It would take weeks to cap it, especially if the concrete foundation was split, and even this would take special equipment unlikely to be available within 1,000 miles. But the main issue was, from the U.S. Navy’s point of view, that the Chinese base in the eastern waters of the Bay of Bengal should become history.
Meanwhile, Dallas MacPherson, assisted by Mike Hook and Catfish Jones, was manhandling the second bomb up to the huge upper valve, the one that had to be obliterated. It was 0330, and they had the bomb well secure on its moorings. They eased it through the gap and made it fast, hanging in the shaft, swinging in the spooky plumes of white steam still drifting up from below.
Dallas wound in the last of the det cord, wrapping it around the spokes of the red wheel on top of the valve. Then they placed the C-4 plastic explosives in three places on the cast-iron casing of the valve itself. Just below them Rick checked his watch, it was 0334. They had to get out of there before the base started to explode. And they didn’t dare to set the timers in the power plant for anything less than a half hour from the moment they began to head for the marshes where the boats were waiting.
The leader’s mind raced. Say 40 minutes from now…gives us ten minutes to get clear of the building…then a half hour to get clear of the island…is that enough? Don’t wanna get killed by flying masonry…I’m gonna make it forty minutes from now. Just hope to hell it’s not too much time for the Chinks to discover the plot.
“Set that clock for zero-four-one-five, Dallas,” he said. “That’s thirty minutes after the ships, the fuel and the buildings blow. There’s gonna be a lot of chaos. Hopefully the blast from the control and comms building, plus the ships, will blow the ordnance store as well. But we have to get outta here in one piece. And we’re not committing suicide. My daddy wouldn’t like it. Nossir.”
At this exact time, 0334, the night-patrol jeep was running back down the blacktop from the guardhouse. When it arrived at the point where the road swerved right along to the jetties, the driver swerved left and headed directly for the power station, driving across the rough ground.
Rattlesnake Davies, lying in the grass with the machine gun, nudged Buster, and they turned around and saw the lights of the jeep coming toward them—not directly, but approximately.
“Jesus Christ, have they seen us?” he whispered.
“No. But I hate the coincidence,” replied Buster. “What do we do?”
“Nothing. Keep our heads down. I think they’ll go by. First sign they ain’t goin’ by, we take ’em out with the ole MP-5s, all of them, however many.”
By now the Chinese jeep was almost on them, still making a straight line, at a narrow angle toward the southern wall of the power station. If it did not stop, it would pass 25 feet in front of them.
Buster and Rattlesnake, now gripping their small submachine guns, followed the vehicle with their eyes, every sense alert. If it stopped, there were going to be six dead Chinese guards, no question about that, because they would not see the prostrate SEALs until it was much, much too late. But Buster and Rattlesnake both knew the real problem would come after that, after the base rippled into life at the sound of gunfire. Ten minutes later it would ripple into death at the sound of high explosives. It was 0335.
And events were moving rapidly. Rick Hunter and his team were moving swiftly back through the power station toward the exit room through which they had arrived. And, to their horror, Rattlesnake and Buster were watching the Chinese patrol’s jeep pull up right outside that door.
There was no sense of urgency, but it was obvious they were going in. The SEALs’ rookie lookouts were flying across the grass back to the rendezvous point. They hit the ground together right next to Buster. “Jesus Christ,” said one of them, “the bastards are going in. They’ll be behind the guys…oh, shit…Buster…they’ll fucking kill ’em.”
By now the guards were climbing out of the jeep, and Rattlesnake Davies, without a word, wriggled left to the standard M-60 machine gun they had set up in the grass. Buster had already laid the 100-round ammunition belt in the clip. And it was aimed right at the power station door. Lieutenant Rufeng and his deputy were on the steps, the other four right behind them. Each one carried his Kalashnikov. And without a word Rattlesnake Davies, the SEAL from the Louisiana bayous, opened fire with the M-60.
The range was only 70 feet, and the fatal 7.62-NATO rounds tore a path straight at the steps, killing the man now opening the door, and virtually taking Lt. Rufeng’s head off. The other four guards, stunned at the explosion of blood running down the steel door in the dim light of the bare bulb, wheeled around, trying to see where the gunfire was coming from. They tried to raise their Kalashnikovs, but they were facing Rattlesnake Davies directly now, and that was a very poor strategy. He blew all four of them away; the force of those big shells, almost four inches long, slamming into them, actually knocked them sideways into the jeep, one of them hurtling backwards over the hood, his uniform riddled with bullet holes.
It was 0336 in the morning, the darkest time, and the sound of the SEALs’ machine gun, rattling away in the night, had echoed around the base. A light went on in the accommodation block, someone came to the window of the communications room. Up on the foredeck of the Chinese destroyer, two seamen on their watch looked up in surprise. It was gunfire. Unmistakable machine-gun fire. And it was only 160 yards away. Both of them raced aft toward the near-deserted comms room below the aerials.
At which point, 175 yards away, Commander Hunter opened the door to exit the power station and nearly fell over the blood-soaked bodies of Lt. Rufeng and his colleague.
The thick, reinforced walls of the turbine room had spared them the anxiety of listening to Rattlesnake take out the entire Chinese night patrol, but Rick was amazed by what he saw. He jumped over the two bodies, followed by Catfish, Bobby and Dallas, grabbed the rail and jumped the steps in two bounds. In front of him was the jeep, three more bodies lying around it, and one lying on it.
“What in the name of Christ?…” he muttered, just as Rattlesnake, Buster and the three rookies came charging in from the rough ground, Buster saying too loudly, “We had no choice…let’s GO-GO-GO…down to the marsh…do we take the jeep…?”
“Hell NO!” said Rick. “It’s too easy to follow. We’re better off in the dark, running on our own. Get my fucking attack board off my back, will you? We need the compass…. Okay…let’s go, that way…make a diagonal back to the fence at the jungle end…GO NOW! ALL OF YOU! FOR FUCK’S SAKE, RUN!”
And with that, the SEAL leader grabbed the M-60 from Rattlesnake and one of the rookies and tucked it under his arm, checking the belt to see what was left—about 36 rounds. He was the only one of them strong enough to handle it comfortably alone.
“DALLAS! Quick. Blow that fucking jeep up, willya? It’s faster than us and they may follow. Catfish’s got the grenades.”
But Catfish was off and running. Dallas, who had once considered an athletic career at 200 meters—an ambition abandoned only when he failed to make the 1992 U.S. Olympic team at the age of 14—could still run like hell, and he caught Petty Officer Jones in short order. He ripped the pin out of the grenade, and hurled it back at the jeep. Six seconds later, with the SEALs in full flight heading for the woods, it exploded in a fireball.
And it attracted the attention instantly of all four half-dressed but fully armed guards running out of the accommodation block. The light from the jeep illuminated the 11 black-hooded figures pounding across the rough ground making a southwest course toward the trees. And the frightened but disorganized Chinese instinctively opened fire. They were shooting almost blindly into the dark, in high but flickering light from the gasoline flames. But a bullet caught Buster to the right of his shoulder blade, paralyzing his arm, and knocking him flying to the ground.
The Chinese saw the SEAL go down, but they did not see Commander Hunter rumbling along 30 yards behind his men with the M-60 poised. Rick stopped, steadied the weapon, then opened fire at the four run
ning Chinese, cutting them down, dead in their tracks in a bloody scream of anger and fear. Then he turned the machine gun onto the accommodation block itself and blew out all the side windows, in an attempt to discourage anyone else from giving chase.
Meanwhile Dallas and one of the rookies had the wounded Buster on his feet with both arms around their necks. But the pain in his right side was agonizing and he screamed as they tried to carry him to the trees. Rick Hunter finally caught up with them, ordered everyone to stop for 20 seconds, and then he injected a shot of morphine right into the stricken SEAL’s right shoulder.
“Let’s go…,” he said. “Fast as we can…Buster…that shoulder’s gonna ease in a few minutes, old buddy. Don’t worry about it…” Buster Townsend, blood pouring down his back, nodded and smiled. “Thanks, guys,” he said.
And so they struggled on, plunging into the woods, glad of the dark, glad of the cover.
Behind them they had left abject chaos. The fact was that the Chinese Navy was fully aware the base was under attack. They had no idea, yet, of the scale of the attack. Nor indeed who was mounting it. They knew only that there appeared to be a gang of madmen running around murdering people.
The air was alive with the transmissions of cell phones as the comms rooms in the two warships talked both to each other and to the main control center of the base. The Commanding Officer of the Jangwei frigate was fastest into his stride. He hit the buttons to the destroyer suggesting they get helicopters into the air, with lights and pilots with night goggles. It was plainly essential to locate the killers as soon as possible.
The CO of the destroyer reacted equally quickly. Both of his helicopters were in a ground-crew service area, way over beyond the fuel farm. It was a workshop complex, with fuel pumps. But the choppers rarely used it, and the U.S. satellite trackers had scarcely bothered with it. The Captain knew they were there, and he moved fast to alert his air crew.
And this was just as well, because it was 0344 when the destroyer’s CO was on the phone, and his ship was just about 23 seconds away from being blown sky-high. And so was the frigate directly astern of him.
12
0345. Thursday, June 7.
Haing Gyi Island, Burma.
On an academic level, it was the limpet mine of Commander Rick Hunter, expertly clamped flat among the barnacles on the port side of the Luhai destroyer’s keel, that exploded first. Buster Townsend’s mine exploded two and a half seconds later. The viciously tailored “shaped” charges magnified the power of the detonation fivefold, and the limpets blew two gaping holes, one on either side of the keel, the blast slicing through the steel hull of the 6,000-ton warship.
Generally speaking this was all bad news for the People’s Liberation Army/Navy, but not quite as severe as it would become four seconds later when the Luhai’s torpedo magazine went up with a thunderous explosion, killing half of the ship’s company.
Any onlooker might have been dumbfounded at the scale of the explosion, stunned by the flames and billowing jet-black smoke. But it would nonetheless have been difficult to focus attention strictly on the destroyer, because eight seconds after the torpedoes blew, the 2,000-ton Jangwei II frigate, moored dead astern, did a passable imitation of Hiroshima 1945, when the limpet mines fixed by Petty Officer Catfish Jones and Chief Mike Hook detonated with massive force right under the guided-missile magazines.
The little Jangwei, only 360 feet long, a ship that punched a lot harder than its size, paid the penalty for that and literally blew itself to pieces. The entire complement of guided missiles, the SSM 6 YJ-1 Eagle Strikes, the CSS-N-4 Sardines, the 1-HQ-7 Crotales, all contributed to the crushing explosion, and the docks shuddered, lit up with two towering fires that could be seen 10 miles away.
Only six men would survive in the frigate, only 50 out of 250 in the destroyer. Automatic fire alarms began to howl throughout the base, but they were drowned out by the colossal explosion in the fuel farm as one million gallons of diesel and jet fuel detonated into a raging furnace, courtesy of the Louisiana SEALs Rattlesnake Davies and the now-wounded Buster Townsend. Their carefully timed Mk-138 satchel bombs had blown apart a total of five holding tanks, and within moments the other seven had formed a gasoline inferno.
The roar from the fire almost, but not quite, drowned out the noise of the two other bombs blasting apart the fuel control center. In the middle of all this the coils of det cord, wrapped around the main electricity cables by Dallas MacPherson and Mike Hook, exploded with sufficient force to blow the manhole cover 60 feet into the air and permanently wreck the electronic fuel-control system.
And way over on the other side of the inlet, an unbelievable blast right by the main boiler in the basement of the control-and-communications center paid further tribute to the smooth black skills of Buster and Rattlesnake. The explosion literally caused the entire building to cave in, crushing all of its five occupants to death.
Residents of the base, at least those not gunned down in their tracks by the marauding U.S. Navy SEALs, believed they were witnessing the end of the world. Any other explanation seemed utterly inadequate. And the whole spectacularly awful scenario had erupted in under two minutes; out of nowhere. There was zero evidence of an attack either from the air or the sea. The place just seemed to be blasting itself to pieces.
Meanwhile, struggling through the woods on the north side of the base, the SEALs were still 1,200 yards from the edge of the marsh. Buster was losing blood, and he was still in pain despite the morphine. Rick Hunter ordered them to stop while he examined the wound, and to his dismay he discovered the bullet was still lodged in the flesh on the right side of Buster’s upper back, and he was losing blood fast.
He took Dallas MacPherson aside and told him to bring out the rest of the medical kit. Between them they had sticky and plain bandages, plus disinfected swabs for just this kind of wound, plus more disinfectant. But they had no groundsheets and they had to kneel Buster down, and he kept losing consciousness, and Rattlesnake held his head and splintered shoulder. Dallas held the tiny pinpoint light beam they had brought, and Rick Hunter gritted his teeth, and using a large pair of tweezers, designed for this particular task, gripped and pulled the bullet out.
Blood cascaded from the wound and Dallas tried to stop it with a strip he tore from his own shirt. Rick used a gauze pad soaked in strong disinfectant to clean it. And for the first time, Buster Townsend screamed, and Rattlesnake Davies, one of the toughest men ever to wear the trident, broke down and wept at the agony of his lifelong friend.
Rick Hunter kept going. He used another gauze pad and pressed it on the wound. Dallas fixed it tight with a roll of bandage that he wound around Buster’s chest, then stuck it down firm with the sticky tape. They stuck another length of this around Buster’s upper arm, taping it tight to his side. Then Rick Hunter injected him with more morphine, and the SEAL climbed back to his feet, and Rattlesnake just said, “I’m taking him.”
He put Buster’s good arm over his shoulder and held his wrist, and with his own arm around the wounded man’s waist, they pushed forward, walking as well as they could through the undergrowth of the Burmese forest.
“I’m glad we did that,” said Rick. “We’ve stopped the blood, stopped the infection, and it isn’t going to get worse before we reach a doctor.”
Moments later Mike Hook’s radio, tuned to the frequency, picked up the bleep-bleep-bleep of the homing device in the inflatables, now parked somewhere down by the Letpan Stream. “Got ’em, sir. They’re waiting.”
“Good job, Mike…we just gotta stay on this course,” said Rick. “It’s due west and right now the attack board compass has us headed two-seven-zero. We’re right on the money—gonna pop right out of these woods on the left-hand fork of the stream, right where Shawn drew the spot.”
“You want a couple of us to make a bolt for it?” asked Lt. MacPherson. “Just to let the boat drivers know we’re on our way—tell ’em we got a problem?”
“Good call. Why don�
��t you, Mike and one of the rookies take that other little radio and get down there. Bobby’ll handle the transmitter. And use your compass—you know they say it’s impossible to walk through trees in a straight line?”
“Okay, boss. See you in about fifteen minutes.”
070400JUN07. USS Shark. Bay of Bengal.
16.00N 94.01E. Speed 3. Racetrack course. PD.
The watch changed at 0400, and Lt. Commander Dan Headley still had the ship. No sign yet of Commander Reid, who had remained distant throughout the SEAL operation at Haing Gyi. Dan Headley knew he was not coming, at least not formally, to take over the watch. Although he thought the CO might show up casually a little later. He had just seemed extremely relieved when the XO had requested that he handle Shark during the Special Forces operation.
At that moment Lt. Pearson came into the control room and said the CO wished to see him in his room immediately.
“Any clue why, Shawn?”
“None, sir. He just stuck his head out of the door when I was passing and said to tell you.”
“Okay…Officer of the Deck, you have the ship.”
“I have the ship, sir,” replied Lt. Matt Singer.
Dan Headley made his way down to Commander Reid’s room, and was surprised to find the CO unshaven and looking fraught, which he considered was several degrees worse than worried.
“Hello, sir,” he said. “What’s up?”
“We have a very serious problem,” replied the boss of USS Shark.
“We do?”
“We certainly do. And before I elaborate, I want you to understand that I am talking about a subject on which I am something of an expert.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Mercury, XO, is just coming into retrograde.”
Dan Headley had rarely, probably never, been quite that bewildered.
The Shark Mutiny Page 39