Authors: Patrick Robinson
Just as they sat down in the private SEAL dining area, the message came in from the destroyer USS
Roosevelt,
whose Commanding Officer Capt. Butch Howarth was still furious with the controllers of the canal. His message was simple.
Chinese reopened Panama Canal 141730APR08
…
. Gave immediate priority to three Chinese ships in the holding area
…
. First, the Luhu Class Type 052 destroyer
Qingdao,
then two freighters around 20,000 tons.
Roosevelt
still awaiting clearance. Howarth.
Bill Peavey was immediately alerted, and someone brought his dinner to the Comms Room while he drafted a signal into the beach where the recce party’s guards were manning the big machine gun and the radio.
Chinese reopened canal 1730
…
. Luhu Class destroyer
Qingdao
entered first
…
. ETA Gatún Lock midnight
…
. Stay alert
…
. We arrive 2100. Peavey.
Up on the flight deck, the Sea Stallions were revved up, loaded
and ready for takeoff. Lieutenant Commander Peavey led his team out onto the hot, windy area high on the port side of the carrier.
One by one, the SEALs boarded, each man’s face blackened with camouflage cream, each of them carrying his personal weapon, the MP5 machine gun, combat knife, and binoculars. Some of them with hand grenades, all of them with small maps, charts, and diagrams of the locks.
Two Petty Officers, the Texan Joe Little, and Tony McQuade from Georgia, sat with checklists detailing the number of gasoline cans, compressed air cylinders, paddles, the heavy reels of detcord, the ready-cut bomb lines, the satchels, the bags, the radios, the water canisters. The SEALs were to leave no trace of their existence. Every last piece of equipment had to be accounted for, both on the inward journey and the return. There was no food. This was to be a ten hour round-trip operation, door to door. Max.
They took off at half past eight, following the route of the recce team, fifty miles into the Panamanian coastline, down the river, and into the landing space on the narrow beach. Lt. Comdr. Peavey was silent for the whole journey, turning over in his mind the split-second timing they would now require, because that top chamber had to be empty when the gates blew, and that meant the first ship had to be completely out of it, and into the channel heading for the second lock, when the bombs were detonated. Not too far, because with the heavy exiting traffic building up in the lake, the Chinese keepers would be refilling that chamber very fast.
The moment the first Sikorsky landed, the three SEALs manning the little beachhead rushed forward to help unload the inflatables, fill them with air, and gas them up in the shallows. One Zodiac was, of course, still there, ready to go. All of them had been fitted with twelve-gallon plastic tanks to give them a six-hour running time, ample for the stealthy four-mile round-trip to the lock gates.
Everything was unloaded and the empty gas cans were stowed aboard the lead Sikorsky, which took off immediately after the second one landed. And still there was no sign of any patrol craft,
nor indeed any indication that the Control Room up at the lock even knew there had been a landing.
In total silence, the twenty-eight SEALs pushed out into the black waters, huddled in the three boats. They kicked over the engines and began the short run up to the lock, past the great wall of the Gatún Dam, which was precisely where their luck ran out.
Up ahead, they could hear the unmistakable sound of a powerful boat, about a half mile north, traveling dirctly toward them, its red and green port and starboard lights easily visible in the clear tropical night.
The Zodiacs carried no lights and their tactics were well rehearsed. All motors were cut and two of the inflatables peeled off, one left, one right heading back south. The lead boat carried on, four SEALs paddling straight toward the oncoming patrol, the rest flat down in the boat, all fingers on the trigger.
“Ahoy,” yelled Peavey, as a big searchlight settled on his boat.
“No es culpa suya!”
Which he hoped meant “please help” in Spanish. “
Incapaz, indefenso,
” he added.
By now they could see the armed four-man crew up on the rail looking down in plain and obvious alarm. But not for long. Petty Officer Joe Little, from out of nowhere, blew all four of them away with a savage burst of machine-gun fire that riddled a grotesque pattern into the forehead of every one of them.
Tony McQuade boarded the ship, headed for the cockpit, and blew away the radio. By which time Lieutenant Commander Peavey was on board, stripped to the waist, boots off. He set the autopilot on 284, shoved Tony over the side back into the Zodiac, tossed his own machine gun in right after him, and headed back to the Control Room.
He rammed the throttles wide open, sending the patrol boat straight for the dam wall at thirty unwavering knots. Then he jumped for his life into the lake, starboard side, and waited for the Zodiac to come pick him up.
Wet pants, dead Chinese, and a wrecked boat, all in the first twenty minutes.
“Jesus Christ,” said Bill, as they hauled him out of the water.
One minute later, they all heard the dull crump of the patrol
boat obliterating itself on the dam wall, the wreckage sliding down to the very deepest part of the lake, more or less as the CO had planned.
“Onward,” he said quietly. “We got work to do.”
Five minutes later, they were up level with their landing beach, paddling in, the other two Zodiacs now right behind them, two more SEALs standing in the shallows, ready to help them into the shadow of the towering Gatún Locks jetty.
By now Lieutenant Rougeau was positioned close to the top of the steel ladder with Chris O’Riordan, ready to help haul in the satchels, as the SEAL assault group made the climb from the beach, the explosives strapped to their backs.
One by one, they made the killer ascent, each man with close to seventy pounds on his back, as well as his light machine gun and ammunition clips fitted across his chest. The trouble was it was impossible for two men to carry the load. The task had to be achieved one by one, and there was no question of assembling the bombs and then maneuvering them somehow through the water.
The explosives had to be dropped in from the top of the gates, no ifs, ands, or buts. And the SEALs had to get it up there from the beach. Failure, as ever, was unthinkable.
Their only recourse was for CPO O’Riordan to drop a heavy line with a meat hook, which could grab the metal clasp in the satchel and take some of the weight up the final steps. This was an option Lieutenant Commander Peavey laid out before they started. No one took it. Each man fought his way up that ladder, carrying his huge burden all alone. None of them became US Navy SEALs by accident.
The last man reached the top at 11:20
P
.
M
. Time was running out. Patrick Rougeau steered them to a place in deep shadow where they split into their allotted groups. Two teams of six men took over the tying operation, lashing the satchels together in groups of six.
Two more teams descended the ladder and dragged two of the Zodiacs down the beach and back into the water, ready to round the jetty and provide protection for the men working on the high gates. Bill Peavey assessed that any danger or challenge would
come from the lake rather than the somewhat slothful shore patrol up on the lock complex.
The two teams assigned to shore protection split to either side of the jetty, one group back up on the roof where Lieutenant Rougeau had started, the other on the far side of the lock, lying flat, looking back toward the Control Room. The men working close to the walkway were now covered by withering machine-gun fire, if necessary. But everyone hoped it would not be.
By 11:40, the six bombs were ready, packed in their waterproof bags, the devices armed, the detcord wrapped hard and tight. Patrick Rougeau personally set the electronic wires, one end connected inside the red-banded satchel, the other end to the little floating radio aerial.
By now they could see the lights from the Chinese destroyer advancing across the lake, probably two miles away and making around six knots. And now the bomb teams faced the most difficult and delicate part of their operation. And they were short of time.
Lieutenant Commander Peavey grabbed the big handle on the first bag, and with three more SEALs on the other corners, they heaved it onto the walkway, half dragging, half carrying it the 110 feet across the lock where Lieutenant Rougeau awaited with the meat-hook line. Swiftly he inserted the hook, and Mich Stetter pushed the bag under the iron handrail.
They all took the weight as it slipped down eight feet and then became light as it submerged into the water on the lakeside. Slowly they lowered it, feeling it bump down against the girder. As it reached its correct depth, some sixty feet below, Lieutenant Rougeau checked the marker tape was hard against the edge of the gate, and he lashed the remaining three feet to the base of the end strut. He used a bowline knot and cut the surplus line off. When the motorized handrail went down, when they opened the gates, that strut would slide through the line and the rail itself would hide it.
Twice more, they repeated the exercise, dragging the huge weight across the lock, and lowering it into the water, fastening it off with the bowline, and feeling it swing gently against the giant hinges.
On the nearside of the gates, CPO O’Riordan was doing the
same. But his men did not have that backbreaking journey across the lock, and it was, as well that Bill Peavey, one of the strongest men in the U.S. Navy, was among the muscle present on that dark and treacherous night.
By midnight, the SEALs had moved into position, Lieutenant Rougeau back on the roof of the original building, accompanied by three bodyguards, four MP5s and powerful night binoculars. Lt. Commander Peavey was heading back out into the lake in one of the Zodiacs and everyone else was clearing up and preparing for the getaway.
The Commanding Officer was accompanied by Chief O’Riordan, who was now speaking to Patrick Rougeau on the radio. They headed out into the lake more than a quarter of a mile from the gates but still well within the range of the deadly transmitter that would flash its electronic signal simultaneously to the six bobbing little aerials outside the lock gates.
The plan was simple. Lieutenant Rougeau would give them clearance to detonate when the Chinese destroyer was safely through the exit gates from the upper chamber, almost thirty feet lower, and being hauled along to the second chamber by the automatic locomotives. In various forms, these iron horses have done the task for generations, like an old-fashioned car wash used to drag vehicles through the soapsuds.
The men on the lake would then wait six minutes for the SEALs to make their escape off the roof, back to the beach, and the last boat, at which point they would send in the fatal signal.
West of the destroyer’s approach path, the SEALs watched from the Zodiacs, as it steamed slowly toward the lock gates. They could not see them slowly open, outward into the lake, powered by no fewer than ninety-two electric motors, but they saw the great 470-foot-long hull of the warship slide between the jetties, at which point Chief O’Riordan knew the bombs would have eased back into the wide recesses in the walls.
Up on the roof, Patrick Rougeau and his team watched the locomotives drag the warship into the chamber and the giant gates shut behind it. And somewhere deep below them they heard the distant thunder of the water, millions of gallons, gushing
through the tunnels, emptying the lock. The ship did not appear to be moving, but after five minutes it was undoubtedly lower in the water.
For twenty more minutes they waited, until the superstructure of the ship had virtually disappeared. Then they saw the gates at the far end slowly open, and they could hear the revving of the locomotives as they dragged the ship out of the chamber into the narrow waterway toward the next set of gates, the entrance to the middle lock.
Over in the Control Room, the entire procedure was being watched by four Chinese technicians on the sixty-four-foot-long electronic model, which demonstrates every progression, every step of the way for every ship that moves through the canal. It records the actions of every one of the 1,500 electric motors, and now it showed the Luhu Class destroyer at the beginning of its short run to the second pair of gates it would encounter.
“H-HOUR! H MINUS SIX!” called Patrick Rougeau. H for HIT, that is.
Out in the Zodiac, Bill Peavey hit the stopwatch, which would count down the six minutes it would take Patrick and his boys to clear the rooftop, race down the stairway onto the jetty, down the long ladder to the beach, and board the last inflatable waiting to ferry them away.
Working the radio, Chief O’Riordan immediately summoned the Sea Stallions, which were ready to take off from the carrier. They were scheduled all to arrive at the landing beach together.
Five minutes passed, by which time Lieutenant Rougeau and his team were clambering into the boat, everyone scared to death the blast from the bombs might send the entire lock skyward, millions of tons of concrete. They fired up the engine, now careless of the noise, and traveling flat out, made 300 yards south, by the time Bill Peavey hit the button.