The Shark Mutiny

by Patrick Robinson

  In SEAL tradition, he was not required to accept another order to go into combat. But there was no need for any order. Lieutenant Commander Schaeffer not only volunteered; he insisted, and his old boss Rick Hunter was delighted to have him aboard. The attack on the refinery would be Ray’s first, and last, overall field command, before he returned to the East Coast as a senior BUD/S instructor at Little Creek, Virginia.

  Ray was eminently qualified for this command. Aside from his experience both under fire and undercover, he was a superb navigator and an expert seaman and yachtsman. He was the son of a sea captain and former platoon middleweight boxing champion.

  He was not as big as Rick Hunter, nor as brute-force strong. But then neither was anyone else. But Ray Schaeffer was an ice-cold operator, ruthless with a knife, deadly with any firearm and, under attack, a trained, merciless killer. His men would follow him into hell.

  His 2 I/C would be Lt. Dan Conway, from Connecticut, who had performed with highest distinction in the attack on the Chinese jail. He was thirty now, a tall dark-haired demolition expert from the submarine base town of New London. He’d finished in first place after the BUD/S “Hell Week,” the murderous SEAL indoctrination that breaks one in two of the applicants.

  A superb athlete, Dan had very nearly gone for a career in professional baseball, but Annapolis beat out Fen-way Park for his services, and the ex-college all-star catcher had never looked back. Everyone knew he was destined for high office in the Navy SEALs, and his promotion to Lt. Commander after this mission in the Hormuz Strait was a foregone conclusion.

  One other Lieutenant would be included in the first group, the 28-year-old Virginian John Nathan, serving on his first combat mission. John, the son of a prosperous Richmond travel agent, had elected to become a SEAL specialist in high explosives and their various detonators. He was thus in overall charge of the eleven limpet mines, now stowed in the hold of the giant Navy freighter. Six of them, with specially aimed charges, would be attached to the massive holding tanks in the gasoline and petrochemical areas—another three to the bases of the 100-foot-high steel bubble towers that separated the crude. All eleven were fitted with backpack straps for the swim-in, and large magnets to grip the target surface.

  John Nathan had sat in on the meeting with Admiral Bergstrom and Commanders Bennett and Hunter while they discussed tactics to take out the Control Center. At first the Admiral had toyed with a plan to hit the center with Mk 138 satchel bombs: just hurl them through the windows and run like hell for the fence, right at the last minute, leaving the Chinese to deal with the chaos for a couple of hours before the main charges went off and, hopefully, blew the place to pieces. The destruction of the Control Center would, of course, render it nearly impossible to turn off the valves and isolators that regulated the flow of crude oil through the main pipelines.

  But Rusty was skeptical of this strategy. The SEAL leader from Maine thought the explosion in the Control Center would cause the Chinese instantly to summon assistance from the Iranian base at Bandar Abbas to conduct a thorough search of the entire refinery. It would be, said Rusty, a search that would surely reveal the limpet mines on the tanks and towers. “They’d only need to find one,” he said, “and they’d go through the place, searching every square inch until they found the rest.”

  In his opinion, that would be “kinda silly.”

  No, the Control Center would have to go off bang with all the other stuff, using a delayed charge of a couple of hours to give the SEALs time to get clear, out into the deep water. John Nathan recommended the plastic explosive C4, which looks like modeling clay and can be made into any shape. It works off an M-60 time fuse lighter, which burns through regular green plastic cord loaded with gunpowder at around one foot per 40 seconds. John preferred this fuse because it’s a spring-loaded pin like a shotgun, no matches, no bright light, and extremely quiet, just a dull thud. Also there was a new timing device that could delay it several hours, and in John Nathan’s experience it was just about 100 percent reliable.

  Final details for the second SEAL mission, to the Bassein Delta, were not yet finalized, but all the necessary fuses, plastic explosives, mines and detonators were loaded into the Galaxy for storage at Diego Garcia. There was enough C4 alone in the hold to “blow up half the world,” according to John Nathan, who carried with him the complete list of ordnance throughout the long flight.

  “Something combustible hits this baby,” he said, in his deep Virginian drawl, “guess we’d wobble the goddamned rings of Saturn.”

  Nathan had started off his Navy career as a navigation officer in a frigate, and still liked to pontificate about astronomy, the universe and the solar system. The heavy-set, fair-haired southerner answered to the nickname of Clouds, which everyone thought was hysterical, given its obvious proximity to his present field of expertise, with a progression to the word mushroom.

  Sitting right next to Clouds, on the rear bench, was another southerner, Petty Officer Ryan Combs, from North Carolina. He was a tall, athletic outdoorsman, expert with a hunting gun and a fishing rod. Ryan was only 26, but he was a tremendous swimmer and as good with a machine gun as anyone on the Coronado Base. He could handle the 500-rounds-a-minute M-60E4 single-handedly, and he would carry it under the wire into the Chinese refinery. Commander Bennett had personally requested his appointment to the SEAL combat mission on the shores of Iran. It would be Ryan’s first.

  Rusty had also requested personally the big, beefy Pennsylvanian Rob Cafiero, the platoon’s heavyweight boxing champion, who was as big and almost as strong as Commander Hunter himself. Rob was a mild-mannered giant, with dark, close-cut hair and not an ounce of fat on his 220-pound frame. At 32 he had made Chief Petty Officer, but Rob was ambitious and was studying to take a commission as soon as possible. Like Lt. Nathan, he was an expert in high explosives, but his best field of expertise was unarmed combat. He was a veteran of the conflict in the mountains of Kosovo.

  These were the five key players in the 12-man assault force that would slide into the warm shallows along the coast of Iran fewer than five days from then.

  111600MAY07. USS Shark with

  Harry S. Truman CVBG. South

  of the Hormuz minefield.

  Lieutenant Commander Dan Headley could not make up his mind whether he was being trivial or not. The new orders had arrived that Friday night, while he and the CO had been together in the control room. Dan had read them out to the Commander, whose comment had been, at best, vague.

  The orders specified a critical new mission, the insertion of a SEAL team, a precision task that always heightens tension on a submarine. But Commander Reid had merely said, “I really must take my shoes off.” And then had proceeded to do so.

  Lieutenant Commander Headley had thus found himself for the first time in his life next to a commanding officer who was standing in the control room in his socks.

  It wasn’t much. But it was new. And Dan Headley did not really do new. He was a devotee of the tried-and-tested ways of the United States Navy. He liked and expected his fellow officers to act in a predictable, cautious, but determined way: though sometimes with an added dash of daring, the way most senior warship officers are trained to view an often hostile world.

  He particularly liked his commanding officer to react in a calculated manner. I really must take my shoes off.

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered Dan.

  The trouble was, he could not get it out of his mind, though he knew it to be insignificant. The CO had swiftly returned to normal, even suggested they have a private talk about the insertion later in the afternoon. But he had left without really acknowledging the seriousness of the forthcoming Black Op the following Tuesday night.

  Dan Headley found it curiously disconcerting. And now, as the submarine cruised slowly at periscope depth, 20 miles off the port bow of the Harry S Truman, he made his way down to the confined privacy of the Commander’s personal cabin and tapped on the door.

  “Come in, XO,” call
ed the CO. “I’ve got us some coffee. Let me pour you a cup.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Dan, heading for the second chair at the little desk, and noticing for the first time a small framed print hung on the wall, a portrait really, just a head and shoulders of someone who was obviously an eighteenth-century nobleman.

  While the CO splashed the hot, black coffee into their mugs, Dan Headley leaned over and took a closer look at the little portrait. The gentleman wore a tricorne hat, with a sash across his chest. Beneath the picture were the words L’Amiral, le Comte de Villeneuve.

  Dan found that unusual, and he said cheerfully, “Nice little picture, sir. But why a French admiral?”

  “Oh, you noticed that? It belonged to my grandmother. She was French, you know…my mother’s mother. Lived in a little town called Grasse in the south of France, up in the hills behind Cannes…I went there a coupla times as a kid. Pretty part of the world.”

  “Yessir. I was in Nice once, just along the coast. It was crowded, but kinda warm and cheerful…my dad and I went together, trying to buy a racehorse…little provincial meet down there in the spring….”

  “I didn’t know that was horse-racing country.”

  “It’s not really, sir. But they have a meeting down there before the weather gets warm farther north in Paris. We went especially to buy back a mare we’d sold as a yearling. She’d won about four races, one at Longchamp.”

  “Long way to go to buy a horse.”

  “Yessir. But she was from a family that’d been real fast back in Kentucky. My daddy’s the senior stud groom on a very big farm out there, and the owner just wanted her back as a broodmare.”

  “Did you get her?”

  “Yeah, we got her. Probably paid too much, what with the shipping and all. But when Mr. Bart Hunter—that’s my daddy’s boss—wants a mare, he’ll usually pay the price.”

  “Was she worth it?”

  “Not really. She never bred a stakes horse. But one of her daughters was very good, produced a couple of hotshot milers in New York. Then her next foal, by a top stallion called Storm Cat, fetched $3 million at the Keeneland sales. He couldn’t run worth a damn, but I guess that sale probably quadrupled ole Bart’s money in the end.”

  “I find that very interesting, Dan. The way the talent of a fine family just keeps coming back, sometimes skipping a generation, but still hanging in there, ready to surface.”

  “That’s the way it’s always been in the horse-breeding business, sir.”

  “And it’s not a whole lot different with people, if I’m any judge,” replied Commander Reid.

  “I’m not sure that’s altogether politically correct, sir…breeding people’s a tricky subject—aren’t we all supposed to be born equal?”

  “Believe that, XO, and you’ll believe anything.”

  “You got any hotshot ancestors yourself, sir?”

  “Well, we never really delved into it, but I certainly have some deep connections with the French Navy. Very deep.”

  “Not Admiral Villeneuve?”

  “Non.” Commander Reid paused, almost theatrically raising his head. “We have a connection to the man who effectively won the American Revolution, Comte François-Joseph de Grasse, victor of the Battle of the Chesapeake.”

  Commander Reid dipped his head, as if in deference to the memory of the French Admiral who had held off the British fleet at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on September 5, 1781.

  “Hey, that’s really something, sir,” said Dan. “Was your grandma named de Grasse?”

  “Oh no, the family of François-Joseph merely adopted that title, and named themselves after the town.”

  “Good idea, eh, sir? We get those SEALs in, and then out of Iran, I might do the same. How about Lieutenant Commander Dan of Lexington?”

  Commander Reid never even cracked a smile. Le Comte de Grasse was plainly a man about whom he did not make jokes.

  And this Friday afternoon was plainly a time when he did not make plans. The two men finished their coffee more or less in silence, and the CO suggested a more formal planning meeting at 1100 the next day.

  The new XO left with two unimportant, but nagging, questions in his mind. One, what was this “NON” crap all about? And, two, what the hell was the CO of a U.S. attack submarine doing with a picture of the ludicrous Admiral Villeneuve on the wall? This was a man who had narrowly escaped the annihilation of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, and then commanded the new fleet at the absolute catastrophe of the Battle of Trafalgar, where he was taken prisoner, escorted to England and six months later committed suicide.

  Dan Headley walked back to the control room confirming to himself that he was a loyal XO, resolved to support his immediate boss under any and all circumstances. But in his deepest, most private, thoughts it occurred to him that this Reid weirdo might be a half-dozen cannonballs short of a broadside.

  0400. Monday, May 14.

  U.S. Navy Base. Diego Garcia.

  Indian Ocean.

  The Galaxy freighter came thundering onto the runway in the small hours of the morning, 34 hours after having left the North Island Air Base in San Diego. Most of the men had slept during the second half of the journey, from Pearl Harbor, but they were all tired, in need of a stretch; and the stifling heat of the island, only 400 miles south of the equator, took them by surprise.

  Unlike most arriving passengers after a trans-Pacific journey, the SEALs had to supervise their own cargo. Crates that were accompanying them on the next leg of their journey, up to the flight deck of the Harry S Truman, 2,600 miles to the north, had to be carefully separated for reloading, while the rest of the explosives, which would ultimately be used at the far eastern end of the Indian Ocean, were taken on fork-lift loaders to the main storage area.

  Lieutenant John Nathan and Commander Hunter took care of this task, and Rusty Bennett checked off the matériel being reloaded into a much smaller aircraft for that afternoon’s flight up to the carrier.

  They were escorted to specially prepared quarters, 15 small rooms set aside for the men who were going to work in Iran, 14 more for those who were waiting in Diego Garcia for their orders to embark for the Bassein River.

  The SEALs hung around for only a half hour, during which time they demolished ham, cheese and chicken sandwiches and several gallons of sweet decaffeinated coffee. By 0600 they were all asleep, and would remain so until 1300, when they would eat a major lunch of New York sirloin steak, eggs and spinach, as much protein as they could pile in, before boarding the aircraft for the northern Arabian Sea.

  That journey was of almost seven hours’ duration, and the Navy pilot put down on the Truman’s deck in a light subtropical sou’wester just before 2200 on that same Monday night.

  The carrier was busy that evening, and the howling Tomcats were coming in, in clusters every two minutes. The Admiral had ordered a separate crew to disembark the Special Forces fast and then move their gear down to the hangar for storage, before it would be ferried with the SEALs by helicopter to USS Shark, which would be waiting a half mile off their port beam at 1600 the next day, Tuesday, May 15.

  Their ranks were thinned out now. Commander Bennett and Lt. Commander Ray Schaeffer supervised the opening of the crates and removing of the personal kit each SEAL would require before the short 30-mile submarine run up to the rendezvous point. Lieutenant John Nathan took care of the separate interior boxes that contained the weapons, breathing apparatus and attack boards, before carefully marking the containers of high explosives that would take down the Chinese oil refinery.

  Forty minutes later, the three officers joined their colleagues in a corner of the huge ship’s dining room for what carrier men call MIDRATS (midwatch rations). Tonight they ate specially prepared Spanish omelettes, french fries and salad, and they all ate together, no separation of officers and men. SEALs always ignore this distinction, particularly on the eve of a truly lethal operation, such as this one might very well become.

  They retired
to bed soon after midnight, but for most of them it was a fitful night. The first four hours of sleep were easy because of general tiredness after the endless journey. But by 0400 the SEALs were awake, each man wondering what the next 24 hours would hold for him. The younger first-mission SEALs would not sleep again this night, and even the veteran Lt. Commander Ray Schaeffer was anxious. He climbed out of bed and walked around his room, flexing his muscles, as if taking comfort from his enormous strength. But the mission weighed heavily upon him, and he could not take his mind off the warm shallows through which he must lead his men in the darkness of the following night.

  Commander Bennett was sharing a bigger cabin with Lt. John Nathan, and the younger man was unable to sleep. Three times he stood up and walked over to the door, finally pulling on a sweater, waking Rusty and leaving to find a cup of coffee. Fortunately a big carrier never sleeps, and the dining room was full, mostly of Navy fliers. By some bush telegraph they seemed to know that the broad-shouldered young stranger in the corner nursing coffee in a plastic cup was one of the SEALs going in later that day.

  None of them were strangers to fear and daring, but there is a certain aura surrounding a combat SEAL on the brink of a mission, and no one approached him. No one, that is, until a cheerful 24-year-old pilot from Florida, still in his flying jacket, showed up. He collected a tall glass of ice-cold milk and walked straight over to Lt. Nathan’s table, stuck out his hand and announced, “Hey, how you doin’? I’m Steve Ghutzman.”

  The SEAL explosives chief looked up and nodded. He shook hands and said, “Hi, Clouds Nathan.”

  He felt awkward, sitting there in the middle of the night with this robust stranger, but in truth he was glad of the company. Steve swiftly regaled him with details of the hot, gusting southwest wind out there. “You don’t wanna take your eye off the ball tonight, I’m telling you. The air’s like a goddamned switchback coming in…it wouldn’t be no trouble to slam one of them Tomcats bang into the ass of this fucking airfield. Gotta stay right on top of it, yessir.”