The Gulf

by David Poyer

  Now, sinking, he ran through the memorized bearings again, then twisted his wrist toward him. The numerals and needle of the compass glowed tritium luminescent, unnoticeable in daylight, but so complete was the darkness through which they fell, it seemed bright.

  The depth pressed its thumbs into his ears. He worked his jaw and swallowed, felt the wheeze and pop as they equalized. Passing 33. The sea was quieter here than in the Narrows. Only an occasional distant whistle, and the Rice Krispies crackle of bottom dwellers. The 16 vented no bubbles, so that familiar rumble was absent. Gas sighed through his breathing tubes, and rubber creaked as he finned downward.

  When the needle reached 40, he stopped, gripping the line in his glove. The anchor and sandbags should be thirty feet farther down. He pressed the button on his hand light, pointed it at his hand, aimed a finger down.

  Burgee nodded and continued his descent. Gordon floated weightless and without motion, waiting as below him the number-two diver’s light came on. It fanned slowly around. The visibility was excellent tonight, easily fifty feet, possibly more; it was hard to tell in the gloom.

  The light angled up and blinked twice, then went out.

  On the bottom, Gordon turned his on again. The mushroom lay quietly on a sandy bottom grooved with innumerable tiny ripples. It reminded him of the desert they’d flown over on the way to Kenya. The sandbags were splayed out from it, leaning inward like a tent.

  Burgee had the jackstay out. He clipped it to the fitting on the anchor, then paid out line. Gordon snapped the end to his belt, then fumbled around his body. Where the devil … His hand recognized it then dangling on its line: an AN/PQS-2A, a hand-held mine-detection sonar the size of a calf’s head.

  He took a few deep breaths, appreciating the steady flow of purified, oxygen-enriched air. Then he clipped on the waterproof earphones and turned up the volume.

  A steady hissing beat came through them, sounding like the screw of a passing freighter. He steadied the sonar in front of him, chest high, and with his knees in the sand, pivoted slowly, closing his eyes to concentrate on what came through his ears.

  The rhythmic sibilance continued without change. When the transducer bumped the buoy line, he unlocked his lids, clicked on his light, tapped the compass, and pointed to the left.

  Burgee moved away, swimming slowly just above the bottom. Gordon couldn’t see him, but he knew the number-two diver was following 240 magnetic. He paid out line till it ended, then moved out following it. When they collided, they switched off, and Gordon swam while the other stayed.

  Doing this three times put them 120 feet to the left of the reference, in position now to turn ninety degrees right and begin the long sweep. He marked the position with a buoy from his vest, cracking the tube of a chem light like a king crab leg before sending it up. Putting lights on the surface added risk, but they had to have orientation in this immense blackness. He didn’t think they could be seen from shore.

  But if the Pasdaran patrolled the mine field …

  He swept the sonar through another circle, but the throbbing hiss was unaltered. He signaled Burgee out on 330.

  They’d done this twice, stopping to sweep each time they reached the line’s end, when he heard a thud. He fanned the sonar back and forth before him. Whooshes to either side, a metallic thud like a heartbeat out to their left. He grabbed Burgee, who was already starting away, and clicked on his light to match compasses.

  The green meteor bobbed outward, grew faint, and disappeared. Gordon glanced at his watch as he waited. 2145. This was going about as he’d expected. Slowly. Except for the danger, clearing a mine field was a deliberate, rather boring process. He’d figured it would take them till 1 A.M. That gave them an extra hour, just in case. He hoped they wouldn’t need it.

  The line tugged twice. He clicked the sonar off and let it dangle, then finned ahead, gathering line in a loose coil as he moved. Burgee’s chem light reappeared, then the dazzling beam of his flashlight, probing about in the gloom.

  Gordon valved air, the bubbles loud in his ears, and sank till his knees grated on the bottom.

  The mine was the size of two 55-gallon drums welded end to end. The nose was half-buried in white sand. Scabrous brown paint discovered olive drab beneath. A rusty cage of angle iron was bolted around it. He recognized it as the shipping frame. It was removed for an airdrop, but more convenient to just leave on if it was laid from the deck of a ship.

  Not moving, breathing deep to keep the vise from clamping his throat, he studied it from twelve feet away.

  There were two bomb lugs on top, about a yard apart. It had stubby fins at the exposed end. The tail.

  His mind brought back the clipped voice of the instructor at Fort Story. Use the logic tree. Take acoustic, magnetic, and pressure precautions. Limit stay time on the site. Don’t hurry; always move slowly around a live device, but do what you have to do and then get out.

  His hand waved the other back. Burgee nodded and retreated another ten feet. He kept his light on, though, gilding the waiting weapon with a tremulous radiance.

  Gordon moved left a little—they’d happened on it at the nose—and began working his way in. You always approached a bottom mine from the side. Since lines of magnetic flux converged at the nose and tail, its sensitivity was greatest there. Six feet away, he stopped again, sinking back to the sand, examining it more closely.

  It was a Mark 36, all right. He sipped air cautiously, going over again what he wore and was carrying. Everything was nonmagnetic, recertified monthly to be sure it picked up no stray fields. He hoped Maudit, who’d done the checking, had been thorough.

  Usual procedure was to stop here and sketch the mine, in case someone else had to finish the job. But if he didn’t, there was no one else. And they had a lot of ground to cover.

  He decided to move in.

  Slow approach. Avoid the nose. Drift aft, toward the fins. Gradually rising silt was dimming Burgee’s beam. Gordon had his finger on the button of his own light before he remembered: No current flow near a detonator, gentlemen, bad for your health. He took his finger off it slowly and exhaled.

  He had enough light. He moved closer, close enough to touch the fin. Though he didn’t. His glove drifted down to the net bag, found the hard rectangularity of one of the gadgets, and drew it out.

  He circled slowly toward the tail. Over the smallest rear access plate. Align the long axis with fin number three. As he reached it, he sculled downward, letting his legs rise.

  The tail plate came into view. His eyes searched it, his hand already coming forward with the box, a finger poised against the switch.

  And stopped.

  The tail plate covered the butt end of the mine. It was two feet across, steel, with a solid brass access plate. Bolted on. With quarter-inch holes hand-drilled through it.

  Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

  His eye went automatically to the corner of his mask, but the readout was green. Then he realized it was his throat. He reached up and massaged it through the rubber. After a couple seconds, he got a breath. Then another.

  He stared at the brassy gleam, rummaging his mind for the characteristics of the mods. The tail cover was how you told them apart. One through three, solid blank cover, magnetic. Mod four was straight pressure sensing. Mods five through eight had three openings, with acoustic and/or magnetic combinations. Eight and up were the latest types, turned over to the Shah just before he fell, and they had the three-plate combination, too.

  None of them had a bolted-on brass access with hand-drilled holes.

  He balanced there, one fin trailing to the bottom, as thoughts jumbled through his head. There was no way to tell what was inside this thing. Pressure, acoustic, magnetic, it could even be rigged to explode when touched. Tailored for whoever tried to disarm it.

  Just like a pineapple bomb, years before, deep in the green hell of the Mekong Delta.

  He backed away slowly, following what he figured would be the lines of force emanat
ing from the tail. His fins dug up little gouts of sand that whirled like snow devils across the tail plate.

  When he was six feet away, still staring at it, he let his hand drift upward. The marker buoy came out in a flat pack. The weight chunked into the sand. He popped it, wincing at the noise, broke the chem light and released it. It soared upward, dwindling and trailing line till it was out of sight.

  Now what, Senior? Four hours left, and seven hundred yards of corridor to clear. But he couldn’t touch this thing. The gadgets were useless weight. He thought for a moment of ditching them, then rejected that for two reasons: one, they still might find some off-the-shelf mod elevens. And two, Rothman had made it clear they were secret as hell.

  But what was he going to do? There’d be two destroyers tearing through here at 0200. Unless he came up with something, either the raid was already a failure or four, five hundred men would be steaming straight into a live mine field.

  He bumped something and flinched around. It was Burgee. His eyebrows were puzzled behind tempered glass. Gordon made abrupt signals: Abort. Surface.

  When the sea rolled off their masks, he unseated his and shoved it back on his forehead. After the blackness at seventy feet the stars were a million searchlights focused on him. He picked out a faraway firefly and swam toward it.

  Maudit was lying flat in the boat. “What is wrong?” he whispered when he recognized them.

  “We found one.”

  “And?”

  “The Iranians modified it.”

  “A bordel. So what are we going to do?”

  “Blow it,” said Gordon.

  He heard Burgee suck air through his teeth. “John, we can’t do that! There’ll be Pasdaran all over out here!”

  “Not now, we won’t blow it now. We’ll rig it and mark the fuze float with a chem light. Then go back just before H-hour and pull the primers. Etienne, how many M133s we got, how many haversacks?”

  “Two, three—we have five of them, Senior.”

  “I hope that’s enough. Give me three. Two for Lem’s team. They’ll be back if they hit one of these bastards. Tell ’em what we’re going to do.”

  Maudit nodded. Gordon looped the straps over his head and checked to be sure a detonator was included with each. “Any last words?” he muttered to Burgee’s raised mask.

  “I’m glad we went to Nyali Beach.”

  “Why?”

  “I got a lifetime’s worth of pussy, anyway.”

  Despite his fear, Gordon had to laugh. He let go the buoy, turned on his back, and began to swim.

  * * *

  On the bottom again, again in the silent waiting presence of his mechanical enemy, he slowly peeled free the silver Mylar over the charge. They hadn’t made them up in advance; hadn’t expected to use them. Now he blessed his insistence that they not trust blindly in their orders, that they take along all their regular gear.

  The problem was that now their escape plan was shot. According to the operation order, after safing the mines in the corridor, they were supposed to return to the raft, beacon the channel, then leave before the first shot was fired. For pickup, they’d rendezvous with the destroyers again fifteen miles out, after the action was over—again, a good safe distance away.

  Now they’d have to stay here. Triggering the destruct charges early would alert the IRG and wreck the whole raid. So at least one diver would have to stay, waiting till the last moment, till the ships were practically in sight, before pulling the fuzes.

  Gordon already knew who that last man would be.

  Moving with drugged slowness, he scooped out a shallow hole in the sand under the mine casing. He worked the haversack, a twenty-pound slab of explosive, into it. Despite his total attention, his fingers brushed the mine. The paint came off in crackling, drifting flakes.

  He paused there, unable to breathe, waiting for his destruction.

  It didn’t come. Not yet.

  He recovered himself and slowly backed away, unreeling the primacord. It floated upward slowly in the side glow of Burgee’s light, settling back into coils until he tugged at it.

  He looked at his watch. 2322. They’d have to move faster. A lot faster. There wasn’t much time left.

  He signaled to his shadow, and they began to rise.

  * * *

  He and Burgee finished their lane two hours later. He was groggy from fatigue, cold, and nitrogen when at last they came up at the inner boundary of the mine field.

  They found three more bottom mines. Two of them were the modified 36s. The other was a standard mod eleven. A gadget went on the latter as planned, the sticky-tape gluing it against the access plate. He’d held his breath as he eased the switch over. If the spectacled engineer had miscalculated, would he ever know? But it seemed to work. At least the little red light came on. Only a ship passing over would constitute a real test.

  Back on the surface, he paused at the center of the lane and sighted over his wrist compass back at the green pinpoint of the master reference. At eight hundred yards, he could only see it occasionally, and kept getting it confused with the fuze float markers. As near as he could tell, though, they were in line.

  Three-three-zero. The course in, as planned.

  It was a long swim back to where they’d started. Almost half a mile. He was exhausted when they got there.

  The raft was nowhere around.

  He clung to the float with Burgee, neither of them saying anything. If Maudit had left … but that was impossible. They’d been with him through seven years of monthly drills and annual active duty. Once, Gordon remembered, they’d been trapped under the ice at Lake Memphremagog. He’d been steady then, circle-searching and tapping on the translucent ceiling as their air ebbed away till they found a place to break through. No, Tony couldn’t have …

  The night purred. He heard muffled voices, and ducked till only the upper half of his mask emerged between waves.

  It was the Z-bird. It purred up to them and a light flashed. Burgee had his up and returned it. Briefly, because at this angle it was aimed toward the island that had brooded over them all night.

  “Senior Chief!”

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “Lem signaled me to pick him up.”

  “Everett, damn it”—Ola didn’t like him to swear, but this one just slipped out—“couldn’t you swim back?”

  “That’s not the problem, John.” Everett’s voice was sober. Gordon had an instant feeling of danger. Not now, he prayed. Not when they were all but done.

  “What is it?” he said quietly.

  “We found four in our lane. One was a mod eleven. We safed it with a gadget. One was an old U.S. Mark Six, a contact mine. We put a haversack charge on that one. But the last two were these garage-workshop lashups.”

  “So? You had—”

  “We started with two haversacks, John. So we got one live mine left.”

  Gordon closed his eyes. He hadn’t expected this dense a barrier. And the mix of types made it even more dangerous. Not all would be live at the same time. Not all would explode at the first pass. But any of them, old or new, would break a frigate’s back like a steel-toed boot on a hen’s egg.

  “Where’s the last one?” he asked, still hoping somehow it would be at the edge of the channel.

  “To the right, but in the area.”

  “We got to get that bastard out of there, John,” said Terger, who’d been silent up to then.

  “You’re right, but how?”

  Against his will, his eyes were drawn to his watch: 0109. The ships would be here soon. Were already on their way. Yet the channel wasn’t cleared. That last goddamn mine …

  It occurred to him then. He knew immediately it would be dangerous. But anything was better than firing that flare. He’d already decided John Gordon wasn’t going to do that.

  “Lift bags,” he said tersely. “Tony, we brought bags in the kit, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Lem.” He turned ins
tinctively to the older man. “Us two, we’ll take the raft in after it. The rest of you pile out, stay here. If it goes off, it’ll be far enough away, you won’t be hurt.”

  “John, you can’t—”

  “No discussion time left, Leroy, sorry. Lem, you marked this last one, didn’t you?”

  “Chem light. Yes.”

  “Senior Chief—”

  “No goddamn arguments!” He tried to steady his voice. What he had to tell them now was vital. “Listen! If we make it, Lem and I’ll pop the fuzes on the way back. That’ll give us five or ten minutes to get you guys in the raft and get clear, out to sea.”

  Maudit: “And if you don’t?”

  “If you hear an explosion, it’s up to you. That mine’ll be taken care of. You’ll have to go back and pull the primers on the others yourselves.” He paused to think it through. A man in full gear swam at a knot and a half; fifteen minutes on the fuzes, they’d be seven hundred yards away … it should be enough. If they weren’t too exhausted. But then how would they get back? How would they be picked up?

  He struggled with this for a moment, then added softly, “Or you can stay here. Leroy, you’re next senior. Here’s the flare pen. Signal the ships with it. They’ll abort the raid, pick you up, and leave. I won’t order anyone to go. Volunteers?”

  There was a pause, during which he hoisted himself into the raft. The men in it moved back. He felt drained; he had barely energy to pull off his mask. “So. Who’ll go in? If we don’t make it back?”

  “Me,” said Terger.

  “I’ll go, too,” said Burgee, sounding gloomy. “I knew something would happen to fuck this party up.”

  “Ah, moi aussi, bordel, j’y vais … me, too, I guess,” muttered Maudit, his accent somehow more pronounced. “Sure, let’s go for it.”

  Gordon felt sudden pride. They were good men, these reservists. Only half military, more than half civilian. Yet he realized now that they were the best team he’d ever served with. He hoped they all made it out of this. But regardless, he was glad to be here with them tonight.