“Nonetheless, we’ll be branded a bunch of reckless maniacs by the international community,” said Stafford. “And then they’d all start asking questions. Why should the USA hit the Navy of Iran? What’s Iran done to deserve that?
“And then they’ll be asking if the Jefferson was really an accident. Was this outrageous air strike against Iran because the Pentagon believes the fate of the carrier was no accident? Because the Pentagon believes the Jefferson was hit by an Ay-rab in one of those Kilos?”
“Yes,” murmured the Secretary of State, “I suppose that would be very bad news indeed.”
“Yes. That would be hopeless,” said the President. “Gentlemen, I think it would be in my best interest to leave the meeting now. You may of course stay here as long as you wish, and perhaps Dick can inform me of anything particularly pertinent. However, the less I know about the technicalities the better.
“I just hope to see in the newspapers a couple of weeks from now that there has been a most unfortunate accident to three submarines at the Iranian Navy base in Bandar Abbas.”
“How long was that, sir?” asked Scott Dunsmore.
“Couple of weeks, Scott. Is that all right?”
“Sir, I think I would be inclined to allow a month. Just because it may take us that long to get a specialist submarine into the area, especially one we can equip with the new SDV, which also has to be transported. It’s over twelve thousand miles from our San Diego base. Also we have to allow the SEALS time to rehearse the mission.”
“Yes. I understand. But try to get it done in two weeks. Especially as I would like to have it done tomorrow.”
At which point Admiral Dunsmore said formally, “Well, gentlemen, since I am plainly the person to be charged with carrying out the Chief’s wishes, I would be happy to tell you any more details you may want. But I think it best that I get back to the factory and put this all in motion; then maybe we can meet tomorrow somewhere and I’ll brief you all further. By the way, the Navy likes the plan. We can’t wait to get rid of the Ayatollah’s submarines. I think this is a great call by the President.”
“Sure was. All my guys will be relieved,” said General Paul. “Matter of fact I think Scott and I should go back together right now, and get this thing moving.”
The meeting broke up. And the two Service Chiefs left the White House immediately. In less than one hour Admiral Dunsmore had contacted the most elite combatant force in the Armed Services, the SEALS. It is the U.S. Navy’s Special Forces Unit, where each man must possess a nearly unique combination of physical, intellectual, and emotional strength. Aside from speed and strength, and a natural agility in the water, he also requires a first-class memory and a thorough knowledge of dozens of weapons, systems, and demolition techniques.
The United States runs eight teams of SEALS. Three of them are based at Little Creek, Virginia, numbered Two, Four, and Eight. Numbers One, Three, and Five work out of Coronado, California, home of the U.S. Navy Special War Command—in the trade, SPECWARCOM—which oversees all SEAL missions anywhere in the world.
The admiral in command of SPECWARCOM, John Bergstrom, answered his telephone on the island of Coronado at 0835 on that Thursday morning. He was greeted by the Commander of the Fifth Fleet, Vice Admiral Archie Carter, who was visiting San Diego, and requested his presence at the main Navy base forthwith.
When he arrived, Admiral Carter was standing at a big desk using a pair of Navy dividers and a metal ruler. Before him was a Navy chart of the area north of Jazireh-Ye Qeshm, a long, parched island in the Strait of Hormuz. He was measuring the waterway between the eastern end of the island and the harbor directly opposite; this was the right-hand harbor of three, in a twenty-mile stretch along the southeast coast of Iran.
Admiral Bergstrom peered over his shoulder, gazing at the name at the head of the chart, “The Port of Bandar Abbas.” He noted the big radar domes marked clearly behind the harbor. He noted the narrow channel, only twenty-seven-feet deep, running between the pincer-shaped claws of the outer harbor walls. He noted the length of the long breakwater.
There could be but one reason why he had been summoned to this room, where the Commander of the Fifth Fleet was examining a chart of a potentially hostile foreign navy base: to organize its destruction. The SEALS specialty.
In his mind he imagined the base as his men would see it from the dark waters as they swam in…the flashing green light on the right, perhaps just illuminating an armed sentry on the harbor entrance. He noted the sheltered interior reaches of the harbor, tucked behind the sandy headland on the right. A death trap if they were seen. He wondered how carefully it was all guarded, what chance his men had of survival, and how many they might have to kill to get out.
“Morning, Admiral,” he said breezily. “What do you want us to do, blow the entire thing to pieces, or just destroy the warships?”
Admiral Carter smiled at the insight of the top man from SPECWARCOM. “Not all of them, John. Just three, all submarines. Orders direct from CNO. We’ve got fourteen days to get there and take them out. I understand the decision was made less than two hours ago in the Oval Office.”
“How close can we get to an SSN?” asked Bergstrom instantly.
“John, I’m very much afraid no nearer than thirteen miles.”
“Jesus. That means they’ll have to go in with the new Mark IX SDV. It’s untried. And it only makes five knots. But it’ll hold ten people, and it has a big battery, should run for twelve hours.”
And he stared down at the chart, looking again at the narrow confines of the harbor entrance. “Are the submarines all in the water?” he asked.
“No. Unfortunately, we think one of them may be in a covered floating dock, shored up on her keel, and probably guarded.”
“You want us to go in and take out the guards before we start?”
“No. I’d prefer you not to take out anyone, if possible. This is a completely clandestine operation, and ideally I would like the Iranian Navy to be wondering what the hell’s going on for as long as possible. Maximum damage, minimum noise, no traces left behind. Except three rather large, very wrecked, Russian-built submarines, which will never go to sea again.”
“Yessir. I understand. Will someone send the biggest, latest charts and overhead pictures over to us? And if we are pursued by armed Iranian patrol boats carrying depth charges, do I have permission to sink our enemy?”
“John, with this President we always enjoy that freedom. Shoot to kill in self-defense, if your lives are in danger. But in general terms I believe the White House would very much prefer you did not start World War Three.”
“I’ll certainly try to avoid that, sir,” replied Admiral Bergstrom.
9
0930 Thursday, July 18.
IT TOOK ADMIRAL BERGSTROM NINETY MINUTES TO establish his initial plan of action, in the SEAL compound, surrounded by barbed wire, behind the Coronado beach.
The admiral had ordered all of the commanders involved to enter “brainstorm mode”—and he had already presided over the short-list selection of the hit squad which would strike against the Ayatollah’s underwater Navy.
There are 225 men on each SEAL team, of whom only 160 are active members of the attack platoons. There are 25 people in support and logistics, technicians and electronic experts, with 40 more involved in training, command, and control. Each SEAL strike squadron requires enormous backup.
The senior commanders had recommended this job for the Number Three Team. They had then selected one of the ten platoons of sixteen SEALS, which made up the team. They would then choose the final squad, of probably eight, which would make the “takeout” deep inside the port of Bandar Abbas. Their leader would be Lieutenant Commander Russell Bennett, a thirty-four-year-old veteran of the Gulf War, graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, leading classman in the SEALS murderous indoctrination course, BUD/S, known colloquially as “The Grinder,” and son of a Maine lobsterman.
Bennett was medium height, with
thick, wide shoulders, dark blue eyes, and a generous but well-trimmed mustache. He had forearms and wrists which might have been made of blue-twisted steel. He was an expert on explosives, a superb marksman, and lethal with a knife, especially in the water. He could scale the smoothest steel plates of any ship. He could swim anywhere in the coldest seas, and he could climb anything. Any enemy who ran into him was probably looking at the last five seconds of his life.
His subordinates worshiped him and called him “Rusty” because of his short-clipped red hair. Like most SEALS he ignored all forms of correct uniform, and went into action with a head bandage instead of a hat, calling it his “drive-on rag.” His colleagues swore he pinned his coveted SEAL golden Trident badge on his pajamas each night at Coronado. He had never gone into combat without that badge, carefully blacking it up before leaving, even more carefully burnishing it bright on his safe return. Lieutenant Bennett was typical of the kind of Navy SEAL SPECWARCOM considered adequate for platoon command.
He had twice done a stint as a BUD/S instructor, pounding tirelessly along the burning Pacific beaches at the head of his class, driving them up the sand dunes, and then down into the freezing sea, driving them until they thought they would die of exhaustion. Then driving them some more. Using the time-honored SEAL punishments, he sent shattered but still defiant men just one more time through the underwater “tunnel,” then made them roll on the beach and complete a course of grueling exercises under the agonizing grazing of the clinging wet sand.
Twelve years previously, other instructors had done it to him, driven him until he thought he had nothing more to give. But he did. And they made him find it. They forced him ever onward, through the assault courses, through the brutal training of “Hell Week,” which breaks 50 percent of all entrants, until at the end, he believed in his soul that no one on this planet could ever hurt him. At least not worse than he had already been hurt.
When he was selected as leading classman, and, in his full-dress uniform, chimed the great silver bell at the end of the course, Rusty Bennett was the proudest man in the United States Navy. And still, in the high summer of 2002, he was as hard-trained and impervious to pain as any human being could ever be.
Rusty’s father, who still set his lobster traps in the deep, ice-cold waters of the rocky Maine coast, south of Mount Desert, had long assumed that his unmarried eldest was crazy.
And now Rusty was in “brainstorm mode,” in the operations room, staring at the chart. This was the initial session involving SEALS high command and the team leader. They were dealing with absolute basics. Which submarine? Where is it? How long to get to Diego Garcia? Admiral Carter of the Fifth Fleet would have theater command, once they move into the area.
Rusty too was asking elementary questions: Strength of the current? Tide and depth? Conditions on the bottom? Guards? Patrol boats? Searchlights? Possible alarms? Likely weather conditions? Phase of the moon? Underwater visibility? How many SEALS do we need to go in? Not until these basic matters were clarified would he call in his second-in-command, who would drive in the SDV.
He made a drawing of the two Iranian Kilos in their precise positions, as provided by the satellite photographs. He sketched in the big floating dock, in the position it was last seen. He marked the place where they would leave the SSN. Marked another spot where the SDV would wait, in the outer reaches beyond the harbor, once they were all in the water.
He conferred with the weapons officers and the explosives experts, formulating the precise charge necessary for the “sticky” mine they would carry in and then clamp to the underside of each Kilo’s hull. The explosion would drive upward, through the casing, through the hull, right under the gigantic battery.
The charge had to be powerful enough to blow a big hole in the pressure hull, and ignite a major internal fire. The overall game plan was that the blast, the intense heat and searing flames, would immediately overcome the crew, while the onrushing flood of seawater would sink the submarine.
Another “sticky” mine, blasting upward, under the stern, and bending the propeller shaft, would make double-sure the Kilo never left the harbor again.
It was understood that it would take two SEALS to destroy each of the two floating Iranian submarines. The third one, the one which could be inside the floating dock, would undoubtedly prove a bit more difficult. But it had to go. After all, it might be the very one which had hit the Jefferson.
Everyone realized the floating dock might be empty, which would at least confirm they had definitely hit the right nation. But now they had to make their plans and behave as if it was going to be there—even though this submarine would be four times more tricky to take out than the others. The commanding officers knew they faced the age-old problem of big business—they were about to spend 80 percent of their effort on 33 percent of the problem—and all of that 80 percent might be wasted if the third Kilo was not there.
The action required on the first two was relatively straightforward by SEAL standards. The one in the dock involved a lot of educated guesswork, but the principle of standing up a 2,356-ton submarine in a dry dock was universal. The huge ballast tanks under the dock were flooded, on the same principle as the submarine itself, and the dock routinely sank sufficiently for the boat to be floated in.
She entered right down the middle of the dock, above a series of huge wooden blocks arranged precisely to accommodate the shape of the submarine’s keel, and spread the load of her colossal weight. The ballast tanks under the dock were then pumped out until the dock rose a few feet, and the submarine nearly settled.
Mooring wires, controlled by powerful dockside winches, were then used to position the boat in exactly the right spot over the keel blocks, accurate to the nearest inch. Eight giant wooden “shores”—around eighteen inches square, twice the thickness of a telegraph pole, and probably thirty feet long—were set against the hull, a fraction over halfway up, four on either side.
These great beams, easily strong enough to bear the weight of several men, were wedged into place with sledgehammers, to prevent the submarine from toppling over sideways.
At this point operators would start to pump out the ballast tanks, and the massive edifice would begin to float upward, very slowly, not much faster than the outgoing tide. With the dock on the surface, the submarine stood high and dry, ready for the engineers and ship wrights to begin work. It was one of the more time-consuming, difficult procedures in any dockyard. If a submarine went into dry dock it had a major problem, involving repairs below the waterline.
The floating dock in Bandar Abbas had a roof built right across the top, turning it into something the size of an aircraft hangar, anchored to the harbor bottom by monstrous steel and concrete moorings. It was not going to wreck anyone’s life in the Pentagon if the SEALS wiped that out too. But that would depend on how much “kit” the SEAL swimmers could carry.
Admiral Bergstrom, himself a SEAL veteran, made a key recommendation here. “I don’t think we need ‘blow’ the third Kilo at all,” he said. “If we could somehow smash all four shores on her starboard side, she’d crash down on her own, probably take out the entire wing wall of the dock, and possibly drive her way straight through the floor. Two and a half thousand tons is a pretty good weight to drop—it would certainly smash the dock to pieces, and put the whole lot on the bottom of the harbor with very little explosive effort on our part.”
“Yes,” replied Commander Ray Banford, “but those things are damn finely balanced. She may not fall immediately, and the noise we make blowing the shores might just alert them, maybe give ’em time to bang in another shore if they happen to have a few spares around. Just one could stop her falling.”
“She’d go if I blew a damn great hole in her starboard holding tank at precisely the same time we took out the shores,” said Lieutenant Bennett. “I guess the slightest tilt of that dock would do it. And that big float tank, full of seawater, would tilt her over half a degree in about one minute flat. She’d go then.�
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“Yes, I guess she would,” said Commander Banford. “Actually I think our real problem here is the amount of guys we might need to get those shores out.”
“One man on each,” said Rusty. “That’s four. I’ll go in first, under the dock, and attach some kind of a mine to the tank. Then I’ll stand guard while the guys wire up the shores. We’ll use det-cord. We’ll hook up the explosives to the same detonator, give ourselves time to get clear, and the whole lot will blow together. She’ll go. No doubt, she’ll go.”
“Right here, we’re talking a lot of guys,” said Banford, the exsubmarine commander, who would oversee the mission. “We need four men for the floating Kilos. Four for the shores. Couldn’t two guys do two each?”
“Too dangerous, sir. Don’t forget we’ll be working close to the guard on the deck of the submarine, but just out of his sight-range. If he hears one sound he’ll start looking, then I’ll have to take him out, then someone else might hear, then we’ll end up taking a dozen of ’em out, with all hell breaking loose.
“No, sir. I think we should move at twice the speed, with four men, one on each shore working simultaneously.”
“Yes, Rusty. I do see that, it’s just the number I’m worried about. Four men on the two floating Kilos, four men on the shores, you blowing the float tank and standing guard—that’s nine, plus the driver of the SDV. That’s ten, and the SDV only holds eight.”
Admiral Bergstrom spoke next. “Well, Ray, we do have a new Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, delivered in the past few weeks. It does hold ten. They call this one an ASDS, an Advanced Swimmer Delivery System, electric-powered, made by Westinghouse. It has a longer range than the old Mark VIII, probably twelve hours, and it does hold ten guys.
“If you assume three hours to get in and three hours back, plus four hours waiting, that’s ten hours, if nothing goes wrong. She only makes five knots, but she’s nearly perfect for us. Trouble is, I don’t know whether she’s operational yet. And I believe we only have two SSN’s fitted to carry her…. Tommy!” He beckoned over to Lieutenant Tommy Schwab, asked him to check out the submarine situation with SUB-PAC, Vice Admiral Johnny Barry, Commander, Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet.
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