“What happens is the crude gets pumped via pipes, through a furnace, which heats it to maybe seven hundred twenty-five Fahrenheit. The resulting mixture of gas and liquids then passes into a vertical steel cylinder, called a fractioning tower, or a bubbling tower.
“This little bastard is what we’re after. Because inside that tower we got a lot of shit happening — the heavy fuels condense in the lower section, light fractions like gasoline and kerosene condense in the middle and upper sections. The liquids, all highly inflammable, are collected in trays and drawn by pipes along the sides of the tower. Some fractions never even cool enough to condense, and these get passed out through the top of the tower into a vapor recovery unit.
“Right here I’m talking high-test incendiary. One of these towers goes up because of a bomb stuck on its lower casing, can you imagine? It blows the heavy fuel oil into a blizzard of fire that hits gasoline, kerosene and then liquefied gas in the vapor unit. That tower, as far as you’re concerned, is potentially one of the world’s biggest fireworks.”
He rapped the screen with his ruler…. “See this group here at the north end? There’re ten towers…as far as I can see, the biggest maybe a hundred feet high…. We wanna bomb this one…this one…and this one, out here on the right by these holding tanks. According to Jack, they’re full of gasoline. I’d say if the towers blow, they’ll take the storage tanks with ’em. They might even take the entire local landscape, so I’d prefer you guys to be well clear before you detonate.”
He paused for effect. But no one spoke. So he pressed on. “This tall building here,” said Admiral Morgan, “is the control center. It is essential that you hit this. And hit it hard. Because in there they can turn off the flow of oil through literally miles of pipeline. We don’t want that. We want that stuff flowing in, feeding the fire, keeping it raging.
“And finally we come to this group of holding tanks. Jack says this is where they store thousands of tons of deep-frozen liquefied natural gas. Looks like there’re around thirty of them, and they are strategically well placed from our point of view. They are nowhere near the towers, and far from the control center, so we’re not wasting any of our explosive assets. You can see from this picture the tanks are huge, maybe fifty feet high and forty feet in diameter. I’d guess if we hit five of them, that’d send the rest of them up. It would also give us a triangle of fire and explosions, the towers, the control center and the holding tanks, which will certainly take out this middle storage area that lies between them.”
He looked at his audience and noticed that he still had their attention. “Gentlemen,” he said, “out here on the northwest of the plant you can see yet another large grouping of tanks. Jack thinks this is the chemical area, maybe a lot of ammonium nitrate for fertilizer. I realize that you are going to be shorthanded, only twelve of you can go in…but if you found yourselves with some spare time, with a little spare explosives, you could do a lot of damage out there with the stuff that once blew up Texas City.”
“Arnold,” interrupted Admiral Bergstrom, “were you proposing to nail down the entire plan here for us to go away and…er…well, refine?”
“Absolutely not, John. I’m done. I just wanted us to be singing from the same hymnbook for the seaward insertion and getaway. And for the extent of the mission, the amount of TNT required and the main targets you must attack. The number of SEALs going in is dictated by the size of the ASDV. The rest is up to you, how and when you break through this high wire fence to get in, how you deal with possible alarms and guards. I’ll have any and all information from Fort Meade fed into Coronado at all times during the next few days. And the Navy will be ordered to supply anything requested by either Commander Hunter or Commander Bennett during the missions. By that I mean, of course, heavy backup firepower. Whatever it takes.”
“Okay, Arnold. Now, how about the Bassein River? Mission Two?”
“I’m in the process of taking some heavy-duty advice on that, John. But I have prepared charts for you and Rick to take back to California. I’ve also got a few godawful black-and-white pictures of the place, but NRO are working on some better, clearer stuff, which I’ll get to you.
“This whole operation is strictly Navy. That’s why Alan Dixon is taking overall command of it personally. Especially during this extremely classified stage. He and I will be in constant communication, but I’d prefer that you two work directly together. Depending on the advice we get, we may have to change tactics. I just don’t want to get into anything that might be obsolete next Thursday.”
“Understood, sir.”
By 1145 the meeting was over. The three SEALs declined lunch and left to board their helicopter immediately: White House lawn to Andrews Air Base — Andrews direct to San Diego. Military aircraft. As Admiral Morgan would have phrased it, “No bullshit.”
1000 (local). Thursday, May 10.
Headquarters, Eastern Fleet.
Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.
Admiral Zhang was puzzled. Here was the United States with the biggest concentration of Naval power assembled since the war with Iraq seventeen years ago, and they had made absolutely no communication with either of the nations that laid down the minefield in the first place.
“You think they may not know who the culprits were?” he asked the C-in-C, Admiral Zu Jicai.
“They know,” he replied. “They saw our warships down there. Indeed, they just crippled our leading destroyer. At least I think they did. No proof, of course.”
“Well, if that’s the case we have a rather strange silent war going on, wouldn’t you say? Two of the most powerful nations, plus the guardians of the old Persian Gulf, grappling in some three-way sumo headlock without one word being spoken by the protagonists.”
“And, unhappily, no referee,” said Admiral Zu.
“It’s bizarre. The Americans have uttered no formal protest about the minefield. But they have moved a staggering lineup of Naval power into the area, and it’s standing there like that ridiculous ape they all admire so much…. What’s his name? Hong Kong?…No, Emperor Kong…King Kong, that’s him…fists flailing, but no one to strike.”
Admiral Zu chuckled. “The trouble with the Americans is they always have a hidden agenda. We cannot drop our guard. And we don’t want our warships anywhere near them.”
“You think they have an agenda for striking back at us? We have, after all, been responsible for the total destruction of four extremely expensive oil tankers.”
“It’s hard to know, Jicai. I don’t think they would come after us and attack one of our cities, or even a Naval base. So what’s left?”
“Well, we do have a very large oil refinery in Iran.”
“Oh, yes. But the Americans won’t attack that. They revere money too much, and oil is currently the world’s most precious commodity. They might one day try to buy shares in it, but they wouldn’t destroy it. That would just turn them into reckless cowboys like Saddam Hussein, ignoring the ecology of the region, not to mention a lot of civilian deaths.”
“Nonetheless, Yushu, I think we should strengthen the guard at the refinery, perhaps borrow some of those attack dogs the Navy has at Bandar Abbas.”
“It certainly could not be harmful, Jicai. And I agree with you. We ought not to underestimate the innate viciousness of those men in the Pentagon.”
“Even if, for the moment, their actual agenda remains hidden, Yushu.”
“As indeed does ours, my Jicai.”
6
101200MAY07. USS John F. Kennedy. 10.40S 146E.
On the face of it, Big John was not making much progress. The giant carrier was back in warm waters 200 miles off the Australian state of Queensland, having passed once more through the narrows of the Torres Strait. There was still no wind, they were still running at flank speed and it was still hotter than hell. The only difference from one week ago was they were heading east, rather than west. Big John had been diverted.
No one had given a reason. There was just a ters
e signal from the Third Fleet HQ in San Diego to come about and head right back the way they had come. Forget Diego Garcia. Make instead for the Pacific, steer east of New Guinea and head on north, taking up station off the east coast of Taiwan.
There was a widespread suspicion on board that China must as usual have been prowling around too close to the independent island in which the USA had such a major investment, and for which she was pledged to fight, very nearly, to the death.
However, the truth was more mundane. The Nimitz-Class carrier Ronald Reagan, just out of major overhaul in the San Diego yards, was simply judged to be in need of a considerably longer workup period than one week.
And with Constellation, Truman, Stennis and Roosevelt all in the Hormuz area, it was decided the Reagan ought to take the proper time to get into front-line shape, and that the JFK could perfectly easily swing around and make the Taiwan patrol, leaving the other four CVBGs to take care of the oil problems at the gateway to the gulf.
Those four battle groups packed enough of a punch to deal with any problem in the entire history of the planet. The mere presence of Constellation and Truman had frightened away the Iranians, the Chinese and anyone else wandering around trying to make a buck.
Which still left Big John thundering along toward the Coral Sea, with everyone sweating themselves half to death, wondering what the hell the Chinese had done, and what indeed the hell they had done to deserve making this lunatic circular route south of Indonesia, in seas that were of no interest to anyone.
0800. Thursday, May 10.
U.S. Navy Base, Coronado.
Even in the shadowy, unlit inner sanctum of SPECWARCOM, this was as secret as it gets. Deep in one of Coronado’s underground ops rooms, behind locked doors and armed guards, twenty-four handpicked Navy SEALs were undergoing a two-day briefing by three of the toughest men who ever wore combat boots: Admiral John Bergstrom, Commander Rick Hunter and Commander Rusty Bennett.
The task before them was relatively compact by SEAL standards — the destruction of two foreign installations, one of them loosely guarded. But the overall intent of the operation was Herculean…to drive the Republic of China out of the Gulf of Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and, in particular, the Bay of Bengal. In that precise order.
Twenty-four members of America’s most elite, ruthless Special Forces, against the collective will and determination of 1.3 billion Chinese citizens, and their 300,000-strong Navy. The odds, by any standards, were not in any way promising. For the Chinese, that is.
In fact there was a total of 28 battle-ready SEALs in the ops room, counting four “spares” should anyone be injured. Commander Hunter himself was one of the main group, and would personally lead in his team of 12 on Mission Two.
Right now Commander Bennett was going over the initial insertion of troops, the final four or five miles that Assault Team One would swim/wade, en route to the sprawling Chinese refinery on the shores of Hormuz. Before him was the chart of the shallow waters all along the beaches.
“Well, guys,” he said, in the SEALs’ usual informal method of command, “you can all see these depths…if you’re lucky, the ASDV will get in to within four miles, but this damn chart is obviously not reliable…if the submarine can make it right in here to the ten-meter line, that’s about the best you can hope for…that’ll be a three-mile swim in warm water not more than nine feet deep.
“Then it looks like you may have to wade the last mile. But the good news is there is no formal military surveillance. We’ve swept and surveyed it thoroughly and found nothing. The nearest foreign military is thirty miles away. Also you have tremendous cover right offshore, a U.S. Navy presence that for the past couple of weeks has plainly frightened everyone else to death.”
Rusty paused and asked for questions. There were none. And now he flicked off the chart of the seaward approaches and zoomed in on the Chinese refinery. “Right here I want you to start taking notes,” he said. “Each of you will be provided with a clear ten-by-eight print of the objective you see on the screen. And obviously you will make your approach from the west, through this marshy area, up the beach and across these sand dunes. You’ll see from the satellite shots, there is cover in here, within four hundred yards of the perimeter fence, and that’s important.
“Because we want you to make two separate entries. First night, you’ll reach the perimeter fence at around midnight. I want you to cut it cleanly on three sides, a gap big enough for two men at a time to go through. I want a team of four, each armed with ordnance, to go to work right away on this near group of storage tanks.”
He pointed at what looked like a cluster of 28 giant white tin cans, 30 feet high, 60 feet in diameter. “I want you to place the explosives at the base of three of these,” he said. “They’re made of cast concrete, with steel casing on the outside. Each one is full of just-refined petroleum — see this pipeline?…You can follow it due west and then pick it up out near the new offshore loading bay. It’s gotta be gasoline, which, as you know, burns up pretty good.
“This is not a time-consuming task. I’m talking twenty minutes’ work, maximum, from the time you get in through the wire. Of course, if you should be caught or attacked, the entire mission is canceled.”
Rusty paused again, took a long swig of iced water, and proceeded. “Three more of you will take care of cutting the wire on the outer fence, and then folding and clipping it back into position at the conclusion of the first night ops. That team will also be responsible for observing and avoiding guard patrols. For obvious reasons we do not want to be detected, because our main assault will be on the following night…. Questions?”
“How many bombs do we carry in, sir?”
“Six for the holding tanks, three for each of the two groups. Three for the towers, which could be overkill since I suspect one would blow the hell out of ten square miles of oil pipelines. And three more for the control center, two ground level, one higher up if possible. If there’s time you’ll need another couple for the petrochemical area, but I realize there may not be. That’s a total of fourteen — one each for most of you. However, three mines go in through the wire the first night, eleven the second.
“I know that’s a lot to do, with your own personal weapons, plus the Draegers, the attack boards and the detonation kit, but it’s not that bad, except for the long wade-in through the shallows.”
“Are we taking in any heavy weapons, in case we get into real trouble?”
“No. Nothing real big. If anything unexpected happens, you’re one radio shout from help. We’ll have helicopters ready to take off from Constellation at one minute’s notice, get you the hell outta there.”
“How about the goddamned Iranians get helos up if we’re detected?”
“Anything takes off from any Iranian military or Navy base, we take it out instantly. As far as I’m concerned, your safety is not an issue. You’re protected by the heaviest front-line muscle we have…. Danny, it’s secrecy we’re interested in. Just don’t get detected.”
“Okay, sir,” replied Lt. Dan Conway, another decorated veteran of the South China Sea operation last year. “Softly softly, catchee Chinese monkey.”
“Never mind Chinese monkey, sir. How about Chinese woofer — attack dogs? If they’ve got Dobermans or shepherds, we’d have to shoot them or they’ll try to tear us to pieces…we’d be into a goddamned uproar at best.”
“Right now we’ve seen no evidence of any guard dogs in the refinery. In fact, we’ve not even located formal guard patrols. Langley tells us there are no guard dogs. However, I agree we should consider the matter, because one damned dog going berserk and barking like hell could wreck the secrecy of the operation. Which would not be fatal, because our main objective is destruction. But we would very much like to get in, and out, unseen and unknown.”
“If we shoot any dogs, they gotta know we’re in there, right?”
“Correct. But we might find a way to silence a couple of Doberman
s without killing them, if we were unlucky enough to run into a couple on the first night. Second night doesn’t matter so much, since I don’t plan any survivors.”
The intricate details of the SEAL attacks wore on through the whole of that Thursday, and, after dinner, into the night. They reconvened on Friday morning, and concluded late in the afternoon, each man now fully acquainted with his task and how to carry it out to the letter. No one ever suggested it was going to be easy.
0930. Saturday, May 12.
200 miles west of San Diego.
30,000 feet altitude.
The huge U.S. Navy Galaxy, which carried the SEAL assault teams, was making 400 knots above the Pacific, bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After a short refueling stop there and the unloading of several tons of marine spares, the remainder of the 13,000-mile journey to America’s Indian Ocean base at Diego Garcia would be nonstop.
The SEALs sat together in the rear of the aircraft, their personal gear stowed in packing cases with the rest of the combat equipment they would haul into the Chinese oil refinery. Each man had carefully packed his flexible, custom-made neoprene wet suit. His big SEAL flippers, for extra speed, were also custom-made. On the instep of each one was the lifetime identification number awarded to him after passing the BUD/S course.
All of them had packed two modern scuba-diver’s masks, the bright Day-Glo colors for amateurs carefully obscured by jet-black water-resistant tape. The attack boards, which the lead swimmers would use on the swim-in, had been carefully stowed. To a marauding SEAL, this piece of equipment represents almost certain life or death.
The leader holds it with both hands out in front of him, his eyes constantly flicking between compass and small clock, neither of which betrays even a glint. No SEAL ever goes into the water wearing a watch, for fear a shaft of light off its bright metal casing might reflect back and alert a sentry or a harbor-wall lookout.
The Shark Mutiny am-5 Page 19