Hoffman stood up. "Yes, sir. At least the ones for the actual target— you know, blowing the wires. We're still working on some other ones we might need to breach the fence and the mine field."
"I want you to be able to give a class to everyone, late tomorrow afternoon, on how to prime and emplace those charges. Will you be able to do it by then?"
"Yes, sir. No problem."
Mitchell addressed the rest of the room. "I want everyone to be able to use the radio and rig the charges. If just one of us makes it to the target, I want that person to be able to blow it." He glanced around the room. He hated holding long meetings and he could tell that everyone was tired. "That's all I've got for tonight, unless someone has a question or something they want to add."
Riley scratched his head. "One thing I would like to know is why we're hitting this pipeline. How important is it? Maybe that will give us an idea of why we're planning to do this."
Mitchell knew a little about the pipeline's significance from his initial work as the S-3 on the Typhoon oplan, but he wanted to let someone with more knowledge answer. "Dan, you've been working on this pipeline all day. What can you tell us about it?"
Hoffman pushed his thick glasses farther up on his nose and pulled a piece of yellow scratch-pad paper from the cargo pocket of his fatigue pants. "Well, sir, I think that someone did a damn good job in picking this pipeline as a strategic target, both for economic and psychological reasons. If you wanted to pick a target out of all of China to hurt them in both those areas, I really doubt that you could come up with a better one than this. Other than maybe the locks and dams that help control the Yellow River, but that's a target that fifty A teams couldn't hit.
"The Daqing-Fushun pipeline carries oil from the Daqing oil field to the port of, hell I can't pronounce it." Hoffman struggled with the name until Chong interrupted. "Spell it please."
"Q-i-n-h-u-a-n-g-d-a-o."
Chong pronounced it correctly for Hoffman, who continued. "Anyway, it runs from Daqing to the port Chong just named. That section alone is 1,150 kilometers long and was operational in 1974. In '75, they extended that pipe to run all the way to Beijing. Another portion coming out of the same trunk line branches off to North Korea."
Riley interrupted. "How much of that will be affected if we take it down at the point we plan on hitting?"
Hoffman walked over to the map. "We're taking down the main line prior to any branching. That means that the lines to Beijing and to North Korea will both go dry along with the one to the port." He ran his finger up the pipeline to its starting point.
"The Daqing oil field accounts for anywhere from one third to one half of all oil production in China. We're talking about at least an approximately million-barrel-a-day operation. That oil is not only critical to China's own industry, but they also export some of it. As best as I can make out from the data, one percent of Japan's oil imports comes from China, almost all of that out of the Daqing field."
"Wait a second," Mitchell halted Hoffman. "What effect will that have on Japan if we dry that up for a couple of weeks?"
"I don't know, sir. Hard to estimate. It's only one percent, but when you're talking the magnitude of the amount of oil Japan imports, that's quite a bit. I imagine they would be able to make up the loss by increasing their Middle East imports or their imports from other Asian sources. What I do know is that this will be a bad kick in the ass for the Chinese economy. Not only will they lose almost half their oil for the duration of the down time of the pipeline, but they'll lose valuable foreign currency that they need desperately."
Chief Trapp had obviously been doing his homework in the intelligence field, and he tried to put it into a clearer perspective. "They think so much of this oil field and pipe that they don't even put it on their maps. In other words, if we take this thing down, the leaders in China are going to sit up and notice."
Hoffman nodded his agreement. "This is a rough analogy, but it's almost as if some terrorist group attacked the Alaskan pipeline. It pumps more oil than the Daqing pipeline but contributes a much smaller percentage to our economy. Also, the U.S. economy is in a hell of a lot better shape than the Chinese economy. If we do this, it will hurt them bad where it counts — in the pocketbook."
Hoffman shifted from the economic aspect. "As important as the economic impact is, there is also a psychological one. The Daqing oil field was used extensively throughout the sixties and seventies as a model for the rest of the country." Hoffman grabbed one of the books he had been using for research. "Let me read you something to give you an idea of what I mean."
He flipped open to a marked spot. " 'Throughout the twenty years since liberation, and particularly during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Chinese oil workers have displayed the revolutionary spirit of hard struggle,' blah, blah, blah." He went down a few lines. " 'The workers of the Daqing Oilfield, which is the model for developing the oil industry by self-reliance and arduous struggle, have continued to display the revolutionary spirit they showed during the battle to open up the oilfield. They have striven to catch up with and surpass advanced world standards,' blah, blah, blah. Oh yeah. Here's the good part. 'Using the invincible Mao Tse-tung Thought as their weapon, they sharply criticized,' that refers to the workers," Hoffman threw in, " 'the poisonous influence of the counter-revolutionary revisionist line, as{From The Petroleum Industry of The People's Republic of China, H. C. Ling, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1975, pp. 166–168.} well, that's enough." Hoffman threw the book on the table. "Get the picture? This isn't just a pipeline. It's a symbol."
Mitchell looked over at Riley. He had a feeling that the team sergeant was thinking the same thing he was: If this target is that significant, maybe this is for real.
Colonel Bishop had been laboring over his charts ever since the initial concept of operations arrived. He was trying to figure out a way to get the exfil helicopters to the pickup zone that the team had designated and back out again. His main problem was fuel. The closest land base from which he could launch the aircraft was in either Korea or Japan. Right now he was thinking of using Misawa Air Force Base in Japan. For security reasons they were keeping the helicopters separate from the base where the team and infiltration aircraft were stationed. Misawa was the same distance as Osan, using the route from the Sea of Japan over either North Korea or Russia. Bishop had early on ruled out the route to the west of North Korea, shooting north up to the target. The Chinese air defense capabilities were much greater in that corridor. From Misawa, a straight shot to the PZ was 1,230 nautical miles one way. Even with the external tanks, the helicopters would still have only a total range of 1,090 nautical miles. Not even enough to make it one way.
Bishop was beginning to think that someone in his office had made a mistake in planning to use the Blackhawks. He usually assigned one of his young captains to work the supporting air annex to the contingency oplans. He couldn't believe that the captain had overlooked the range factor — the idiot should have realized that the Blackhawks couldn't reach any part of the pipeline and make it back with one load of gas.
Bishop considered the hand that his staff officer had dealt him. He thought about trying to get an air force HH-53 Pave Low out to Japan. The Pave Low had an inflight refuel capability, which would solve the fuel problem. Unfortunately, the Pave Lows were all stationed at Hurlburt Field in Florida, and he knew that it would cause quite a ruckus to get one loaded onto a C-5 transport and flown all the way to Japan. Besides, they'd already ordered the Blackhawks moved during the initial alert this morning.