The Shark Mutiny

by Patrick Robinson

  Admiral Zheng’s own flagship was a massive 400-foot-long nine-master, almost five times the size of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria, 60 years later. The Chinese Navy’s great explorer beat Vasco da Gama to the coast of East Africa by 80 years, and it was just as well they did not arrive at the same time because the massive warships of Admiral Zheng would surely have obliterated the “tiny,” 85-foot-long Portuguese caravels that struggled around the Cape of Good Hope.

  Whatever possessed the Ming Dynasty Emperor to willfully eliminate his mighty fleet a few years later can only be guessed at: China’s endless suspicion of foreigners, all foreigners? Its view of itself, and its ancient feelings of superiority? Perhaps its own melancholic sense of isolation?

  It is possible that the death of the immortal Admiral Zheng He, halfway across the Indian Ocean during the final homeward voyage in 1433, may have left a gap in the high command of the Chinese Navy that was just too large to fill.

  But perhaps the ultimate truth of the amazing decision to ban entirely overseas Naval adventures may be found in the words of the young Ming Emperor Zhu Zhanji, who presided over many of Zheng’s momentous journeys.

  “I do not,” he once said, “care for foreign things.”

  He was not of course referring to sweet crude oil from the vast fields of Kazakhstan. And now, fast-forward in the long winter of 2007, Admiral Zhang Yushu could not afford to ignore foreign things. And he was about to reverse almost 580 years of Chinese Naval policy: policy from which that huge nation had not departed. Not until World War I were the giant battle fleets of the Ming Emperors matched, either in size or relative firepower, by any of the world’s great powers.

  Zhang Yushu stared through the windshield of the Navy car, watching them cast off the lines of the 1,700-ton guided-missile frigate Shantou, a warship that would have been dwarfed by Zheng He’s Pure Harmony.

  “She’s going, Jicai. And it’s a historic moment in the long records of our sea power…. Just think of it…that little Type 053 Jianghu frigate is steaming off in the wake of our ancestors of five hundred years ago. The same old sea-lanes, from the most glorious days of our history…just like the Silk Road. They’re going back as the main power in the Persian Gulf, in a sense to conquer the trading world all over again.”

  “I’m not sure the Americans would be appeciative of your phrasing, Yushu. They think they have rights to the gulf and its waters anytime they see fit.”

  “Ah, yes. So they might. But remember we were there as welcome guests and trading partners with the Arabs half a millennium ago, and longer. Remember, too, in recent years Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty has been discovered along the shores of Hormuz. We have long historic roots in that area, and the Persians want us back to help them in the struggle against the West…. Oh yes, Jicai. We belong in those ancient waters of our forefathers.”

  “And we’re taking a lot of high explosives to prove it. Eh, Yushu?”

  Shantou eased out into the main channel, the driving rain gleaming on her big surface-to-surface guided-missile launchers. Her six twin 37-millimeter gun houses stood stark against the shore lights. Her five-tubed fixed antisubmarine mortar launchers could still be seen through the rain squalls.

  What could not be seen, however, were the principal weapons of her forthcoming voyage, the 60 Russian made sea mines, secluded under heavy tarpaulin from the prying eye of the American satellite that had passed overhead two hours previously.

  Out on the pitch-black horizon, there waited Shantou’s two Shanghai-built sister ships, Kangding and Zigong. They were in company with the first of China’s new $400 million Russian destroyers, the 8,000-ton, 500-foot-long Sovremenny Class, Hangzhou, with its supersonic guided missile, the Raduga SS-N-22 Sunburn.

  But the Hangzhou was not there to engage in surface-to-surface warfare. Her mission was strictly clandestine. She would lead her three frigates on the 6,000-mile journey to Hormuz, essentially to carry 40 more mines, but also because in the event of a confrontation she was best equipped to fight the little fleet out of trouble—though she would be no match for a determined U.S. commanding officer in a big cruiser.

  Their voyage would take them down the South China Sea, up through the Malacca Strait into the Bay of Bengal, where they would immediately rendezvous with the 37,000-ton Chinese tanker Nancang, operating out of their new Navy base on Haing Gyi Island, at the mouth of Burma’s Bassein River, across the wide, flat, rice-growing delta, west of Rangoon.

  Haing Gyi Island had occupied many a sleepless night for the American President’s National Security Adviser, Admiral Morgan, who was suspicious of Chinese motives at the best of times. The creation of a big Chinese fueling base, and Naval dockyard in Burmese national home waters, sent a shiver right through him. Particularly since the Chinese had constructed a railroad from Kunming, the 2,000-year-old capital of Yunnan Province, straight across the Burmese border to the railhead city of Lashio, from where heavy military hardware could easily join the rest of the $1.4 billion worth of weaponry China had already shipped into Burma.

  Back on the rainswept dock at Zhanjiang, Admiral Zhang pulled his greatcoat around him and stepped out to watch the Shantou heading out toward the black shape of the harbor wall, and beyond to the South China Sea.

  “Don’t you get a thrill from this, Jicai? Just seeing our great modern Blue Water Navy moving into action on this dark night, bound for a major foreign adventure, the first for more than five hundred years?”

  “I suppose so, Yushu. I’ll let you know more when we discover how seriously infuriated the Americans are by the exercise.”

  But even the wise and experienced Jicai looked quizzical at the non sequitur that served as a reply from his lifelong friend.

  “A mere diversion, my Jicai. The merest diversion.”

  1200 (local). March 13.

  The White House. Washington, D.C.

  “Now where the hell are they going?” demanded Admiral Morgan, staring at the grainy, poor-quality satellite photographs taken through the rain clouds above the Chinese coast. “Looks like three frigates and a Sovremenny destroyer, going south. What the hell for? And how far? And who the hell’s going to refuel ’em? Answer that.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not really qualified to do that,” said Kathy O’Brien sweetly.

  “Well…er…you ought to be. Ought to be general knowledge for anyone in Washington….”

  “Oh…I hadn’t realized.”

  “How far do you think they’re going, then?”

  “How could I possibly know?”

  “I know you don’t know. I’m just asking for guidance. Is that too much?”

  “Well for all I know, they’re just going on a picnic,” she replied.

  “Well, I wouldn’t care about that…nice basket of chop suey in the pouring rain on the South China Sea. But that may not be what’s happening. What I’m interested in is whether they are going on a long voyage, maybe to visit their friends in Iran. And if they are, those frigates are gonna get refueled from that damned new base of theirs on that frigging Burmese island.”

  “Which Burmese island?”

  “Haing Gyi Island, their first serious Navy base of operations outside of China—EVER,” the Admiral thundered. “Right now we’re returning to the goddamned fifteenth century, when their fleets dominated the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

  “And another thing,” he yelled. “What the hell happened to all those sea mines from Russia…the ones we saw getting unloaded at Zhanjiang? Where the hell are they? And why isn’t anyone keeping me up to speed on this? Where the hell’s George Morris?”

  “As you well know, my darling, he has cancer of his right lung.”

  “Serves him right for smoking so much,” grunted the Admiral, puffing away on his cigar. “Where is he right now?”

  “He’s undergoing intensive chemotherapy, as you also well know. Since that awful treatment has been making him extremely ill, I imagine he’s asleep.”

  “Well, h
ave someone wake him up.”

  “Honey, please,” said the best-looking redhead in Washington with a sigh.

  Two weeks later. March 27.

  Fort Meade, Maryland.

  Lieutenant Ramshawe was sifting methodically through a pile of satellite photographs. He had singled out a dozen shots, and he was trying to fit them together into a montage, trying to see if the three submarines were actually forming some kind of a small convoy, out there in the Arabian Sea.

  He had a couple of VLCCs (giant tankers, Very Large Crude Carriers) in focus to help him, and the conclusion he reached was the submarines were all together, moving on the calm blue surface about a mile apart, heading north. More important, they were Russian Kilo-Class boats, the deadly little diesel-electric attack submarines, currently being exported by the old Soviet Navy to anyone with a big enough checkbook to buy them, especially the Chinese, the Indians and the Iranians.

  Lieutenant Ramshawe was in the process of identifying the nationality of these particular ships. And now he was more or less certain. He had located all three of Iran’s Kilos, one in Bandar Abbas, two in their submarine base at Chah Behar, outside the gulf on the north shore of the Gulf of Oman.

  So far as he could tell, the Indians had no submarines at sea, which meant, almost certainly, the three Kilos were Chinese and they were headed directly to Chah Behar.

  This was mildly unusual but not earth-shattering. Chinese warships were no longer rare in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. They were occasional visitors to the Gulf of Hormuz, and just today there were new satellite pictures of a four-ship Chinese flotilla, including their big Sovremenny destroyer, heading across the Bay of Bengal toward the southern headland of the Indian continent.

  “Wouldn’t be that surprised if the whole bloody lot of ’em were going up to Hormuz,” pondered Jimmy. “What with that new refinery and Christ knows what else up there.”

  Lieutenant Ramshawe was thoughtful. The four surface ships had been steaming very publicly all the way from the South China Sea. “No worries,” he muttered. But the Kilos had been much more secretive. No one had spotted them since they had left their base, since they’d mostly been deep, only snorkeling for short periods. But here they were now, large as life, making their way up to their close friends on the southernmost Iranian coast.

  “That’s seven Chinese vessels, possibly going in the same bloody direction to the same bloody place,” murmured the Lieutenant, reaching for the latest edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships, the bible of the world’s navies.

  Now let me have a look here…right…Jianghu frigates…they can hold sixty sea mines apiece…and that destroyer has rails for forty more…now…how about the Kilos…. What’s it say here? They can carry twenty-four torpedoes or twenty-four mines…not both. So if those little bastards were carrying mines, that’d be seventy-two, plus the two hundred twenty in the surface ships…that’s close to three hundred…. My oath, you could cause a lot of trouble with that little lot.

  The Lieutenant knew he was just trying to connect two separate mysteries. The first: What the bloody hell happened to all those sea mines that ended up in Zhanjiang? Second: What the hell are all these bloody Chinese warships doing in the Indian and Arabian Seas?

  He had of course not the slightest shred of evidence there was one single solitary mine on board any of the ships. Certainly nothing that showed on the satellite photos, except for the big covers.

  But still, he considered it his duty to alert his immediate superior, Admiral Borden, as to the possibility, even if it did mean rejection. So he drafted a short memorandum and sent it in.

  Fifteen minutes later he was summoned to the Acting Director’s office, knocked firmly on the door and waited to be instructed to enter.

  “Lieutenant, I appreciate your diligence in these matters, but I heard earlier this morning from Langley the Iranians are staging some kind of a forty-eight-hour military hooley with the Chinese Navy down there in Bandar Abbas. Bands, parades, red carpets, dinners, speeches, television, the whole nine yards. Apparently the surface ships are scheduled to arrive there next Monday.

  “So I’m very afraid your theory of a large traveling minefield is out. Thank you for your efforts, though…but do remember, I did warn you to forget about it…If someone’s laying a minefield, we’ll see them…all in good time. That’s all.”

  “Sir,” said Lt. Ramshawe, making his exit, muttering, “Supercilious prick. Serve him right if the bloody hooley was just a cover-up and the whole U.S. tanker fleet was blown up.”

  2015. Tuesday, April 3.

  Navy Base. Bandar Abbas.

  The festivities were over for the evening. The last of the Iranian public were driving home out of the dockyard and the great arc lights that had floodlit the magnificent parade were finally switched off. The huge fluttering national standards of the Islamic State of Iran and the People’s Republic of China had been lowered.

  A 60-strong guard of honor from the People’s Liberation Army, resplendent in their olive green dress uniforms, hard flat-top caps with the wide red band, were retiring back to their quarters in the Hangzhou. The lines of electric bulbs that had floodlit the masts and upper works of both nations’ warships were methodically being extinguished.

  But as yet, no air of calm had settled over the fleet. They were running down the flags, but turbines were humming, senior officers were on the bridge, lines were being cast off. It was a curious time to arrange a night exercise after such an exhausting day of preparation and celebration. But that, ostensibly, was precisely what was happening.

  The three Chinese frigates were already moving, slowly, line astern, led by Shantou, out through the Naval basin into the main channel, now dredged to a low-tide depth of 33 feet. Thirty minutes later, China’s 6,000-ton Sovremenny-class destroyer, the largest ship ever to enter this harbor, was escorted out by two 90-foot harbor tugs, the Arvand and the Hangam.

  Astern of the destroyer, a 900-ton twin-shafted Iranian Navy Corvette, the Bayandor, almost 40 years old, originally built in Texas, followed, still flying the green, white and red national flag despite the late hour of the evening. Her sister ship, Naghdi, also armed with modern Bofors and Oerlikon guns, awaited the flotilla one mile southeast of the harbor, ready to guide them around the long shallow outer reaches of the shelving Bostanu East Bank.

  Their 65-mile journey would take them past the great sand-swept island of Qeshm and on into the deeper waters of the Hormuz Strait. Forty miles farther on, east of the jutting Omani headland of Ra’s Qabr al Hindi, they would make their rendezvous, at 26.19N 56.40E. Admiral Mohammed Badr himself was on the bridge of the Hangzhou, accompanying the Chinese Commanding Officer, Colonel Weidong Gao (Chinese Navy COs are all three-star Colonels).

  Under clear skies they pushed on southeast through light swells and a warm 20-knot breeze out of the west. Finally at 56.40E Colonel Weidong ordered a course change to one-eight-zero, and running over sandy depths of around 300 feet they headed due south for the final six miles.

  Gradually the little flotilla reduced speed until the sonar room of the big destroyer picked up the unmissable signal of the Chinese Kilos, patrolling silently at periscope depth in the pitch-dark waters off the jagged coast of Oman.

  The plan had been finely honed several weeks before. The Kilos would take the southerly six miles of the designated area where the water was now 360 feet deep. Each of the three submarines would make a course of zero-nine-eight starting from the deep trough off Ra’s Qabr al Hindi. They would thus move easterly a half mile apart, launching out of their torpedo tubes a one-ton Russian-made PLT-3 contact sea mine every 500 yards—the ones made at the Rosvoorouzhenie factory in Moscow: the same ones that had so vexed young Jimmy Ramshawe on their top-secret journey all the way across Asia to the South China Sea.

  At the conclusion of these three death-trapped parallel lines, six miles long, the minefield would make a 10-degree swing north, and then run for 24 miles dead straight, all the way across the S
trait of Hormuz to the inshore waters of the Iranian coastline, at a point 29 miles due south of the new Sino-Iranian refinery outside the little town of Kuhestak.

  And right now the three Chinese mine-laying frigates were moving into position. Shantou, Kangding and Zigong, a half mile apart, heading east-nor’east, slowly in the darkess, the soft thrum of their big diesel engines interrupted only by the splash, every 500 yards, as they sowed their treacherous seed in a barrier across the world’s most important oil sea-lanes.

  The 60 mines on board each frigate would last for 17 miles. The final coastal area would be handled by the destroyer, and they would designate a sizable three-mile gap through which Chinese and Iranian tankers could pass, principally because they would be the only tankers informed of the position of the safe passage.

  Meanwhile the newly laid mines sat at the bottom of the ocean secure on their anchors, awaiting the moment when they would be activated electronically, released on their wires to rise up toward the surface and then hang there in the water, 12 feet below the waves, until an unsuspecting tanker man came barreling along and slammed it out of the way, obliterating his ship in the process.

  It was a two-and-a-half-hour journey back to Bandar Abbas and the surface convoy set off at 0400, leaving the Kilos to make their own way back to Chah Behar, running at periscope depth (PD). There was time to spare because the big U.S. satellite did not pass overhead until 0800.

  The frigates and their 6,000-ton bodyguard docked in Bandar Abbas at 0630, when the next stage of Admiral Zhang’s plan went into operation. The Hangzhou was immediately reloaded with 40 PLT-3 contact mines, plainly visible, as her original cargo had been the previous evening. When “Big Bird” took her photographs a few minutes after 0800, the fully laden Chinese destroyer would look precisely the same as she had on the last daylight satellite pass, just before the grand parade yesterday evening.