by Dick Couch
“Here’s where we are,” the ops officer said, pointing to a location almost due north of the tip of the Horn, “and here is where you need to cross the coast. We can get the Michigan safely to a point here some twenty-three miles offshore, then it becomes a little too shallow for us. At this offshore location, the two of you will board a SEAL delivery vehicle for the rest of the trip. The SDV will get you to about a mile offshore, where it then shallows up for them. You’ll have to swim the rest of the way.”
The two SEALs studied the chart. “How soon will you be in position to launch the SDV?”
“We’re only about thirty miles from the launch site now, so we could easily be there in a few hours.” He paused to glance at his watch. “Since we have to wait until dark, or about twenty-one hundred this evening, we’ll just be idling here in the Gulf of Aden, avoiding surface traffic. This will give you about sixteen hours to prep your gear, run through the launch procedures, and maybe get in a few hours’ sleep.”
Ray looked at A.J., then the Michigan’s ops boss. “Easy day, sir.”
“We here on the Michigan,” Captain Toohey intervened, “fully understand our orders. We’ll get you to the launch coordinates, and we’ll get you on your way. I’ve not been read in to the specifics of your mission ashore but I know there are issues of national security and homeland security in play here. When this all gets resolved, I’d like to be able to tell my crew of the role they played in this, if security protocols allow for it.”
“Understood, sir. When this is over, we’ll do what we can to see that you’re included in the after-action reporting. No promises, but we’ll try.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you and good hunting.”
They discussed the mechanics of the Michigan’s role in the mission, and then the COB led them back to what had been the missile compartment of the submarine, where the massive silos once housed the Trident D-5 ICBMs and enough megatonnage to create a nuclear winter. In those strategic-deterrent times, the crew referred to these closely placed silos as Sherwood Forest. Now four of the silos housed advanced cruise missile sabots, poised in the ICBM silos like the cylinders of a revolver handgun. Other silos had been converted for storage and troop-support requirements for embarked special-operations personnel. Once they reached the SDV area, Ray and A.J. were greeted with a barrage of chiding.
“Well, for Christ’s sake—look what the COB dragged in.”
“All this trouble for these two?”
“I thought this was a big, secret, high-profile mission. And here they send in the second team. Go figure.”
There were six of them, SEALs from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, stationed on Ford Island, in Hawaii. These SEALs specialized in the underwater launch and recovery operations associated with SEAL delivery vehicles—mini-submersibles that piggybacked on larger nuclear submarines like the Michigan and took SEALs into waters too shallow for the bigger boats. The boats carried by the Michigan for this mission were the Mk8 Mod 1 SDVs. These were “wet” submersibles, meaning that they have seawater inside the SDV as well as outside. While this subjects the occupants to ambient conditions, the simplicity of a non-pressurized fiberglass hull makes the little craft both simple and reliable.
“You know, A.J., if I knew that we had to work with these turkeys, I wouldn’t have volunteered for this important and dangerous mission.”
“Yeah, well y’know, Ray, we didn’t exactly volunteer. We’re just here following orders.”
“Still, you’d think that we’d be given some better support than this bunch of misfits.”
The SDV Team One SEALs each in turn greeted their brothers from Team Seven with handshakes and hugs. Meetings between SEALs from sister Teams are often accompanied by a great deal of bantering and good-natured condescension. The COB watched all this with a grin and shook his head. With close to thirty years in the Navy under his keel, he knew all about submarines and submariners. These SEALs were a different lot. After a few minutes of greetings and grab-ass, the SDV officer in charge, a master chief petty officer, called for order. They then began to talk through the mechanics of the launch and the clandestine delivery of the two reconnaissance SEALs to a precise location on the coast of Somalia.
* * *
The USS Makin Island (LHD-8) was an updated, carbon copy of the Bataan and the Bonhomme Richard and the last of the eight Wasp-class amphibious warfare ships. Since the U.S. Navy no longer had the luxury of the huge base at Subic Bay in the Philippines, any military contingency in Southeast Asia of any size had to be addressed by an afloat presence. For this reason, the Makin Island, her diverse air group, her embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit of 1,400 Marines, and a SEAL task unit had been cruising the waters of the South China Sea off the island of Luzon. The SEALs and the Marines had detachments working with the Filipino military to counter Muslim secessionists in the southern archipelago in the Sulu Sea. So it was with some reluctance that the captain of the Makin Island recalled his disbursed SEAL elements and their combatant craft and put his ship on a course for Malaysia. After heading south for a full day with no reason given to the captain, and some harsh message traffic up his chain of command, he was granted limited code-word clearance, as it related to his ship’s orders. That evening the SEAL task unit commander and Senior Chief Otto Miller, charts in hand, knocked on the door of the captain’s sea cabin.
“Come in, gentlemen. My mess specialist has just brewed a fresh pot of coffee. I only hope you have some fresh perspective as to why my ship had to abandon its duties off the Philippines and is now making best speed for Malaysia.” Captain Evin McMasters, the skipper of the Makin Island, was easygoing, competent, and well liked by his crew. Yet it was all he could do to remain civil at having been kept in the dark while his embarked SEALs seemed to know a whole lot more than he did. When they were seated around the small conference table, the captain continued. “So, Commander,” he said, pushing two mugs of coffee across the table, “what the hell’s going on?”
Lieutenant Commander Todd Crandall was the embarked SEAL task unit commander. In addition to a platoon and a half of SEALs, he had an Mk5 boat detachment and two 10 meter-RHIB (rigid-hull inflatable boat) detachments. The TU also carried the associated administrative, technical, and maintenance personnel to include Senior Chief Miller’s cadre of intelligence analysts. The TU commander was a short, serious former enlisted man, who had been a boatswain’s mate before he was a SEAL. He knew the blue-water Navy, and he knew Special Operations. Although he did not like the tone of the Makin Island’s commanding officer, who was about his same age, he could well appreciate the man’s irritation at being kept in the dark.
“Captain, I’m going to let Senior Chief Miller read you into this. He’s been with the operation since the beginning, and he has a good handle on the situation.”
“Okay, Senior, let’s have it.”
“Uh, it’s a rather long story, sir. Before we begin,” he said as he sipped appreciatively at the coffee, “let me apologize for your not being read in to this operation from the beginning. Sometimes those up the line, in the interest of security, get a little stingy with the information. So let’s take this from the beginning.”
* * *
Aboard the USS Michigan, Ray and A.J. stood off to one side in their dry suits. The previous sixteen hours had been occupied with a few hours’ sleep and a lot of preparation and briefings, along with a final text message from Lieutenant Engel and Chief Nolan. They were now in the metal chamber on the deck of the Michigan called the dry deck shelter, a pressurized garage whose interior walls were a maze of pipes, air flasks, and fittings. In the harsh fluorescent glow of the crowded space, a single SEAL delivery vehicle rested in its cradle.
For now, there was little for the recon SEALs to do; they were merely spectators to the preparations that would see them from the Michigan to their drop-off point off the Somali coast. They wore only their Mk15 scuba rigs, which had been meticulously prepared earlier that afternoon. Since the depth of the
dry deck shelter would be close to sixty feet, they would use the more sophisticated Mk15 mixed-gas diving rig rather than the standard Dräger rebreather. While the SDV SEALs and their diving-submersible technicians made their final checks, the speaker overhead barked out the launch countdown.
“Ten minutes to launch sequence—ten minutes to launch sequence. All nonessential personnel should now exit the shelter.”
Then, “Five minutes to launch sequence initiation. All craft personnel should be in place. All hanger handlers should be in place.” The hatch that mated the dry deck shelter to the Michigan was now closed, and they were environmentally segregated from the mother submarine.
Ray and A.J., helped by two SDV SEALs, climbed into the rear compartment of the SDV. Up in the forward compartment, the pilot and navigator were already in place, powering up their propulsion and navigation systems. Both had done this dozens of times before in training, but given that this was an operational mission, they went through their checklists with additional attention to detail. The SDV master chief, in dry suit and traditional scuba attire, stepped to the side of the submersible and offered his hand, first to A.J., then to Ray.
“You sure that you don’t need me to go along to keep you two out of trouble?”
“Thanks, Master Chief. We could probably use the help, but three’s a crowd, and this one’s a sneak and peek.”
“Then good luck to you both. The SDV will stand offshore and surface at half-hour intervals for a comm check and in case you need an emergency extraction. They’ll stay on station for about four hours before they head back to the Michigan.”
“Thanks for everything, Master Chief. Your guys are great.”
“Ditto, Master Chief,” Ray echoed. “Mahalo and aloha.”
The senior chief took his position along the forward bulkhead of the shelter, from where he would direct the launch. The SDV pilot and navigator signaled that their systems were up and they were ready to launch. Two SEALs and two SDV Team diving technicians stood by on either side of the SDV to assist with the launch. On the signal of one of the diving techs, Ray and A.J. began to purge their scubas, breathing in from the rig and exhaling through their nose and mask so as to replace the air in their lungs with the nitrogen-oxygen mix in their scubas. A loud buzzer sounded, and the dry deck shelter began to fill with water. As it filled, swallowing up SDVs, SEALs, and divers, the pressure inside the shelter was gradually increased to equal that of the sixty-foot depth at which the Michigan was moving through the Gulf of Aden. Her forward progress was about three knots, just enough to make steerageway and to hold depth. The fluorescent lights in the shelter now took on an emerald shade. Then the launch crew began the much-rehearsed and well-choreographed sequence of events that undocked the SDV, attached the bow planes, and eased the craft gently aft and out from its underwater hanger. A.J. and Ray felt rather than saw the big pressure door hinge back to open the dry deck shelter to the open ocean. They did notice the fluorescent lighting of the shelter give way to the blackness of the open sea.
The SDV was towed by a steel cable as it followed the mother sub, hovering just behind and above the shelter. When the pilot and navigator were again satisfied with their systems and instrumentation, the pilot turned on his lithium-ion-powered electric motor and began to match the speed of the Michigan. He then dropped the tow cable. For several minutes, the SDV matched the course and speed of the big submarine, like a small pilot fish keeping station on a whale shark. Then it veered to port and took a southerly heading for Somalia.
At the SDV’s six-knot cruising speed, they had a three-hour run to their offshore insertion point. The little craft finally leveled off at its cruising depth of fifteen feet, as the four SEALs aboard shifted from their Mk15s to “boat air,” or the SDV’s internal supply of breathing air from the onboard compressed-air bottles. Their scubas were now backup/bailout rigs. The onboard breathing mouthpieces were modified for speech. Hearing was achieved through the use of a “bone phone,” a circular transducer held to the diver’s temple by his diving hood. The speech was garbled and understandable, and the bone phones transmitted sound quite well. Yet both the SEALs in the rear compartment were surprised when Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in C Minor floated over the SDV’s comm system. A.J. appreciated both the music and the skill of the SDV’s navigator, who had found a way to hook his iPod into the underwater sound system. Ray was a little miffed that there was no salsa music on board, but he’d brought a book. He read with a waterproof mini-headlamp, and after finishing a page, he pulled it from the soaked book and jettisoned it from a crack in the canopy of the SDV. He did this because it passed the time and because he could.
EIGHT
On the Bonhomme Richard, Lieutenant Roark Engel and Chief Dave Nolan read message traffic and followed events as they unfolded in the Gulf of Aden and the South China Sea. Each morning they, along with Sonny and Weimy, met on the flight deck for a physical training session. The Marines aboard jogged around the perimeter of the flight deck. The four SEALs jogged bow to stern, then sprinted into the wind, stern to bow. Following forty minutes of these wind sprints, they retired to the Bonnie Dick’s extensive weight room for more punishment. On the third day, Nolan found Engel in the compartment assigned to the SEALs and their equipment and took him aside.
“Look, sir, we’re within helo range of the beach, and you got a kid on the way. There’s a good chance that this, whatever might be developing, is not going to mature into a real threat. Or if it does, some other agency or strike element is going to step in and handle it. Or the bad guys, if we just stand back and keep an eye on them, will fuck it up themselves without any interference from us. As you well know, they’ve been known to do just that. So go spend a few days with your wife. I can handle it, and if something breaks, I’ll give you a shout and you can get right back down here. Right now it’s a wait and see. Until we get more from A.J. and Ray or from Senior Chief Miller, there’s not a lot we can do. Seriously, man, family is important.”
Engel allowed himself to consider what Nolan was saying. As the Bonnie Dick steamed north, there was little for him and the others to do but await developments and more intelligence. As the Bandito Platoon commander, Roark Engel was the only one who did not have to surrender his satellite phone. He was now the sole link between his SEALs and their families back home. Jackie understood this and so when he called, he let her know all was well with the men and she passed on family news as needed. His men needed to know their families were okay, and in turn, the families wanted to know their men were fine. In her conversations with Roark she had made no demands, but he knew she would like him home if that was at all possible—he could hear it in her voice, and he knew all too well this was a challenging pregnancy. He ached to be there for her. It was possible for him to make a trip home, but not easy—at least not easy for him. First of all, there was the operation—one that could quite possibly be a big one if it did go down. And though there was little for him to do right now, if things did begin to break, they might break very quickly. What if the mission went down and for some reason he couldn’t get back in time? Past the operational issues, there was the fact that he was on deployment. Special operators often allowed themselves privileges not normally afforded others in the military. Yes, they deployed often, and they often went in harm’s way. They also spent much more time away from their families than almost anyone else in the military. But no male sailor or officer on the Bonnie Dick could simply have himself flown off the ship because his wife was having a baby, unless, of course, there were serious complications. Roark Engel was not someone who could easily take advantage of his position or leave what he considered his duty post. And then there was the priority of the mission. It was, after all, a code-word operation.
“Understood, Chief, and thanks. I’ll think about it and get back to you.”
That evening while at his small desk in the SEAL compartment, he called Jackie on his Iridium satellite phone. It was one of the few times he calle
d his wife while on deployment when they were in the same time zone. He found her at home, folding clothes with the TV on in the background.
“Hi, darlin’. How’s my favorite expectant mother?” he began.
“Roark! I’m so glad to hear your voice.” She was about to ask, “Where are you?” but stopped herself in time. “How is everything wherever you are?”
“All is well here, and for the moment, things are pretty quiet.” He could never discuss operational matters over the phone, but he knew that saying they were inactive would cheer her up. “The question is, how are you and the little one getting along?”
“I’m a little tired, but everything’s fine. Your child kept me up most of last night. Wouldn’t stop kicking me. Oh, and I’m as big as a house.”
Engel ached to be home, to be able to hold his wife—to spoon up with her in bed and run his hand over her belly. “Listen, hon, there’s a chance I may be able to break away and get home for a few days—just a chance,” he quickly added.
“Oh, Roark. That would be wonderful.”
“There’s a project I’m working on,” he said guardedly, “that could go either way. It could turn out to be nothing, in which case Dave Nolan can keep an eye on things while I’m gone. But it could be something that will keep me tied up here. I’m telling you this, as there may be a chance I can get away, but right now it’s up in the air. I wish I could be more definite, but that’s just the way it is.”
Jackie Engel considered this and her response carefully. She sensed that her husband was torn between his duty to her and his job—more specifically his duty to his men. She’d give anything to have him with her, even for a few days. Well, almost anything. She knew that if she pressured him, he’d come, and at the expense of shortchanging his strong sense of duty.
Well before the baby, before they had even talked about marriage, Roark had made it clear to her that she would have to share him with the life he’d chosen and his duties and responsibilities as a professional warrior. She’d accepted that, even thought it noble and romantic. But that was then and this was now. She always missed him when he was gone, but she’d never needed him close more than at this very moment. Yet she somehow knew that the man she loved and needed would somehow not remain the same man if she forced him to leave his post on the eve of a mission or if his men should have to go into harm’s way without him. If Dave Nolan and the others needed him and he wasn’t there for them, then something between the two of them would be lost, perhaps lost forever. My God, she briefly reflected, before I met Roark, I would never have considered marriage with someone who was gone half the time and in mortal danger on the job. But that was before. I’ve accepted the role of the spouse of a warrior, and now I have to accept this. I love him dearly, and he’s worthy of this sacrifice, but still . . . “Hon, you still there?”