The Shark Mutiny (2001)

by Patrick Robinson

  “And the key to China’s domination of that strait is their new base in Burma. Without it, they’re damn near helpless, because they simply live too far away. And, gentlemen, right now we have world opinion on our side. We can force them right out of the Bassein River Delta, and no one would support any of their claims of U.S. bullying. That’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Anyway, who’s to know what happened if the SEALs pull it off?” asked the CNO.

  “China will know, because we’ll fucking tell ’em. But they have made the mistake of striking the first blow against the West with that minefield in Hormuz. And then literally conquering Taiwan. Everyone knows they deserve whatever the hell’s coming to them. And my guess is that if we hit Haing Gyi, the ole Chinks are going to go real quiet for several years.”

  “Meanwhile how the hell do we get in there to hit it?” asked Bob MacPherson. “And since we’re going to tell them what we’ve done, what’s wrong with just bombing the sonofabitches?”

  “The USA does not bomb people, without a drastic and just reason,” replied Admiral Morgan. “However we may justify an attack on China’s Indian Ocean east base, it is no more than a power play—the superpower bangs the pretender into his rightful place. Second place.

  “But it’s so much better that the guy with the busted nose is the only one aware of who’s whacked him. That way it goes quiet. Some accident, on some remote island, in the Bay of Bengal. That’s the way to run the world these days. Keep it quiet, keep it tight, but make it count.”

  “Well, you were right about the refinery in Hormuz,” said Admiral Dixon. “We’ve heard nothing from China by way of complaint.”

  “That’s because they know,” said Admiral Morgan. “They know and they understand. And quite honestly, I don’t think they care. Their objective was Taiwan, and they were prepared to pay the price for it. I doubt they’ll ever bother to rebuild that refinery. But in the next several months you’re gonna see the start of a trans-Sino pipeline, all the way from Kazakhstan to their eastern seaboard. It’s the Chinese way. They’ll build the world’s longest ditch, containing the world’s longest pipe, just the way they built the world’s longest brick wall, and the world’s greatest dam at Three Gorges. They have the labor, and they’re not afraid to use it. A lot of it, one suspects, slave labor.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Admiral Dixon, “how the hell are we going to get the guys into Haing Gyi, and what are they going to do when they get there?”

  “First question, how to get in.” Admiral Morgan moved closer to the chart, zooming back a little to show the water depths out in the bay.

  “And that’s a problem,” he said. “You can all see the fifty-meter line out here, fifteen miles from the central seaway into the estuary. I’m not completely crazy about this chart, but they have the fifty-meter line well defined. It follows the coastline very accurately, all the way down from the narrow border with Bangladesh. Anywhere you look it’s showing depths of around one hundred sixty-five feet to the left and one hundred twenty feet to the right. So we gotta assume it’s more or less correct. So our submarine is going to have to make a rendezvous point somewhere right there on that line, where she can still hide in one hundred fifty feet of water.

  “But that’s up to the SEALs and to Shark’s CO. More important is the insertion of the troops. And I’ve given it a lot of thought, because that ASDV is so damned slow. And fifteen miles is a long way at only six knots, and that only gets us into the mouth of the estuary. It’s another ten up to the deeper water off Haing Gyi. That’s a total running time of more than four hours, and it leaves us with the ASDV in a pretty vulnerable spot.

  “My conclusion, therefore, is that we bring the guys into the estuary, which will take two and a half hours, and then creep up the new channel as far as Rocky Point, right here on the southeastern headland of the island, and let ’em swim in. We then have the ASDV return to the Shark.”

  “Leaving the guys alone in there?”

  “For a short while. Because I think we have to get ’em out with fast, rigid inflatables. The possibility of pursuit by the Chinese is high, and they may have fast patrol boats out searching. If they locate the ASDV crawling through the mud, in a channel less than forty feet deep, with nowhere to maneuver right or left, we could be light one boatload of very precious guys. And that would not be good.”

  “You mean we set up a rendezvous point somewhere right along the island beaches?” asked General Scannell. “Then get ’em out fast, running all the way back to the submarine at high speed on the surface?”

  “No alternative. ASDV in, for maximum stealth, when we’re not expected. Top speed run out, when the Chinese Navy is searching around in the dark, but may not catch us. Those fast inflatables make twenty-five knots. The guys will obviously get a good start…maybe fifteen minutes…and that way they have a real shot no one’s gonna locate ’em.”

  “Okay, Arnie. Sounds good, so long as they don’t get caught in the base. We got a contingency to rescue if the crap hits the fan while they’re still working?”

  “No, Alan. No I’m afraid we don’t.”

  “Nothing?”

  “How can we? We wouldn’t know if they were in trouble. The only thing we can do is have an accurate rendezvous point on the island, with fast boats waiting to evacuate. The ASDV cannot fight, and the submarine is too far away.”

  “Jesus, that’s a tough call for the guys. Who’s in charge?” asked Tim Scannell.

  “Commander Rick Hunter.”

  “That makes me feel better. But it’s still tough. I hate to send the guys in with no backup.”

  “So do I. But they will be armed to the teeth, and very thoroughly prepared. Chinese guards wouldn’t have a prayer against them if push came to shove.”

  “They didn’t have one against Ray Schaeffer, either,” replied Admiral Dixon. “But shit happens.”

  The four men were thoughtful for a few moments. And as they each contemplated the horror of discovery while the SEALs were ashore, plying their devastating craft, the door swung open and the beautiful Kathy O’Brien came in bearing a brown envelope addressed personally to Admiral Arnold Morgan, delivered by hand from Fort Meade to the White House.

  “Just a moment,” said the Admiral. “This might be just what we need. If it is, it should have been here two hours ago. But if Borden’s taken my advice, the newest observations are gonna be real thorough.”

  And thorough they were. Fort Meade had apparently solved the mystery of the power source of the sprawling Naval complex on Haing Gyi Island.

  Report on Haing Gyi Island Power Source

  Comprehensive overheads have revealed no external power sources or supplies to Haing Gyi Base. This includes possibilities of the use of a generating ship or nuclear power plant.

  Power supplies for operation of the base facilities all appear to emanate from a single large building in the center of the base.

  Detailed examination of the foundation area of this building, in particular its size and scope beyond the building itself, suggests a possible geothermal source of power. This is confirmed as entirely consistent with local geophysical characteristics, supported by the known existence of mud volcanoes within 15 miles of the Haing Gyi facility.

  An attachment is a full engineering statement of how geothermal energy is tapped. It indicates its vulnerability, and opportunities for disruption/accident.

  Arnold Morgan mumbled about another cup of coffee, and asked his three colleagues to “hold everything” while he skipped through the notes on geothermal power. Bob MacPherson poured, and Arnold yelled “KATHY!” once again, and asked the goddess of the West Wing to have three copies made of the photograph of Haing Gyi.

  Three minutes later, the Admiral looked up, complained that his coffee was half cold and told his guests that the principal mission of the SEAL attack on the Chinese base would be to destroy a power station, and with it the entire electronic network that runs from it. There would also be some other
Naval hardware that had to go, but basically they were knocking out a major power supply, which would shut down the base entirely.

  The three color photocopies arrived and were duly studied by Admiral Dixon, General Scannell and Bob MacPherson. Admiral Morgan pointed out the building in the center and asked if anyone knew how a geothermal power station worked. And no one did.

  “Well, what you’re always looking at is an area where heavy rainfall has filtered through the earth’s surface for millions of years. And right here we have such an area. It’s sandy in a lot of places, and it gets a lot of sudden, fierce rain from the monsoons in a very flat basin, where it can hang around and filter through.

  “And right here we have an area with volcanic activity, where the earth’s plates can pry apart, shifting way below the surface, forming giant, hollow caverns thousands of feet deep. Now in these caverns we get huge underground lakes, and the bottoms of those lakes are so deep the water becomes colossally hot from the earth’s core.

  “If you drill down in the exact right place, you hit one of these lakes, and the compressed, boiling water flashes off into steam. If you let it, it will blast three thousand feet into the air, in a clean, clear white plume of steam. The Nevada Desert is the big steam-well area in the USA. Some of ’em light half of San Diego and occasionally Las Vegas.”

  He paused to let everyone absorb what he was saying. “Right,” he added. “Got that? Now look at the picture. See that building? Well, here’s how it got there. The Chinese geologists located the steam lake and capped the drill hole. Then they dug deep and poured a solid concrete foundation, probably fifty yards by fifty yards by fifty yards deep.

  “Clean down the middle of this, they sank their main shaft into the vast cavern that contains the lake. They capped it with a massive valve at the top, right on the concrete, and then they built their power-generating station all around it, right on that big concrete cube. They installed the electric turbines to run on steam power, and when they completed their electronic grid for the whole dockyard, they opened the valve.

  “The steam surged straight up the shaft in the middle of the fifty-yard cube, into the system, and began to rotate the turbines. The clever little Chinks thus had virtually free, endless electric power for years to come. It sounds complicated, but it’s not really. It’s just a kinda upside-down dam with the force coming upward from the earth, rather than downward from released water. One thing about electric turbines: The only thing you have to do is turn ’em.”

  “And our guys have somehow to get in there and blow it up?” said the General.

  “I think that would do very nicely,” replied the Admiral. “Because that would shut down the base indefinitely.”

  “Is John Bergstrom on side?” asked the CNO.

  “He is. Right now they’re consulting their main demolition guys, and I have to get this stuff to Coronado right away. Then two of the main SEAL explosives officers will leave immediately for Diego Garcia to brief Commander Hunter and his team.”

  “Do we have any handle on how well this place is guarded?”

  “Fort Meade’s been watching it carefully for some weeks now. And there is some security. But not overwhelming. Haing Gyi is in such a strange, inaccessible place. It’s literally surrounded by Burma, whom the Chinese have been financing. It looks to me as if they have not even considered the possibility of an attack on the base.

  “But of course it is a military installation. And there will be patrol boats, and guard patrols on the jetties. But we have not found any sign of patrols in the interior of the base. Just some activity close to the visiting ships. The trick is to get in there nice and quiet. Then cause absolute havoc, and get out while everyone’s trying to find out what’s going on. It nearly always works. Surprise. You can’t beat surprise.”

  “Meanwhile, where’s the SEAL team?”

  “They’re all in Diego Garcia, waiting. The refinery team are all there too, waiting to fly back to Coronado. They made it back from Hormuz in one of the carriers. The Shark’s in there too, waiting to embark the SEALs for the coast of Burma.”

  All four men took a break from the charts to watch the CNN evening news, and the lead item was more or less what Admiral Morgan had expected. The Chinese were fighting fiercely for the port of Keelung, and according to the news had swiftly secured the actual dockyard area with a team of Special Forces, which had overpowered the mainly civilian security guards. Most of this information had leaked out through merchant ships’ radios via Hong Kong.

  But the rest of the picture was very blurred. The Chinese had breached the wire fences and now controlled the container docking areas, but the surrounding town was still very much Taiwanese. The local garrison was well equipped and was backed up by continuing air strikes from a remote strip in Hsinchu County. The Chinese assault force thus found itself badly bogged down, sustaining heavy casualties out on the Yehliu Road

  , four miles from the town.

  The Taiwanese had somehow managed to conserve eight of their most modern ground-attack aircraft. Armed with cluster bombs and cannon, the Taiwanese pilots came in groups of four, from the south, constantly harassing the great mass of Chinese troops, tracked vehicles and artillery moving ponderously toward Keelung.

  CNN had found access to satellite photographs that showed a mass of fire out along the western approaches to the seaport. And, in some ways, the Chinese were in a very difficult position. They had a Special Force in control of the port area, but it could not hold out forever, and right now the advancing army from Chinsan was at a standstill. The Taiwanese had found the range with a battery of cruise missiles, which were currently smashing up the entire road system from the west. They had 40 M-48X medium tanks on that side of the town, arranged defensively, and the Chinese commanders knew beyond doubt they were in a serious fight for this seaport, and they were not winning it.

  The problem was they had to win it. Otherwise this local war might drag on for weeks. The Chinese needed heavy reinforcements. They needed possibly 300,000 men on the island of Taiwan in order to secure it. And they could not land that many without capturing a major container port and bringing in major transport ships that could land men in the thousands. They needed the jetties, they needed the docking facilities. They needed Keelung.

  And out on the Yehliu Road

  things were going from bad to worse. The Chinese army was having constant problems with its surface-to-air missiles, and after 16 hours of sustained attack from Taiwan’s brave fighter pilots they had hit only one, and had themselves sustained hundreds of casualties. It was impossible to evacuate them all back to the beachhead, and their hospital capacity on the long sands was negligible. The fact was, China had to take Keelung, not just to provide a proper inbound port for her massed armies, but to give her a proper mechanized base for supplies of both food and ammunition, treatment of the wounded and communications. Right now they had no base on the island of Taiwan.

  Admiral Morgan stared at the screen, trying to read between the lines. He was a military officer attempting to picture the scene in his mind. As were General Scannell and Admiral Dixon.

  And it was the CNO who spoke first. “They don’t get ahold of that goddamned seaport in the next two days, they could find themselves in serious trouble,” he muttered.

  “Think they might switch the attack altogether, maybe go south to Kaohsiung?” asked Bob MacPherson. “That’s as big as Keelung.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” replied Admiral Dixon. “According to our information, the bulk of the Taiwanese Army is trapped in the south, can’t get back north. But that army is probably in pretty good shape, mainly because they’re kinda stranded, with nothing to fight. By the look of this, the Chinese are determined to win the battle in the north, and right now they’re in some trouble.”

  “They are that,” interjected Arnold Morgan. “They got a foothold in the container port, and another in the museum, which is what this war is at least partially about. But they have to
consolidate, and that does not seem to be happening.”

  “You know what their real problem is?” said General Scannell thoughtfully. “They are bound and determined not to knock down Taipei. And you take that option away from an invading army, you cut its balls right off. You render them unable to use the ultimate force. If they rolled up their sleeves and began a bombardment of the capital city, flattening major buildings, destroying the downtown area, Taiwan would surrender inside of an hour. It’s not like the London blitz, or Berlin. It’s different. More like a civil war.

  “And, faced with imminent death, or normal life under an ultimately benevolent ruler on the mainland, there’s only one answer for Taiwan. And until China gets prepared to slam Taipei, she’s gonna be fighting a half-assed conflict, against a very proud enemy. And that’s gonna cost them a lot of guys.”