7
The trusty CH-46 landed on the command cruiser Vicksburg, CG 59, at 0820, and the SEALs jumped off and assembled on the fantail. Ed DeWitt waited with the other SEALs as Murdock went to talk to the cruiser’s captain, Commander Roth.
Roth was a short, heavily muscled redhead, and he grinned when he saw Murdock.
“So, I just wanted to take a look at the guy who has shaken up the brass and the CIA. I’ve never had an order directly from the CNO before, probably never will again. Can you tell me what this is all about?”
“Commander, I’d be glad to if we knew. That’s why we’re going on a recon down about a hundred feet. Want to come along?”
The captain chuckled. “Not about to get down that deep. Hell, it’s been so long since I’ve been in the water I don’t even know if I remember how to swim. Oh, the CNO says my ship is your ship, you’ve got the whole damn fleet we brought up here. Whatever you want, you get.
“He said we are on maneuvers, we do some simulated attacks, some circles around the two towers, and a general charging back and forth to cover our dropping you and your men into the water. Might as well get something started. You can board the surface-effect boat whenever you’re ready. You need one or two, Commander?”
“One will be good for our men, but send the other one along to play tag with us and maybe shield us when we drop into the water. Appreciate it if you have somebody watch for us to surface. We’ll shoot up a red flare when we’re ready for a pickup.”
“Sounds good to me. Let’s get this circus started.”
Murdock nodded, and left the cabin and headed back to his men. Two of the air-cushion landing craft hovered around the stern of the cruiser. Murdock signaled to the closest one, and it backed into the cruiser’s squared-off stern. The big ship was making less than five knots, so there was no trouble tying up. Sailors put down a ladder from the deck to the air-cushion craft, and the SEALs went down it quickly and sat down on both sides of the deck against the large machinery pods. Murdock came down last. They had four battery-powered stream lights, which would light up the ocean floor for fifty feet. Four of the SEALs each carried one of the lights in a heavy-duty shoulder bag.
Murdock talked with the boat driver, and moments later the craft backed away from the cruiser and angled toward the closest oil rig. The ships had collected on the island side of the tower and a mile away, and now they began to move. The destroyers charged north, then cut back, slashed past the 27 tower, and circled back toward the islands to the west.
The Santa Barbara Channel Islands lay almost twenty-five miles off the mainland opposite Santa Barbara. The largest one, Santa Cruz Island, is over twenty miles long and part of the Channel Islands National Park system, which contains three large islands and several smaller ones.
Murdock slowed the air-cushion boat and waved the second one on toward the tower closest to shore. The big ships put on a good display for anyone watching, and he was sure that the men on both towers were watching it all with interest.
Now Murdock moved his air boat closer to Tower 4, and when they were a quarter of a mile west of it, he signaled the second air boat to ease between them and the tower. Then he and his men dropped off the boat as quickly as they could. They went to fifteen feet at once, and Murdock swam around locating them and getting them all in a group. Then he motioned for a move, and they headed toward the tower using a bearing on Murdock’s handheld compass board.
After what Murdock figured was four hundred yards, he came up and took a peek by putting just his face out of a Pacific swell. He saw the tower a hundred yards dead ahead. Back down with the men, he angled on east and slanted down as they began working their way toward the bottom. Another five minutes and they came to what Murdock had seen before, the concrete blockhouse resting on the channel floor. He checked a depth gauge on his wrist: 110 feet.
The concrete dome looked more ominous now in the half-light from above. Each squad had two of the lights; Murdock motioned for them to be turned on. He positioned one man on each corner of the dome, and then all the SEALs began swimming around the structure, examining it, looking for an entrance, or wires or cables or tubes coming out of it.
Murdock completed a circle and found nothing. He moved to the top of the dome, and again there was no hint of an opening. If there was one there, it was cleverly concealed. They worked the recon for another ten minutes; then word went around the unit that they were done and should head back the way they had come. The heavy lights were passed on to new men, who shouldered the added weight, and they kicked to the west, in a gradual upward slant toward the surface.
Murdock broke to the fresh air first. Yes, they were at least a quarter mile west of the suspect tower. They swam on the surface for another quarter mile west, and then Jaybird fired a red flare and one of the air-cushion boats headed toward them. It sent up a furious spray of water as the powerful fans directed a cushion of air directly down on the water, while other fans pushed the craft forward just above the surface of the water. The spray of water was fifty feet long and half that high, which meant the air-cushioned craft were not for slipping up on anyone. They were eighty-eight feet long and forty-three feet on the beam, and could travel over water, desert, or a highway at forty miles an hour.
The closest one powered down as it neared them and settled into the water. The SEALs used a rope ladder, and climbed up over the blunt bow of the craft and flaked out on the deck. Murdock went to find the driver and use his radio.
“Is it scrambled?”
“Afraid not, Commander.”
“Figures. Tell the captain we’re coming back to his cruiser. Ask him if he has a SATCOM. Let’s move.”
Fifteen minutes later on board the Vicksburg, the radio room got through to Admiral Kenner in his Virginia office with a military scrambled signal. Murdock had been instructed to report his findings directly to the head of all the SEAL teams.
“Yes, sir, Admiral. Measurements were about the same, probably on some metric scale, but about forty by fifty feet oblong with a fifteen-foot-high roof slightly domed.”
“How in hell did anybody get that thing down there, and right under our noses?”
“Sir, the freighters must have brought it in one piece at a time, and they sunk them and fastened them together, then pumped out the water.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been considering that, sir. If it is North Korea, they have a big loss of face from when we smashed that invasion attempt last year, and they’d want to get even with us for it. We were wondering why they didn’t just put a submarine offshore and send a few missiles into our cities, but then we discovered they don’t have any missile subs.”
“Is the structure set up so they could fire missiles from it?” Kenner asked.
“No, sir, too small.”
“Does North Korea have missiles capable of hitting our cities from some platform offshore?”
“They do, Admiral. The Taepo Dong-1 has an extended range of four thousand kilometers with its third stage. They have rockets similar to the SCUD with a three-hundred-kilometer range. The Nodong missile reaches out a thousand kilometers.”
“So why do they want a facility in close to shore?”
“Maybe for recon, for intelligence gathering, maybe even as a forward direction control for something coming over the ocean.”
“Is there any easy way to get into that thing?”
“No, sir. It’s solid as a rock. We found no indications of windows, doors, openings of any kind.”