The Shark Mutiny (2001)

by Patrick Robinson

  “Oh nothing, Rusty. Just a thought. Let’s wait until tomorrow. See you right here tonight zero-zero-thirty. Civilian suit. We’re meeting Commander Hunter at the White House.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  0859. Wednesday, May 9.

  The White House Lawn.

  Admiral Morgan turned his head sideways to the wind and stared into the skies to the southeast, searching like an air traffic controller for the big Navy helicopter bringing John Bergstrom and Rusty Bennett in from Andrews Air Base.

  He checked his watch, one minute before touchdown, and no sign yet of the U.S. Marines’ Super Cobra clattering across the eastern bank of the Potomac.

  “If I could see the sonofabitch right now, they’d still be a minute late,” he muttered. “Standing out here on the grass like some fucking rose pruner. Goddamned disorganized sailors. Where the hell are they?”

  He had to wait only two more minutes. And then he spotted the Marine guided-missile gunship, with its brand-new four-bladed rotor, bearing down on the White House. The pilot swung over the building, banked the helicopter to its port side and dropped gently down onto the landing pad.

  Seconds later the loadmaster had opened the passenger door and the U.S. Navy’s Emperor SEAL, Admiral John Bergstrom, stepped down into a bright spring morning in the capital. Behind him, dressed in a dark gray suit, with gleaming black shoes, came the powerful figure of Commander Bennett. He wore a white shirt with a dark blue tie. His principal distinguishing feature was pinned on his left lapel, the combat SEAL’s gleaming golden trident. Rusty Bennett’s colleagues swear he pinned it on his pajamas each night without fail.

  Arnold Morgan walked toward them with a welcoming smile. “Hello, John,” he said. “Good to see you again.” And he shook the hand of the Commander-in-Chief of SPECWARCOM. And then he turned to the junior officer, who was hanging back in the presence of a legend, and he just said solemnly, “Come and take me by the hand, Commander Bennett. This is a moment to which I have looked forward for a long time.”

  Rusty walked forward and said quietly, “Admiral Morgan, it’s my pleasure to meet you.”

  And as their hands clasped, the Admiral found his imagination roaming out of control. Before him stood a clean-cut well-presented Naval officer, but in his mind Arnold Morgan saw a warrior, face blackened, machine gun cocked, leading his men out of the water, up the beach, face-to-face with unimaginable danger. He saw in Rusty’s deep blue eyes the icy glance of a born leader, a veteran of three brutal SEAL missions, a tiger among men, and he shook his head and said, “Commander, I don’t often get a chance to shake the hand of a real hero. I just want you to know I regard it as a great privilege.”

  Rusty nodded, and said without emphasis, “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed.” And in the background he could see the White House, the very citadel of American power, and he wished with all his heart that his widowed father, Jeb Bennett, the Maine lobersterman from Mount Desert, could have seen him right now. Just for a few seconds.

  They walked companionably toward the main door to the West Wing, and the agents handed both SEALs special passes before they set off down the corridor to Admiral Morgan’s lair. Kathy O’Brien greeted them as they arrived and informed the Admiral that Alan Dixon and General Scannell were waiting inside. She had just received a signal from the base at Quantico that Commander Hunter was in the area and that his helicopter would put down on the White House pad in five minutes, direct from the SEALs’ east coast h.q. at Little Creek, Virginia, home of Teams Two, Four and Eight.

  Inside the office the introductions were made, principally for the benefit of Rusty. The rest of the officers knew one another. Kathy ordered coffee for everyone but returned almost immediately to announce the arrival of Commander Rick Hunter, the SEAL team leader who had operated under deep cover in a murderous attack on Russian Naval hardware in the late Joe Stalin’s northern canals; and who had been in overall command of the attack on the Chinese jail the previous year.

  He walked through the door, a tall, hard-muscled warrior, standing 6 feet 4 inches tall and tipping the scales at a zero-body-fat 220 pounds. He was dressed like Rusty in a dark gray suit, with a white shirt and highly polished shoes. Like Rusty, he wore the gleaming golden trident of the combat SEAL on his left lapel.

  Admiral Morgan vacated the big chair behind his desk and walked across the room to meet the battle-hardened SEAL leader from the Bluegrass State. He told him, as he had told Rusty, that it was an honor finally to talk to him.

  “Sir,” said Rick Hunter, “I had no idea you had even heard of me.”

  “Rick,” said Arnold Morgan, “for me to refer to you as one of the finest combat commanders our Special Forces ever had would be to damn with faint praise. I know who you are, and I know what you have done. Please go over and sit in my chair, behind my desk, and allow me to bring you a cup of probably disgusting coffee. It’s the best I can do.”

  Everyone laughed. And the big SEAL went and sat in the Admiral’s chair.

  “If you only knew, Commander, how many hours I’ve sat right there, wondering about you, and your missions, and whether you could possibly succeed…Well, you ought to feel right at home, right there. That’s my Rick Hunter worry-myself-to-death seat.”

  Admiral Morgan poured coffee for everyone, then directed their attention to the electronic chart he had pulled up on a big screen at the end of the room. It showed the southeast coast of Iran and it was highlighted by three dotted lines, close together, joining the Omani coastal town of Ra’s Qabr al Hindi to a point 20 miles east on the Iranian shore. It stretched like a wall across the strait.

  “That the minefield, Arnie?” asked Admiral Bergstrom.

  “That’s it. And we should have a pretty-good-size seaway through it in a few more days. The Indian sweepers have done well. We’re looking for a cleared gateway of three or four miles.”

  “Tankers start moving this week?”

  “We’re not that clear.”

  “Okay, boss,” said the SEAL chief. “Lay it on me. What do we hit?”

  “Up here, John. Twenty-nine miles to the north. See where it says Kuhestak? The new Chinese oil and petrochemical refinery is right there, two miles south of that little town. It’s huge.”

  “You want it put out of action?”

  “Uh-uh. I want it vaporized.”

  “Jesus,” said Rick Hunter.

  “What’s the water depth inshore?” asked Rusty Bennett.

  “Damn shallow,” replied Admiral Morgan. “We got about five miles under nine feet, the last two miles are under four.”

  “Can we get a submarine in close?”

  “Probably seventeen miles, then an ASDV into the shallows. The last five miles you have to swim, walk or wallow. Water’s warm. No military presence that we know of. A deserted coastline.”

  Commander Hunter nodded. “We got the new ASDV, the one that holds fourteen guys?”

  “You have. It’s on board Shark right now. Two-man crew, twelve SEALs.”

  “Range?”

  “Sixteen hours at six knots.”

  “Will it wait, using zero power? Or come back for the guys later?”

  “It’ll wait.”

  Commander Hunter nodded again. He turned to Admiral Bergstrom. “Am I going in, sir?”

  “Not this time. You’re leading Mission Two. That’s two weeks later. If you agree. You’ve served your time on active duty, as you well know. I’m not ordering you in. But I’d be grateful if you’d answer in the affirmative.”

  “But I don’t know the nature of the attack.”

  “It’s on a Chinese Naval base in the Bassein River in Burma,” interjected Arnold Morgan. “It’s going to be dangerous, but highly organized. Failure is unthinkable.”

  “Well, sir, I’m not too bad at wiping out Chinese military.”

  “You’re also the best team leader the SEALs have had since Vietnam, according to John. Except of course for the now-retired Rusty, here. Quite honestly, Comm
ander, I’d be real unhappy with anyone else in charge.”

  “Will it be my last active mission, sir?”

  “It will. And it will guarantee you make Admiral in the shortest possible time. Admiral Dixon, here, will give you that personal guarantee…Ask him, John.”

  “Commander Hunter, will you accept command of Mission Two, the forthcoming attack on the Chinese base in the Bassein River?”

  No hesitation. “Affirmative, sir.”

  The three Admirals nodded curtly in the time-honored Naval code of recognizing a big decision, well made. And then they turned back to the screen, where John Bergstrom was pointing at the course Shark would steer up to the ops area. Arnold Morgan had already coded in the rendezvous point at 26.36N 56.49E, where the submarine would wait in 180 feet of water, 17 miles southwest of the Chinese refinery.

  By now Commander Bennett was assiduously taking notes. Two big blue, yellow-and-white charts had been provided for him and John Bergstrom to take back to Coronado. Rusty had drawn in the lines of the minefield and was now marking water depths.

  “That’s a darned long way in those shallows,” he said. “Is there any radar down there?”

  “Not that we can see. Certainly no Chinese radar. We detect no military presence whatsoever by the Chinese. Nearest radar is down by the missile sites at the end of the minefield. That’s around thirty miles away. If the guys are kicking in along the surface, even in three feet, there’s no way they’d get picked up.”

  “It’s the last coupla miles I’m concerned about,” said Rusty. “Water’s just about ankle deep, then a kinda swamp area, then flat rough sandy terrain. No cover.”

  “SEALs can move across that in under twelve minutes,” replied Admiral Morgan. “It’s gotta be ten thousand to one against a towelhead with a radar screen picking anyone up thirty miles away while the guys are going in.”

  “It wasn’t that I was so much worried about, sir.”

  “Sorry, Commander. How do you mean?”

  “My guys can get in,” said Rusty. “I’m more worried about getting them out.”

  “Okay, Commander. I have given this thought,” said Admiral Morgan. “Let’s take a worst case. The refinery blows before your guys are clear. Let’s say you did not hit the control tower hard enough, and the nonmilitary guards hit the buttons to their Iranian Navy buddies at Bandar Abbas. That’s nearly fifty miles away. Too far for a patrol boat. Their only shot at catching you is helicopters, and by the time they’ve saddled a couple of them up, that’s twenty minutes. Flight time at one hundred seventy knots is, say, fifteen minutes. By which time you’ve had thirty-five minutes to get into deepish water. It’s pitch-dark, and they gotta find you.

  “Right out there I got two guided-missile frigates. Your guys have radios. Those fucking choppers get too close, I’m gonna have them blown right outta the sky and blame the goddamned refinery explosion. Matter of fact, I might blow ’em right out of the sky on takeoff. Fucking towelheads.”

  “How about they happen to have a helicopter or two down by the minefield missile sites?”

  “Anything moves into the sky anywhere near that minefield, it’s toast,” growled the Admiral. “Remember, right now the U.S. of A is in sole Naval control of the gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Northern Arabian Sea. No one moves there unless we say so. NO ONE.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Commander Bennett.

  “Anytime, Commander. Glad to be of help.” Arnold Morgan smiled, thinly. He was loving this. Talking to real fighting men. Guys who knew something. Proper people.

  He gazed at the SEAL, a veteran of more dangerous situations than most people could even imagine. Rusty stood there, still looking at the chart, still writing in his notebook, his bearing upright, his dark moustache perfectly trimmed, his gaze steady.

  Arnold Morgan could have talked to him for a week. And at this moment he suddenly asked the SEAL from the coast of Maine, “Commander, may I ask you a question? A rather personal question?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “When you hit the island in the South China Sea, at the head of your team last year, were you ever afraid?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Did your fear subside once you got into action?”

  “Nossir. I was afraid all the time.”

  “Did any of your men realize that?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Were they afraid?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Did anyone give in to his worst fears?”

  “Nossir.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they all wear the trident, sir. We don’t give in to anything.”

  Arnold Morgan just nodded and said, “Of course.”

  It was plain that the Admiral was quite moved by the short conversation, and John Bergstrom stepped in and said, “Rusty, you will be going on the mission, I believe? Not into combat, but you are going to be there?”

  “Yessir. I was unclear before what it entailed. I would like overall command, until they go in. Then I’ll hand over to the Team Leader. I’ll go with them in the submarine as far as the rendezvous point. That way I’ll be close if something should…well…happen. Something…er…unexpected, I mean. I’d like your permission for that, sir.”

  “You have it, Commander.”

  Admiral Morgan said now that he considered that the insertion of the SEALs, plus the getaway, was clear to everyone and that it was time to take a look at the refinery itself. He clicked off the electronic chart and replaced it with an excellent color transparency, 30 inches by 24, taken by satellite of China’s vast new petrochemical plant on the Iranian coast.

  He told them it had cost close to $2 billion to build and would generate product worth more than $10 million a day. It refined petrol, kerosene, jet fuel, heavy fuel oil, liquefied petroleum gas, tar and sulphur. After just a couple of months operational, it was refining 250,000 barrels a day.

  “You guys hit this hard, there’s gonna be a lot of very, very angry Chinamen running around. It’s a big place with a lot of pipes and towers and valves. However, it’s no good just blowing holes in things. Busted pipes and bent towers can be shut off and repaired, with little lasting harm done. And that’s not our objective. We intend to blow this place sky-high, and right here I’m looking for ignition, right? Pure combustion.”

  “No bullshit,” said Admiral Dixon, in an undisguised parody of Arnold Morgan’s favorite phrase.

  “Precisely, CNO,” confirmed the National Security Chief. “No bullshit.”

  He walked back to his desk, picked up his 36-inch-long steel ruler and came back to the screen. “Right,” he said. “I’m going to stand off to the side here so you can all see the area I’m referring to. That way Rusty, here, can use a yellow marker on one of these prints I had done.

  “Okay, now I’m assuming you are not all experts on refining, and I’m going to explain what you are looking for. By the way, twenty-four hours ago I knew none of this, but I do now because I had Jack Smith come down and explain it to me.

  “I have had notes on this prepared for everyone to take back and study, but I do want to go over it. For a start, we should be clear: a refinery converts crude oil—in this case from Kazakhstan—into a whole range of products. The crude is really just a combination of hydrocarbons that are separated inside the refinery into various groups, or fractions. It’s actually called ‘separation, conversion and chemical treatment.’ The stuff basically gets distilled, but it’s complicated because some fractions vaporize, or boil, at very different temperatures—gasoline at seventy-five Fahrenheit, some heavy fuel oils at six hundred Fahrenheit. They also condense at different temperatures.

  “What happens is the crude gets pumped via pipes, through a furnace, which heats it to maybe seven hundred twenty-five Fahrenheit. The resulting mixture of gas and liquids then passes into a vertical steel cylinder, called a fractioning tower, or a bubbling tower.

  “This little bastard is what we’re after. Because insid
e that tower we got a lot of shit happening—the heavy fuels condense in the lower section, light fractions like gasoline and kerosene condense in the middle and upper sections. The liquids, all highly inflammable, are collected in trays and drawn by pipes along the sides of the tower. Some fractions never even cool enough to condense, and these get passed out through the top of the tower into a vapor recovery unit.

  “Right here I’m talking high-test incendiary. One of these towers goes up because of a bomb stuck on its lower casing, can you imagine? It blows the heavy fuel oil into a blizzard of fire that hits gasoline, kerosene and then liquefied gas in the vapor unit. That tower, as far as you’re concerned, is potentially one of the world’s biggest fireworks.”