonid Ivashov, Chief Foreign Affairs official, regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resumption of conventional arms sales to Iran

“We will bury you.”

—Nikita Khrushchev, USSR Communist Party First Secretary on relations with the United States

CHAPTER 6

Northwestern Russia

The Barents Sea is located in Russia’s northwest region, an odd-shaped body of water that surrounds the Kola Peninsula before looping inland for several hundred miles to join the White Sea. There are four port cities located on that body of water, seven naval bases, and six naval yards, all of which service the nuclear-powered ships of Russia’s Northern Fleet.

Once the pride of the Soviet Navy, the facilities of the Northern Fleet have become radioactive graveyards for decommissioned vessels. More than twenty-five strategic nuclear-powered submarines are laid up, rotting in floating docks, waiting to be dismantled. Solid and liquid radioactive wastes from spent fuel assemblies are haphazardly stored, exposing unskilled, often inebriated laborers to high doses of radiation. Toxic refuse leaks into the environment. Thousands of barrels of nuclear waste and tons of damaged reactor components have been illegally dumped into the neighboring Arctic Ocean. A lack of funds and storage space, as well as gross criminal negligence, have made the waterway an environmental and economic disaster zone.

The largest and most important submarine base in the region is Zapadnaya Litsa, home to Russia’s newest Borey-class missile subs, as well as the monstrous, decommissioned Typhoons. Seven of these nuclear-powered ballistic missile giants were commissioned between 1981 and 1989 at Shipyard 402, the last of which was begun but never finished, owning to funding shortages, political changes, and technical problems.

Until Goliath, the SSBN Typhoon was the largest submarine ever constructed. Squat and bulbous, the vessel is 575 feet long, with a 75-foot beam and 38-foot draft. Five titanium inner sections are situated within a superstructure composed of two concentric main hulls. Each of these two hulls is equipped with a nuclear water reactor and turbogear assembly that drives the Typhoon’s two fifty-thousand-horsepower steam turbines, as well as its four 3,200-kW turbo generators. The sub has two seven-blade, fixed-pitch, shrouded propellers, which enable the submarine to reach submerged speeds of twenty-five knots at maximum diving depths of 1,300 feet.

The titanic size of the Typhoon provides unprecedented comfort for its fifty officers and 120-man crew. Sailors bunk in rooms rather than hot racks, and have access to a gymnasium, swimming pool, sauna, art gallery, solarium, and even a pets’ compartment featuring birds and fish.

Chief designer Sergey Kovalev’s purpose in constructing the 24,500-ton Typhoon, however, was neither speed nor comfort. In 1974, Leonid Brezhnev announced to the world that the Soviet Union, in response to the growing threat of America’s Trident submarines, would construct the world’s largest, most powerful submarine fleet, each vessel capable of delivering a deathblow to the nation’s enemies. The result were the Typhoons: six nuclear monsters armed with twenty RSM-52 Sturgeon intercontinental three-stage solid-propellant ballistic missiles. Each payload in turn possessed ten independently targetable hundred-kiloton nuclear warheads, a total of two hundred nuclear missiles—enough to annihilate every major city in the United States in a matter of minutes.