Then they surfaced and swam straight out from the shore. Murdock got his Motorola out and activated without getting it wet as he floated on his back. He called the RIBs three times before they came in.
“Ready to motor,” Murdock said.
“Roger that, we’re on our way. Keep transmitting, and I’ll try to home in on your signal. We’ll be coming right off the small point of land where we left you.”
The SEALs swam a half mile into the gulf and waited. Five minutes later, the black RIBs came out of the night and idled up to them.
Once on board, the SEALs settled down for a wait. The coxswains wanted to get back to the safety of the five-mile zone, but Murdock said no.
“We need to know that our charges went off,” Murdock said. “Then we send a message to the carrier, and it will be relayed to the amphibious ship so they’ll know the way is clear on the beach.”
They waited. Most of the SEALs slept. Murdock watched the shore for any sign of activity. They were only a half mile off and in rifle range if anyone wanted to try to hit them. If anyone knew they were there.
Murdock had Holt crank up the SATCOM at 0500 and reported to the carrier that the charges had been set on eighteen mines in the 200-yard LZ. They would detonate at 0530.
At 0525, the SEALs were all awake and watching shoreward. Just before the appointed time, the first explosion shattered the morning calm. It went off three feet underwater, so the report was not loud, but they could hear it and see the geyser that shot into the air. Then, in quick sequence, the other mines exploded. Some of them came on top of others, so they couldn’t be sure of a count. One man said there had been seventeen explosions. Another one said he heard nineteen.
Murdock got back on the SATCOM:
“SEALs to Flatiron.”
“Go SEALs.”
“We report explosions on the beach. We set eighteen. Some counted seventeen, some two more than that. We assume they all detonated. Please relay.”
“That’s a roger, SEALs. Come home.”
Murdock nodded at the coxswain who gunned the little boat, and it slanted away from the tip of the shore. The other RIB followed them. A moment later, they saw two landing craft utility boats plowing through the gulf waters at eleven knots, heading for shore. The big landing craft could hold 350 combat troops, or 250 troops and an M-48 tank. A half mile behind them came two landing craft air cushion craft sending spray high into the air. They held 24 combat men, but could do 40 knots, and slide right up the beach, into the sand, over solid ground, and discharge 48 men to put down covering fire from shore for the troops in the slower LCUs.
It worked that way. Murdock could see the air cushion craft spray sand as they charged across the beach and spewed Marines out in all directions to lay down protective fire.
The LCUs hit the beach, the front ramp came down, and 250 Marines charged from each boat through a foot of surf, onto the dry sand, and into the brush. Behind them, from each LCU, rolled an M-48 tank, its big gun swiveling as the gunner checked out possible targets. Murdock heard one of the tank’s cannon fire before they were out of sight of the beach.
The coxswain grunted as they put more distance between them and the fighting. “Hey, I’m not used to getting shot at. I’m a blue water sailor.”
Murdock tried the Motorola. “DeWitt, any casualties over there?”
He made the transmission twice, then checked his own guys. Nobody had any new hurts.
“Lam, how’s that shoulder?” Murdock asked.
Lam had to shout over the sound of the RIB’s motor. “Yeah, I know it’s there. Think it busted open. No sweat.”
“Get to the medics as soon as we hit the carrier. I want them to check out Adams and Franklin, too. Not taking any chances you guys won’t be around for the big one.”
“What’s the big one?” Jaybird shouted.
Murdock shrugged. “Damned if I know, but we’ve had three or four little jobs on this vacation time. There must be a big assignment for us out there somewhere. I want everyone to be ready.”
11
USS Enterprise CVN 65
Off the Strait of Hormuz
Persian Gulf
Don Stroh threw down the printout and glared at it. Murdock picked it up and started to read it.
“Straight off the Reuters News Service Web page. As of today, all Western nationals will be excluded from Iraq. All United Nations employees, workers, and volunteers will be put on planes and shipped out of the country. The Iraq Department of Commerce has totally and unilaterally canceled all agreements about imports and exports. Iraq will sell oil to anyone she wishes, anywhere in the world.
“In short, Iraq is declaring war on the U.N. and the Western powers and is defying anyone to do anything about it.”
“That’s a hell of a bold step for a small country like Iraq,” Murdock said.
“But she has one strong bargaining point. About ninety-two billion barrels of oil reserves in her country just waiting to be pumped, loaded, and shipped.”
“Sure, but one aircraft carrier sitting right here at the strait can stop any Iraqi tanker that comes this way, or any tanker we know is hauling embargoed Iraqi oil.”
“If we’d do it,” Stroh said. He flopped into a chair in the SEALs’ assembly room. “Hell, we knew Iraq could do this at any time. So far, we’ve been able to keep her in chains. Now Saddam is smashing those chains.”
A sailor came into the room, looked around, and spotted Stroh. He hurried over.
“Mr. Stroh, a call for you. I’ll have it transferred to the phone in here.”
“Oh, damn, what the fuck has gone wrong this time?”
He went to the phone and soon was talking a little and listening a lot. After more than two minutes on the phone, he nodded, said something more, and hung up. His hand held the phone on the hook for several seconds, then slipped off as he turned and walked back to Murdock.
“Saddam took the next step. We’ve just had word that he now rejects all U.N. agreements and operations on the no-fly zone. He says he will defend the territorial integrity of all of Iraq. Any foreign military aircraft flying over any part of Iraq will be shot down without warning.”
“I bet that damn Saddam is a poker player,” Murdock said. “He sure knows how to up the ante. Any reports from the no-fly zone yet?”
Stroh shook his head. “No, but we have planes in the air patrolling that large no-fly zone. It won’t be long.”
Iraqi No-Fly Zone
Two F-16s with U.S. Air Force markings slanted along the top border of the Iraqi no-fly zone. Captain Archer Smarthing kicked the Fighting Falcon over into a roll and checked his radar. Nothing ahead. He’d been on thirty-two of these flights and had to chase only one Iraqi MiG back over the line to the north. Sometimes he wondered how valuable this service was.
He knew the Kurds appreciated it, but it took a lot of manpower and aircraft to do the job. He looked over at his wingman, Jeffrey Smith, and waved. They rode in tandem part of the time, then split off for checking the rest of the envelope they had as their responsibility.
Still nothing showing on radar to the front.
If the Iraqi planes intruded, it usually was from due north. The plane-to-plane radio jolted him back to reality.
“Arch, I’ve got three blips coming hard from the north,” his wingman, First Lieutenant Broderson, said. “Looks like we’re going to have company today.”
Captain Smarthing swung his craft more to the north. There they were on his screen, coming fast. They were already over the line into the no-fly zone. “I see them. You go left, I’ll go right,” Smarthing said. “Let’s give them a reception.” He moved the controls only a little and the Mach 2 craft slammed to the right, raced around in a wide arc, and slanted at the invaders from the side. He saw the missile shoot almost when it left the Iraqi MiG. He hit the chaff button to disperse a false target for the missile and did a second sudden turn, then came in behind one of the MiGs. He maneuvered carefully and had the plane in
his crosshairs and a lock.
He hit the firing button and felt the AIM-9 Sidewinder drop off the wing and slam forward, trailing a white plume of condensation. The nine-and-a-half-foot-long rocket leaped ahead of the plane at 2.5 Mach, slanting in on the tail end MiG in the group. The target must have shown a missile warning and began to maneuver, but before it completed the first turn, the Sidewinder hit it just in back of the wing. The annular blast fragmentation warhead wrapped in a sheath of preformed rods, exploded with a shattering roar, and triggered the detonation of three Iraqi missiles under the wing. The combination of explosions blasted the MiG into wheelbarrow-sized chunks of scrap metal and bloody body parts that began their long fall to the desert below.
“I’ve got trouble!” Lieutenant Broderson shouted on the radio. “Two of the bastards. I’m going low and fast. You see them?”
Smarthing scanned the sky but couldn’t find his wing mate. He checked the radar screen and moved around, hunting them. Then he saw a flash of sunlight off metal to the west, and he angled that way. Soon he had the three blips on his screen. He targeted the front plane in the trio but received back a friendly signal. The last two were his targets.
He judged the distance and hit the afterburner to catch up, but before he could get into a good firing position, he saw a flash of light in the sky.
“Broderson, come in. Broderson, where are you?”
There was no response. The two MiGs put on their own afterburners and jolted away to the north. He was in no position to follow them. He kept searching the sky and at last found a black cloud slowly rising. Far, far below he saw what was left of an aircraft impacted into a dry gulch in the desert floor. There was no parachute. He slanted down and overflew the wreck. He found one part with the white star on a blue circle, the insignia of the U.S. Air Force. Smarthing swore for two minutes, then climbed back to his assigned altitude.
He switched frequencies on his radio and contacted his home field. “Mother Lode, this is Sweet Sixteen One.”
“Go, Sixteen.”
“Just tangled with three Iraqi fighters. I shot down one of them, the other two jumped Broderson and they splashed him. No chute. I just flew over the crash. Not much left of the plane.”
“Bring it home, Sixteen. Watch yourself. We just had word that Saddam has called off his observance of the no-fly zone. It’s open season out there. We’re sending up three replacements to work the edges. Get it on home.”
“That’s a roger, Mother Lode.”
Captain Smarthing turned his plane and headed back toward the field near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He had a letter to write to a widow. Later, Smarthing heard that his was the first aerial combat of the day that would see four United Nations planes shot down and eight Iraqi fighters blasted from the air.
One of Saddam’s Palaces
Near Baghdad, Iraq
Colonel Jarash Hamdoon sat watching his idol and longtime friend pacing beside his big desk in the fifth sublevel of one of his bombproof war rooms. In it were complete communications with his armed forces, with the government, even with his favorite baker. The complex had been stocked with enough food, water, and batteries to last a month. Even the emergency electrical power generator was in place with a separate smokestack and air inlet from the surface to function in another part of the fifth underground level.
Saddam Hussein turned and stared at the colonel. “My friend, it was not supposed to go like this. We had seven of the eight nations practically in our pocket. We had set up takeovers from inside the countries by trusted and loyal friends. We paid dearly for that friendship. Now we have only one of those nations under our control. We need the larger ones, Syria especially.”
“But you have made a statement, Mr. President. You have declared Iraq’s freedom from the devil Western powers. You have cut down four of their fighters over Iraqi airspace; you have sent tankers with Iraqi oil into the marketplace. You have declared our freedom.”
Saddam slumped into the executive leather chair behind the desk and frowned at his top adviser.
“My good friend Jarash. It has been twenty years, you and I at the helm of this great nation. We are not in the position today that I hoped we would be in back in 1979. What has happened?”
“Iraq has many enemies, Mr. President. They coil and strike like serpents. They are everywhere we look. We must be careful how we walk through the desert in our bare feet.”
Saddam smiled, then rubbed his face and his mustache. “It was not supposed to go this way. We must do something quickly, and it must be dramatic. They will not attempt to bomb us into surrendering. They tried that for two months in the Desert War, and it didn’t work. It won’t work now. So what will they do?
“They will try to isolate us, to cut us off from all the rest of the world. We must do something to shut out the rest of the world from us.”
“The Strait of Hormuz?” Hamdoon asked softly.
“Exactly. We have planned for two years. Everything is ready. Iran has given me its word for cooperation whenever we ask. The time is now. Let me make one call to Tehran, then you make the necessary calls to get the program into motion. I want it done tonight. It all must be in place by morning. No ships will go through the strait until Iraq says that they can. That will gain us a lot of respect. Do it now.”
Hamdoon went to his separate office next door. Two minutes later, his phone buzzed and he picked it up.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“My call is completed. The door is open. The rest is up to you.”
“Thank you. It will be done.” He hit the disconnect button, waited a moment, then made three phone calls. For each of them he gave the one code word, Armageddon. One navy lieutenant challenged it.
“Sir, for that word, you must have a secondary countersign word. Do you know what it is?”
“No, Lieutenant Aziz. The question is, do you know what the countersign is?”
“Yes sir, ‘In Allah’s hands’.”
“Very well, Lieutenant Aziz. See that it is done, tonight.”
In the port city of Qeshm, Iran, on the coast of the Strait of Hormuz, Lieutenant Aziz rousted out his crew of seventeen and fifteen special technicians. They had been in place here in Iran for six months. Every day they practiced. Lately, they had been practicing at night.
Now they would do it at night.
Lieutenant Aziz felt a wave of emotion fill his mind and body. For the greater glory of Allah.
The Iraqi PB-90 coastal patrol boat moved out of the Iranian port at dusk. All was ready on board the ninety-foot Iraqi naval boat. It was the lone survivor of a fleet of fifteen of the speedy coastal craft purchased years ago. Six had been sunk in the war with Iran, three more sunk in the Desert Storm war against Kuwait, three were scrapped, and three left at the naval port of Basra. Only one had been refitted and made seaworthy. Now it would have the honor of bringing the Western powers to their knees.
Lieutenant Aziz felt his heart racing as he went over the plans again as he had daily for the past six months. They would proceed to the narrowest part of the strait, a thirty-five-mile-wide section. However, the ship channel through that area was no more than three miles across. It was a well-known and much-used passage.
His divers knew their job. He went to the hold and to the special containers on the deck and checked to be sure all was ready. The large boxes held relics of World War II that Iraq had purchased seven years ago when the old Soviet Union was breaking up. Many arms and munitions, even atomic weapons, had been for sale back then if you knew the right people to contact.
Lieutenant Aziz heard that their leader, Saddam Hussein, had wanted to buy two nuclear bombs, but he didn’t have enough ready cash. Instead, he bought the munitions resting on the deck of the PB-90. Lieutenant Aziz had the commander’s trust that he could do the job that must be done to insure Iraq’s surge to becoming a world power. Soon they would have all of the clout they needed to do it.
He knew the history of the items in his care. They had
been devised, researched, and developed by Germany near the end of World War II. The Nazis never had a chance to use them. By then, they were in a land war on their home country and had no need for naval arms.
He touched the case gently. Soon they would be uncrated and inserted into the Strait of Hormuz at precise locations.
The Germans had been brilliant on this project. They developed a passive mine that could be planted on the sea floor, activated on command, and then would lay in wait with its sensors tuned for the right moment to fire.
Aziz went over in his mind again how the mines worked. They lay on the gulf bottom. The sensitive mine felt the magnetic pull of a large mass of metal, the steel hull of a large ship such as a tanker. The magnetic force moved a pressure piston in the mine in response to each change in the electromagnetic flux. This generated a small trickle of electricity as its armature cut through the magnetic lines of force. With this feature, the mine would gather electricity from the ships moving near it but well overhead.
As with many early naval mines, these were shaped like torpedoes. A titanium casing, developed by the Germans late in the war, protected the mine’s interior from any corrosive element in the sea or in the dank caves where they were stored for years.
Inside the mine, a small magnetic generator and a primitive signal transducer still worked. Each of the mines had been taken apart and checked to be sure they functioned.
Once the mines were placed on the strait bottom, they would be activated with a specific signal from a transmitter on board the patrol boat. The mine would hear the signal. Inside the titanium shell, a relay in a spectrum analyzer would click on. Electrons would trickle out of a capacitor and into the firing circuit. At that moment, the mine would be armed and ready to fire.
Then the mines would lay in wait, checking each ship that went over it, until the right signals came. The mine’s acoustic sensors would determine the size of the ship and if it fit the right conditions that had been programmed into it. When the right conditions were met, the analog circuits would tell it to fire. When the mine was triggered, it would break apart and fire a torpedo that would slam upward, seeking the steel target. The torpedoes were designed with delay fuses, so they would penetrate well into the tanker before exploding with tremendous force.
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