“I believe that Kilo was refueled at the new Chinese Navy Base in Burma on the Bassein River Delta. I further believe it’s on its way back there right now. But that’s just a sideshow.
“The real problem is China. Her intentions. The depth of her involvement in the mining of the strait, and her ambitions in the Arabian Sea, the gulf area, the Indian Ocean and in particular the Bay of Bengal….”
He paused, and no one spoke. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am quite certain that if we do not chase China out of those oceans, we will live to regret it. Remember, they have been passive in terms of sea power for more than five hundred years, just running a coastal Navy to protect their own shores.
“But not anymore. They’re plainly in an expanionist mode, acquiring submarines, destroyers and a couple of aircraft carriers from the Russians. They’re building a new ICBM submarine platform, and they are pushing westward. That new oil refinery of theirs south of Bandar Abbas gives them an excuse to send protective warships into the Arabian Sea. And that new base in Burma has given them a home port from which they could essentially control the oil routes through the Malacca Strait. That’s all the oil routes to the west and north Pacific.”
Admiral Morgan paused again. And then he growled, “Gentlemen, these guys are not just stepping lightly on our toes. They’re running us over with a fleet of fucking rickshaws, and I’m not having it.”
Jack Smith and General Scannell both smiled, and Harcourt Travis laughed out loud. “Arnold,” he said, “you have such a way with words. You really should have considered the diplomatic service.”
Everyone in the room knew the suave Secretary of State was not entirely enamored of the President’s crusty National Security Adviser. And, some thought, the diplomat’s calm, thoughtful intellect was a very good foil for the irascible ex-nuclear submarine commander. But the Admiral’s mind was invariably superior, and he had won almost every one of their exchanges down through the years, even if he did occasionally sound like a Master Sergeant in an ugly mood.
“Hey, Harcourt, old buddy. Glad to hear you’re still sharp, because right now I want you to give me an assessment. If you wanted to chase the Chinese out of the Indian and Arabian Seas, what action would you consider taking?”
“You mean as an American?”
“Christ, no. As an Ethiopian.”
This was too much for both Jack Smith and General Scannell, who both burst out laughing. Bob MacPherson and Admiral Dixon tried to restrain themselves. And even Harcourt permitted himself a deep chuckle—restrained, of course.
“You see, Harcourt,” Arnold Morgan said, smiling, “that’s the trouble with you Foreign Service guys…you’re always looking for the extra half sentence, to give yourselves an extra few seconds to think…it’s just a habit…. Yes, Harcourt, as an American. You got it the first time.”
“Well, first of all, I’d go and pray at the tomb of my former Emperor Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah. Then I guess I’d come right back and advise you to blow the bastards right out of the water. Is that sufficiently primitive?”
“Harcourt,” replied the Admiral, unsmiling, his bright blue eyes narrowing dangerously, “I like it.”
At which point everyone laughed some more, but it was edged with nervousness, like telling a joke before an oncoming disaster. The Navy are good at that. In World War II no U.S. ship was ever blasted by bombs or torpedoes without one of the survivors observing, “Guess you shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke.”
The Admiral quickly regained his stride. “I’m talking politically…. You know our problems—the Iranian Naval base at Bandar Abbas, the new Iranian refinery, right there next to the warships, the Sino-Iranian refinery, effectively owned by the Chinese, just along the coast, and the new Chinese Naval Base and refueling docks on the Bassein River. All four of those installations represent a giant pain in the ass, not just for us, but for all nations that require oil and gas….”
Harcourt Travis nodded, an air of caution written right across his face. “Arnold,” he said, “I do not think we could just cold-bloodedly take out the Iranian base at Bandar Abbas. However covertly we moved, everyone would know it was us, and I think it would be construed as a blatant act of war. However, I think we would hold on to world opinion if we hit any warship we judged to be a threat to the free passage of shipping through the gulf.”
“Uh-huh. And how about the Iranian refinery?”
“Bad idea. If the situation in the gulf turned really ugly, we might just need the oil out of that refinery. We might even need to seize it. Let’s not destroy it, however pissed off we might be at the Ayatollahs.”
“And the new Chinese refinery?”
“That’s different. Because that refinery gives the People’s Liberation Army-Navy a reason to be operational at the western end of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. I’m not saying we go in and blast the place to smithereens, probably starting World War Three. But if that refinery was to…er…become disfunctional after some kind of…er…problem, well, I guess a lot of people would be pretty relieved.”
“And the base on the Bassein River?”
“That,” said Harcourt, flatly, “has gotta go.”
“Any drift on the state of mind of the Burmese government? Or Myanmar, or whatever the hell they call it?”
“Well, you know it’s a military junta, Arnie. It’s in power regardless of the results of democratic elections. And recently they appear to have become much less friendly toward the Chinese. But the Big Dragon sits right against their back door, and the Big Dragon has built roads and even railroads right through the country to the port cities on the Bay of Bengal. The Chinese have armed the Burmese military, sold them God knows how much hardware on long lines of credit. I’m afraid the Burmese are in too deep to get out. We’ll get no help from them. You want to get rid of that Chinese base, you’re on your own. But you’d have some cheerleaders in India.”
“They still pissed off about the tracking station on Great Cocos Island?”
“Very, very pissed off. The Chinese installed it with extreme cunning and furtiveness. Then they put an airstrip in there. Now they can pry deep behind India’s eastern coastline. Myanmar says the Seventy-fifth AF Radar Squadron is theirs, but everyone knows it’s Chinese. They probe straight across the Bay of Bengal and record all takeoffs from Calcutta Airport and any military airport along the coast. The Indians call them the Chinese Checkers.”
Bob MacPherson, another veteran of this Republican administration, interjected here in support of the Secretary of State. “There’s more trouble in that region than even we realize. The Chinese have spy ships all over the Bay of Bengal, and that’s thanks largely to their base on Haing Gyi Island. It would be a hell of a lot more difficult for them if it wasn’t there.”
“Trouble is,” said Harcourt, “that Burmese coastline is so damned strategic. The Cocos Islands are only just in Burmese waters, right on the Cocos Channel, the main seaway for every merchant ship bound for eastern Indian ports and Bangladesh.
“Immediately to the south, around ten miles, we have the northernmost island of the Indian archipelago…you know, the Andamans and the Nicobars, stretching five hundred miles to the south toward the Malacca Strait. No one in the area feels safe, with Chinese warships constantly on patrol there.”
“I’ll tell you something else,” added Jack Smith. “On average there are three hundred ships passing through the Bay of Bengal every day. A lot of them are tankers to and from the east. There’re some new economic projections which suggest that in the next twenty years, fifty percent of all world trade will center on the Pacific-Asian countries. God knows how many more ships that will mean.”
“And China sees itself as the great controller of those seaways,” said Bob MacPherson. “But the elimination of the base on the Bassein River would set them back a quarter of a century.”
“So what are our priorities?” asked Admiral Morgan.
“I think we make it plain to th
e Chinese that we will sink any of their warships in the clearance zone in the Strait of Hormuz. We then quietly mastermind a problem in their refinery in Iran, and cause it essentially…er…not to work. That gets them out of the western waters of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The oil issue is irrelevant because it’s from Kazakhstan and the Chinese are going to get it anyway, probably via a pipeline into their western territories, and on to Shanghai.”
“Christ,” said Admiral Morgan. “That’s, what, five thousand miles or something? They can’t do that.”
“With respect, Honorable National Adviser,” said Harcourt in his best Cantonese accent. “They built a very long, very high wall. They’ll probably manage to dig a fucking hole.”
Arnold Morgan chuckled. But he was very preoccupied. “And our next priority?” he asked.
“I think you know the answer to that. Let’s chase them out of the Bassein River. Somewhat secretly. And probably earn the thanks of many millions of people.”
Admiral Morgan sat thoughtfully. He and Harcourt Travis had been through a few run-ins, but, despite everything, he liked the Secretary of State. And he liked him for one overriding reason…smooth sonofabitch really knows his stuff…he’s a scholar, a realist and a cynic. A guy you can count on for important opinions.
“Harcourt,” he said. “I thank you. I thank all of you. Civilians may consider the meeting concluded. CNO, Tim, I’d like a half hour more to discuss tactics.” He stood and shook hands with the departing chiefs of Foreign Policy, Defense and Energy.
“I scarcely need to remind you of the hugely classified nature of the matters we have discussed,” he added. “There is no one who needs to know, save ourselves.”
Then he walked to the end of the room where Kathy had pinned up a large chart of the Strait of Hormuz, showing the coastline all the way from Bandar Abbas to the desert town of Kuhestak, way over on the long, near-barren eastern shore, forty-eight miles south of the Iranian Navy HQ.
“Come up here and take a look at this,” he said. “You see this place right here, Kuhestak? The Chinese refinery is situated right here, two miles along the coast to the south. It’s big. There’s a massive pipeline system running in here, all the way from the oil fields in Kazakhstan, one thousand miles, right across the heart of Iran.
“This precious Iranian seaport is soon going to give China its energy from the heart of the second-largest oil producer on earth. Because it can run tankers in here of virtually unlimited size, and then drive out straight across the Indian Ocean, through the Malacca Strait and into the South China Sea.
“In my view, that’s basically what the trouble is all about. That is precisely why China wants this growing military presence in the region…and precisely why we cannot allow it.
“You just heard the assessments of Harcourt and Bob. Now I want you to tell me how a dozen SEALs can take out that refinery. I say a dozen because the water’s shallow and well patrolled. We’re going to need an SDV, I’m certain of that. And we only have one in the area—the one stowed on the deck of the good old Shark. The good news is it does not take a whole lot of high explosives to blow up an oil refinery. Sonsabitches are apt to blow themselves up if you give ’em a head start.”
“Guess you’re referring to the Big Bang in Texas City back in 1947, eh?” said General Scannell. “I had an uncle lived somewhere out near Galveston. He told me when I was just a kid you coulda heard that explosion from one hundred fifty miles away.”
“I was about three years old at the time, and we didn’t live that far from the disaster,” said Arnold. “I remember my daddy told me the ship that blew it exploded with such force its one-and-a-half ton anchor was flung two miles and embedded itself ten feet into the ground at the Pan American refinery.”
The recollection of the Texas City disaster reminded all three men of the enormous problems involved in taking out a major refinery, with its attendant sites of sprawling petrochemical plants; just about every square foot of such industrial time bombs is filled with highly volatile, flammable materials, including vast pressurized storage tanks for natural gas. And the new Chinese installation at Kuhestak had all that, and more.
Hundreds were killed, thousands injured in Texas City, buildings all over town were blasted beyond recognition. And the devastation was not restricted to the waterfront, or to the refining towers and storage areas. It just about ripped the entire town apart. A radio announcer simply yelled, “Texas City just blew up!” The mushroom cloud rose 2,000 feet into the air. Massive, white-hot steel parts from the French merchant ship SS Grandcamp were hurled into the holding tanks hundreds of yards away, setting off secondary explosions, which in turn caused immense damage.
The burning Grandcamp with its heavy cargo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was responsible for what remains the worst industrial catastrophe in U.S. history. At the time, so soon after World War II, there were few modern safety precautions in place. And of course there was none of the grim voyeurism of late-twentieth-century television, with its voracious, insatiable appetite for agony, heartbreak and disaster, which it finds so helpful in its endless, somewhat childlike, quest for drama and action.
Texas City 1947 remains a milestone in U.S. industrial calamity. And Admiral Arnold Morgan, a native-born Texan himself, had no wish to involve civilian casualties in the little Iranian town of Kuhestak, even though he gave not one jot for the lives of the Chinese technicians at the refinery…. You guys wanna fuck around with the free passage of world oil and gas…guess you should have thought about that real deeply before ordering those mines from Moscow.
In any event, the Chinese refinery had to go. The remaining questions were how quickly and how to get the SEALs out before the whole shooting match went up in smoke and took our guys with it.
Meanwhile, Admiral Dixon stared at the little numbers on the chart, checking out the water depth, turning over in his mind the equation…Shark can’t operate in depths of less than one hundred fifty feet…How near can she go before the guys have to leave in the little electric SDV, running until she touches the sand, and then unloading the SEALs to swim in the rest of the way?
“What d’ya think, Admiral?” Arnold Morgan was stepping aside to allow the CNO some space.
“Shark’s gonna need passageway through the minefield…then she’s got a twenty-mile submerged run nor’nor’east up to this point right here…’bout twelve miles off the Iranian coast…. She’ll be in at least one hundred eighty feet of water all the way there, say 26.36N, right on 56.49E.”
“That’s precisely where I had the rendezvous point, Alan…. Great minds, right?”
“Realistic minds, at least, sir…Shark wouldn’t want to move inshore any farther. She starts leaving a wake—that’s asking for trouble. Iran’s got a few fast attack craft with ASW mortars. We wanna stay real silent.”
“How many guys does the SDV hold?”
“Well, the old ones carried only ten. That’s the one on Mendel Rivers…crew of two and eight SEALs. This new one holds fourteen, so we got twelve active SEAL demolition guys. We’re just lucky the SDV is on the deck of Shark, otherwise we’d be all over the damned place. Still, I guess we’re due for a bit of luck. Haven’t had much for a while, and I gotta real gut feeling about getting Beijing out of Arabia.”
“You and me. What d’you say, General?”
Tim Scannell looked thoughtful. “I was just thinking: Something goes wrong, say the submarine gets hit and crippled, any thoughts on backup? You need a carrier in the area to frighten everyone away, or you want me to order up some fighter aircraft we can deploy out of Oman, with the Brits’ help?”
“Good call, General. Anything hits our submarine, I mean a surface ship, we vaporize it, right?”
“Yessir, Arnie. But how about an Iranian or Chinese Kilo-Class submarine in the area? Both nations have ’em, and as you know they’re little bastards under the water.”
Admiral Dixon responded immediately: “I’ll order a coupla LA-Class nuclear boa
ts to ride shotgun on Shark while she goes in. They’ll pick up a Kilo if it’s close enough.”
“And then?” Arnold Morgan looked quizzical.
“If it’s under the surface, we sink it. No questions asked.”
“Thank you, CNO. That’s my language you’re talking, right there. You can only fuck around with these towelheads and Orientals for just so long, right?”
“Right, sir.”
“No bullshit,” added Admiral Morgan, by way of emphasis.
“Matter of fact, sir,” said Alan Dixon, “I’d say our biggest worry is getting the guys in, once they leave the SDV…. You see, the twenty-meter depth line is all of five miles offshore…the ten-meter line’s only about a half mile farther in…then they got a coupla miles in about four feet of water on flat sand…. Terrain’s fine, but there is a risk of detection…and it’s a long way back to deep water and safety.”
The Shark Mutiny (2001) Page 17