The ensign nodded, and the boat moved down the river at fifteen knots. Murdock found the ensign. “I thought this tub would do forty-five knots.”
The ensign grinned. “Sure as hell will, Commander, but not in the dark on a damned river I’ve never seen before. Then there are floating logs and trees in here and who the hell knows what else. We’ll make fifteen, maybe twenty knots and be glad of it.”
Murdock nodded. “Right. You’re the skipper. Even fifteen knots is a shitpot better than swimming forty miles. You hit any other problems coming up?”
“Just that one searchlight and the fifty caliber. We even took one hit but above the waterline. They didn’t know where we were, so they covered the whole tree-lined shore. We were lucky.”
Suddenly Murdock was tired. He looked around. Half of the SEALs were asleep already. He waved at the ensign, settled down, and closed his eyes. For a moment he thought of Ardith Manchester, his beautiful lady back in Washington, D.C. He wondered what she was doing today, or tonight, whichever it was back there. Probably at work. He smiled. She would know about this run into Iraq before twenty-four hours were up. She and her dad should be working for the CIA.
He smiled just remembering that wonderful smile she had, the way she walked, how great she was at making small talk and figuring out his exact mood. She should have been a shrink. No, a lawyer was good or bad enough. He hadn’t decided yet. The last thing he remembered was her glorious smile when she met him at the door of his Coronado condo. Yes, some things were worth fighting for.
Murdock came awake from a nudge on his shoulder.
“Sir, we’ve got some trouble. Looks like a river patrol boat coming upstream with a searchlight.”
Murdock came awake at once. “How far away?”
“Half mile.”
“You have machine guns on here?”
“Yes, a 12.7mm and a grenade launcher.”
“Can you fire forward?”
“Yes. Get it ready. Bradford,” Murdock shouted. The big guy came awake at once and lifted the McMillan .50-caliber sniping rifle.
“Yes, sir. Where do you want it?”
“Forward, patrol boat coming. Give it ten rounds.”
Bradford found a place to shoot over the top of the low cabin and zeroed in on the oncoming boat. His first round was short, his second close. His third ripped into the patrol boat. The next three put it dead in the water.
The Pegasus’s machine gunner jolted the craft with the 12.7mm rounds as they stormed past it fifty yards away and at thirty knots. There was no return fire. The searchlight angled upward and still blazed with a shaft of brilliance through the dark night.
Once they made it past the river patrol boat, Ensign Turley looked at Murdock with new interest.
“Never seen you SEALs in action before,” he said. “You do good work. So far, we’ve only run the admiral around. Glad to get in some real action. This boat was made specifically to take you SEALs in and out of places on your missions.”
“We’ve heard,” Murdock said. “This is our first ride in one.” Murdock went into the small cabin and looked out front. The captain had been right; it was hard to see out there at night.
“That inland patrol boat must have had a radio. If they did, they probably got the word out that we were here. That land machine gun might have had contact, too. My bet that we have some more company downstream. How far do we have to go yet?”
“Thirty miles.”
“Plenty of time and distance for them to radio ahead and put out some heavy-duty welcome for us. Can we juice it up to thirty-five knots?”
“Might be safer than running though some concentrated fire from the riverbank.” He nodded to the helmsman who revved the throttle. Then he switched off the interior lights. “If they can’t see us, we’ll be harder to hit.”
“How’s your supply of forty-mike grenades?”
“Plenty, two cases of HE and a case of WP.”
“Good. Our guys might need to borrow some if they run out.”
They raced along hard and fast for a while. The river here was fairly straight and getting wider.
Ten minutes later, they saw a light downstream. Turley put his twenty-power scope on it. “Can’t tell. Could be a searchlight or maybe a bonfire onshore.”
He cut the power and the sound of the two big V-12 diesels that kicked out 4,500 horsepower.
“Whoever it is can hear us but can’t see us,” Murdock said. “How about hugging the opposite shoreline.”
“Dangerous over there, but we’ll try it and cut power again. Let’s hope we can creep by them.”
“SEALs up and at ’em,” Murdock bellowed. “Weapons on ready, especially you long guns. Some more company up front. If there’s a spotlight, I want it to go first. Snipers decide who gets it.”
The SEALs moved from the small, covered cabin to anywhere on the Pegasus that they would have a good firing position. The boat angled for the far shore. The light was on the right-hand shore. They chugged along at about five knots, and the engines sounded like they were idling.
Without warning, they saw a flash from the shore and a trail of sparks and fire coming toward them. It fell halfway to them.
“RPG,” Ed DeWitt said. “Damn poor calculation on range. They can get this far.”
As he said it, three more flashes showed onshore, and the rockets flew farther this time, but all fell short and slightly upstream from where they were.
The river here was three hundred yards wide. They were still fish in a barrel.
With dazzling suddenness, the light they had seen before turned in their direction, slashing a brilliant shaft of white searchlight across the water. It highlighted the far shore, swung back and forth in a good search pattern, but never got upstream far enough to find them.
“Do it,” Murdock said.
Two shots without suppressors blasted from the sniper rifles. Within half a second, the searchlight died.
Ensign Turley gave an order. The SEALs heard the motor revving up and slid back into safety or hung on with both hands. The slender boat leaped ahead, thrust by the four thousand horses. It went from five knots to forty knots faster than Murdock had ever gone before.
A machine gun chattered from shore. The rounds hit well behind them now. Turley aimed the dartlike boat at the middle of the river and pushed the throttle forward again until they were racing along at forty-five knots. Everyone hung on to anything solid he could find.
The machine gun fire faded.
Turley pulled the throttles back to fifteen knots and sailed down the center of the river.
“We didn’t hurt them much back there,” Murdock shouted over the engine noise to Turley. “They might have some more friends downstream waiting for us.”
“Might,” the Pegasus captain said. “I’m not counting on it. We didn’t see any activity at all on the way in here. I figured we might have to fight our way in and then get clobbered on the downstream run. But now I doubt if it is going to happen. They would have most of their defenses nearer to the navy base. We’re a long way from there now. Fifteen, maybe twenty miles to the gulf.”
“Hope to hell you’re right,” Murdock said. “That last bunch really messed up my nap. Gonna try it again.”
Murdock found a vacant spot in the cabin and sat down, crossed his ankles, and went to sleep.
14
USS Enterprise CVN 65
South Persian Gulf
The SEALs made it down the river to the Persian Gulf with no more problems, and then on to Kuwait City. The next morning, they had a big breakfast at the air base near Kuwait City before they flew on a COD back to the carrier. There Murdock pigged out on a big steak dinner for lunch, with all the trimmings he could find. At 1300, he and the SEALs were working over their gear in the assembly room, when Stroh boiled in the door, waved at the two officers, and put them down in chairs at the far end of the big room. He told them the problem quickly.
Murdock and Ed DeWitt looked at Stroh with s
urprise.
“What do you mean, the Navy minesweeper guys don’t know what kind of mines those are across the Strait of Hormuz? They must know, that’s their rice bowl.”
“They’ve been probing the area for the past day and a half while you were playing float down the river. They report that none of their usual testing and search-and-find operations are working.
“They have located a rough line of chunks of serious metal on the strait floor in a rough line spanning the three-mile channel. The metal chunks haven’t been there before, and the specialists say that they must be some kind of mines. They don’t know for sure. There are nine of them. Presumably, there were ten before the tanker went down.
“Incidentally, about half of the oil slick is washing into the Gulf of Oman, and the Southern Iranian coastline will also take a hard hit from the oil pollution. Not much of it burned off.”
“So how did the Navy find the chunks of metal that may be mines?” DeWitt asked.
“The usual metal detection equipment and a batch of other mine identification and neutralization systems on board the mine sweepers.”
“So why don’t they neutralize them?”
“They didn’t say, exactly. I understand that many marine mines are suspended on cables from anchors on the bottom. They hang in the way of ships passing by, and when one is hit, boom, there goes another rubber tree plant. The mine experts on the Ardent and the Dextrous say that these mines are not the hanging variety. Instead, they are down there on the bottom of the strait. That’s from three hundred to three hundred and fifty feet below the surface.
“So they can’t send divers down unless they get a submersible, and that much metal might set off the thing,” Murdock said.
“Now you’re starting to see the problem. Too deep for free diving, no way to shoot a torpedo at the things to detonate them, kind of hog-tied until they figure out exactly how to set the things off without sending another tanker to its grave.”
“These mine countermeasure craft are the ones made out of a lot of wood, right? And they had no trouble moving over and around the nine mines. But one tanker rocked one of them, and it hit and sank the ship. So, how does the bomb get from the bottom, three hundred feet below, and into a tanker?”
“Some kind of cutting-edge electronics and radar and target ID and tracking system?” Ed DeWitt asked.
“Not a chance,” Stroh said. “Our people have ruled out any late-tech stuff. They say the things have to be some sort of torpedo to get from down there up here.”
“So, what kind of a torpedo?”
“Who the hell knows?” Stroh said. “Oh, the Iraqi know, but they don’t return any of my phone calls.”
“Ed, remember those torpedo classes we had to take at the academy? They had some on World War II torpedoes. Not nearly as sophisticated as what we have today. But wasn’t there something about one the Germans developed late in the war but didn’t get to use?”
Ed scowled for a minute. “Yes, some kind of a mine that activated, fired a torpedo that then charged into the ship. Yes, the devices were set on the sea floor. Designed for the North Sea and shelves around British ports. They never got to use them. Two to four hundred feet depth. It fits, but where would Iraq get German torpedoes from World War II?”
Stroh kept nodding. “Yes, yes, yes. It fits. Why don’t we get the Ardent on the phone and talk to them.”
“Stroh, these are the torpedo specialists. They must know all about those German mines and how they work.”
“Know, but maybe they forgot. I’m calling. Don’t go away.”
They got through on the radiophone, and a few minutes later, Murdock was talking with Commander Johnson on the mine sweeper.
“Commander, I know you’ve thought of this, but what you have there sounds a lot like the German torpedo mines they developed near the end of World War II.”
There was a moment of silence. “Keeeeereist. You’re right. The same type of setup. They had them programmed in some hand-wired way with electronics and a kind of target-seeking device we didn’t understand. That fits the parameters. But where the hell would Saddam get German torpedo mines from WW Deuce?”
“That and the fact that they would be nearly fifty-five years old,” Murdock said. “Would they even work?”
Commander Johnson’s hand shook so much he almost dropped the phone. “Now, why didn’t we come up with something like this?”
“You’re too advanced in your field,” Murdock said, laughing. “Hey, I’m just a SEAL hoping I don’t have to dive to three hundred and fifty feet and deactivate nine mines.”
“So how… how did you come up with this?”
“We were just kicking around the problem. All that mine would need is a magnetometer. They’ve been around for a hundred and fifty years. So the Germans would have them. Then the electrical circuits, and a primitive circuit board, some propellant, and you’ve got it.”
“But how would the torpedo track the ship once it gets a big dose of magnetic signature that its system required?”
“Not the slightest, Commander. Unless maybe it has some way to home in on the magnetic source. Some of your people might know. But it isn’t important. All you need to do is ram a high frequency of magnetic force into the strait toward those mines, and they should fire and come to the surface.”
“Sure, and blow up any boat they can find.”
“True. You have something that could send a magnetic signal into the water?”
“Well, we usually don’t do that, but I guess we could. Yeah, possible.”
“Only don’t do it from a ship. Drop a lead into the water from a chopper and send it that way. The little brain inside that mine gets the magnetic signal, it’s large enough to be the right magnetic signature for the firing device to work, and it blasts off and looks for the source of the signal. The thing must have a contact fuse so it couldn’t be set off by a foot-square box.”
Commander Johnson’s voice rose with his excitement. “Yes, yes, it could work. We have a few choppers in the area to launch a missile at the torpedo once it surfaces and starts hunting.”
“Good idea, Commander. I just hope I haven’t upset your whole schedule.”
“Hey, with this we will have a schedule.” The officer paused. “If this works, I want you to be on board when we activate it. This is a rush project. We’ve got over seventy-five tankers lined up on both sides of the strait. Washington says do it today. You’re on the Enterprise?”
“Right, Commander.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Gent named Stroh. He’s right here.”
“Let me talk to him.”
Two hours later, Murdock and Ed DeWitt stepped off a chopper to the deck of a frigate that roamed an area a mile off the line of mines the minesweepers had located. The frigate’s choppers were refueled and had full loads of missiles ready to go.
Murdock was called to the phone. It was Commander Johnson.
“Sorry, Commander, as close as I can get you. We don’t have landing pads on these mine ships. We’ve been busy. We have our target picked out. In an hour, one of the choppers from your frigate will come over for a wild pickup on a hook and take up a device we’re sure will activate the mines. I’ve talked to the brass and the chopper pilot. He’ll have a fifty-foot lead, drop the device into the water directly over the mine, and broadcast those intense magnetic signals down to the mine. If it doesn’t work, it’s all your fault.” Commander Johnson gave a short, nervous laugh. “Just kidding. You can imagine the intensity of the tension around here.”
“One suggestion, Commander. The mines must have a good pickup range. Why not aim your signals directly between two of them. That way you might get two to take the bait at the same time.”
The line was silent for a moment. “Gawddamned if you ain’t right, Commander. We’ll give it a try. We just had the pickup of the device and we’ll position the chopper.
“We’re about ready to get this moving. We’re about a quarte
r of a mile off the line of mines, but I don’t think one could sniff us out with a bird dog. The chopper is in position, and we have two other choppers from the frigates working their torpedo-finding gear. Here we go.”
Murdock could see the choppers in the distance. The frigate captain had been ordered to stay at least a mile away.
Murdock put the radio signal on a speaker, and half the ship’s crew listened.
“Okay, we have contact with the water; the device is sending a huge magnetic signal down to that magnetometer that must be in the shell of the mine somewhere. We’ll keep sending for three minutes.”
The energy level of the magnetic signal decayed the deeper it went, but by the time it reached the mine, it was still strong enough to pulse the acoustic diaphragm on top of the mine. The sensitive diaphragm made a small compression in the heavy oil reservoir just beneath it, which moved a piston through a magnetic coil and generated an electrical current in direct proportion to the strength of the sound.
Electrical circuits in the mine studied the frequencies of the energy, judged the fundamental frequencies of the complex waveform to the discrimination standards hardwired into it. The mechanical device determined there was a match. It was a large ship. The device moved on to the next step by determining the strength of the signal to see if the target was close enough. It was.
A relay tripped as all parameters were met for a firing. Power surged into the mine’s firing circuit, first arming the torpedo-shaped charge, then activating a small electric motor, which provided the propulsion. The torpedo shot away from the metal casing that had housed the detection devices for so long, determined the direction of the massive electromagnetic signal, and automatically homed in on it.
Another voice came on the frigate’s speaker.
“Ardent, This is Cover Two. I have a torpedo moving toward my position, still moving. Slow rate of speed. Torpedo approaching the surface, yes, surfacing. I have a visual. I have a missile lock on and firing at the torpedo. It’s on a straight course on the surface. Estimated speed twenty knots.”
Murdock heard the explosion from a mile away and a great geyser of water spouted into the air.
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