The Shark Mutiny am-5

by Patrick Robinson

  “Mother of God!” breathed the broker for Shell. And the trader for a New York Bank roared “PLUS FIVE…PLUS FIVE FOR 500,000….” Which pegged the price of Brent Crude Futures at an astounding $45 a barrel.

  Dealers left behind in the stampede for the best prices surged forward as a rumor swept the pits that the price was going to $70. Brokers for the big finance houses huddled together, uncertain whether to chase the price up further, or whether to wait for the retreat some thought might not come. At least not on this day.

  Snatches of conversation fired the desperate atmosphere. Yelling, classless British voices from London, interspersed with louder American tones…. “Jesus H. Christ! This can’t last…Bullshit it can’t…they’ve just closed the fucking Gulf of Iran…. It’s only three ships, for chrissakes! It doesn’t matter a flying fuck if it’s only one…right here we’re talking fucking minefields! That’s one step from global war…the U.S. Navy’s moving THREE aircraft carriers into the strait…you think this market’s fake? Forget it. There might be no more oil out of the gulf for six months.”

  Five minutes later the price hit $50 when a Rotterdam trader bid on a precious cargo of Shell crude currently on its way to Scandinavia. For a brief four minutes the price hung and then faltered at around $50. Then a rumor swept the floor that a major fleet of minesweepers from the Indian Navy was under escort moving up the Arabian Sea to the strait.

  The price of Brent Crude Futures hit $55 in 42 seconds. And by now it was impossible to hear anything above the thunder of the pits as the traders piled in, bellowing bids for any available crude oil already free of the confines of the Gulf of Iran. On a normal trading day, 50 million barrels changes hands in this room. In today’s uproar, almost 30 million were traded in the first 45 minutes. There was only one thing worse than paying through the nose for oil, and that was not having any.

  “PLUS TWO…PLUS FOUR…PLUS WHATEVER IT TAKES.”

  By 11 o’clock that morning the price of world fuel oil had doubled. By the close of trade it stood at $72. Up over 150 percent. No one in the International Petroleum Exchange had ever seen anything like it. In New York, West Texas Intermediate had opened at $60 a barrel. Gas oil futures had gone through the roof, and Natural Gas futures, thanks to the exploded Global Bronco, were even higher.

  1630 (local). Tuesday, May 1.

  The White House.

  Admiral Morgan stared at the pile of data before him. The minesweepers were in action in Hormuz, and there was no doubt the field was composed entirely of Russian-made PLT-3s. So far as the Indian commanding officers were concerned, they were looking at three lines, less than half a mile apart. Inshore on the Omani side, they were in deep water, and it looked as though the same three lines stretched clean across the strait to the Iranians’ Sunburn missile site. Lieutenant Ramshawe had thus far been correct in all of his assumptions.

  But now the tasks facing Fort Meade were different. Question One was Where is China now deploying the warships? The Kilos appeared to have disappeared from the face of the earth, but the two frigates that had been flying the national flag of Iran had been picked up by the overheads traveling toward China’s Burmese base in the Bassein River. The Shantou had already left there and was making her way toward the Malacca Strait. But of China’s big Sovremenny destroyer there was no sign.

  Quite frankly, the Chinese completely baffled the President’s National Security Adviser. For a start, he had no idea what they hoped to achieve by providing the hardware for the Ayatollahs to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Nonetheless they had plainly done it, and the Western world along with Japan and Taiwan, and to an extent South Korea, was presently in deep trouble. The world would run out of oil in a matter of weeks if the Gulf of Iran was not opened up very quickly.

  The Chinese obviously thought they were immune to this chaos, and in Arnold Morgan’s opinion they must be taught a very sharp lesson. It might be possible to tweak and irritate the United States, but when you start tampering with the national interest of the world’s one superpower, you might very well end up in deadly serious trouble. Nonetheless Admiral Morgan was determined not to overreact until he could ascertain what the men in Beijing were doing.

  Not so the President. He went into a complete dither as world oil prices went into some kind of meltdown, or rather a meltup. Constantly on the line to his Energy Secretary, Jack Smith, he kept asking, over and over, “But what’s this going to mean for the average American at the gas pump?”

  As early as midafternoon, answers were coming in fast and furious. And they were all the same. Up, up, and up again, as the big gas-station chains found themselves paying fortunes for every barrel of crude oil on either side of the Atlantic. West Texas Intermediate looked set to close even higher than Brent Crude Futures. And still Big Tex Packard’s mighty tanker blazed alone out in the strait, lighting up the waters. When the gusting wind swung back around to the northeast, it sent a gigantic black oil cloud into the night skies above Arabia.

  In a week when gas prices could very easily hit three dollars a gallon at the pump, or even three-fifty, President Clarke faced rampaging inflation on a scale that would send the Federal Reserve into shock. Every commodity and product in the USA was going to suffer because of drastic increases in transport costs. Taxis, buses, diesel freight trains, interstate trucks, airlines, especially airlines, anything that moved was going to be hit.

  And that was not the worst of it. President Clarke had a vision of the ultimate national uproar. The United States starting to run out of oil, with no time to tap its own deep reserves. High gas prices were one thing. No gas at any price was entirely another. If the country ground to a halt, his name would surely be remembered as one of the most ineffective Presidents in the entire history of the nation. And what the hell was his oh-so-brilliant National Security Adviser doing about it? As far as he could see, a big fat zero.

  He picked up his phone and asked a secretary to have Admiral Morgan report to him instantly. Two minutes later, Arnold came growling in through the open door to the Oval Office.

  “You wanted me, sir?”

  “Admiral, what the hell are we doing about this standoff in the gulf?”

  “Sir, we got a minefield across the Strait of Hormuz, as I explained. The gulf is now shut. The Iranians are saying nothing, admitting nothing and they sure as hell aren’t about to clear it. Neither are their buddies in Beijing.

  “That means we have to clear the minefield ourselves, and the Indian Navy, working on our behalf, began that process several hours ago. They have six minesweepers, under our protection, locating and exploding the mines. But it’s slow, and there’s a lot of them. I understand they have attended to three so far, and my guess is forty still to go, in order to secure safe passage for essentially defenseless tankers. There’s already an environmental nightmare of spilled oil in the strait.”

  “Well, what are we doing about the goddamned Iranians? That’s your area, Arnold.”

  “Sir, you want me to declare war on ’em? Or at least advise you to do so?”

  “I don’t know, Arnold.” The President’s voice was rising. “I just know this could be a major national crisis. And we seem powerless.”

  “Well, we’re not that, sir. However, I do not want to make any kind of extravagant move until we clear the mines, quietly, and with as little rancor as possible. A hot war raging around the minesweepers would clearly be absurd. However, when the field is cleared, I’ll be happy to station a lot of muscle in the strait and warn both Iran and China that one false move means we’ll sink ’em.”

  “Well, why not issue that warning right now?”

  “I just did, sir. Three hours ago.”

  “You told ’em we’d sink them?”

  “Sir, I just sent a joint communiqué to Tehran and Beijing informing them of our anger at their conduct, and our intention to eliminate any warship from any nation that tries to interfere with the removal of the sea mines.”

  “And what about the future, Arnol
d? The future. That’s what my job is all about. What about the damned future? How do we know the Chinese might not mastermind this kind of stunt again?”

  “Sir, as you know, they have a very large petrochemical and oil refinery on the southern Iranian coast. And it’s tapped right into the heart of the oil fields of Kazakhstan. I was proposing to recommend its elimination.”

  “It’s WHAT?”

  “Destruction, sir. A better word altogether. I agree.”

  “You mean bomb it?”

  “Sir. Please? Let’s not be crude, like the oil.”

  “Well, what are you saying?”

  “I’m proposing an insertion of Special Forces, to put that refinery out of action forever.”

  “You mean the SEALs?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Can we get them in? And out again?”

  “Sure we can. We can do anything.”

  “But surely everyone will know it’s us?”

  “Same as we know who mined the gulf. But no one’s saying anything, at least not in a confrontational way. We make no accusations, at least not publicly. They make no admissions. We just do what we do.”

  “But surely the goddamned Chinese would go bananas if we blew up their refinery?”

  “Nossir. They’d feel like going bananas. But they’d get a very quiet message from us…You guys want to start fucking around with America’s oil supplies? We’ll show you how to REALLY fuck around.”

  “Arnold, your brutality occasionally takes my breath away. But I like it. Makes me feel safe in this big chair.”

  “My job, sir, is to make every American feel safe, no matter how big or small his or her chair may be.”

  “Should I now conclude this strategy meeting?”

  “Mr. President, this is not strategy. This is direct action. Clear the strait. Protect the sweepers. And then guard the strait with all the menace we can. By that I mean four CVBGs on station between the area inside the gulf, and our base on Diego Garcia. Any foreign warship moves in that area without our express permission, that warship’s history.”

  “Arnold, please go ahead as you think fit.”

  “That’s not quite all, sir.”

  “It’s not? What else? You planning to conquer Russia or something?”

  “No, sir. But I am distressed by China’s plain and obvious Naval expansion. It’s no secret they want a blue-water navy for the first time in more than five hundred years. And it’s no secret they are expanding at a rapid and apparently sustainable rate. In the past few years they’ve created a new submarine fleet. They’ve bought two aircraft carriers, three Russian destroyers and a ton of hardware from the old Soviet missile outfits. They’re reaching out, sir. And we really don’t like it.”

  “We don’t?”

  “Sir, we are staring a major problem bang in the face. China is on the move. They have cozied up to us for a lot of years. And they’ll go on doing so for as long as it suits them. But when they feel they’re good and ready to challenge us, to dominate the East and to swing the balance of power their way…that’s when you’ll see the real face of China. Trust me.”

  “Well, what do you plan to do about that?”

  “I plan to stop that global expansion dead in its tracks. I want that damned great Navy of theirs back in the China Seas.”

  “But how do we do that without starting a shooting war?”

  “Sir, how do we keep our own global presence? How do we keep our own Navy roaming the world’s oceans making sure no one steps out of line? Right here the world enjoys Pax Americana. Just as it once enjoyed Pax Romana. That was peace on the terms of the Romans. Now it’s peace on the terms of the Americans.

  “And we do it by ensuring we have a succession of U.S. bases all over the place…in the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, in the Japanese Islands, with our buddies from London in the Atlantic. That’s the only way. A chain of supplies and allies. That’s what China does not have. Yet. Except for one place. Burma.”

  “You mean that new base of theirs in the swamps west of Rangoon?”

  “That’s the one, sir. The one on the island in the Bassein River. It’s huge. Massive facilities for servicing and refueling warships of all sizes, including submarines. The Chinese once dominated the entire Indian Ocean and my instinct is they want to do so again, because that would give ’em control of the main eastbound oil route through the Malacca Strait. Right now that narrow, shallow freeway, with its goddamned granite bottom, is just too far from China to allow them any influence over its tanker traffic.”

  “Well, how do you propose to discourage them from using their new Burmese base?”

  Arnold Morgan smiled. “Not too hasty right now, sir. We got bigger problems. But if you’ve got any shares in China’s Naval operation on Haing Gyi Island in the Bassein River…sell.”

  4

  020330MAY07. USS Shark. The Indian Ocean.

  Speed 30. Depth 400.

  By the start of the final half hour of the midnight watch, Lt. Commander Headley was already mobile, moving quietly through the 30-year-old, 5,000-ton nuclear boat, a half hour before he was due to take over the control room from Commander Reid.

  He had already been down to the main propulsion room where Lt. Commander Paul Flynn was watching a very minor seal leak on the main shaft. Right now the pumps were operating efficiently and dealing with the incoming fine spray with relative ease.

  “Damn thing wouldn’t want to get any worse, though,” said the dark-haired engineering officer from south Boston. “Still, the rest of the stuff’s looking good — reactor’s smooth, shaft’s steady. At twenty-nine knots she feels like she’s cruisin’. No problems, sir.”

  Dan Headley made his way up to the Navigation Officer’s corner of the ops room. He had only just met young Lt. Shawn Pearson, but he knew he had been rescued with the crew of Seawolf when that massive nuclear attack boat had been lost the previous year in the South China Sea.

  “Hi, Shawn,” he said, leaning on the big table and staring down at the chart. “What are we? ’Bout seven hundred nor’nor-west of DG?”

  “Accurate, sir. Accurate. I like that in an XO…gives me confidence…. I just sent for coffee. Want some, sir?”

  The Lieutenant Commander had immediately liked Shawn Pearson because he was sharp, amusing and never lacked respect for more senior officers. Whatever his part had been in the Seawolf debacle, he had been highly decorated for it — an honor Dan Headley assumed must have been well deserved.

  “Good idea, Lieutenant,” he said. “Keep me awake for the next four hours.”

  “Right now I have us five degrees north of the equator, on line of longitude six-five-zero-zero. As a matter of fact, we’re running fast beneath about a zillion square miles of absolutely nothing. Maybe five hundred miles west of the Maldives, still way short of the most southerly latitude of the Indian Continent…but we’re gettin’ there, sir.”

  “Any ships around?”

  “No, sir. Just our immediate escort, the frigate Vandegrift. She’s steaming about three miles off our starboard beam, sir, same course…three-five-two. We’re just about five miles off the carrier’s port bow, and she’s got a destroyer off each beam—Mason to port, Howard to starboard.”

  “How about Cheyenne?”

  “She’s way off the carrier’s starboard bow, maybe four miles east of us. Same depth.”

  Dan Headley sipped his coffee. “Mind if I take this with me?” he asked companionably.

  “Not at all, sir. It’ll keep you sharp, while I’m sleeping gently.”

  “Well, remember you’ve still got fifteen to go. So long, Lieutenant…don’t get us lost now.”

  “Nossir. I am right on top of this.”

  And as he wandered toward the control room, Dan Headley thought again of the reality of the situation — this huge jet-black steel tube, forging north through the Indian Ocean, hundreds of feet below the surface, in complete secret, a lethal weapon of war, terminally deadly to any opponent. The espr
it de corps in an attack submarine was like no other feeling in any other ship. He felt that he and Shawn Pearson were somehow friends for life, after an acquaintance of just a few hours.

  U.S. Navy submarines do that. They fling people together, causing them to see only the best points in one another.

  Dan Headley was proud to serve on this old ship, and so far he had been impressed with every one of his crew. He especially liked the Chief of the Boat, a big blond former center fielder from the University of Georgia, Drew Fisher. The Master Chief Petty Officer had dropped out of college to try his luck at professional baseball, but failed to make it through a chronic ankle injury.

  He had ended up with no university degree, no money, and no career, in or out of sports. “Sir, I didn’t even have a bat,” he had told Dan Headley. “So I just joined the Navy, and kept right on going.”

  Drew had risen steadily up through the ranks, and in Lt. Commander Headley’s opinion was not finished yet. It was widely rumored that the former Georgia Bulldogs left-hander was on the verge of accepting a commission, and that a full command might not be that far away.

  Drew was only 36 years old, and in addition to his onerous duties on board, he had pushed himself through course after course, gaining qualifications in navigation, weapons, hydrology, electronics, marine engineering. Right now he was working on combat systems and spent a lot of time with Lt. Commander Jack Cressend from New Orleans, Shark’s CS Officer.

  In fact the two men were together outside the control room directly up ahead of Dan, and both men greeted him cheerfully. The Master Chief, like Dan, was early for his watch and had already ascertained that Shark’s new XO was some kind of an expert on thoroughbred horses. Right now, in the small hours of the morning, running hard above the towering underwater mountains of the Mid-Indian Ridge, he wanted to know precisely which colt was going to win the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs this Saturday.