The Shark Mutiny (2001)

by Patrick Robinson

“And, Jimmy, speak to no one. Not a sentence. Not a phone call. This is very important. Believe me.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And, Jimmy, make sure you bring your working chart with you.”

  “Yessir.”

  Arnold Morgan stood up and walked to the top of the basement stairs in Kathy’s large Chevy Chase home. He yelled instructions to his Secret Service detail, organizing Lt. Ramshawe’s escort at the White House. He kissed Kathy good night, pulled on his coat and headed outside where his car and two agents were waiting.

  “Straight to the factory, sir?”

  “You gottit.”

  It was almost 1 A.M. when the black White House staff car came barreling over the Taft Avenue Bridge, driving swiftly down Connecticut Avenue

  . It was raining now, and the city was quiet. They crossed Dupont Circle

  and made their way to Seventeenth Street

  , swinging into West Executive Avenue

  from where they could see a Jaguar already being waved through to the West Wing.

  Admiral Morgan met Lt. Ramshawe right outside the door, while four duty agents attended to his visitor’s pass and parked his car.

  The Admiral stuck out his hand, smiled, and said, “Hello, Lieutenant. Arnold Morgan.”

  Jimmy Ramshawe had met a few major men in his life, but this was different. The Admiral exuded power. He was all of seven inches shorter than Jimmy but his gaze was dead straight, his eyes bright blue and his grip strong. The Admiral’s dark gray suit had been tailored somewhere in heaven, and his black lace-up shoes were gleaming. The perfectly knotted tie was that of the Naval Academy, Annapolis, a place and experience that Arnold Morgan had never forgotten, and never would. He made Jimmy Ramshawe feel like a little boy.

  And in response to the Admiral’s curt but warm greeting, he just managed, “Sir.” He’d used up all his daring and bravado for one night, making two unauthorized calls on the private line to the right-hand man of the President of the United States.

  “Follow me,” said the Admiral, to anyone who might be listening, which included the two Secret Service agents who were with him at all times, four White House agents, and Jimmy. And, line astern, they set off in the wake of the Admiral, who never walked; he kind of pounded along the carpet, chin out, shoulders back, dead upright. If a regular wall had suddenly appeared in front of him, he would have crashed right through it, like a Disney cartoon, leaving just the outline of his silhouette. He conducted the business of the United States of America along very similar lines.

  At the big wooden door to his office he came to a halt, and his commands were sharp…. “Get me a competent secretary to sit in Mrs. O’Brien’s chair right now. Tell someone to bring us coffee…. You hungry, Jimmy?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Chicken sandwiches for the Lieutenant…and make sure someone’s attending to my phone exclusively at all times…Aside from that, my regular agents take up positions right here…and have the hot line to the President on high alert…I may have to speak to him in a major hurry.”

  Everyone nodded. Admiral Morgan glared; turning to one of his regular agents, he barked, “No bullshit, right, Bobby?”

  Bobby snapped to attention. “No bullshit. Sir, nossir.”

  It was a well-practiced routine, and everyone laughed.

  “Okay, gentlemen, that’s it. Lieutenant, let’s get to work…and tell ’em to hurry up with the coffee in case we both fall asleep.”

  Inside the office, Jimmy spread his chart out on the Admiral’s big desk. Arnold Morgan stared hard as the key spots were pointed out to him…the missiles, the Global Bronco, the stricken VLCC, currently pumping oil into the strait.

  “Okay, Lieutenant, first things first. I want to know what the master of that ship actually saw. I guess if they slammed into a mine…What was it, a contact PLT-3 from Russia?”

  “That was what the Chinese ordered, sir. So I’m assuming that.”

  “So’m I. Well, they make a pretty big bang in the water. The Captain must have heard something.”

  “I agree, sir. But the guy I spoke to in the Omani public affairs office was giving nothing away. It took me all my time to get him to tell me where the ship was.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, I may have to kick a little ass. Hard. Do we know the name or the nationality of the ship?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Okay. Well, the news guys will have that very soon. Meantime I’m gonna get the Royal Navy in London to do our work. The Brits are well in with the Omanis, have been for years. Just about every warship they own is British.”

  He picked up the telephone and ordered the new secretary, “Get me Admiral Sir Richard Birley on the line in Northwood, England. The numbers are in my big blue book, top right-hand drawer…. He’ll be at home, right near the base. He’s head of the Royal Navy’s submarine service.”

  Less than two minutes later, the Admiral’s old friend from London was on the line. The two men exchanged greetings, and the English submarine chief instantly agreed to have someone call the Omanis and find out precisely what was going on, who owned the ship and what the Captain had to say.

  “I’ll be back inside the hour, Arnie…. By the way, may I ask why you’re treating this so urgently?”

  “Not right now you can’t.”

  “Well, you always have to wonder in those waters, hmmmm?”

  “You always have to wonder. Talk to you later, Dick.”

  The Admiral turned back to Jimmy Ramshawe, and he said quietly, “Lieutenant, I want you to listen very carefully. Only two people in this country believe the Iranians and the Chinese may have put a minefield across the strait. That’s you and I.

  “We may be wrong. But I think not. Your straight line on that chart is just too much of a coincidence. And I would not be that shocked if another ship blew before we’re much older.

  “But this is what I want you to understand: If this turns out to be true, we’re going to be sitting on a colossal world oil crisis. The gulf will have to be shut down while we sweep and clear it, which is going to take weeks. Oil prices will go through the roof. The entire global economy could go berserk. Japan could come to a complete halt. A gallon of gas could go to six bucks right here in the U.S…. and what I’m trying to do right here is avoid a national panic, if that is at all possible.”

  “Yessir.”

  The chicken sandwiches arrived, a large plateful. Jimmy Ramshawe attacked them, and the Admiral had one himself while they waited for the English Admiral to call back.

  He was on the line before 0200. “Arnold, the ship is Greek, Liberian registered. Only two years old. It’s huge, three hundred thousand tons deadweight. Loaded with Saudi crude. The Captain and the crew are still on board. The ship is not sinking but it’s ten degrees bow down, and it’s currently belching seventy thousand cubic meters of oil from its for’ard tank.”

  “Any word from the Captain?”

  “Yes, he made a statement to the Omani coast guard. Says there was a massive explosion, for no reason, way up at the bow. It completely ruptured one of the five holding tanks.”

  “Was she double hulled, Dick?”

  “Oh, yes. Very heavily built in the Daewoo Shipyard, South Korea. Compartmentalized, too, throughout the hull. She’d be just about unsinkable…I expect you know, but she’s only twelve miles away from the Global Bronco, which blew up yesterday.”

  “Yeah. We do know that. And right now I’d have to say that this, Sir Richard, ole buddy, is not good.”

  “This, Admiral Arnie, old chap, is becoming deeply unattractive.”

  3

  April 28. The White House.

  Washington, D.C.

  With Lieutenant Ramshawe on his way home now, sworn to total silence, Admiral Morgan stood alone in his office at 0230. It was a situation not entirely unfamiliar to him, even on a Saturday morning. He yelled through the door for someone to bring him some fresh HOT coffee, and debated whether or not to call the President.

 
“Maybe not,” he muttered. “It won’t do any good. And as soon as the President knows, everyone knows. I think we need a little more time before the crap really hits the fan.”

  The first thing to do was to get a couple of minesweepers into the strait and take a closer look. Jimmy Ramshawe was to spend the morning screening all satellite pictures to check whether any tankers were making a successful through-passage. Arnold Morgan suspected any big fuel-oil carriers that did make it through would be either Chinese or Iranian. And that their cargo would either be direct from the refinery just east of Bandar Abbas, or from the new Chinese refinery farther down the coast. But Lieutenant Ramshawe would find that out.

  The problem was minesweepers, the little specialist warships that locate the mines by towing a sweep wire through the water until it hits and cuts the mine’s cable. The USA had some extremely effective sonar mine hunters in the Avenger Class, but they were mostly based along the Texas coast, and made only 13 knots. “Damn things would take forever to get there,” the Admiral grumbled.

  He pondered the Brits, wondering about the Royal Navy’s excellent Hunt Class minesweepers. But again, the same problem…slow, and half a world away from Hormuz. No. He had to get someone much nearer, which meant, essentially, the Indians…. What the hell time is it in Bombay?

  The question was rhetorical. Arnold Morgan knew more or less what time it was everywhere. And right now in the great Indian city of Bombay it was somewhere around midday. He picked up the telephone and asked his night-duty secretary, whom he’d never even seen, to connect him immediately to the Indian Embassy in Washington.

  When the duty officer answered, the Admiral said simply, “This is Arnold Morgan, National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. I’m in the White House. Take down the following phone number, and have the Naval Attaché call me in the next four minutes…. Thanks. And hurry up.” Click.

  Three minutes and 22 seconds later, the telephone rang on his private line.

  “This is Vice Admiral Prenjit Lal speaking. I believe you wanted me?”

  “Hey, thanks for calling. I do appreciate it’s the middle of the night, but my request is easy. I would like Admiral Kumar, your Chief of Naval Staff, to call the White House immediately and ask for me. I guess he’s in Bombay?”

  “Yes, Admiral. Today he is. I’ll contact him right away.”

  “Stress that it’s extremely urgent, will you?”

  “The hour of the night tells me of the urgency, Admiral. I’ll do it personally and immediately.”

  It took eight minutes. Admiral Kumar came on the line, insisting that he would be honored to provide any assistance he could to India’s very great friends in the White House.

  Arnold Morgan, however, knew this was only half true. What the mannered and apparently pliable Indian officer had not said was “Just so long as it will not damage our relations with our neighbors or allies, and so long as the U.S. would assist with whatever the cost might be.” Unspoken hurdles.

  Admiral Morgan elected to lay out the facts as swiftly and brutally as he could. He pulled no punches. And he went very carefully over the iron-clad fact of Jimmy Ramshawe’s Straight Line. And he ended his little speech by saying: “I’m afraid all of the world’s oil consumers are in this together. But yours is the nation with the most easily accessible minesweepers…. Admiral Kumar, you will have the full backing of the USA. I’ll have two destroyers there to meet you, and you may assume all costs will be met by the big oil consumers, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France, Germany, everyone.

  “I’m sure you can appreciate the urgency…we simply cannot just sit here and wait for another tanker to blow up…we have to get in there, check it out and if necessary sweep a safe channel…and your Pondicherry Class minesweepers are the nearest.”

  “Admiral Morgan,” replied the Indian Navy Chief, “I am indeed grateful for your call and your trust. If the Iranian Gulf was closed for even three weeks, my country would be in the most terrible trouble…aside from the regular petrol supplies, almost all of our propane gas for cooking comes from there. My country could come to a complete halt.

  “Obviously we had noted the two tanker accidents. But no one had any idea it might be a concerted plot by the Iranians and the damnable Chinese. You may assume we will sail six of the Pondicherrys in the next twenty-four hours. You think we should take a tanker?”

  “Yes I do. And escorts. Admiral Kumar, we do not yet know precisely what we are dealing with here. But I can assure you of massive U.S. protection once your ships arrive at the strait…. One squeak out of the Chinese or the Iranians, and we’ll put ’em on the bottom of the ocean. That’s a promise.”

  “Excellent, Admiral. My attaché in Washington will be in contact in a few hours to give you times of sailing, an ETA, and further details of our escort. It’s one thousand miles to the strait from Bombay, but the Pondicherrys make sixteen knots. We’ll aim to sail at first light tomorrow morning, which should put us in the strait before dark on Tuesday.”

  “Thank you, Admiral Kumar. We look forward to working with you. I just wish the circumstances were less serious.”

  Arnold Morgan replaced the telephone, checked his watch at 0320 and opened up his private line to the Pentagon. He told the duty officer in the Navy Department to get the CNO on the line right away.

  Sixty seconds later, Admiral Alan Dixon, former Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, betrayed no sign that he had been called in the small hours of the morning. The new Chief of Naval Operations said crisply, “Morning, sir. Sorry if I kept you waiting.”

  “Not a bit, Alan. But what I have to say is rather long and complicated. Can you come to the White House right away? Where are you, in the Yard?”

  “Yessir. Give me thirty.”

  “See you then. West Executive Avenue

  entrance.”

  The minutes ticked by slowly for the National Security Adviser. He debated the rather appealing possibility of waking “that stuffed shirt, Borden,” but decided there was nothing to gain from such a malicious act. So he waited. Sipped his coffee, thought of Kathy. And waited.

  At 0348 sharp, Admiral Dixon was escorted into the office, and for the second time that night, to a second slightly incredulous Navy chief, Admiral Morgan went over the whole scenario in the Strait of Hormuz.

  Alan Dixon, a veteran destroyer CO from the Gulf War, nodded gravely. “I guess two sinkings in much the same place are beyond the bounds of likely coincidence, almost impossible we could be mistaken—I haven’t heard the theory before…. I suppose that’s your day’s work, eh?”

  “Not so, Alan. One of the brighter sparks on George Morris’s staff. I’d like to support it, though.”

  “An interesting bit of deduction. And to tell the truth, sir, the Pentagon had not yet received a position on the second tanker when I left the office.”

  “No. Neither had anyone else. This young Lieutenant bamboozled his way into the public affairs office of the Omani Navy and pried it out of them.”

  “Good job! Love to hear it. Anyway, sir, what now?”

  “Well, the Indian Navy is going to work with us sweeping the strait. We obviously have to start a major mine-clearance operation ASAP. I hope on Tuesday evening. They’ll have a half dozen of those Russian-built Pondicherrys working, with an escort of their own. But I want to get a couple of our destroyers in there, and a CVBG as soon as we can.”

  Admiral Dixon pulled out a personal notebook, which detailed all of the five currently operational U.S. Carrier Battle Groups. The 55 ships that surrounded the huge carriers were just a little too much to commit to memory. And the highly methodical Boston-born Alan Dixon never went anywhere without that little notebook.

  “Okay, sir,” he said. “We’re pretty well placed. The Constellation Group’s stationed up at the north end of the Gulf off Iraq. We got John C. Stennis with nine guided-missile ships and two nuclear boats exercising in the Arabian Sea, probably a day and a half from the strait.

&nb
sp; “Harry S Truman’s battle ready at Diego Garcia. She’s got a full complement of escorts, one cruiser, two destroyers, six frigates, two nuclear submarines, an LA and a Sturgeon, plus a complete Under Way Replenishment Group. John F. Kennedy has a full operational group just about ready to leave from Pearl at any time, certainly in the next three days.

  “Back in San Diego the Ronald Reagan’s almost finished a major overhaul. Her Group can be ready inside two months, if we need it.”

  “That’s great, Alan. I guess we ought to have one right in the southern approaches to the strait and one inside the gulf, spread across the exit, with a lotta muscle concentrated south of Bandar Abbas. There’s been a couple of pretty heavy Chinese destroyers prowling around there these past few weeks. Once the Indian minesweepers get in there, we’ll get the President to issue a private warning to the Iranians…any ship attempting any kind of interference will be sunk. By us. No bullshit. Right?”