by Mark Greaney
“Speak Russian, you fool!” he yelled back up.
The ship’s loudspeakers were already doing the job of translating, and an Iranian-accented voice yelled out in Russian, “Torpedo! Torpedo! All men brace for impact! Torpedo in the water!”
Borbikov looked out to sea. How could there be a torpedo? The mouth of the port was supposed to be filled with antisubmarine ships and three prowling Russian subs. Could the Americans really be so stealthy that they could slip through?
All around Colonel Borbikov, men began to panic, running toward the gangway to get off the ship. A GAZ Tigr, midway down the ramp, smashed into the railing, its front wheels falling off the edge, wedging it there as the driver jumped out of the vehicle and took off for the pier.
Undeterred, Borbikov ran toward the ship’s water side and looked over. A thin white sheet of wake approached at high speed. To his left, he heard two other ships’ klaxons wail.
Borbikov watched the incoming torpedo with detachment for a moment; then self-preservation kicked in and he grabbed a railing. He had just done so when a muffled boom rocked the vessel and an enormous spray of water erupted into the sky farther down the hull. Borbikov’s body shook as the explosion below the waterline vibrated throughout the ship, and then a secondary explosion rocketed him off his feet and smashed him against the deck.
More explosions came from farther down the pier as other ships were struck with torpedoes.
His brain, rattled and slowed by the impact, forced him to lie still for a moment, all but deafened. Then the sounds of bedlam erupted slowly as the ship began listing slightly to one side.
Borbikov, touching his hand to his forehead, felt a slight trickle of blood. Angered and stunned by this latest turn of events, he climbed back to his feet and grabbed an armor sergeant running by him toward the gangway.
“Halt there, trooper! Grab two men and slow the others down. No panic!”
The man looked at him with crazed eyes.
Seeing that he wasn’t getting through to the panic-stricken soldier, he reached out a hand. “Give me your fucking rifle, you idiot!”
The man handed it over reluctantly, expecting to be shot on the spot. Borbikov flicked off the safety and racked the bolt back, aimed the AK-47 skyward, and fired a burst of fifteen rounds into the air. All around him men dropped to the deck.
The blast of gunfire was a sound of destruction they all recognized. Everyone on the deck of Sabalan stared at Colonel Borbikov.
“Listen to me! If you make order, you’ll have time to get yourselves and the equipment off. I will not tolerate any more panic. You are Russian soldiers, on a mission vital to your nation. Every man is your comrade!” Either the burst of fire or his sharp words did the trick, and the sergeants and junior officers took charge and began a firm but more orderly evacuation of the ship.
Borbikov made his way to the bridge to see how long they had before the Sabalan went down. He glanced back at the gangplank, where a group of men was trying to straighten the Tigr that had halfway fallen off the ramp. An incredible explosion some way down the pier signaled another hit. He could feel a heat wave and guessed it was an oil tanker going up in flames.
The U.S. submarine chose wisely, he thought as he climbed to the bridge. Two oil tankers, the command ship, and a cargo vessel carrying tanks and ammunition. The torpedo hits on the tankers had been calculated to severely degrade his task force before it even assembled on land. The Iranian frigates were already racing out of the mouth of the bay to search for the enemy submarine, but the damage had been done.
* * *
• • •
USS JOHN WARNER
GULF OF TADJOURA
On board the John Warner, the sonarman called out to DelVecchio. “Captain, full spread has hit. Active ping sounding now. Those frigates are coming out after us. Still more than five nautical miles distant. From their tracks, they are uncoordinated and searching blind.”
Diana DelVecchio said, “Let them come. XO, I want more than twelve nautical miles distance within the hour, but keep a good sweep searching for their subs, because you can be sure they’ll be converging on our location. Calculate course and speed to get us there. Hydrophones, confirm ship’s noise—I want silence en route. Then I want you to pick a nice sandbar. We’ll wait for them to pass over us, and only then will we go for deep water.”
A murmur of assent and pride quietly went around the John Warner as word was passed in low tones from stem to stern that Captain DelVecchio had sent four vessels to the bottom of the Djiboutian harbor.
The boat snuck along just above the seafloor as ships in all directions began hunting for it.
CHAPTER 57
SEYCHELLES
28 DECEMBER
After thirty-eight miserable hours of constant travel, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly landed at the civilian airfield in the city of Victoria, the Seychelles. When he disembarked from the C-130, two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters from the USS Boxer were on the tarmac waiting to pick him up.
A Marine captain, dressed in a spotless green flight suit and sporting a khaki flight jacket bedecked with his unit patch, the Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 465, strode up and saluted smartly.
His leather name tag said his rank, last name, and call sign: “Booger.”
“Are you Colonel Connolly?” asked Booger politely but with a tone of surprise. Connolly looked awful, smelled worse, and was so tired he couldn’t even muster the strength to be professionally embarrassed for not shaving.
“That’s me.”
“Sir, you look like shit. The regimental commander isn’t expecting us to get you aboard the Boxer until we get a flight check from ground personnel here. If you want, I’m sure one of the crew has some spare toiletries, and back behind the cargo terminal there’s a duty hut with a head. If you can shit, shower, and shave in less than fifteen, we can keep our timeline and take you to the Boxer to meet your new boss.”
“Thanks for taking pity on an old, dirty grunt.”
“Sir, we’ve all been there before. We’re a long way from anything, but I hear you came from D.C., and D.C. is the other side of the earth.”
* * *
• • •
Fifteen minutes later the Marine lieutenant colonel was clean and refreshed and ready to report into a combat zone.
One and a half hours later, he touched down aboard the USS Boxer, the command deck of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and now also the headquarters of Regimental Combat Team 5.
Colonel Kenneth Caster stood ready to greet him on the big, flat deck, and Connolly recognized him instantly. The Marine Corps was a pretty small place for men who had been in as long as the two of them, and Connolly had worked with Caster on many occasions.
Connolly stepped out of the helo, his legs weary from so many hours aboard cramped aircraft, and they wobbled, unused to the pitching deck. The colonel approached the open helicopter door and yelled above the rotor wash in a Texas drawl, “Welcome aboard, Dan. Grab your shit and follow me down to the CiC. We don’t have a second to waste.”
* * *
• • •
The CiC of the USS Boxer, the command ship of the six-ship flotilla, was a spacious Navy gray–painted room littered with computers, phones, and radio sets. Whiteboards hung on every open bulkhead, and the ceiling was a mass of cables, wires, and pipes common to Navy ships. The room was oddly lit by overhead fluorescent lights that gave the space a dim and drab quality.
There were a few digital maps on the two big LED screens, but the paper maps on the big table were the center of attention. They depicted all six ships in the flotilla. Dan Connolly looked over the chart table; dry-erase marker on acetate overlays showed the latest data.
A single blue rectangle sat off the coast of Tanzania near Dar es Salaam. This was the symbol for Marine Corps units here on Boxer, ready for the “go code” to off
-load.
Caster stepped up to the table now and put his hand on the shoulder of the new arrival. “Okay, folks, this is Lieutenant Colonel Connolly. He’s been sent here from the Pentagon, from the Director’s Office for Strategic Plans. He’s got some words for us on how we are to prosecute this mission, and he’s our link to the national decisions being made about this whole thing.
“Dan, what have you got for us?”
“Well, sir, I can say a few things about what we’re up against and what this is all about.”
“Anything you got, Marine. We’ve been pretty much flying blind. Seems all the relevant background is being kept close back in D.C.”
“Yes, sir. Here’s the situation. I’m sure everyone is tracking what’s going on around the world. The movements in Taiwan and the . . . issue with the admiral and the general—the Russians orchestrated that, and it was the opening salvo. That set PACOM back, and we deployed the entire Global Response Force to PACOM expecting we were going to have to support our friends in Taiwan. Next came Europe, Christmas Day. A huge deal, and seemingly unrelated, but now it looks like that was just the second punch of the fight. The attack on AFRICOM and EUCOM left those commands in tatters and the majority of our remaining quick-response forces were sent to clear Russia out of Europe. That’s still ongoing, but we’re making good progress.
“The Russians banked on a limited or nonexistent U.S. response here, in Africa. In a sense it was a one-two fake out.”
“So the landing of Russians in Africa is the third punch in that metaphor?” asked the colonel.
“Yes, sir, we believe so.”
“And their ultimate objective is this mine outside of Mombasa?”
“That’s right. They feel like if they don’t grab it now, while the West is involved with China, soon enough they’ll have to buy all their rare-earth metals from the West. Metals needed in things like missiles, guidance packages, computers, et cetera. At any time we could embargo them back to the Stone Age, so to speak, technology-wise. They would have to grovel to the West or China and behave at all times or suffer our economic wrath. It would constitute a worse threat than they faced during the Cold War.”
Caster said, “So this is Russia’s big bid for success. And that means they’re in it to win it.”
“Yes, sir. This is their attempt to secure a future free from Western influence. An independent economy in the computer age.”
“Then why not send their entire army?” He pointed to the Russian icons on the map. “I mean, surely there’s more stuff in the Russian arsenal than this.”
“They were hoping to hide a smaller, faster force. Remember, they are retreating from Europe—they anticipated NATO would think right about now they’d fought the Russians back into a box. Besides, they helped distract pretty much everything in the U.S. arsenal over to the Pacific. There isn’t much left that will be here before they can take over the mine.”
“How will they hold it? I mean . . . sooner or later we can get a force arrayed to dislodge them, even with AFRICOM in tatters.”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. I will say I think they must have a plan. More forces on the way, a political deal in the works with Kenya once they own Mrima Hill . . . something else. I just don’t know.”
The colonel clearly did not like this one unknown element in the situation. He let it go and said, “How long until we can expect reinforcements?”
“The Vinson, along with the rest of its carrier strike group, are on the way, but they won’t be offshore for three days. Till then, you’re it, sir.”
Colonel Caster looked back to the map. “From the sat images over Iran, it looks like the Russians are a reinforced mech brigade. We don’t have anything like the bang to go up against that kind of armor. One of our subs took out a sizable portion of their fuel in the harbor in Djibouti, but there’s still plenty of armor that can make it down to the mine.”
Connolly said, “We do have airpower on our side. Navy and Marine Corps attack aviation.”
“Yes, but I’m betting they thought of that. Are we guessing they have more than just a little antiair?”
“Well, yes, sir. We believe some of it is the newest Chinese stuff. Bought presumably so we wouldn’t notice the increased production at facilities in Russia.”
“Looks like we’re facing about four-to-one odds. And no cavalry coming over the hills anytime soon,” said Colonel Caster. Then a faint smile crossed his lips. “Just the kind of odds that the Marine Corps dreams of.”
The men pored over charts and maps, looked at timetables, and came up with solutions. Assembling men from each of their commands, Connolly was now the de facto chief plans officer for both the Navy and Marine Corps units and ships. Fortunately, he’d had plenty of experience organizing campaigns. The only catch was most of his planning experience had been in Afghanistan and Iraq against insurgents. Fighting Russians, the planning team agreed, was going to be a whole new ball game. They took their best crack at it and came up with both a landing and a subsequent assault plan.
An hour later Connolly and the new planning team gave the commanders a solid walk-through. They would steam to port at Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania. There they would bring the regiment ashore, and once all the gear and vehicles were off-loaded, they’d begin their movement north to Kenya, where they would defend the mine.
The captain said, “Navigation? What’s our time to get to Dar es Salaam?”
“Sir, sixteen hours until we can make pier side.”
Caster asked, “How long do you figure it will take to off-load pier side?”
“We calculate it’ll take about ten to twelve hours to get your rolling stock ashore, Colonel.”
Connolly added, “Then another sixteen to get up to Mrima Hill.”
Caster whistled. “Damn, that’s cuttin’ it close. One mistake or some bad weather and Lazar beats us there. Once he gets into those mines, he’ll be like a tick on a deer in December.”
Connolly said, “That’s true, sir.”
Caster put a finger on the map at Mrima Hill and then drew it north. “We have some air mobility; they do not. That means we have the advantage of speed and surprise. I want to use it. I want a spoiling attack mounted in the next twenty-four hours. Find me a piece of terrain along their route. Someplace where they are forced to slow down, a choke point where they can’t spread wide.”
The colonel continued. “Use the light-armored reconnaissance guys and some Force Recon JTACs to get up north fast and pound the Russians one time in the snout. I want them to know they’re headin’ for a fight with the Marine Corps.”
Connolly said, “I’d like to request permission to join that fight, sir. We can make an amphibious landing and take the LAV-25s; they’ll move a lot faster than anything else we have, so while the main element moves to the mines, we can race ahead in the LAVs and meet the Russians”—he looked at the map quickly—“at Moyale. It’s on the Ethiopian-Kenyan border. I can be there in twenty-four hours, just before Lazar’s force arrives.”
Caster thought it over. “Permission granted.”
Now Connolly said, “I just wish we knew more about the makeup of Lazar’s forces.”
CHAPTER 58
PORT OF DJIBOUTI
DJIBOUTI CITY, DJIBOUTI
28 DECEMBER
Three immense spouts of flame burned skyward in great chimneys of fire from the stricken Iranian ships. The flames topped more than one hundred feet high, casting flickering light across Djibouti City.
The two split oil tankers had disgorged their liquid cargo and coated the bay in a sea of fire. The burning oil drifted against the pier, waves of flame washing over the concrete and utterly destroying what had been a calm and orderly port only hours before.
Occasionally ammunition would blast from the ongoing conflagration aboard the ammo ship, flipping and spinning like fireworks, detonating i
n the air or crashing inland or out to sea as the bunkers of rockets or missiles cooked off.
The ammunition ship, tied next to one of Lazar’s cargo vessels, had sunk halfway, settling onto the sand in the shallow draft of the inner harbor. The burning pieces stuck out like flaming broken bones reaching up from a flooded graveyard.
The destruction was otherworldly, and local citizens and foreigners alike made signs of the cross or said prayers in either Arabic or French.
On the horizon beyond the mouth of the bay, Iranian and Russian Tarantul-class warships crisscrossed rapidly, frantically searching for the culprit in the attack.
Colonel General Boris Lazar sat atop his command-and-control BTR on the road just in front of the pier and watched the continuing debacle impassively. He had seen destruction on a large scale before. He’d seen bodies stacked like firewood outside a Dagestani mosque, artillery work over a Ukrainian hamlet until it was nothing but a smoking hole, and airpower decimate a hillside full of brave but hopelessly overmatched Afghan mujahideen. As then, he was detached now, but as he watched the colors dance across the horizon, he remembered the pain of battles from before.
He rubbed his chin and watched the fire splitting the ships apart. Another explosion; this time it might have been an anti-tank round aboard the munitions ship. Streams of smoke corkscrewed up and outward as missiles lit off and fired erratically.
He had taken his vehicle helmet off so he could avoid the frantic radio transmissions for a while. All the chatter between his commanders and his chief of staff, Colonel Kir, had been too much for him. The damage reports kept flooding in.
He’d heard radio traffic like that before, in other lands, other times, other battles. He’d listened to the calls of desperate men at the edge of their wits more than he cared to remember.
War did seem to have familiar echoes.
His big chest heaved in a large sigh as his brain worked over the meaning of this mess.
