Authors: Patrick Robinson
Dan chuckled at the sobriquet, an ageless boyhood term of endearment. But Rick Hunter continued seriously, “What happens if we do bump the bottom and we can’t find the goddamned channel? What then?”
“Look, I realize you’ve been rolling around in the dirt strangling guards, killing terrorists and blowing things up all your life. But what I’m going to show you requires
careful thought…now look here…this deep trench is very important because it’s a haven for a small submarine, moving through waters that are plainly too shallow to allow it free passage.
“You want to get a channel into this main lane, which your guys have marked here; you want first to get into the trench where you don’t have to dredge. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Right. Now there are two ways into the trench. The long way, across here, maybe two and a half miles, dredging all the way, in water only fifteen feet deep. That’ll take months. Or, alternatively, you could take this three-mile detour, west of the island, in deeper water, and that way you only need to cut a channel three hundred yards long max, and you’re in the trench. What do you think?”
“I’ll take the three hundred yards cut, any time, any day.”
“And that’s what our oceanographers think the Chinese Navy will have done. Therefore your driver will take the ASDV around through the deeper water, and we think he’ll find the hole straight into the trench. When the water settles at, say, fifty feet, you guys go to PD and you’ll see the flashing light about a mile up in front. At which point you’re headed straight for the channel, and that’ll take you right in to where you wanna be.”
“What happens if some bastard’s coming the other way down this narrow ditch?”
“Edge hard to starboard. Drop down to the bottom and sit in the mud, act like a recently drowned pig. Whatever it is will go right by. If you hear anything, just lie very quietly on the bottom. Gently.”
“You keep saying ‘quiet’ and ‘gentle.’ You suggesting I’m some kind of a gorrila, young Danny?”
“Not really, but you’re the leader and you got a lot more in common with a gorilla than a sea wraith.”
“Well, anyway. I’m not driving.”
“Thank Christ. But what I was going to mention was
the utter unlikelihood of your meeting another ship. I mean right now the latest satellite picture shows only two warships in there, plus a submarine, with two or three patrol boats running around some of the time.
“We have no pictures of any boats running around after midnight at any time. Personally I think you will find the channel easily, and you will make your landing with no trouble. After that, you’re in charge. But my guys will get you out, Rick. On that you can trust me. That’s a promise.”
“Who’s driving the ASDV?”
“The best man in the Navy. He’s a specialist. You might even know him. He’s Lieutenant Mills, and he can maneuver that little ship anywhere. He’s calm, expert and very instinctive about danger. Better yet, he’s done it before. And you could not be in safer hands. He’ll get you in, and if there’s trouble, he won’t get caught. You can’t ask for more than that.”
“Yes I can.”
“What?”
“Just for you and me to be sipping a coupla cold beers on my daddy’s side porch, listening to the music, watching the mares and foals moving across the paddocks in the evening. Instead of raising hell in some Chinese dockyard.”
“Yeah, doesn’t that sound great right now? Guess it’s because we’re right around the corner from real danger. But it’s too late now to think of our own world. It’s too late. We’re in someone else’s world, big time. And we gotta make it happen.”
Two hours later, Commander Rick Hunter stood before the team that would shortly embark for the eastern end of the Indian Ocean. They had taken over a brightly lit, concrete-walled ops room, with a five-foot-wide computer screen placed at the side of a long trestle table.
The eleven SEALs who would accompany the Commander into Burmese waters were seated casually along the other side of the table with notepads and pens. Each
man was issued a map of the delta of the Bassein River, plus various views, shot from the satellites, of the Chinese base itself. Everyone had a blowup of the geothermal power station that sat almost in the center of the dockyard complex.
And behind the SEALs sat the additional, but critical, personnel: The XO, Lt. Commander Dan Headley, who would take the USS
Shark
in and supervise their escape; Lt. David Mills who would drive the ASDV inshore; Lt. Matt Longo from Cincinnati, the ASDV navigator; and Commander Rusty Bennett, who would not join the mission but whose guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Behind them, the steel door was shut and locked. Two Naval guards remained on duty immediately outside, with four more patrolling the area beyond the main door to the otherwise-deserted building. No one, including the C-in-C of the Fleet, was permitted to enter. Even to exit the ops room, each SEAL needed to have his notepad personally signed by the Team Leader.
No one was permitted a phone call. There was absolutely no further contact with the outside world. Nor would there be until they were back in the USS
Shark
at the conclusion of the mission. They were scheduled to sail at 2200 that night, Saturday, June 2.
Commander Hunter immediately introduced his second-in-command, 28-year-old Lt. Dallas MacPherson, a wide-shouldered southerner from South Carolina who had started life at The Citadel, the state’s near-legendary military academy, but had switched after only a couple of semesters to the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
He rose rapidly in dark blue, making Lieutenant in double-quick time, and serving as a gunner and missile officer in an Arleigh-Burke destroyer before the age of 25. This was good, but not good enough for the restless Dallas, who suddenly, to the surprise of his colleagues, requested a transfer to the US Navy SEALs.
He crashed through the BUD/S course, finishing in
third place, complaining he’d probably “been stitched up”—most SEALs are happy to pass through in the first 30. And throughout his short, but meteoric, career people had been more or less divided on whether he would end up in Admiral Bergstrom’s chair, or in a box with a posthumous Medal of Honor. He was tough as hell, brave as a lion and smarter than almost everyone. But there was a daredevil in his soul, and that might either save the lives of an entire squadron or, alternately, get them into terminal trouble.
Commander Hunter was in no doubt. Lieutenant MacPherson was reputed to be the most brilliant young explosives expert on the base, a progressive Naval scientist on the subject of demolition in all its forms. Rick Hunter would take Lt. MacPherson any day, on the strength of his swiftness of thought. When he appointed him, he had said, “Dallas, where we’re going, the only thing that’s gonna keep us alive is brains. Keep using ’em, and we’ll make it out.”
In fact, Lt. MacPherson’s father was a distant cousin of the veteran Secretary of Defense, Robert MacPherson. And when news of this had seeped through various wardrooms, one senior commanding officer had remarked playfully, “Well, young Dallas, you can’t beat a few family connections in the military to ensure you advance your career.”
“Sure can’t, sir,” replied the twenty-two-year-old Midshipman. “I taught that Bob MacPherson damn near everything he knows.”
And now, right here in the most secretive room in the most remote American Naval base, Dallas was about to undertake an awesome responsibility, not only to accept command of the entire force, should anything befall the leader, but to ensure personally the total destruction of the geothermal power station on the island of Haing Gyi.
Rick Hunter introduced him carefully, as a young officer in whom he had the utmost confidence, and from
whom they must take orders unquestioningly while working in the Chinese electricity-generating plant.
He then introduced his personal bodyguard, Lt. Bobby Allensworth, with whom he had served on another highly classified mission the previous year. He provided no background, certainly not the information that young Bobby had fought his way out of a life of petty crime in south-central Los Angeles and obtained his commission in the U.S. Marine Corps. He said merely that Lt. Allensworth would be personally responsible for the safety of the force, particularly if they had to fight their way in, though he hoped this would not be necessary.
Chief Petty Officer Mike Hook, also from Kentucky, a medium-sized supreme athlete and swimmer, was included as the number-two explosives expert on the team. He would be personal assistant to Lt. MacPherson during the time setting of the charges and the guardian of the special bomb they would carry in—the one Dallas said would split the steam shaft asunder, releasing a massive geothermal force, which might very well blow up the entire base.
“How far in the clear do we want to be when that happens?” asked someone.
Before Commander Hunter could reply “One hour,” Lt. MacPherson remarked he thought back in Coronado would be just perfect.
That was the deceptive side of Lt. MacPherson’s character. He sometimes sounded merely flippant, but the truth was he was always a few strides in front. He knew “one hour” was correct, but he’d gone past that and was instinctively trying to defuse the tension, trying to reduce the fear factor, the prospect of the unknown. Some officers think this approach has no value whatsoever. But you still have to be extremely able to do it. And Commander Hunter laughed anyway.
Only Lt. MacPherson understood the perfect timing
required to send that armor-piercing, steel-cased bomb thousands of feet down the main steam shaft, to blast the giant well-head valve apart and release the seismic energy from the core of the earth.
“Gentlemen,” said the Commander, “details of the in-base mission will be clarified during the three-day journey to the Bay of Bengal. Right now I am intending to show you precisely where we are going, how we land, where we get off and the main drive of our objective.”
Briefly he introduced other key members of the team: two SEALs who had also served under his command the previous year in the South China Sea, Riff “Rattlesnake” Davies and Buster Townsend, the radio operator. Both were from St. James’s Parish down in Louisiana’s Mississippi Delta. Both had served in surface warships.
He also brought forward the toughest man in the squad, Petty Officer Catfish Jones, an ex-deepwater fisherman from the coast of North Carolina. Catfish, 29, was a combat veteran of the Kosovo campaign. He had a 19-inch neck, and forearms of blue-twisted steel. Bobby Allensworth had instructed him in unarmed combat. And these two represented the front line of the Assault Team’s heavy muscle if they came face-to-face with the Chinese inside the Navy base.
For his opening remarks, Commander Hunter played down the danger of the mission. “We are going into a lightly defended Chinese Naval base,” he said. “It’s a relatively new facility, and we’ve had it under observation for several weeks. Our Intelligence conclusion is that the owners do not anticipate a serious attack from anyone. Which should give us a reasonable chance of accomplishing our mission. Which is, incidentally, to take it off the face of the earth as quickly as possible.”
At this point a ripple of disquiet could easily be sensed in the room. And the Commander elected to clear up the question that was on everyone’s mind: Why are we doing this?
“As most of you know, we are in the middle of a
world oil crisis, caused principally by the Chinese. In the judgment of our colleagues in National Security, China has further plans for disruption at the other end of the Indian Ocean. But she can only instigate this disruption by maintaining a major Navy base in the area.
“This one, at the mouth of the Bassein River, is the sole means by which China can have a catastrophic effect on the free and peaceful flow of the world’s oil. Our instructions come direct from the White House. We are to take that Naval base out, on behalf of the government of the United States of America.
“The successful achievement of our objective will not only send the Chinese right back to their home waters, where they belong. It will also deservedly earn the gratitude of every person in the industrialized world. Although they will not know, of course, to whom they are grateful. But we’ll know. And that’s what matters.”
Everyone in the room nodded approval. And Commander Hunter told them that for the purpose of this initial briefing he wished to demonstrate to the entire group precisely where they were going, and how they were going to find their way in, in the pitch dark.
“Okay,” he said, “look at your own charts, and follow my bigger electronic one as we go.” He used a long ruler and pointed it at the rendezvous point where the
Shark
would arrive with the entire mission on board.
“Right here,” he said pointing precisely, “we get into the ASDV, in about one hundred sixty feet of water. We then take this route, down toward this little island here…and according to our experts we take this route, to this slightly deeper water right here. We believe this flashing light on the red can, marked here, will guide us into a newly dredged channel. Then we pick up the main throughway up to the island of Haing Gyi, where the base is.
“You’ll see right here on your chart, we adjust our course to zero-two-zero and run on up here in the main channel, as far as the next light—right here…it flashes
every two seconds. We’ll pick that out probably a mile before we get there. And though we have not absolutely finalized our landing spot, we are leaning toward this area here…Rocky Point.
“It’s a headland with deep water in front, right up to the beach. Maybe fifteen feet. We can swim in there, and it’s far enough away from the base to carry no sentries. About one and a quarter miles. We have to walk that, with our equipment, but there’re no hills, no swamps, and just a tidal river to cross. We’ll take a look when we get there. This looks like a bridge, and if it’s quiet we’ll use it.”
“
We coming out the same way, sir
?”
“Absolutely not. Because there’s no way we can make our business look like some geothermal accident. The Chinese are going to know it’s us very early on. The ASDV’s too slow, and it’ll need to turn around as soon as it drops us. So they’re bringing in rigid inflatables to get us out fast. The water’s very flat this time of the year. We’ll be back in the submarine in fifty minutes.”