They filed on the sleek jet, took seats. There was room for nineteen passengers and a crew of two or three. It cruised at 581 miles per hour and could cover 4,275 miles without a drink of fuel. A Coast Guard commander sat in the driver’s seat. His copilot was a Coast Guard JG female. She didn’t even look at the men; she was too busy doing a final preflight checklist.
Don Stroh came running out. They had held the plane for him for ten minutes. He grabbed one of the box lunches and dropped into a seat beside Murdock.
“Okay, big spender,” Murdock said. “Tell us where we’re going and what kind of hell we’re going to be jumping into.”
“We’re going there fast. That’s why I wangled this VIP jet. She’ll fly us over there in a damn rush. We’re late now. I haven’t even figured out when we’ll arrive or where we stop for fuel.”
“Hey, Stroh. Just tell me where we’re going.”
“Last stop is Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Another sixty-five hundred miles from here. We’ve got a small problem in the Persian Gulf.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, big buddy, again.”
“So, is it a secret?”
“It is. We’ve had a supertanker hijacked in the middle of the Persian Gulf. The captain on board used a common term that is a trigger word. It means the ship is in terrorists’ hands, and he has no control of it. If the terrorists know that we know, they could sink the ship or release millions of tons of crude into the Persian Gulf, causing a die-off of billions of fish and birds and turning the gulf shorelines into a wasteland.
“The tanker, the SUCC Jasmine Queen carries one and a half million tons of crude.”
“When was the takeover?”
“We’re not sure. First transmission of the trigger word was about midnight, our time, last night.”
“You move fast.”
“The President moves fast. There’s a lot of other crap going on as well over there.” Stroh told Murdock about the four coordinated bombings in Cairo and the attacks on three U.S. embassies in the Middle East.
“Does it all tie together?” Murdock asked.
“The President wishes that he knew. State doesn’t have a clue. Our Middle East desk is totally in the dark. We’re swatting flies in an outhouse here.”
Murdock thought about that a minute. “We must be one of the swatters. Our job is to retake the tanker?”
“Good guess. I have the specs on the ship, layout, crew, types of radar, and machinery. Everything you’ll need to know.”
“We better start planning. Will the tanker still be in the gulf by the time we get over there? How fast is she?”
“She does eighteen knots fully loaded; that’s two hundred and fifty miles a day. The gulf is four hundred seventy miles long. Let’s say they captured the ship in the dark thirty-six hours ago. The tanker had loaded at Kuwait City near the top of the gulf. In forty-eight hours, the ship will be out of the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Oman.”
Murdock stood up in his place. “DeWitt, Dobler, Sterling, up here for a powwow. Now.”
Stroh moved across the aisle. DeWitt took his seat, and the other two stood in the aisle. The business jet was quieter than most jet airliners.
“We’re going to the Persian Gulf. Here’s the problem.” Murdock laid it out for them. They all listened and then began talking at once.
“Hey, easy. We’ve got lots of time. We’ll be on this plane for another eleven hours. We’ll chew it around, get some sleep, and then talk about it again in the morning. It’s now twenty-two hundred. Stroh says the pilot reports that with two stops, we should hit Riyadh about 0900. So talk to me.”
They talked.
4
By the time the sleek Gulfstream jet had landed at Riyadh, the SEALs were rested, had worked out a basic plan to take over the tanker, and were ready for breakfast. Murdock was taken to a communications room where he was put in contact with the XO of the carrier Enterprise, now working the duty in the southern half of the Persian Gulf.
“Yes, Commander. We received orders and have been tracking all U.S. super crude carriers in and just out of the gulf with our Hawkeye. We’ve pinpointed six of them and have confirmed ID on all but one. The tanker in trouble is the Jasmine Queen. We have her now outbound in the Gulf of Oman about fifty miles from the Strait of Hormuz. She’s on a southeasterly course at a steady cruising speed of eighteen knots.”
“That’s our target, Captain. My orders are to proceed to your ship via COD. Is there one at this base waiting for us?”
“That’s a roger, Commander. It’s ready when you are. Your orders come from the highest source, and we’re ready to extend all services we can to you and your men.”
“Good, Captain. We’ll need two IBS craft and a chopper to get us in front of the Jasmine. What is your range to the target?”
“We’re about fifty miles from the strait, which puts us now a little over a hundred to the tanker. That’s out of range of the Sea Knight, which would be the best vehicle. We’ll go with the Sea Stallion, which has plenty of room for your boats and men. Sixteen SEALs?”
“Yes sir. We’ll need an assortment of ammo and weapons we can talk about when we get on board. We won’t be leaving you until near dark, so we can do a nighttime attack.”
“Then we have lots of time. I’ll contact you as soon as you’re on board.”
“Thank you, Captain. We’ll see you soon.”
Ed DeWitt and Murdock had breakfast to order with the rest of the SEALs at one of the mess halls on base, then rode in a truck out to the flight line, where the transport waited. Murdock had dropped in on more carriers in the COD C-2A than he cared to remember. It was a two-engine turboprop cargo plane that could land and take off from a carrier. Its only job was to ferry people, supplies, and mail to and from CVN carriers at sea.
The SEALs grumbled when they filed on board the COD. All had ridden on them before, and they found what they expected: uncomfortable bucket seats along the sides of the ship.
“Hell, it’s only about four hundred miles,” Jaybird cracked.
“Yeah, and I bet they’ll have one of the Air Force’s best box lunches to go,” Ostercamp said. They all laughed. The stock car racer was fitting in well with the platoon.
When they landed on board the Enterprise three hours later, a JG met them and escorted them to an assembly room they could use to get ready for the mission.
“Yes, Commander,” the JG said. “We have three IBS craft ready for your inspection. We’ll have a man from ship’s stores on hand to get any supplies, ammunition, or weapons you’ll need.”
A messenger waited for Murdock, and when he was ready, took him to the XO’s office.
“Are you getting everything you need, Commander?” Captain Arthur J. Small asked. He was a large man with a wind-marked face and brooding green eyes. He wore an aviator’s wings on his shirt.
“Yes sir. All’s in order. All we do now is wait for the sun to get low enough. I understand the target is now about a hundred and thirty miles downstream. That still is in range of the Stallion, I’d guess.”
“Right. She’ll do over a thousand miles round trip.”
“Sunset is about 1830 here?”
“Closer to 1900 this time of year.”
“So we have a little over an hour’s ride at a hundred and seventy knots to get ahead of the tanker. We want dark down there, so we’ll leave here at 1830.”
The captain wiped one hand over his face and grinned. “Have to say, Commander Murdock, that I’ve never had orders direct from the Chief of Naval Operations before. This must be something damned important.”