Turning, Markham used a laser pointer to place a bright red dot on the screen. "Some of what we can see here is pretty obvious." The dot swiftly orbited several objects. "We can see bulldozers… new road construction… a rail bed… and what look like concrete bunkers. Over here… these appear to be new barracks, storehouses, and POL storage tanks. If it was just this, we'd assume the facility was a new army base and let it go at that.
"But here are the things that have us concerned." The satellite photo clicked to another shot, closer in, centered on a line of blurry patches at the base of a mountain. Two large dump trucks and a bulldozer were clearly visible in the harsh sunlight. The red dot of the laser pointer circled the dark patches on the hillside.
"These are tunnel entrances, eight of them. Fifteen feet tall, twelve wide… big enough to receive a fair-sized truck or other vehicle. Our satellite recons have shown them moving hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of rock and earth out of that mountainside. Whatever they're building here, most of it is underground, where our spy sats can't see it.
"What is particularly alarming is some ancillary intelligence we received from our Azerbaijani station three months ago. CIA officers in Iran made contact with an Iranian citizen identified as a member of the MKO. That stands for Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a group originally formed to oppose the Shah and his pro-West policies back in the 1960s. Now, the MKO is currently on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations, because of their past use of bombings and assassinations to advance their political agenda. However, they currently oppose the Tehran regime, and have provided us with substantial information about Iran's nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare programs. According to our MKO informant, the White Scimitar site is planned as a storage area for Iranian WMDs."
A ripple of emotion ran down the table, a mingling of suspicion, denial, and a sense of "Oh, no, not that again."
The powerfully negative reaction, Garrett thought, was certainly justified. Rumors of weapons of mass destruction had been the principle public justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and careers had been ruined by the political flak when those WMDs could not be found.
That, of course, didn't mean the weapons hadn't existed. But to the public mind, the government had either lied to the people or been lied to by its own intelligence services, and neither possibility sat well with the voters.
"And that brings us to the failed op yesterday," Markham said, "to Black Stallion. As most of you know, a sixteen-man SEAL platoon was inserted off the coast by PBC. Eight of them moved inland in order to have a close covert look at the White Scimitar site, but encountered a heavy Iranian force — almost certainly a unit of the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslam, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The SEALs successfully fought their way back to the beach. However, one of the PBCs was hit by an Iranian antiship missile and sunk. We lost two SEALs and five other Navy personnel. The rest of them made it back to our base in Oman this morning.
"The mission was a complete failure. They ran into the Pasdaran patrol while still more than a mile from their objective. We're not sure yet, but the Iranian defenses may have been higher tech than expected. The enemy may have been equipped with starlight night vision devices or sophisticated perimeter defense sensors.
"Needless to say, we expect some serious political fallout from this… incident, both at home and abroad. The Iranians will most likely use it to fan anti-American sentiment throughout the Islamic world… and to try to present themselves as the defenders of Islam against American aggression. Our Middle East desk analysts predict that the Shi'ite populations of both
Iraq and Syria could explode in anti-American riots and demonstrations. Israel is afraid that this could provide a major impetus for their ongoing Palestinian insurrection.
"Despite this, the President is still most insistent that we identify the nature of the White Scimitar site, and, in particular, find out what those tunnel entrances are for. To that end, he has authorized a second attempt at the covert infiltration and reconnaissance of Objective White Scimitar. The new mission has been code-named 'Operation Sea Hammer.'
"Obviously, such an attempt must be highly secret. The proposal has been made that a sizable SEAL or Special Forces unit could be put ashore by submarine… specifically by the newly recommissioned SSGN Ohio. To address that possibility, we have Captain Tom Garrett here this morning, of Naval Littoral Warfare. Captain Garrett?"
Garrett pushed back from the table and walked past its length to the front of the room, working to quell the butterfly flutter in his stomach. Commanding a submarine in combat was one thing; addressing a roomful of admirals, generals, and National Security types was something quite else.
Berkowitz had told him what to prepare for, and even quizzed him a bit last night, but the moment was on him now and he found himself nervous as hell.
"Gentlemen," he said as he stepped behind the podium. "Mr. Myers. I think by now most of you have at least seen the stat sheets on the Ohio. Here she is."
He picked up the remote control Markham had left at the podium and clicked it. A color photograph came up on the screen behind him — the Ohio under way, returning from her shakedown cruise six weeks before. The camera had caught her just exiting the Admiralty Inlet as she passed the Twin Spits and Port Ludlow, slipping gently into the quiet waters of the Hood Canal.
"Under the terms of the Start II arms limitations treaty, four of our SSBN boomers were scheduled to be stricken from the fleet. The Ohio, which was our very first Trident sub, was the first launched — back in 1979— and was originally scheduled for decommissioning.
"However, in the early 1990s, Congress directed that Ohio and three of her sister vessels be converted into conventional war-fighting platforms." He clicked the remote, and a schematic came up on the screen, a cutaway showing the submarine's interior. Most of the space aft of the sub's sail appeared to be taken up by a single compartment, the long and cavernous missile room, containing twelve pairs of forty-foot launch tubes down its length.
"As an SSBN, an Ohio-class boat mounts twenty-four launch tubes for Trident ICBMs. In the Ohio conversion to SSGN, each of twenty-two of her launch tubes now mounts seven VLS tubes — that's Vertical Launch System — firing TLAMs. A single converted Ohio-class submarine can carry 154 vertical launch TLAM Tomahawk missiles, the equivalent in cruise-missile firepower of an entire surface battle group.
"In addition, the Ohio now has facilities to carry a sizable special operations force — up to four platoons, or sixty-six men. The remaining two missile launch tubes have been redesigned as airlock compartments, allowing SEALs or other commandos to lock out of the sub while she remains submerged.
" Ohio currently is serving as a test bed for two miniature special-warfare submarines, the Advanced SEAL Delivery System, or ASDS, which has recently been deployed on the new Virginia-class boats, and the experimental prototype Manta SF/NB. Both of these will be useful in conducting covert reconnaissance of hostile coastlines, in advance of a commando insertion, or a full-blown invasion. An ASDS will be operated off the Ohio's aft deck using a Dry Deck Shelter, with access through the lockout tubes. The SF/NB will operate out of one of the missile tubes, which has been temporarily coopted for the test series.
"We envision the Ohio and her sister SSGN conversions giving us a very special capability in Littoral Warfare… the ability to put a sizable covert special-ops unit ashore anywhere in the world, and to support that op from the submarine for the duration of the mission. In other words, Ohio could put a large SEAL team ashore, monitor the progress of the op, provide logistical support and resupply, and handle the extraction and withdrawal at the mission's end. If the situation called for it, the Ohio could lay down a devastating barrage of cruise missiles, either in support of forces ashore or as a means of eliminating the target after the completion of the initial reconnaissance…. "