Warriors of God

by William Christie

  "Okay," Garvey gasped.

  "Ready . . . one, two, three!"

  They plunged below the water, and Hawkins opened his eyes. He couldn't see anything in the darkness. Disoriented, he lost his sense of direction, and the twisting of his body in the turbulence sent him off course. Propelled forward by Garvey's panicked kicking, his head slammed into something soft and yielding. Feeling with his hands, he realized it was a body. He almost expelled his breath. Still moving forward, he hit something solid. Feeling again, more tentatively this time, he realized that it was the line of bunks that ran parallel to the ladderwell. Grabbing the aluminum tubing of the bunk frame, he pulled himself along. Reaching the end, he felt frantically around the corner for some sign of the ladderwell. Garvey's arms squeezed his waist so tightly that they were forcing out what little air he had left in his lungs. Pushed forward by the kicking, Hawkins felt what had to be the tubing of the handrail. He grabbed it with his left hand and pulled. He felt the steps below with his right hand. The pressure in his lungs was unbearable. Hawkins pulled himself up the handrail with the strength of desperation. He fought the desire to take a breath. Garvey had stopped kicking, but was still hanging onto his waist. It couldn't be much farther, the ladderwell wasn't that long. Again, his head struck something hard. Sweet Jesus, the hatch that was usually pinned up out of the way was now shut tight. In the middle of the hatch was a smaller access hatch, the size of a man's shoulders, that opened by turning a wheel. Hawkins's thrashing hands found the wheel, but it wouldn't turn. The rising water was putting pressure against the locking catches, and they wouldn't budge. Hawkins wedged his feet against the side of the ladderwell and used the force of his entire body against the wheel. The quick movement caused Garvey to slip off, but Hawkins didn't notice. The wheel moved an inch. Feeling himself blacking out, Hawkins coiled his body for a last desperate push. The wheel gave in his hands, and he turned it wildly. Finally the force of the water popped the hatch, and Hawkins bobbed up through the fountain of water erupting through the opening.

  Halfway through the hatch, Hawkins inhaled air in great, wheezing gasps. Hands grabbed his arms and pulled him through. It took him a moment to realize that Garvey wasn't there. Unable to speak, Hawkins pointed at the opening until an enormous khaki-clad chief petty officer realized what he meant. The chief plunged headfirst through the hatch until only his legs were visible. His legs swung about as he rooted through the water. Then he emerged—first his torso, then his head, and finally his arm, which was wrapped around Garvey's head. True to his rank, he bellowed to the nearest sailors: "Well, give me a fucking hand!"

  Two sailors pulled Garvey through the hatch. "Any more?" shouted the chief. Hawkins shook his head. The chief levered the hatch back down and secured it while the sailors began CPR on Garvey. After five breaths, Garvey spewed out a lungful of saltwater into a sailor's face and began to breathe on his own.

  The chief leaned wearily against the bulkhead. He pointed to Hawkins and one of the sailors. "Rest until you get your wind, and then put him on a stretcher and get him topside." He paused to take a long breath. "If you see any officers, tell them we need more people to get the fire in the galley under control."

  Hawkins was just starting to breathe normally. He felt a little put upon. After all, he had just gotten Garvey out of serious shit, a real act of fucking heroism, and now they wanted him to drag the boot up three flights of stairs. Couldn't they find a spare squid around here? As he opened his mouth to bitch, the chief said, gently this time, "We can't spare anybody else." Hawkins nodded.

  The sailor pulled a metal-framed stretcher from its mounting on the bulkhead, and they strapped Garvey into it. The ship was tilted to one side, making it difficult to get up the ladderwell. As they crouched to get the stretcher through the hatch leading to the main stairway, Hawkins kept up a running conversation with Garvey, who was beginning to come around.

  "You might want to consider dying, Garvey, because if you don't, you will pay for this, I shit you not. Personally, if I was you I'd tell the Doc I strained my back and get a medical discharge, because if you come back to the company you're going to be my house mouse for the rest of your time in the Corps, you bastard. It's not good enough I save your ass—I have to break mine carrying you out of this scow. First I'm blown up, then drowned, then I get a fucking hernia. You better plan on supporting me for the rest of your fucking life."

  The sailor on the other end of the stretcher listened in amazement, then began laughing so hard it weakened him, and he nearly dropped the stretcher. Goddamn Marines! The world falls to shit, the ship is sinking, and he's making me laugh. What kind of rocks do they find these animals under?

  Garvey began to perk up. He didn't think Hawk would be giving him all that shit if he was going to die.

  There was chaos at the top of the stairwell, the level just below the flight deck. The corridors were filled with smoke and people rushing back and forth shouting orders and passing messages. Hawkins attributed the confusion to the fact that they were near officers' country. A crowd was trying to push its way through the open door leading to the flight deck. Hawkins looked first at the mob of men, then at the sailor carrying the other end of the stretcher.

  "I've had about enough of this bullshit, my arms are falling off. Just keep pushing on this thing, and we'll get through."

  "Right behind you," yelled the sailor.

  "Take it easy, Garve," said Hawkins, looking down into the stretcher. "Don't strain yourself or nothing." Garvey, strapped down tightly, just grinned uneasily. Hawkins would surely drop him if he said anything even remotely wiseass.

  Hawkins turned to the crowd at the hatch. "Gangway, gangway, serious casualty here. Make way, make way," he yelled, butting at the bodies in front of him. "Make way, we got a man hurt bad here." His voice rose several decibels as the men in front grudgingly made room. "Goddammit, you people get the fuck out of the way before this guy dies!"

  They emerged from the hatch to a dark morning sky just showing streaks of red. A short stairway led them to the tilted flight deck. It was crowded with shouting sailors and Marines; some were jumping into the water. On each aircraft elevator were rows of casualties waiting to be winched into one of the helicopters buzzing around the ship. Circling in dangerous proximity to one another were American Seahawks from the nearby destroyers, two British Lynxes, and some French Gazelles that must have come from the shore.

  Patrol boats, customs boats, fireboats, tugs, and dhows poured from the port, all attracted to the Makin Island. Four tugs attempted to nudge the ship into shallower water, but could not. Localized fires burned throughout the interior of the ship, but the fireboats could do little except supply hoses and pumps.

  Hawkins and the sailor pushed through the crowd and set the stretcher down on the aft elevator, near one of the medical teams.

  "I'm going to shove off now," said the sailor. "You guys take it easy."

  "Thanks a lot for everything, mate," said Hawkins, shaking his hand.

  "Now listen, Garve," said Hawkins, bending over the stretcher. "I've got to see about getting off this thing. Now for Christ's sake, if they ask you, tell them you're dying. If they find out you've just got some water in your ear, they'll never let you off."

  "Thanks, Hawk," said Garvey as Hawkins stood up and got his bearings.

  "You'll pay, Garvey," yelled Hawkins, as he disappeared into the crowd. "You will definitely pay for this."

  As the first light of dawn illuminated the scene, the captain's gaze was fixed on the flight deck. "All personnel except damage control lay to the flight deck," he ordered. "But do not, repeat, do not abandon ship." In this confusion, he thought, we'll lose more people than we'll save. The command ship came up on the radio, and the captain turned away to make his report to the task force commander.

  At 0535, with only the upper deck and flight deck above water, the captain of the USS Makin Island abandoned his ship. He was the last man off.

  CHAPTER 3

 
Two weeks later the captain of the Aegis cruiser USS Buna (CG-78) shifted anxiously in his padded chair in the ship's combat information center, studying the blue screens that displayed information generated by the Aegis system's SPY-1 radars. While sailing in the Persian Gulf within range of Iran, the screens were watched with more than usual concentration. It was nearing dawn, but inside the superstructure of the ship one could tell only from the array of clocks on the bulkhead.

  The previous night the captain had been awakened by a flash message ordering him to execute Operation Black Knife at 0225 Zulu, or Greenwich mean time, the designation used in all military communication to eliminate confusion with local time zones. Adjusted for the local time, it meant he would open fire at 0525. For security reasons the code name was meaningless, having been selected from a computer-generated list. If the mission succeeded it would be renamed something suitably patriotic before the initial press release.

  The time was 0500, and the captain couldn't seem to get comfortable. As a perfect example of the modern American way of war, there was minimal risk to his ship. It was the other small, cumulative fears that haunted him. On this mission all eyes in the United States would be scrutinizing his actions, applauding his success, or analyzing his failure. So the fear of a mistake, of a technical malfunction, of disgrace and the end of a career were not only very real but of far more immediate concern to him than the faint possibility of physical danger.

  Kharg Island sat thirty miles off the Iranian coast, in the western Persian Gulf. Two miles wide and six miles long, a barren lump of white sand and boulders. Until 1958, when it was realized that the then-new supertankers, drawing sixty or seventy feet of water, could not put in at any of the ports along the coast of Iran, Kharg served as the Shah's own Devil's Island. It accommodated "communists"—that is, any opponents of the regime. Now it was how the Islamic Republic of Iran exported the lion’s share of its oil to the world.

  That oil reached Kharg in six huge underwater pipes from the pumping station at Ganaveh, on the mainland. The tank farm was positioned on a 220-foot hill so the oil could flow down to the waiting ships by gravity, if need be. There were forty-five storage tanks, including nine with a million-barrel capacity. Tankers took on the oil at two huge terminals: on the east side, the T-shaped Kharg Terminal, which could handle ships of up to 250,000 tons; on the west side, the Sea Island Terminal, where the largest tankers moored to piles driven into the sea bottom and drew oil through underwater pipes. Prior to the revolution, Kharg could load six million barrels of oil a day. At the present time, slightly over three million barrels a day passed through the terminals. The facilities on Kharg included a small airport and a village for its workers and defenders. Fresh water was produced in a desalinization plant fueled by natural gas tapped off from eight oil wells right on the island.

  Iran’s most formidable air defenses were concentrated around its nuclear facilities on the mainland, which may have been another reason for Kharg’s selection as a target. But the island still hosted a battery of American Improved HAWK surface-to-air missiles, with nine separate launchers carrying twenty-seven ready-to-fire missiles. Oliver North’s arms-for-hostages deal had provided the Iranians with a complete store of the vital spare parts required by the complex system. The defenses were also bolstered by the compact and formidable Swedish RBS-70 laser-guided missile, supplied for hard cash through the good offices of the Bofors Company, by way of Singapore. Over five thousand missiles were shipped before the officially neutral and antimilitarist Swedish government stopped the sales in the glare of unfavorable publicity. The island was also liberally sown with Soviet 23mm and 57mm antiaircraft guns, the latter radar-controlled. Farther out in the Gulf, offshore oil platforms fitted with portable radars provided limited early warning.

  As dawn approached and reveille sounded throughout the island, air-defense troops and oil workers began their breakfasts of unleavened bread, cheese, and yogurt.

  The attack began at 0520, when EA-6B Prowler electronic countermeasures aircraft operating from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt fired AGM-88 high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs) at the radars on the offshore oil platforms. The missiles homed in on the emissions of the radar sets and obliterated them. The Prowlers then isolated the platforms' radio frequencies and began jamming, preventing the Iranians from sounding an alarm.

  At 0525, the USS Buna turned out of the wind so the exhaust of the missiles, when they were fired, would not obscure the view of the video cameras recording the launch. Between the ship's superstructure and the forward five-inch gun were sixty-one rectangular hatches. Each covered a built-in missile-launch canister. The absence of a conventional launcher meant that missiles could be fired faster, in greater numbers, and in any combination of types. Near the stern were sixty-one more missile cells. The Aegis cruiser normally carried a mixture of Tomahawk and Standard antiaircraft missiles in the cells. In this case the Standards were displaced by thirty extra Tomahawks.

  In the CIC the captain gave the command to fire, and the first twelve missiles left their launch cells one after the other, trailing white smoke. The booster rockets fell away after lifting the missiles out of the canisters and clear of the ship. Wings sprang out from the missile bodies and turbofan engines ignited. At this stage the missiles were still traveling almost vertically. At the end of their apex, the twenty-foot-long missiles plunged down toward the water. Close to the water they pulled up, compasses setting them on preprogrammed courses and altimeters keeping them just above the waves and below radar cover. One missile, whose engine failed to start, punched neatly into the water at the end of its trajectory. There were shouted obscenities from the bridge. The Buna fired another group of twelve missiles, paused, and rippled off a final six.

  The missiles had a short trip, since Buna was been less than eighty miles away from Kharg Island—far short of the Tomahawks' maximum range. Still several miles from the island, they climbed slightly, following the preplanned GPS coordinates loaded into their guidance systems. The missiles split up, heading for different targets. An Iranian technician manning a HAWK-battery low-altitude search radar spotted the missiles emerging from the clutter caused by radar beams bouncing off the ocean waves. He screamed a warning to his officer.

  The Tomahawks came out of the rising sun at over five hundred miles an hour. From a distance the missiles seemed to float over the waves, but they closed on the island with deceptive quickness. The first three, designated to suppress the antiaircraft defenses, screamed overhead. Plates in the undersides of the missiles fell clear, and a hail of small cylindrical objects fluttered to the ground, stabilized by white streamers. The three HAWK missile radars and three target-illumination trailers disappeared in the small, sharp explosions of the BLU/97B bomblets. Without radars the HAWK missiles were useless. Free of their payloads, the Tomahawks plunged into the circular array of battery launchers like kamikazes, their unburned jet fuel adding to the conflagration. The last missile of the group dumped its 166 bomblets on two Soviet Flat Face and Flap Wheel radars and plunged into a battery of 57mm guns. Some of the surviving gun crews desperately tried to bring their weapons to bear. But as will happen, many simply stood and stared, dumbfounded.

  The next group of three Tomahawks, with thousand-pound high-explosive warheads, emerged from the smoke of the first explosions. The three missiles flew across the island and smashed into the Sea Island Terminal, the explosions shattering the pilings and cracking open the two oil pipelines running from the island. The shock waves from the blasts broke windows all over Kharg.

  The last five missiles of the first wave followed. Four slammed into the Kharg Terminal, the thousand-pound warheads cutting the connection between the mile-long T-shaped terminal and the island and exploding where the two sections of the terminal came together. One blew apart in midair from either a malfunction or a lucky hit by the antiaircraft guns.

  The next wave, twelve missiles, came in seconds later. An RBS-70 missile streaked out from the
island but lost its target in the smoke and the glare of the sun. Several 23mm guns finally started hammering away, but the twenty-one-inch diameter of the missiles did not present much of a target. The speeding Tomahawks broke from their group to pursue different objectives. Six headed for the pipelines bringing oil from the mainland. Five made it; the computer on one malfunctioned and it passed over the island out to sea, flying until it ran out of fuel. Two flew parallel over the airfield, scattering bomblets over the runway before crashing into the control tower and hangar. The remaining four flew into the Kharg Terminal and destroyed supertanker berths. The explosions cut and ignited the oil lines on the terminal; the fires spread to the loading supertankers.

  The last six missiles created the most spectacular damage. Following the long axis of the island in echelon, the Tomahawks dispensed their bomblets over the fuel farm. Emptied of their cargo, two crashed into the desalinization plant. The exploding fuel ignited the stores of natural gas to create an enormous fireball. The only source of fresh water was gone. The remaining missiles plunged onto four of the island's eight oil wells.

  The million-barrel fuel tanks caught fire and began to melt from, the top down, like giant slabs of milk chocolate. Burning oil from the pumping station and tanks flowed down the hill from the fuel farm like lava, and crews abandoned their antiaircraft guns before they were engulfed by the flames. The intense heat cracked the surfaces of roads, melted any pipelines that had been spared, and created a strong wind as the fires drew in oxygen to feed themselves. A choking cloud of oily black smoke covered the whole island, and the surrounding waters became dark from spilled oil.