On that one fateful day, June 7, 2015, the headlines read “Lufthansa Airlines flight number KB101 downed by Ukrainian separatists.” This time, a German airliner was en route from Stockholm, Sweden, to Ankara, Turkey. That is when the Russian separatists, using ground-to-air Russian missiles, targeted her. Bad boys with big (Russian) toys can be dangerous. In this case, several satellite-based weather systems were tracking flight KB101 when three missile tracks from separatist-held Ukraine zeroed in on her. Germany started to roll tanks into Ukraine.
All this really pissed off the king’s men running the Kremlin. So somehow, somewhere, somebody ordered the super-secret Reeba submarine to launch a warning shot across the bow of America. Reeba was ordered to sneak out of her sunken hideaway near the Fort Lauderdale inlet and launch a nuclear-tipped cruise missile off the coast of Washington, DC, and that is where my involvement began.
”This Reeba plan was brilliant,” thought Ivan in 2007. “Make sure they do not rediscover their balls.” But a little nuclear explosion in view of the White House, where nobody died? This was perfect. This was not treason. This would get those goddamn German tanks out of Ukraine!
So Ivan pulled the trigger on Reeba. Within twenty-four hours, Reeba had crewed up, leaving only Polina and those married couples with children. They would continue to live as sleeper cells, gathering intelligence. Polina could drive that speedboat and detonate the nuclear device planted near the Fort Lauderdale inlet, if hot war started. Captain Nikolay of the Reeba was put on wartime alert. This was no drill!
Reeba’s crew dropped the hull panel to release Reeba on the inland side of the tanker 600 feet below the ocean surface, next to Fort Lauderdale. The Virginia class sonar systems “heard” a wide range of electromagnetic signals in addition to the audible sound frequencies of a torpedo tube hatch opening. Thus, the electronics aboard Reeba suddenly came to life. We had a target location already in the computer. We fired two MK48 torpedoes. One targeted the bubble from the missile; it broke the ocean’s surface and exploded. This explosion damaged the guidance system in the cruise missile. And so as this cruise missile flew, it now started going through other embedded targets all over America—including Chicago; New York; Washington, DC; and Houston, Texas. The erratic motions of the cruise missile became world news very quickly.
It was not the Kremlin’s idea to kill American women and children with US Navy antimissile defense systems. But that’s what happened. In fact, we learned later that the missile’s incoming threat detection system was to trigger the nuke harmlessly a hundred miles off the East Coast if it was not going to reach ground zero on the Washington, DC, shoreline. The best-laid plans of mice and men can backfire when reckless leaders play with weapons of mass destruction.
Apparently, Reeba had ten knots over our top speed, and of course, there was the entire Atlantic Ocean to hide in. I had a target resolution on Reeba for her four-thousand-mile cross ocean voyage. I shared my target resolution of coordinates, depth, speed, and direction with every US Navy vessel in the Atlantic Ocean.
The sonar exec was caught (accidentally) talking to the control room. “They launched a fish at us. It is honing in at high speed. We are a sitting duck. If that is an ASTOR-type nuclear torpedo, then all of us within ten miles will be vaporized or vibrated to death. God be with us all! It’s time to pray!”
