Authors: Patrick Robinson
For the second time that evening, the White House interrupted the fearsome Security Chief. He and Kathy were home, sipping a glass of their favorite sauternes, a sweet, silky 1995 dessert wine from the Gironde, before going to bed, when the phone rang.
“
Sir, this is the White House main switchboard. We have a Lieutenant Jimmy Ramshawe on the line, who would like to be connected to you
.”
Admiral Morgan raised his eyes heavenward. But he took the call. “Jimmy,” he rasped. “This better be awfully important.”
“It is, sir. There’s a second big tanker crippled in the Hormuz Strait. I just heard a flash on CNN. But I called Dubai, then the Omani Navy, and I got a position on the ship. It’s eighteen miles from the missile site I mentioned, and it’s twelve miles from the
Global Bronco
. More important, it’s on a
dead-straight line
linking the
two ships and the missiles. The odds against that have gotta be a zillion to one. They’ve mined it, sir. Of that I am now very sure.”
Arnold Morgan hissed his breath inward. His thoughts raged through his mind. “Jimmy, where are you?”
“I’m in my apartment, sir. The Watergate.”
“You are? Hell, I used to know an Australian Admiral who lived in there. You any relation?”
“My father, sir. Naval attaché here a few years back.”
“Jesus. This is getting worse and worse. Your dad and I had a few times together. Lives in New York now, right? With Qantas?”
“That’s him, sir.”
“Okay. Now listen. I want you to meet me in my office in the White House in twenty minutes. I’m leaving right now. I’ll have an escort for you at the West Executive Avenue entrance. You know where that is?”
“Yessir.”
“And, Jimmy, speak to no one. Not a sentence. Not a phone call. This is very important. Believe me.”
“Yessir.”
“And, Jimmy, make sure you bring your working chart with you.”
“Yessir.”
Arnold Morgan stood up and walked to the top of the basement stairs in Kathy’s large Chevy Chase home. He yelled instructions to his Secret Service detail, organizing Lt. Ramshawe’s escort at the White House. He kissed Kathy good night, pulled on his coat and headed outside where his car and two agents were waiting.
“Straight to the factory, sir?”
“You gottit.”
It was almost 1
A.M.
when the black White House staff car came barreling over the Taft Avenue Bridge, driving swiftly down Connecticut Avenue. It was raining now, and the city was quiet. They crossed Dupont Circle and made their way to Seventeenth Street, swing
ing into West Executive Avenue from where they could see a Jaguar already being waved through to the West Wing.
Admiral Morgan met Lt. Ramshawe right outside the door, while four duty agents attended to his visitor’s pass and parked his car.
The Admiral stuck out his hand, smiled, and said, “Hello, Lieutenant. Arnold Morgan.”
Jimmy Ramshawe had met a few major men in his life, but this was different. The Admiral exuded power. He was all of seven inches shorter than Jimmy but his gaze was dead straight, his eyes bright blue and his grip strong. The Admiral’s dark gray suit had been tailored somewhere in heaven, and his black lace-up shoes were gleaming. The perfectly knotted tie was that of the Naval Academy, Annapolis, a place and experience that Arnold Morgan had never forgotten, and never would. He made Jimmy Ramshawe feel like a little boy.
And in response to the Admiral’s curt but warm greeting, he just managed, “Sir.” He’d used up all his daring and bravado for one night, making two unauthorized calls on the private line to the right-hand man of the President of the United States.
“Follow me,” said the Admiral, to anyone who might be listening, which included the two Secret Service agents who were with him at all times, four White House agents, and Jimmy. And, line astern, they set off in the wake of the Admiral, who never walked; he kind of pounded along the carpet, chin out, shoulders back, dead upright. If a regular wall had suddenly appeared in front of him, he would have crashed right through it, like a Disney cartoon, leaving just the outline of his silhouette. He conducted the business of the United States of America along very similar lines.
At the big wooden door to his office he came to a halt, and his commands were sharp…. “Get me a competent secretary to sit in Mrs. O’Brien’s chair right now. Tell someone to bring us coffee…. You hungry, Jimmy?”
“Yessir.”
“Chicken sandwiches for the Lieutenant…and make sure someone’s attending to my phone exclusively at all times…Aside from that, my regular agents take up positions right here…and have the hot line to the President on high alert…I may have to speak to him in a major hurry.”
Everyone nodded. Admiral Morgan glared; turning to one of his regular agents, he barked, “No bullshit, right, Bobby?”
Bobby snapped to attention. “No bullshit. Sir, nossir.”
It was a well-practiced routine, and everyone laughed.
“Okay, gentlemen, that’s it. Lieutenant, let’s get to work…and tell ’em to hurry up with the coffee in case we both fall asleep.”
Inside the office, Jimmy spread his chart out on the Admiral’s big desk. Arnold Morgan stared hard as the key spots were pointed out to him…the missiles, the
Global Bronco
, the stricken VLCC, currently pumping oil into the strait.
“Okay, Lieutenant, first things first. I want to know what the master of that ship actually saw. I guess if they slammed into a mine…What was it, a contact PLT-3 from Russia?”
“That was what the Chinese ordered, sir. So I’m assuming that.”
“So’m I. Well, they make a pretty big bang in the water. The Captain must have heard something.”
“I agree, sir. But the guy I spoke to in the Omani public affairs office was giving nothing away. It took me all my time to get him to tell me where the ship was.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I may have to kick a little ass. Hard. Do we know the name or the nationality of the ship?”
“Nossir.”
“Okay. Well, the news guys will have that very soon. Meantime I’m gonna get the Royal Navy in London to do our work. The Brits are well in with the Omanis, have
been for years. Just about every warship they own is British.”
He picked up the telephone and ordered the new secretary, “Get me Admiral Sir Richard Birley on the line in Northwood, England. The numbers are in my big blue book, top right-hand drawer…. He’ll be at home, right near the base. He’s head of the Royal Navy’s submarine service.”
Less than two minutes later, the Admiral’s old friend from London was on the line. The two men exchanged greetings, and the English submarine chief instantly agreed to have someone call the Omanis and find out precisely what was going on, who owned the ship and what the Captain had to say.
“I’ll be back inside the hour, Arnie…. By the way, may I ask why you’re treating this so urgently?”
“Not right now you can’t.”
“Well, you always have to wonder in those waters,
hmmmm
?”
“You always have to wonder. Talk to you later, Dick.”
The Admiral turned back to Jimmy Ramshawe, and he said quietly, “Lieutenant, I want you to listen very carefully. Only two people in this country believe the Iranians and the Chinese may have put a minefield across the strait. That’s you and I.
“We may be wrong. But I think not. Your straight line on that chart is just too much of a coincidence. And I would not be that shocked if another ship blew before we’re much older.
“But this is what I want you to understand: If this turns out to be true, we’re going to be sitting on a colossal world oil crisis. The gulf will have to be shut down while we sweep and clear it, which is going to take weeks. Oil prices will go through the roof. The entire global economy could go berserk. Japan could come to a complete halt. A gallon of gas could go to six bucks right here in the U.S…. and what I’m trying to do right here is avoid a national panic, if that is at all possible.”
“Yessir.”
The chicken sandwiches arrived, a large plateful. Jimmy Ramshawe attacked them, and the Admiral had one himself while they waited for the English Admiral to call back.
He was on the line before 0200. “Arnold, the ship is Greek, Liberian registered. Only two years old. It’s huge, three hundred thousand tons deadweight. Loaded with Saudi crude. The Captain and the crew are still on board. The ship is not sinking but it’s ten degrees bow down, and it’s currently belching seventy thousand cubic meters of oil from its for’ard tank.”
“Any word from the Captain?”
“Yes, he made a statement to the Omani coast guard. Says there was a massive explosion, for no reason, way up at the bow. It completely ruptured one of the five holding tanks.”
“Was she double hulled, Dick?”
“Oh, yes. Very heavily built in the Daewoo Shipyard, South Korea. Compartmentalized, too, throughout the hull. She’d be just about unsinkable…I expect you know, but she’s only twelve miles away from the
Global Bronco
, which blew up yesterday.”
“Yeah. We do know that. And right now I’d have to say that this, Sir Richard, ole buddy, is not good.”
“This, Admiral Arnie, old chap, is becoming deeply unattractive.”
April 28. The White House
.
Washington, D.C.
With Lieutenant Ramshawe on his way home now, sworn to total silence, Admiral Morgan stood alone in his office at 0230. It was a situation not entirely unfamiliar to him, even on a Saturday morning. He yelled through the door for someone to bring him some fresh HOT coffee, and debated whether or not to call the President.
“Maybe not,” he muttered. “It won’t do any good. And as soon as the President knows, everyone knows. I think we need a little more time before the crap really hits the fan.”
The first thing to do was to get a couple of minesweepers into the strait and take a closer look. Jimmy Ramshawe was to spend the morning screening all satellite pictures to check whether any tankers were making a successful through-passage. Arnold Morgan suspected any big fuel-oil carriers that did make it through would be either Chinese or Iranian. And that
their cargo would either be direct from the refinery just east of Bandar Abbas, or from the new Chinese refinery farther down the coast. But Lieutenant Ramshawe would find that out.
The problem was minesweepers, the little specialist warships that locate the mines by towing a sweep wire through the water until it hits and cuts the mine’s cable. The USA had some extremely effective sonar mine hunters in the Avenger Class, but they were mostly based along the Texas coast, and made only 13 knots. “Damn things would take forever to get there,” the Admiral grumbled.
He pondered the Brits, wondering about the Royal Navy’s excellent Hunt Class minesweepers. But again, the same problem…
slow, and half a world away from Hormuz
. No. He had to get someone much nearer, which meant, essentially, the Indians….
What the hell time is it in Bombay
?
The question was rhetorical. Arnold Morgan knew more or less what time it was
everywhere
. And right now in the great Indian city of Bombay it was somewhere around midday. He picked up the telephone and asked his night-duty secretary, whom he’d never even seen, to connect him immediately to the Indian Embassy in Washington.
When the duty officer answered, the Admiral said simply, “This is Arnold Morgan, National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. I’m in the White House. Take down the following phone number, and have the Naval Attaché call me in the next four minutes…. Thanks. And hurry up.” Click.
Three minutes and 22 seconds later, the telephone rang on his private line.
“This is Vice Admiral Prenjit Lal speaking. I believe you wanted me?”
“Hey, thanks for calling. I do appreciate it’s the middle of the night, but my request is easy. I would like Admiral Kumar, your Chief of Naval Staff, to call the White
House immediately and ask for me. I guess he’s in Bombay?”
“Yes, Admiral. Today he is. I’ll contact him right away.”
“Stress that it’s extremely urgent, will you?”
“The hour of the night tells me of the urgency, Admiral. I’ll do it personally and immediately.”
It took eight minutes. Admiral Kumar came on the line, insisting that he would be honored to provide any assistance he could to India’s very great friends in the White House.
Arnold Morgan, however, knew this was only half true. What the mannered and apparently pliable Indian officer had not said was “Just so long as it will not damage our relations with our neighbors or allies, and so long as the U.S. would assist with whatever the cost might be.” Unspoken hurdles.
Admiral Morgan elected to lay out the facts as swiftly and brutally as he could. He pulled no punches. And he went very carefully over the iron-clad fact of Jimmy Ramshawe’s Straight Line. And he ended his little speech by saying: “I’m afraid all of the world’s oil consumers are in this together. But yours is the nation with the most easily accessible minesweepers…. Admiral Kumar, you will have the full backing of the USA. I’ll have two destroyers there to meet you, and you may assume all costs will be met by the big oil consumers, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France, Germany, everyone.
“I’m sure you can appreciate the urgency…we simply cannot just sit here and wait for another tanker to blow up…we have to get in there, check it out and if necessary sweep a safe channel…and your Pondicherry Class minesweepers are the nearest.”
“Admiral Morgan,” replied the Indian Navy Chief, “I am indeed grateful for your call and your trust. If the Iranian Gulf was closed for even three weeks, my country would be in the most terrible trouble…aside from the regular petrol supplies, almost all of our propane gas
for cooking comes from there. My country could come to a complete halt.
“Obviously we had noted the two tanker accidents. But no one had any idea it might be a concerted plot by the Iranians and the damnable Chinese. You may assume we will sail six of the Pondicherrys in the next twenty-four hours. You think we should take a tanker?”
“Yes I do. And escorts. Admiral Kumar, we do not yet know precisely what we are dealing with here. But I can assure you of massive U.S. protection once your ships arrive at the strait…. One squeak out of the Chinese or the Iranians, and we’ll put ’em on the bottom of the ocean. That’s a promise.”
“Excellent, Admiral. My attaché in Washington will be in contact in a few hours to give you times of sailing, an ETA, and further details of our escort. It’s one thousand miles to the strait from Bombay, but the Pondicherrys make sixteen knots. We’ll aim to sail at first light tomorrow morning, which should put us in the strait before dark on Tuesday.”
“Thank you, Admiral Kumar. We look forward to working with you. I just wish the circumstances were less serious.”
Arnold Morgan replaced the telephone, checked his watch at 0320 and opened up his private line to the Pentagon. He told the duty officer in the Navy Department to get the CNO on the line right away.
Sixty seconds later, Admiral Alan Dixon, former Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, betrayed no sign that he had been called in the small hours of the morning. The new Chief of Naval Operations said crisply, “Morning, sir. Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“Not a bit, Alan. But what I have to say is rather long and complicated. Can you come to the White House right away? Where are you, in the Yard?”
“Yessir. Give me thirty.”
“See you then. West Executive Avenue entrance.”
The minutes ticked by slowly for the National Secu
rity Adviser. He debated the rather appealing possibility of waking “that stuffed shirt, Borden,” but decided there was nothing to gain from such a malicious act. So he waited. Sipped his coffee, thought of Kathy. And waited.
At 0348 sharp, Admiral Dixon was escorted into the office, and for the second time that night, to a second slightly incredulous Navy chief, Admiral Morgan went over the whole scenario in the Strait of Hormuz.
Alan Dixon, a veteran destroyer CO from the Gulf War, nodded gravely. “I guess two sinkings in much the same place are beyond the bounds of likely coincidence, almost impossible we could be mistaken—I haven’t heard the theory before…. I suppose that’s your day’s work, eh?”
“Not so, Alan. One of the brighter sparks on George Morris’s staff. I’d like to support it, though.”
“An interesting bit of deduction. And to tell the truth, sir, the Pentagon had not yet received a position on the second tanker when I left the office.”
“No. Neither had anyone else. This young Lieutenant bamboozled his way into the public affairs office of the Omani Navy and pried it out of them.”
“Good job! Love to hear it. Anyway, sir, what now?”
“Well, the Indian Navy is going to work with us sweeping the strait. We obviously have to start a major mine-clearance operation ASAP. I hope on Tuesday evening. They’ll have a half dozen of those Russian-built Pondicherrys working, with an escort of their own. But I want to get a couple of our destroyers in there, and a CVBG as soon as we can.”
Admiral Dixon pulled out a personal notebook, which detailed all of the five currently operational U.S. Carrier Battle Groups. The 55 ships that surrounded the huge carriers were just a little too much to commit to memory. And the highly methodical Boston-born Alan Dixon never went anywhere without that little notebook.
“Okay, sir,” he said. “We’re pretty well placed. The
Constellation
Group’s stationed up at the north end of
the Gulf off Iraq. We got
John C. Stennis
with nine guided-missile ships and two nuclear boats exercising in the Arabian Sea, probably a day and a half from the strait.
“
Harry S Truman
’s battle ready at Diego Garcia. She’s got a full complement of escorts, one cruiser, two destroyers, six frigates, two nuclear submarines, an LA and a Sturgeon, plus a complete Under Way Replenishment Group.
John F. Kennedy
has a full operational group just about ready to leave from Pearl at any time, certainly in the next three days.
“Back in San Diego the
Ronald Reagan
’s almost finished a major overhaul. Her Group can be ready inside two months, if we need it.”
“That’s great, Alan. I guess we ought to have one right in the southern approaches to the strait and one inside the gulf, spread across the exit, with a lotta muscle concentrated south of Bandar Abbas. There’s been a couple of pretty heavy Chinese destroyers prowling around there these past few weeks. Once the Indian minesweepers get in there, we’ll get the President to issue a private warning to the Iranians…any ship attempting any kind of interference will be sunk. By us. No bullshit. Right?”
“Right, sir. Meantime I’ll order the
Constellation
Group to proceed south toward Bandar, and the
Stennis
to close the strait. We’ll put the
Harry Truman
on twenty-four hours battle notice to sail north from DG. It’s getting pretty damned hot out there right now, and it’s hard to keep guys out there on station for more than a couple of months without sending ’em all crazy.
“If I order the
Kennedy
to leave Pearl in the next couple of days, she can go straight to DG. That’ll give us a four-group
roulement
, keeping two of them comfortably on station all the time. We can keep that up for a year if we have to.”
“Good. How’s the
Kennedy
doing? Christ, Alan, she’s damn near forty years old.”
“No problem, sir. She had that complete complex
overhaul in 1995, made her just about brand-new. There’s nothing wrong with her. No, sir. Old number sixty-seven, a little smaller than the Nimitz-Class boats, but she still holds nearly six thousand tons of aviation fuel. Seen a lot of service. She’s like Senator Ted—indestructible. And just as bloody-minded when she feels like it.”
Admiral Morgan chuckled. The language of the Navy. He still loved it. Still felt pride swell in his chest when the big U.S. ships prepared to flex their muscles. He’d felt it during his first nuclear submarine command more than 20 years ago, and the feeling had never diminished. Arnold Morgan’s soul was essentially held together with dark blue cord, and gold braid.
Monday morning. April 30
.
Officers’ Mess. U.S. Naval Base
.
Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean
.
Lieutenant Commander Dan Headley was just one tour of duty short of promotion to Commander in the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Submarine Fleet. At age 35, he was very proud of that. Right now he was generally regarded as one of the best submarine Executive Officers in the entire Navy. Experienced, a lifelong submariner, weapons and sonar expert, he had just flown to Diego Garcia to take up the number-two spot on the aging Sturgeon-Class nuclear boat, USS
Shark
.
This was one of the Navy’s underwater warhorses, probably on her last tour of duty, since she had been due for decommission in 2005.
Shark
was the newest of the Navy’s four Sturgeon attack submarines, and probably the best. The 5,000-tonner could make 30 knots through the water dived, she carried 23 weapons, Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles, plus torpedoes. On her deck, forward of the sail, there were two twin dry-deck shelters designed for the transport of a deep-submergence rescue
vehicle (DSRV), an Advanced Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (ASDV) or a dry garage for three, even four, high-powered outboard inflatables.
Shark
was quiet, extensively fitted with acoustic tiles, with anechoic coatings. She had the capacity to fire nuclear-warhead weapons, and she was capable of operating under the ice, though Dan Headley doubted that would be needed on her next journey.
He had been at the base for only three hours when word began to spread that there was something happening up in the Strait of Hormuz. Everyone knew the CVBGs of USS
Constitution
and
John C. Stennis
were already in the area. The issue was, how soon would the massive 100,000-ton Nimitz-Class
Harry Truman
and her consorts head north to join them in the narrow waters that guard Arabia’s landlocked Sea of Oil?
No one knew that, but senior officers considered it more likely to be hours than days. It was 2,600 miles up to Bandar Abbas, and the
Truman
Group could steam at 30 knots, making 700 miles a day. If they cleared DG by first light tomorrow (Tuesday), they’d be in the area before dark on Friday afternoon.
Lieutenant Commander Headley had a lot of people to meet in the next 24 hours, and from each of them he had a minor secret to conceal. SUBPAC was not really happy with the veteran Commander Donald Reid,
Shark
’s commanding officer, and they had specifically appointed Dan Headley to assist him in every way possible.
As far as Dan was concerned it was just a wink and a nudge, because no one would tell him what, if anything, was wrong with Commander Reid, only that he was, well, “kinda eccentric.” No one actually said “weird.” But he’d been in the submarine service a lot of years and according to observers had shown “very occasional signs of stress.”
In the modern Navy these matters are taken extremely seriously, unlike in the past when any sign of weakness
or wavering was put down immediately as “shell shock” or “cowardice.” It was not unusual for the offender to be cashiered, or, for the latter transgression, in the Royal Navy on one occasion, shot.