“This time it’s gonna be stir-fried. I’m sick to death of this Chinese crap.”
“Okay, Arnold, do your duty as you see it. Send ’em in, the silent destroyers.”
“That’s the way, sir. Maximum effect, minimum blame. We’ll give ’em seventy-eight bucks a barrel. Crazy pricks.”
He turned away from the Chief Executive and walked slowly out of the Oval Office. And his thoughts cascaded in on him, as his rich imagination took him into the hot, dark recesses of the sprawling refinery on the Strait of Hormuz.
And he thought of the guys, coming in hard and silent, out of the sea, moving across the sand, watching for armed sentries. And in his mind he felt their fear, and their strength, and their patriotism.
And he walked right by Kathy O’Brien’s desk without stopping, snapping out briskly just one command as he opened his office door:
“Get me Admiral John Bergstrom on the line. SPECWARCOM, Coronado Beach. Secure line. Encrypted. We’re talking Black Ops, Kathy. Usual procedures.”
5
1330. Monday. May 7.
The White House.
Admiral Morgan’s call to SPECWARCOM was essentially a request to Admiral John Bergstrom to put two teams of Navy SEALs on 24-hour notice in Coronado, prepared to embark immediately for Diego Garcia. That conversation took less than four minutes.
“Just one thing…. Degree of danger?”
“High. But your guys probably won’t work up a sweat.”
The next call was likely to be more complex, since even Arnold Morgan could not take the United States to war all on his own. He asked his sole serving noncommissioned officer, Kathy O’Brien, to secure President Reagan’s old Situation Room on the lower floor of the West Wing.
Then he ordered her to summon the Secretary of State, the Defense Secretary, the Energy Secretary, the Chief of Naval Ops and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to a meeting, top priority, classified, 90 minutes from then. He excluded the President, since he already had verbal Oval Office clearance to mount whatever military operation he saw fit. He assumed this particular President would deny all knowledge if the operation went wrong, which it had better not.
It was 1500 when General Tim Scannell came hurrying through the big wooden doors flanked by two saluting U.S. Marine guards. The door was closed firmly behind him, and he walked to his place at the head of the big table, at Admiral Morgan’s right hand. “I’m sorry to hold you up, gentlemen,” he said politely. “It’s just that we’ve got more going on in the Middle East than we’ve had since Saddam got above himself seventeen years ago. We’ve got more ships out there, too.”
To the left of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs sat the Secretary of State, the steel-haired veteran diplomat Harcourt Travis, and the Energy Secretary, Jack Smith, probably the best CEO General Motors ever had. Opposite them were the recently appointed CNO, Admiral Alan Dixon, former Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, and the Defense Secretary, Robert MacPherson.
And because the meeting was convened and chaired by Admiral Morgan himself, the seating of the military men always placed them in some kind of ascendancy. Civilians have their place, of course, but when you need to get stuff assessed and then acted upon, in a serious hurry, the military leave ’em standing. The Admiral’s view on that subject was both uncompromising and generally accepted, since he was unlikely to change his mind.
“Gentlemen,” he growled, frowning deeply, “right here we got a major shit fight on our hands.”
Jack Smith, attending his first effective war cabinet, smiled at the Admiral’s poetically worded appreciation of the situation, and added formally, “There’re reports of four-dollars-a-gallon gasoline in the Midwest.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Admiral Morgan.
He shook his head, and muttered, “If we’re not damned careful, this could get right out of hand.”
He then called the meeting to order and proceeded to outline the standoff in the gulf, and approximately what he proposed they should do about it.
“You all know roughly what’s happened. The Iranians and the Chinese between them have constructed a deep, we think three-line, minefield, clean across the Strait of Hormuz, distance of about twenty miles. So far three tankers have been hit and burned. We have the Indian Navy in there sweeping the field, trying to open up a seven-mile-wide freeway for the world’s tankers to start entering and leaving the gulf. But it’s slow and somewhat perilous.
“Right now we have five U.S. CVBGs either deep in the area or on their way. That’s essentially to protect the Indians, and make those seas safe again for the continued orderly conduct of the world’s oil and gas trade. By now, most of that’s routine and under control. However, in the early hours of this morning there was a development that I did not like. An unladen Japanese-registered tanker suddenly blew up at the north end of the Malacca Strait. I have reason to believe it was hit by a torpedo from a Chinese Kilo-Class submarine.
“I believe that Kilo was refueled at the new Chinese Navy Base in Burma on the Bassein River Delta. I further believe it’s on its way back there right now. But that’s just a sideshow.
“The real problem is China. Her intentions. The depth of her involvement in the mining of the strait, and her ambitions in the Arabian Sea, the gulf area, the Indian Ocean and in particular the Bay of Bengal….”
He paused, and no one spoke. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am quite certain that if we do not chase China out of those oceans, we will live to regret it. Remember, they have been passive in terms of sea power for more than five hundred years, just running a coastal Navy to protect their own shores.
“But not anymore. They’re plainly in an expanionist mode, acquiring submarines, destroyers and a couple of aircraft carriers from the Russians. They’re building a new ICBM submarine platform, and they are pushing westward. That new oil refinery of theirs south of Bandar Abbas gives them an excuse to send protective warships into the Arabian Sea. And that new base in Burma has given them a home port from which they could essentially control the oil routes through the Malacca Strait. That’s all the oil routes to the west and north Pacific.”
Admiral Morgan paused again. And then he growled, “Gentlemen, these guys are not just stepping lightly on our toes. They’re running us over with a fleet of fucking rickshaws, and I’m not having it.”
Jack Smith and General Scannell both smiled, and Harcourt Travis laughed out loud. “Arnold,” he said, “you have such a way with words. You really should have considered the diplomatic service.”
Everyone in the room knew the suave Secretary of State was not entirely enamored of the President’s crusty National Security Adviser. And, some thought, the diplomat’s calm, thoughtful intellect was a very good foil for the irascible ex-nuclear submarine commander. But the Admiral’s mind was invariably superior, and he had won almost every one of their exchanges down through the years, even if he did occasionally sound like a Master Sergeant in an ugly mood.
“Hey, Harcourt, old buddy. Glad to hear you’re still sharp, because right now I want you to give me an assessment. If you wanted to chase the Chinese out of the Indian and Arabian Seas, what action would you consider taking?”
“You mean as an American?”
“Christ, no. As an Ethiopian.”
This was too much for both Jack Smith and General Scannell, who both burst out laughing. Bob MacPherson and Admiral Dixon tried to restrain themselves. And even Harcourt permitted himself a deep chuckle — restrained, of course.
“You see, Harcourt,” Arnold Morgan said, smiling, “that’s the trouble with you Foreign Service guys…you’re always looking for the extra half sentence, to give yourselves an extra few seconds to think…it’s just a habit…. Yes, Harcourt, as an American. You got it the first time.”
“Well, first of all, I’d go and pray at the tomb of my former Emperor Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah. Then I guess I’d come right back and advise you to blow the bastards right out of the water. Is that sufficiently primitive?�
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“Harcourt,” replied the Admiral, unsmiling, his bright blue eyes narrowing dangerously, “I like it.”
At which point everyone laughed some more, but it was edged with nervousness, like telling a joke before an oncoming disaster. The Navy are good at that. In World War II no U.S. ship was ever blasted by bombs or torpedoes without one of the survivors observing, “Guess you shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke.”
The Admiral quickly regained his stride. “I’m talking politically…. You know our problems — the Iranian Naval base at Bandar Abbas, the new Iranian refinery, right there next to the warships, the Sino-Iranian refinery, effectively owned by the Chinese, just along the coast, and the new Chinese Naval Base and refueling docks on the Bassein River. All four of those installations represent a giant pain in the ass, not just for us, but for all nations that require oil and gas….”
Harcourt Travis nodded, an air of caution written right across his face. “Arnold,” he said, “I do not think we could just cold-bloodedly take out the Iranian base at Bandar Abbas. However covertly we moved, everyone would know it was us, and I think it would be construed as a blatant act of war. However, I think we would hold on to world opinion if we hit any warship we judged to be a threat to the free passage of shipping through the gulf.”
“Uh-huh. And how about the Iranian refinery?”
“Bad idea. If the situation in the gulf turned really ugly, we might just need the oil out of that refinery. We might even need to seize it. Let’s not destroy it, however pissed off we might be at the Ayatollahs.”
“And the new Chinese refinery?”
“That’s different. Because that refinery gives the People’s Liberation Army-Navy a reason to be operational at the western end of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. I’m not saying we go in and blast the place to smithereens, probably starting World War Three. But if that refinery was to…er…become disfunctional after some kind of…er…problem, well, I guess a lot of people would be pretty relieved.”
“And the base on the Bassein River?”
“That,” said Harcourt, flatly, “has gotta go.”
“Any drift on the state of mind of the Burmese government? Or Myanmar, or whatever the hell they call it?”
“Well, you know it’s a military junta, Arnie. It’s in power regardless of the results of democratic elections. And recently they appear to have become much less friendly toward the Chinese. But the Big Dragon sits right against their back door, and the Big Dragon has built roads and even railroads right through the country to the port cities on the Bay of Bengal. The Chinese have armed the Burmese military, sold them God knows how much hardware on long lines of credit. I’m afraid the Burmese are in too deep to get out. We’ll get no help from them. You want to get rid of that Chinese base, you’re on your own. But you’d have some cheerleaders in India.”
“They still pissed off about the tracking station on Great Cocos Island?”
“Very, very pissed off. The Chinese installed it with extreme cunning and furtiveness. Then they put an airstrip in there. Now they can pry deep behind India’s eastern coastline. Myanmar says the Seventy-fifth AF Radar Squadron is theirs, but everyone knows it’s Chinese. They probe straight across the Bay of Bengal and record all takeoffs from Calcutta Airport and any military airport along the coast. The Indians call them the Chinese Checkers.”
Bob MacPherson, another veteran of this Republican administration, interjected here in support of the Secretary of State. “There’s more trouble in that region than even we realize. The Chinese have spy ships all over the Bay of Bengal, and that’s thanks largely to their base on Haing Gyi Island. It would be a hell of a lot more difficult for them if it wasn’t there.”
“Trouble is,” said Harcourt, “that Burmese coastline is so damned strategic. The Cocos Islands are only just in Burmese waters, right on the Cocos Channel, the main seaway for every merchant ship bound for eastern Indian ports and Bangladesh.
“Immediately to the south, around ten miles, we have the northernmost island of the Indian archipelago…you know, the Andamans and the Nicobars, stretching five hundred miles to the south toward the Malacca Strait. No one in the area feels safe, with Chinese warships constantly on patrol there.”
“I’ll tell you something else,” added Jack Smith. “On average there are three hundred ships passing through the Bay of Bengal every day. A lot of them are tankers to and from the east. There’re some new economic projections which suggest that in the next twenty years, fifty percent of all world trade will center on the Pacific-Asian countries. God knows how many more ships that will mean.”
“And China sees itself as the great controller of those seaways,” said Bob MacPherson. “But the elimination of the base on the Bassein River would set them back a quarter of a century.”
“So what are our priorities?” asked Admiral Morgan.
“I think we make it plain to the Chinese that we will sink any of their warships in the clearance zone in the Strait of Hormuz. We then quietly mastermind a problem in their refinery in Iran, and cause it essentially…er…not to work. That gets them out of the western waters of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The oil issue is irrelevant because it’s from Kazakhstan and the Chinese are going to get it anyway, probably via a pipeline into their western territories, and on to Shanghai.”
“Christ,” said Admiral Morgan. “That’s, what, five thousand miles or something? They can’t do that.”
“With respect, Honorable National Adviser,” said Harcourt in his best Cantonese accent. “They built a very long, very high wall. They’ll probably manage to dig a fucking hole.”
Arnold Morgan chuckled. But he was very preoccupied. “And our next priority?” he asked.
“I think you know the answer to that. Let’s chase them out of the Bassein River. Somewhat secretly. And probably earn the thanks of many millions of people.”
Admiral Morgan sat thoughtfully. He and Harcourt Travis had been through a few run-ins, but, despite everything, he liked the Secretary of State. And he liked him for one overriding reason…smooth sonofabitch really knows his stuff…he’s a scholar, a realist and a cynic. A guy you can count on for important opinions.
“Harcourt,” he said. “I thank you. I thank all of you. Civilians may consider the meeting concluded. CNO, Tim, I’d like a half hour more to discuss tactics.” He stood and shook hands with the departing chiefs of Foreign Policy, Defense and Energy.
“I scarcely need to remind you of the hugely classified nature of the matters we have discussed,” he added. “There is no one who needs to know, save ourselves.”
Then he walked to the end of the room where Kathy had pinned up a large chart of the Strait of Hormuz, showing the coastline all the way from Bandar Abbas to the desert town of Kuhestak, way over on the long, near-barren eastern shore, forty-eight miles south of the Iranian Navy HQ.
“Come up here and take a look at this,” he said. “You see this place right here, Kuhestak? The Chinese refinery is situated right here, two miles along the coast to the south. It’s big. There’s a massive pipeline system running in here, all the way from the oil fields in Kazakhstan, one thousand miles, right across the heart of Iran.
“This precious Iranian seaport is soon going to give China its energy from the heart of the second-largest oil producer on earth. Because it can run tankers in here of virtually unlimited size, and then drive out straight across the Indian Ocean, through the Malacca Strait and into the South China Sea.
“In my view, that’s basically what the trouble is all about. That is precisely why China wants this growing military presence in the region…and precisely why we cannot allow it.
“You just heard the assessments of Harcourt and Bob. Now I want you to tell me how a dozen SEALs can take out that refinery. I say a dozen because the water’s shallow and well patrolled. We’re going to need an SDV, I’m certain of that. And we only have one in the area — the one stowed on the deck of the good old S
hark. The good news is it does not take a whole lot of high explosives to blow up an oil refinery. Sonsabitches are apt to blow themselves up if you give ’em a head start.”
“Guess you’re referring to the Big Bang in Texas City back in 1947, eh?” said General Scannell. “I had an uncle lived somewhere out near Galveston. He told me when I was just a kid you coulda heard that explosion from one hundred fifty miles away.”
“I was about three years old at the time, and we didn’t live that far from the disaster,” said Arnold. “I remember my daddy told me the ship that blew it exploded with such force its one-and-a-half ton anchor was flung two miles and embedded itself ten feet into the ground at the Pan American refinery.”
The recollection of the Texas City disaster reminded all three men of the enormous problems involved in taking out a major refinery, with its attendant sites of sprawling petrochemical plants; just about every square foot of such industrial time bombs is filled with highly volatile, flammable materials, including vast pressurized storage tanks for natural gas. And the new Chinese installation at Kuhestak had all that, and more.
Hundreds were killed, thousands injured in Texas City, buildings all over town were blasted beyond recognition. And the devastation was not restricted to the waterfront, or to the refining towers and storage areas. It just about ripped the entire town apart. A radio announcer simply yelled, “Texas City just blew up!” The mushroom cloud rose 2,000 feet into the air. Massive, white-hot steel parts from the French merchant ship SS Grandcamp were hurled into the holding tanks hundreds of yards away, setting off secondary explosions, which in turn caused immense damage.
The burning Grandcamp with its heavy cargo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was responsible for what remains the worst industrial catastrophe in U.S. history. At the time, so soon after World War II, there were few modern safety precautions in place. And of course there was none of the grim voyeurism of late-twentieth-century television, with its voracious, insatiable appetite for agony, heartbreak and disaster, which it finds so helpful in its endless, somewhat childlike, quest for drama and action.
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