The sonar operator held his head in his hands. He found two more incoming torpedoes. The countermeasures had done nothing to confuse the incoming weapons.
Wong stared at the interior of his control room. There was little left to try. He had jinxed his course. He launched the last of his countermeasures. His reactor was redlined and overheating, and the American torpedoes were fifteen hundred meters away.
He found that his legs were not turning to water. He picked up the ship-wide microphone and said, “This is the Captain speaking.” He paused and stared back down at the stopwatch. “In a few minutes, the first of several torpedoes will impact our hull. There is nothing left to do. I want to apologize to you, the members of my crew, for bringing us to this point. However, you have served with honor and pride. I thank you and bid you farewell.” He clicked off the microphone.
The first two torpedoes were spiraling towards theHan . Impact would take place in less than forty seconds. Wong looked up and said, “Chief of the Boat, prepare for emergency blow on my mark.”
The ping frequency reverberating throughout the boat was increasing. The warhead was nestled behind a sonar seeker and guidance control. When the ADCAP ultimately impacted, the warhead would smash through the fragile electronic parts and pancake against the titanium outer hull.
At five seconds, Wong gave the order to execute the emergency blow. High-pressure air flooded into the main ballast tanks of theHan in an effort to give it positive buoyancy. The bow nosed up and pulled theHan forward at thirty-degree angle. The turboelectric drive continued to push the boat forward so that the screw was much closer to the ADCAP than the bow.
The first torpedo detonated twenty yards beneath the keel. A violent tremor slammed into the entire boat, causing lights to flicker and pipes to burst. Water sprayed over the top of the radio gear. The deck was lurching too violently for anyone to find the valves and stop the water flow.
The second torpedo had a few seconds to adjust its targeting. It impacted at an oblique angle to the hull above the main ballast tanks. The explosion shattered the tanks integrity and broke the propeller shaft into three pieces. TheHan continued a momentary lurch towards the surface, before stopping short and drifting sideways. The blast tilted the deck almost vertical.
Wong slammed against the periscope housing and rolled off, coming to rest on one of the bulkheads. The emergency battery lights flipped on. He levered himself up with one hand before realizing his other arm was hopelessly broken. Amazingly, they were still breathing after two explosions. He looked down at his stopwatch, but the crystal had shattered.
The deck canted in a strange direction as the forward ballast tanks attempted to pull the wounded ship towards the surface. They hung like a fly caught in amber at seventy-five meters below the surface. They did not stay there long.
The third and forth torpedoes slammed simultaneously amidships. TheHan broke into two pieces and began its final death spiral to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The cold seawater flowed through the ruptured watertight doors as the pressure-water reactor disintegrated under the blast. It had taken a little over eighteen minutes to kill theHan , and she never saw her attacker.
* * * *
Andrews stared glumly at the chart table. TheHan was dead. He looked around the crew in his control room, and gave them a brittle smile. They had gone to battle and they had won. He should feel good about his accomplishment, instead, he felt rather empty.
“Robbie, stand down from general quarters and resume normal patrol. I’ll be in my cabin.” He paused and looked at his XO. “And tell theWashington theHan is dead.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Al Jabar Air Base, Kuwait
Sunday, November 16, 1997
8:00 P.M. (+3.00 GMT)
A few minutes before Tommy Hargroves got his first reading on theHan , Harper and his team rolled away from Al Jabar Air Base and into the coming night. Kuwait consists of one city, a couple of air bases, a rudimentary road net, and oil fields. George Bush talked of the savagery committed by Iraq’s Republic Guard, and the unprovoked invasion into Kuwait, but the high ideals of democracy and freedom did not bring five hundred thousand American troops in the fall of 1990. Oil did.
Once beyond the bright lights of Kuwait City and her attendant airfields, the desert begins to gather itself like a dark cloud. It is not a classic desert of drifting sand and broiling sunlight, rather, it is a treacherous desert of hard gravel, mountainous terrain, andwadiswhere the infrequent water has cut an uncertain course through sand and rock.
Police posts and towers act like a connect-the-dots picture defining the vague border between Kuwait and Iraq, a border now insured by the American force of arms. The few roads that pierce the border are matched with token forces on both sides. A night sky illuminated only by stars, and the occasional flames burning off excess gases on an oil well, served as impenetrable cloak for Harper’s excursion.
The HMMWVs veered north, heading towards a police post just below the thirtieth parallel. They would take to the hard-packed sand before reaching the border and cross just above the thirtieth parallel. It was a spot where the road net on the Iraqi side did not exist, and the corresponding Kuwaiti army barracks were set several miles back from the border. Using night vision goggles the two vehicles slipped through the darkness without any visible lights and vanished into the Wadi al-Batin, which acts as an informal barrier between the two countries.
They skirted the western edge of Iraq’s massive Rumaila oil field. The oil towers flashed red, green, and white navigation lights towards the night sky. The separation plant, pumping substation, and storage tanks continued their incessant thumping as the machinery that fed Saddam’s military monster continued to produce oil in defiance of the export ban.
They rumbled across the road leading from Al Basrah to Ash Shabakah. The plan was to drive alongside the road, always tending towards the northwest. Five hundred meters north of the road two lone vehicles were running with special mufflers and no lights. No one saw or heard them navigate the rough sand, strewn boulders, and occasional wadi.
They crossed the Al-Muthanná and An-Najaf Provinces, steadily angling towards Baghdad. Next they crossed the main road leading back to the capitol just north of Ash Shabakah. The road was the last manmade thing they saw as they turned north-northwest.
The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers form the western and eastern boundaries that enclose most of Iraq’s population. It is bordered on the south by a huge lake called Bahr al-Milh. It is virtually a single city from Baghdad to Karbalá. Saddam, always the coward, made certain he had a human shield composed of women doing their wash and children playing in the streets, surrounding his major nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare factories. He created a human shield with his own people, and dared the Americans to attack with their smart bombs.
Bombs capable of finding the third window on the second floor could obliterate the chemical plants and shatter the vials containing viruses. Those same bombs could not prevent a fallout pattern that would leave thousands gasping for air as their lungs shut down. Saddam knew the effect of his weapons on the human nervous system. His experiments at Salman Pak demonstrated the effectiveness of his arsenal. He did not believe American political leaders had the stomach for such a spectacle.
The obvious attraction for so many people in a country containing little more than rock, sand, and oil is water—plentiful supplies to meet the needs of those citizen hostages. Not only did they hug death to their breasts, they effectively buried the strategic web of Iraq’s communication and data infrastructure. Saddam remained confident the Allied Air Force would not bomb civilian homes to destroy his precious command and control network.
Beyond the western edge of Bahr al-Milh, the population drops off to nothing. Some two hundred kilometers southwest of Baghdad on the Wadi al-Ubayyid and thirty kilometers east of Nukhayb, the Iraqi Data Center lay buried in the side of an abandoned quarry. All data links were run using fiber optic cable and not convent
ional copper.
One of the major frustrations during the Gulf War was not being able to knock out Iraq’s communications net. If they had used conventional copper wire, Allied pilots could have followed the network to every major commander and control center in the country. Saddam had gone to the enormous expense of replacing his conventional network with fiber optic cable prior to the war—a development that slipped past the vigilance of American Intelligence. The American Air Force adopted a policy of obliterating every identified command and control van. Saddam might have state of the art communications, but by the end of the war there was no one left to talk to.
After the war, what remained was hardened and expanded. The Achilles heel remained the need for centralized processing. Saddam had plenty of desert and oil. He had his share of brilliant scientists who left their ethics at the border. He could manipulate his people to act as human shields before the American armada gathering in the Gulf. However, he had very few computers capable of processing his data and maintaining his databases.
It was just after four in the morning when Harper stopped their advance. They emerged from the HMMWVs looking like a group of distended beetles with their night vision goggles, throat microphones, and headphones built into their helmets. Weapons bristled in the darkness. All communication was encrypted using a frequency-switch algorithm based on a twenty-four-bit encryption system. Harper jogged down the wadi and scrambled up the crest of a ridge. Stillwell tagged along with his own set of night vision binoculars.
Harper leaned across the crest of the ridge and focused down on the quarry. The heavy metal door he and Jerry had struggled out of snapped into a gray-green image. He flipped the rangefinder to active and found that they were 1200 meters away. Besides the single door leading into the ground and strewn rocks, Harper could find nothing else.
He slid back behind the ridge.
“You sure this is the right place?”
Harper nodded. They had pinpointed the location by satellite and triangulated the global positioning system coordinates. He flipped the GPS system back on and stared at the numbers. “Yeah, that’s the place.” He glanced at Stillwell. “You’d best carry your rifle from here on out. If someone sees you, shoot them. The weapon is silenced so it won’t make much noise.”
Harper walked towards the two HMMWVs sitting at the end of a wadi. A camouflage net had already been strung across the top of the vehicles and the marines were unloading gear.
“Sergeant!”
Darby Hayes looked up from behind the nearest HMMWV. He set two canisters of non-lethal nerve gas down. He rose slowly, eyeing Harper and Stillwell. He had seen many men come and go in special ops. Conventional wisdom dictated that a man who had been out of the game for over five years was not fit to lead. Yet Harper did not seem like someone who had grown soft during civilian life. He seemed like a bomb waiting to explode.
“Sir?”
“About thirty klicks west of here is a town called Nukhayb. Fill up both vehicles and take the empty jerry cans. We’ll need some gas and we won’t have anytime to stop on our way out of here.” He looked up at the sky. “You’ve got an hour and half. If we don’t see you in two, I’ll assume you’ve been blown.” He slapped Stillwell on shoulder. “Help him with the gas cans.”
Harper took his other three marines. They each held various pieces of gear. Ronald Anderson was holding the drag bag for the Barrett. “Anderson? You’re the sniper?”
“Yes, sir.”
Harper reached down and grabbed two .50 caliber ammunition cans. They were the old metal kind with a latch that pulled the lid tight to the frame. He hefted them feeling the weight in both. “My—my, what’d you bring along?”
Anderson smiled as he pulled the rifle over his shoulder. “A hundred rounds, sir—armor piercing, frangible anti-personnel, high explosive, and incendiary. They weren’t very specific as to what we might need.”
Harper nodded. “The scope—is it day/night capable?”
“Uh-huh.”
Harper grinned. Ronald Anderson was a big old farm boy from Nebraska. The rifle in his hands was a Barrett M82A1A .50 caliber sniper rifle, capable of taking out small trucks and four-man fire teams. It fires a round slightly shorter than four inches in length, with a muzzle velocity of twenty-eight-hundred feet per second, from a mile away. Measuring fifty-seven inches from stock to flash deflector, the Barrett is the state of the art sniper weapon. Depending on the munitions selected, the Barrett could become a long-range hand held cannon.
They stopped below the crest of the ridge. “Okay, Captain, this is the deal.” He jerked his thumb at the ridge. “Just over there is a quarry. According to my rangefinder, we’re about twelve-hundred meters away. When you set up your toy here, you’ll find a door and rough track leading into a quarry.
“I want to know two things from you. First, I want to know if anyone shows up. If there is someone that looks like they’re in charge, take ‘em out. If it’s just supplies, hold your fire. The second thing I want to know is if anyone comes out the door. If that happens, we’re most likely in big trouble. Make sure nobody leaves.”
Anderson nodded. “I can handle that.”
“Thought you could, I hope you slept on the way here, because you’ll be watching until we go in sometime after eight tonight. I don’t care what time it is. If you have to shoot, call me.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Anderson.
Harper smiled and turned away. Anderson set the drag bag down and opened the catches. Carefully, he pulled the thirty-three-pound rifle from its padded case and began assembling his toy.
Darby Hayes rolled away from the camp and headed for Nukhayb. Kincaid, Stillwell, and Burns stood next to a stack of gear. Harper flipped on a hooded torch and knelt down. “Kincaid and Burns.”
They squatted next to him.
“How many Claymores we got?”
“Ten, sir,” replied Kincaid.
Harper looked at the hooded faces surrounding him in the night desert. Neither betrayed any emotion, but neither revealed any confidence. Harper sighed. These two would be difficult.
“Okay. We’ve got ninety minutes before the sun comes up around here.” He drew a circle in the dirt and marked the door with a X. “This is the quarry. From the sky, it looks like all the rest of the rocks down here.” He drew the track leading into the quarry. “This is a track leading into the quarry. Now, when the alarm goes up a whole bunch of angry people are going to come down this track. Most likely, they’ll be riding trucks or Jeeps. There may be an APC, but I doubt it.”
He checked his audience. They were listening. They might not care for an old man leading them, but they were paying attention. “I need a killing field inside the quarry, and I need kill zones down this track. The bad guys will come running real hard.”
“Sir.”
Harper looked at Kincaid. “Yes?”
“We’ve got a couple of anti-vehicle mines. Darby put them aboard just before we left the weapons depot.”
“What kind of mines?” Harper was beginning to like Sergeant Hayes.
“We can set them up to blow on different types of circumstances. For instance, maybe on the third vehicle that passes over the mine. They key on metal content.” He drew two circles on the track boxing the length of the track. “If we placed mines at both ends, we could rig to blow this one closest to the quarry on the first vehicle detected, and this one on the end to the fourth vehicle. Then we trigger the Claymores off infrared and motion sensors.”
“It makes for a lot of dead ragheads,” explained Burns.
Harper liked what he heard. “Don’t let me keep you gentlemen. Take Stillwell to help you haul everything.”
“No need, sir. Tom and I can handle it.”
Harper snapped off the light. “Let Anderson know what you’re doing.” He tapped his microphone. “Everybody got one of these things on?”
They both nodded.
He looked over to Stillwell who was sitting next to the HMMWV. “Li
eutenant, grab those canisters sitting next to you. We’ve got seventy minutes to take care of a few things.”
Harper leaned into the back to the HMMWV and grabbed the case of C4, detonators, and a small bag with his name. He adjusted the Mossberg across his back. “All right, Stillwell, here’s something they probably don’t write down in any of the manuals. We’re going to make sure that whoever is inside this hole goes to sleep at the right time.”
Stillwell pointed at the silvery canisters. “What’s in there?”
“Non-lethal nerve gas. It should keep everyone inside tucked away for twelve hours.” Harper grunted. “They’ll wake up with a bad headache, but hopefully we won’t have to shoot anyone if this goes according to plan.”
“Does it ever go according to plan?”
Harper shook his head. “Never.”
He handed the canisters to Stillwell and motioned him to follow. Without the night vision goggles, Stillwell would have lost Harper within ten paces. Instead, Harper became a gray-green ghost dancing across the desert floor.
They started across the desert towards the air vents above the quarry. They picked their way through gravel, small boulders, and around holes. Harper stopped about two hundred meters from the air vents. He pulled Stillwell next to him and whispered, “From here on, no talking.”
Stillwell nodded. He produced garbage bags and a roll of duct tape from his pack. “There are four roof vents set in a quadrangle on the summit ahead. They are spaced about fifty feet apart from each other. They look like clumps of dirt. You need to clean them off and wrap them with the duct tape, then wrap the garbage bag around the vent.” Harper tapped the nerve gas, “When we put them to sleep tomorrow night, I don’t want them waking up because they have a good exhaust system.”
The thick black night blanket was already starting to fade in the east when they arrived in the quadrangle of air vents. Stillwell found the first vent and settled down, methodically making sure it no longer worked very well.
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