As the warship charged toward them, Tommy Clark could make out the Indonesian flag hanging listlessly from the mainmast. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“Relax, Nan,” he whispered. “The Indonesian Navy is here to rescue us.”
Still, the big cannon swung slowly, always aimed directly at them. Tommy could almost feel a bull’s-eye painted on his chest.
Finally the great gray warship pulled alongside and slid to a halt only 100 meters from where they bobbed helplessly. A man standing bridge wing raised a loud-hailer to his lips and called out, “Ahoy there. This is the Indonesian warship Jalawal. You are in restricted waters. You are forbidden to be here. You are under arrest and your ship is impounded. Stand by while we take you in tow. We will open fire if any attempt is made to escape.”
Tommy looked up at his boat’s pilot house just in time to see the old captain step out with his hands raised above his head.
20 May 2000, 0900LT (1700Z)
Jon Hunter shook his head ruefully. The Monday morning call to hustle over to SUBPAC for a pre-mission briefing was as a complete surprise. Even more surprising, only he and Fagan were allowed to attend. But a mission, any mission, was an answer to Jon Hunter’s prayers. Finally, something real, something to test his crew and prove they were as good as anyone.
The small Special Compartmented Information Facility, the SCIF, briefing room was almost empty when Jon Hunter stepped through the heavy vault door. Rear Admiral Mike O’Flannigan, COMSUBPAC, occupied the seat at the end of the small wooden table. Physically a big, florid-faced Irishman, Mike O’Flannigan had a reputation as both a deep strategic thinker and a superb tactician who really cared about his men.
The Chief of Staff, Capt Sam Hughes, sat at his right, chewing on the inevitable unlit cigar. The only other person in the room was the SUBPAC Special Operations Officer.
O’Flannigan jumped up and bounded across the room to grab Hunter’s hand. “Jon, bet you’re wondering what’s going on,” he said in his deep baritone.
“Yes, sir,” Hunter answered, flexing his fingers to get some blood flow restored after O’Flannigan’s bear-like grip. “I’m hoping this is better than a couple of weeks upkeep and a 3M inspection.”
Sam Hughes spat out the well-chewed cigar remnants and chuckled, “Careful what you wish for Commander. You may find this interesting, but probably not fun.”
He waved toward the briefing officer. “Let’s get started. Time is short here. First off, everything said here is Special Compartmented Information, strictly need to know. No one outside this room is cleared to know the purpose of this mission.”
The Special Ops Officer began his briefing. He flashed a slide up on the small screen and spoke, “Essentially, one of the “three letter agencies” has caught wind of someone buying several shipments of specialized laboratory equipment and smuggling it into Indonesia. The equipment; incubators, sterilizers, containment hoods, and the like, is ideal for developing biological weapons.”
He flashed up another slide, this one with pictures of several men, some dressed in lab coats, others in ill-fitting suits. The pictures looked like they had been taken without the subject knowing he was being photographed.
“At the same time, several top biological weapons experts from the Middle East and the old USSR have dropped out of sight. What links them together is that they all worked on weaponized smallpox.”
Another slide flashed up. This one was the outside of a large red-brick building. It looked like a university classroom.
“And just to make things really interesting, someone broke into the Australian Research School of Biologic Studies. All that was missing was some genetic material derived from some mousepox research. Doesn’t sound very threatening until you understand that the material makes the pox resistant to all known vaccines.”
The screen went blank.
Capt Hughes spit out his cigar and growled, “It all adds up to give some very high level people some very sleepless nights.”
“I don’t need to tell you that Indonesia is the home of the world’s largest Muslim population,” O’Flannigan grunted. “And with the current political unrest there, it is extremely volatile. We have some very dubious HUMINT that points toward a small, uninhabited island in Indonesia called Nusa Funata. You are to go in and check it out. Your cover, for what it’s worth, is to be the ESSEX Strike Group’s eyes.”
Hughes added, “Given the classification and the sensitivity of this information, you are not to brief anyone on your crew until well after you are underway. And nobody is to know anything about possible biological weapons. Ever.”
24 May 2000, 1830LT (25 May, 0230Z)
Jon Hunter walked down the long cement pier. They would get underway this evening. On Monday the place had been in lazy tropical torpor. Now the pier fairly hummed with excitement. A lot had been accomplished in the ensuing week, but a lot remained to be finished before SAN FRANSISCO could slip her mooring lines.
The crew worked around the clock for the last three days to get the boat underway. Trucks and forklifts bustled up the pier to stack pallet after pallet of stores. Every carton was laboriously hand-carried from topside to its storage locker somewhere deep in the bowels of the boat. Every piece of onboard equipment was checked, groomed, calibrated, and rechecked.
The crew and the wardroom officers had been told that they were heading out on weekly ops, but the added stores and locked canisters had not gone unnoticed. You just didn’t need that many groceries for a week at sea.
The SEAL Team loaded their complete combat stores on Wednesday. Four torpedoes were off-loaded, replaced with lockers filled with weapons and explosives, as well as the myriad of other gear the SEALs would need.
As the sun was descending over the Wainea Mountains, Captain Calucci summoned Hunter and Fagan to his office. Together, the pair took the short, brisk walk down the waterfront to the historic headquarters building overlooking the submarine piers and the vast Pearl Harbor complex. From Calucci’s ornately paneled office Dick O’Kane, Mush Morton, Gene Flukey, and a host of other heroes of the great submarine battle of World War II had left to face death. Some returned to report victory, too many stayed on eternal patrol.
As Hunter and Fagan entered the office, the large picture window behind the Commodore framed the sun sinking below the Wainai Mountains in a glorious splash of vibrant oranges, reds, and gold. Calucci did not rise from behind the ornately carved koa wood desk to greet them. He merely grunted and waved them toward two straight backed chairs arranged in front of his desk. Hunter couldn’t help but think of respondents before the royal throne.
Calucci dispensed with any pretense of the normal pleasantries and immediately began the briefing. "Let's go over this one more time. SUBPAC is all over me to make sure you don't screw this up."
He idly knocked his large gold Naval Academy class-ring against the gleaming wood. It was a very unsubtle reminder that Hunter was not part of "the club" and Calucci fancied himself as part of the inner circle.
Calucci once again reviewed their mission, emphasizing, for the thousandth time, the need for absolute security. “We have to find out what is happening on that island. If the intel reports are even close, we are playing with fire.”
Hunter nodded and watched the Commodore as he ranted on.
“I don’t mind telling you, you and your crew are certainly not my first choice for this run. If I had anyone else, I would send them. But you’re it.”
He fairly growled as he said, “Just the hint of this op getting out and I’ll fry you all. There are security leaks all over this island. That’s why only you, my ops officer, and I know anything about it. If word of this gets out, you caused the leak.”
Underway from Pearl Harbor was set for 0100 with no prior notice. There would be no radio traffic to minimize prying eyes seeing the operation and to allow SAN FRANCISCO to be submerged and well away from the islands before dawn discovered her empty berth.
Calucci had no new infor
mation, only a rehash of what they all knew. The meeting was mercifully concluded.
Hunter and Fagan rose to leave. Calucci chose not to walk out with them or to wish them luck. Hunter could feel Calucci's baleful eyes burning into his back as he strode out of the office.
As they walked back toward the boat, Bill Fagan was trying to figure out all the millions of details of trying to get SAN FRANCISCO to sea without being discovered. The one thing that he just couldn't answer was the need for tugs. He rubbed the late afternoon bristle on his chin.
With a 0100 underway, they would need the tugs tied up alongside by at least 0015, to allow time for main engine warm-up. They needed to use them for the underway, but arranging for them was a dead give away. How were they going to get around this?
SAN FRANCISCO’s huge main turbines needed to be carefully brought up to operating temperature before they were ready to push the big sub through the water. Much like a turkey slowly roasting on a spit, they were turned as they were heated by steam from the reactor until they were thoroughly and evenly warmed. Failure to successfully complete this delicate procedure could result in the turbine blades hitting the casing and sending deadly shrapnel around the engine-room. The problem, though, was that her engines were so powerful, if she was not restrained by the combined power of the tugs; she could rip the bollards out of the pier or snap the doubled Kevlar mooring lines during the delicate main engine warm-up. Older classes of submarines had a clutch installed that allowed for disconnecting the shaft and screw from the main engines, but they lacked the immense power of the LOS ANGELES class. A clutch powerful enough to withstand her tremendous torque would not fit within the confines of her hull, so the decision had been made to forgo the convenience.
"What is it, XO," Hunter asked. "I hear the gears grinding."
"Tugs, Skipper".
Hunter hesitated, nodded, slowly rubbed his chin, and then said, “Let’s do this without tugs. We can’t afford to announce our underway, particularly in the middle of the night. You’ve listened on harbor common before."
Both knew that anyone with a marine-band radio within twenty miles would know everything happening inside the harbor by listening to all the radio racket.
They rounded the corner of the headquarters building and walked down the waterfront, past the piers that were temporary homes to SAN FRANCISCO's sisters. Most of the berths were empty. The few boats left from the repeated fleet down-sizing’s of the last decade were out on missions.
"OK, Skipper, what are you thinking?" Fagan asked.
"Well, Bill, look at it as innovative ship handling. Let's do it the way the whaling ships did, capstan and lines.”
Fagan flinched, “But, Skipper, that's never been done on an LA class before. And those whaling ships didn’t have a sonar dome to worry about." He didn't need to add how much was at risk if they drove the sonar dome into the pier.
Hunter responded, “We’ve never been bothered by the fact something hasn’t been done on a LOS ANGELES class before. Besides, we have the outboard.”
Hunter referred to a small retractable and trainable electric motor mounted in SAN FRANCISCO's aft ballast tanks, used to swing the stern around or for emergency propulsion if the main engines failed.
They stopped and sat for a few minutes on a picnic table under the palm trees behind the SUBASE theatre. SAN FRANCISCO lay just a few yards away, attended by scores of scurrying sailors. But here was a small, quiet oasis away from the hustle and bustle. The perfume wafting from the dense growth of plumeria behind the old SUBASE Officer's Club enveloped them with the peace of a warm Hawaiian evening.
Taking a scrap of paper out of his pocket, Hunter began to draw, “We’ll use simple vector arithmetic….
LCDR Fagan wasn't entirely convinced but took the scrap of paper and said, “OK, Skipper, I’ll brief the line-handlers and put some of the SEALs on the piers to take in the lines."
He didn't need to add how ticklish he felt this idea was. If the boat slid even a couple of feet forward by too strong a pull on the capstan, she would hit the coral and damage the sonar dome. Too much use of the outboard would pull the stern out and push the bow in to the pier, again damaging the sonar dome.
Hunter stood and walked the short distance to the SAN FRANCISCO, "Don't see any other choice, do you?"
26 May 2000, 0325LT (25 May, 1925Z)
Mjecka stared at the prisoners.
How dare the infidels parade through Allah’s land, bringing blasphemy with them. The young males would pay with their lives. But the uncovered houri females. Didn’t the Prophet teach that it was every warrior’s responsibility to make them show proper respect, and impregnate them with the next generation of Allah’s warriors.
Mjecka grabbed himself and smiled at the red head. She was the one. The first to feel the real power of Allah’s warriors. One of the promised seventy virgins, but delivered before paradise.
He strode across the room and grabbed the young houri by her blasphemous uncovered red hair. He could feel the blood rushing to his manhood. This would be very good; and maybe when he was done he would share her with his friends.
Nan Badgett screamed in fright. The awful, ugly guard, the smelly one with the rotten teeth was trying to drag her off. There was no mistaking his intentions, he meant to have his way with her.
The young missionary lashed out with all her strength, trying to kick and punch her way free. Mjecka laughed easily at her futile efforts as he dragged her toward the door. Tommy Clark jumped up and rushed across the narrow space, fists clenched and ready to strike out to protect her.
Mjecka chortled as he swung his AK47 around. The barrel caught the young missionary leader squarely on the chin. He spun the heavy assault rifle around and slammed the butt into Clark’s mid-section. Clark fell to the deck, groaning with pain. Tears ran down his cheeks, more from the frustration of not protecting Nan than from the pain roaring out of his stomach.
Mjecka dragged Badgett out the door and across the narrow passageway, into a small room. He reached up and snapped on the lights. Light was important. The houri must see the sword of Allah before he penetrated her with it.
The terrorist grabbed Badgett’s blouse and ripped it off. She stood there, futilely trying to cover her breasts. He nodded toward her pants. She screamed loudly and backed further into the tiny room. Mjecka lashed out with his right fist, smashing into her face and knocking her to the deck. He reached down and grabbed her pants, pulling them off in one stroke. Badgett tried to roll into a ball in the corner, but somewhere in her mind, she knew the inevitable was going to happen.
Mjecka unsnapped his pants and let them drop to the floor. He grabbed himself as he stepped toward the naked, cowering houri. He kicked her legs apart and knelt down. It was time to do Allah’s work.
“What are you doing, you stupid fool!” Captain Balewegal kicked Mjecka, knocking him away from the prisoner. “When Admiral Suluvana finds out about this, you will wish your mother had consorted with camels.”
25 May 2000, 1930LT (26 May, 0630Z)
The sun was just an afterglow to the leeward side of the islands, out beyond Barbers Point. SAN FRANCISCO lay quietly alongside the pier, her rounded black shape looking vaguely out-of-place, a creature of the open ocean held captive by the lines reaching to the pier. The brown-green harbor water lapped just a few feet below the deck, hiding most of her massive bulk. The large sail rose imposingly from the deck with wing-like fairwater planes jutting from either side. The only external way to separate SAN FRANCISCO from her sisters was the large white "714" attached to the after surface of the sail and the blue banner laced to the brow rail with the large ship's seal and "USS SAN FRANCISCO SSN 714" lettered across it in white letters. Soon these trappings would be stowed below. SAN FRANCISCO would be indistinguishable from any other LA class sub.
Hunter and Fagan dodged trucks and forklifts to wind their way to the boat. A group of six SEALs carried the last of their gear onboard. Seaman Martinez, one of the most junior
men on the crew, brushed by, hands full of boxes. His hands full and not being able to salute, he was flustered, but settled on nodding acknowledgement of the two officers.
Hunter called out, “Martinez.”
The young seaman stopped in his tracks.
“How is your girlfriend doing?” Hunter inquired.
Martinez stammered, ‘Better. A lot better. Docs up at Tripler say she’ll be able to come home in a few weeks.”
Hunter clapped the young man on the shoulder and said, “Glad to hear it.”
Fagan shook his head. It was amazing how Hunter could keep track of every crewmember’s problems, even at times like this.
Topside was rigged for underway. The lifelines, deck lights and all the other paraphernalia were safely stored below decks.
The 1MC blared “SAN FRANCISCO returning” in the traditional announcement the Captain was back onboard.
Lieutenant Jeff Miller crawled up through the hatch and reported that all was ready for underway.
"Skipper, most of the four hour prior to underway items are done. We are on reactor power. The shore power cables have been removed. The Navigator is reporting some problems with ESGN settling out, but he expects the Schuler oscillations to be adequately damped out by twenty-four hundred, in time for underway. Pre-underway brief in the wardroom in twenty minutes. The Weapons Department is ready to get underway."
“Thanks, Weps. Have the Nav report if he has any more problems. I’ll be in my stateroom,” Hunter said as he walked to the Forward Operations Compartment Hatch.
The thick rubber acoustic tiles covering SAN FRANCISCO's exterior added a springiness to his step while the gritty black non-skid paint held Hunter firmly to the rounded hull. He dropped through the open hatch and slid down the vertical ladder to the deck below. The narrow passageway led directly to his stateroom and then, beyond, to the control room.
Operation Golden Dawn Page 5