Authors: Patrick Robinson
“Christ,” said Clouds, “it’s gonna be like the stage of the New York City Ballet in there.”
“Great,” muttered Dan Conway. “We’ll probably get a round of applause.”
“Shut up, comedians,” whispered Lt. Commander Schaeffer. “That light second from the end has gotta go. Guess we could shoot it, but I’d rather cut it.”
“That would sharpen up the guards if they found the cut,” said Dan.
“Yeah, it might,” replied Ray. “But I’ve been looking down the line of lights. There’s one every two hundred yards, but I’m only counting fifteen, not seventeen. That means there’re a couple out already. Those bulbs go all the time, I’d say, and one more isn’t going to put the place on red alert. These guys are civilians. They’ll probably send a couple of electricians out, maybe tomorrow, to replace the bulbs. So we want to make a cut they won’t notice.”
“Okay, sir,” said Charlie. “I’ll do it. I’ll slice down six inches and pull the inside stuff out. One little cut puts the bulb out. Then I’ll fold it back inside the rubber casing. They might not notice it at all.”
“Don’t worry,” said Ray Schaeffer. “I have a little roll of electrician’s tape in my pocket, and we can thank Rusty for that. He told me before we left Coronado, we would almost certainly have to take out a couple of lights, and a little roll of black tape does a lot to cover your tracks.”
“Beautiful,” said Clouds. “Pity about the applause, though.”
They moved in toward the fence, staying low, crawling across the ground on elbows and knees, the time-honored approach of the killer SEAL. Dan Conway and Charlie went to the base of the light pylon, and the two rookies began to cut a hole in the chain-link fence. There was no sign of guards, no sign of life in this remote part of the refinery in the small hours of the morning. The only sound was the snap of the wire cutters as they carved a doorway through the fence.
At 0017 the big light went out, plunging the storage tanks into darkness. The SEALs lay silently, waiting for a Chinese patrol to show up. But none did, and at 0035, they pulled back the wire and Ray Schaeffer, with Clouds Nathan, wriggled through, followed by Lt. Conway and Charlie. Clouds had the detonator, fuses, time clock and cord, plus one of the shovels. The other three carried the big limpet mines on their backs, and they raced for the cover of the storage tanks, three lines of 10, all owned by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). All now in deep shadow.
It did not look far on the aerial photographs they had been studying for several days, and they all knew the precise route to take. But it was a long 50 yards over flat ground, and they were glad to know that Ryan Combs was right inside the fence with his trigger finger on the machine gun.
Once in among the tanks they worked fast. They made for the middle one in line five, and the two outer ones in line six, which formed a triangle right in the center of the group. Clouds removed the mines from their straps, and clamped the magnets onto the lower inside-facing surfaces of the three tanks. He wired up the detonators and ran cord from each one to a central point at the western edge of the untargeted middle tank in line six. Right there he wired up the clock, which would dictate the time of the explosion of all three mines.
Then he took the shovel and buried the det cord in the soft sand. When he arrived back at the clock, he wrapped it in a plastic bag and buried that, too, without setting it. That would take about one minute on the way out the following night, if their luck held. Right then they were “outta here,” and they flew for the fence, unnoticed by anyone, and made their way back through the wire.
It took another 10 minutes to clip the fence back into shape, and the SEALs retreated into the rough ground 20 yards back, from where they would watch whatever movement there was inside the refinery.
It was a long, boring wait. The only sign of life was almost a mile away inside the control center. Occasionally they caught a glimpse through the binoculars of a door opening, and once they saw some kind of a jeep move from the control block up toward the main refining towers, but it was too far to see if anyone got out or in. By 0330 Lt. Commander Schaeffer concluded that the refinery was just about devoid of any security whatsoever, and he declared the recon was at an end. By this time the following night they’d be on their way out to the submarine. God willing.
They arrived back at base camp at 0400, reported on the distinct lack of armed guards, at least in that remote part of the refinery, and drank a lot of water. Lieutenant Commander Schaeffer and his men would sleep first, and Chief Petty Officer Cafiero organized the sentries.
They were all awake by 0800, and they spent the day
lying low, under the camouflage, eating very occasionally one of the high-protein bars and studying endlessly the layout of the refinery’s interior.
That night there were three targets: the towers, the control center and the middle group of storage tanks. If there was time, Lt. Dan Conway and Clouds Nathan would also attempt to insert high explosives into the more remote petrochemical compound, but that would be touch and go. It was almost 800 yards from the towers along a well-lit road.
Ray Schaeffer had divided the SEAL squad into three teams of four, one led by himself, one by Lieutenant Conway and one by CPO Rob Cafiero. Lieutenant Nathan would join Ray in the critical attack on the giant separating towers, Dan Conway and Charlie would take the central storage area, while Rob Cafiero and Ryan Combs would place the high explosives on the walls of the control center. Two young SEALS would accompany each team, acting as guards, lookouts and radio operators, should there be a need to communicate. Each time clock would be set to detonate at 0300.
They would all go under the wire together at 2300, and the watchword of the operation was
stealth
. At least for the first hour it was. Thereafter the SEALs would feel free to fight their way out and down to the beach using whatever means were necessary. Ryan Combs would bring two belts of ammunition and the M60-E4 machine gun with him.
They dug and buried all their surplus gear, including groundsheets. They left the wet suits, flippers, Draegers and attack boards under the camouflage nets. Because of the 12-man limit on the team, they did not have the luxury of leaving anyone in charge, and at 2230 they all set off toward the refinery. It was warm and windless, with no moon. High clouds drifted in from the sea, and they marched in silence, in three lines of four, through the desolate area behind the beach toward the refinery.
The first thing Ray Schaeffer noticed was that the
light they had deactivated the previous night was still deactivated. The second thing he noticed was a jeep moving swiftly along the outer perimeter along the narrow blacktop track they had crossed to get to and from the storage tanks.
The vehicle did not stop or slow down in this remote corner of the plant, but there were four people in it, and they were carrying weapons, a direct result of an instruction from the Chinese Navy, received 48 hours previously. The guards were in fact military personnel from the People’s Liberation Army and they had been in residence for two months, although they had not found it necessary to mount any form of patrol. The area was, face it, deserted.
The SEALs flattened themselves into the ground as the jeep drove past, but then they moved quickly to the fence and the clips were removed to open their own personal gateway. Once inside, they placed three clips back on the wire to hold it, more or less in place, to attract no attention.
At this point they again checked their synchronized black pocket watches and the time clocks, which would be adjusted as the charges were put in place. Then they fanned out into three groups. They would meet again 90 minutes from then, at 0030, in the dark deserted area of the towers.
The first team on station was Dan Conway’s. He and Charlie led the two rookies deep in the shadow of the hot crude-oil pipes, which cleaved a gantry right down the middle of the refinery. They moved slowly, creeping quietly along, directly beneath the great three-foot-diameter pipes. They provided excellent cover all the way to the central storage area. The four SEALs waited for 15 minutes until they were certain they were alone, then they bolted across the flat well-lit ground to the left and dived into the shadow of the first tank, remaining motionless on the sand for 10 minutes, heads down, but knives drawn.
Meanwhile Lt. Commander Schaeffer and his 2 I/C, Lt. Clouds Nathan, had made it to the tower area. They had crossed two sets of railroad tracks, well to the right of the central pipeline system, and were now crouched in the dark on the south side of a giant holding tank. The towers looked massive, but there were three very close together in the center of the separating plant, and these were the targets.
The problem was four Chinese technicians who had plainly arrived in a parked jeep, testing what looked like a large valve halfway up the biggest tower. “Oh, Jesus,” said Ray, “if they’re not outta here in thirty minutes, we’ll go and place the two mines out in the petrochemical area, and then come back. We can’t risk being seen, not yet, not until the stuff’s in place.”
They waited. So did the technicians. And finally Ray whistled up both of the other teams on the little radio, and announced he was going to the distant chemical area, and would use two of the mines. Dan Conway was instructed to get among the towers as soon as possible with the two extra mines his team was carrying.
They carried out their regular mine placing on the tanks, in precisely the swift, efficient way Clouds had worked the previous night. The time was precisely 2345, and they set the time clock for three hours and fifteen minutes.
Then they rushed back across the open ground into the shadow of the pipeline, and began working their way up to the tower area. Meanwhile, Ray and Clouds were jogging along the eastern perimeter fence, right in the shadow, directly under the lights, headed for the wide area of the plant owned by SINOPEC (China National Petrochemical Corporation).
When they arrived, the place was not only silent; there were also huge dark areas to the west of the tanks, and they worked right in there, shoveling a shallow six-inch trench in which to lay the det cord. By the time they’d finished, it was 0015, and Ray set the clock for
two hours and 45 minutes. Then he buried it lightly in a plastic bag.
By the time SEAL Team One was out of the chemical area, Rob Cafiero and Ryan Combs were making steady progress around the control center. They had placed one mighty charge of plastic C4 explosives hard on the wall below the main downstairs window, and they had seen four white-coated technicians enter the building and four come out.
Both SEALs could also see there was a basement in the building, and realized this was the place to set a major C4 charge because it would surely bring the entire construction down, wrecking all the control systems, and allowing the hot crude to keep on flooding through the pipes, feeding the fires, just as it had in Texas City, 60 years previously.
And now they were ready. The center was plainly being staffed by the minimum number of people, and Ryan Combs told the two rookies to take the machine gun and cover them while he and Rob went through the front door, which had been unused for at least 25 minutes.
They raced across the yard, Rob carrying the explosives, detonator and plastic, Ryan now with a silenced, even lighter, machine gun, the regular MP-5, right behind him. They pushed open the door and moved into the hallway. Right in front of them was a down staircase, and they took the steps four at a time, swinging hard left at the bottom, and going to work under the stairs setting the plastic bomb for a timed detonation.
It was just 2350, and they set the clock for three hours and 10 minutes. They swung back out of the stairwell at exactly 2351, just as two Chinese staff members came out of a lower-floor operations room. The four men stared at each other in total disbelief, and the two refinery workers, confronted with two armed green-and-brown-faced monsters, turned to run back into their room. One of them shouted one word in Chinese before
Ryan Combs cut them both down in cold blood with a burst from his MP-5.
Instantly the two SEALs dragged the bodies back under the stairs, before there was too much blood to clean up. They made sure the two victims would not be easily seen, and then they bolted back up to the main hall, opened the front door and raced back to the shadows where the two rookies waited.
“Everything okay, sir?”
“Except for a couple of Chinamen.”
“Christ, did they see you?”
“Not for long.”
Right then the radio light flickered, and Ray Schaeffer was on the wire informing them of the new meeting point at the first tower at 0100. He was also on the line to Dan and Charlie checking their progress. And shortly after midnight the SEAL team leader knew that all their objectives had been achieved, with the exception of the giant towers.
By 0030, Rob and Ryan had placed their third and final plastic bomb right under a nest of incoming electric wires, and the Chief Petty Officer considered that this wrapped up the entire operation very tidily. He set the clock for two hours and 30 minutes, and, safe in the knowledge that this particular control center was not going to control anything after 0300, he led his men back toward the main pipeline for the shadowy 500-yard journey toward the refining towers.
When they arrived there, they found a scene of silent consternation. The Chinese were still there, still up on the tower, still working. At least two of them were. The others had gone.
“There’s no way we can place the mines on that metal without those guys seeing us,” said Ray Schaeffer. “The risk is too great. We’ll have to shoot ’em. And that’s not easy either.”
“Well, they don’t have a phone up there. How about a
diversion, something to get ’em down? How about we set fire to their jeep? That’ll do it.”
“Yeah, and it’ll bring a lot of other guys out here as well. Fire in a refinery is a goddamned nightmare.”
“You don’t say.”
And then the SEALs received what looked like a piece of luck. Both the Chinese technicians began to climb down the ladder from the refining tower.