The other men followed this older crew member’s lead, and the unloading group reorganized themselves into a straight line from the end of the conveyor all the way to the boat, bypassing the interim stack. As each box came off the conveyor, it was handled by each crew member, who passed it on to the next man without leaving position in line.
It quickly became clear that boxes were moving off the truck a lot faster than before. This new line was also moving boxes a lot quicker than the line on the other side of the pier. Not too long after the new line started, Chief Wilks came over and asked, “Whose idea was this?”
Wade, not wanting to call attention to himself, remained silent. Someone from the original crew pointed to Wade said, “That guy from New Orleans.”
Wilks said, “Excellent idea,” and proceeded to get in the chain gang line alongside Wade. The chief was not afraid of hard work and frequently worked alongside his crew members. The enlisted men respected Chief Wilks for his work ethic and knew he was not just about giving orders. After working on the line for a while, he said to Wade, “Close up rank when I leave. I’m going to set this up on the other line.”
So, Wade had his first personal contact with the Chief, and it was positive. Wade knew from his time in New London that getting on the right side of chiefs was critical in the Navy, and this was a good start.
Wilks said as he left, “We have one more truck coming in after this one.”
After the second truck was unloaded, the Chief came over and said to both truck crews, “I’ll meet with the New Orleans crew over by their gear in a few minutes.” The New Orleans crew members from both truck lines assembled with their gear.
Having worked the truck line, the crew better understood Chief Wilks, who came over and gave them a short briefing, “You’re probably wondering what’s going on here. I can’t give you many details, but the captain wants us to get underway as soon as possible.”
“We were on patrol, and many of the crew members came down suddenly with a strange illness. We thought it was just the flu going around, but our ship’s medic, after speaking with shore doctors, said it was more serious. The sick crew members and officers are on their way to the hospital. We were ordered to remove all food stuffs and replace them with special food items that were individually inspected by naval medical technicians and repacked at a special facility on shore. The medics from shore are wearing masks and gloves because the injured are going to a quarantine ward at the local hospital until the illness or disease can be identified. There are men on board in Hazmat suits disinfecting the ship before we can go on board. The captain is in the forward torpedo room meeting with Naval Intelligence officers. We should be able to go on board within the hour. Ensign Clark is preparing a watch and duty schedule and berth assignments. He has some of it already done. I know, Hanna, you and one other member of your crew will berth in the forward torpedo room with me. I’m not sure where everyone else will bunk. I know we’ll be short-crewed, even with the SEAL team on board. I’ll be back as soon as I have the list, and then we can board. The captain wants us underway by midnight.” With this, the Chief left to attend other business.
The New Orleans crew members sat on the deck with their gear, comparing notes. One asked, “Did you see those sick guys? I got a good look at some. They looked like zombies ready to die.”
Another said, “We now know the boxes are food.”
Another noted, “Wilks said we have SEAL team guys on board, but we are still short crewed. I counted sixteen guys going from the ship to the ambulances, and there are only six of us.”
Someone asked, “Did any of you get a good look at the sub?”
Wade said, “I did because of where I was standing in line. It’s gone through some major modifications. The conning tower has been replaced and is much narrower than the original. It’s got the big bulge on the bow to accommodate the latest sonar gear. It’s got the new thin updated bow planes. It’s painted in that flat black coating to reduce sonar signal.”
An older member of their crew spoke up. “Guys, I think we have gotten ourselves into some serious shit here. I don’t know anything about this boat. It doesn’t look like a regular boat to me. It gives me the creeps just looking at it.”
23
While the New Orleans crew waited on the pier with their gear, Captain Hodges was on board the Prowfish meeting with two plain clothes gentleman from Intelligence. The two intelligence officers arrived in a black unmarked car shortly after the Prowfish docked. The meeting was being held in the forward torpedo room, which had already been disinfected by the Hazmat crew. The hatch door was locked with a sign “No Admittance.”
Immediately after notifying CNO that contact had been made with a foreign sub one mile off the coast of Mississippi just southeast of Biloxi, Naval and intelligence agencies went into action. An incident task force was formed which included several cooperating agencies at the Pentagon headed by Naval Intelligence. The agencies forming this Task Force had all been previously involved in various intelligence operations, ranging from Castro’s insurgence to the Soviet naval operations to known paramilitary activity in Latin America. Two senior members of the Task Force were on the pier when Captain Hodges docked.
Steven Marks from Naval Intelligence headed the team. Marks was an intelligence officer with 22 years of experience. He was experienced in running his own covert operations and had been frequently asked to brief the president’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on strategic options. His intelligence reports and presentations were reviewed and respected at the highest level within the Navy’s Chain of Command and had been read by the president. Marks had been involved in Cuban and Latin American intelligence long before Castro came to power.
Chad Simon was a CIA operative and section chief with similar experience in running his own operations and in briefing both the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff on undercover operations in Latin America. Simon had also successfully coordinated several joint intelligence operations between the CIA and the NSA. He, like Marks, had been involved in Central American intelligence operations since before Castro came to power. He had also been heavily involved in coordinating activities of the U.S. in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Simon had spent fifteen years as an undercover operative in three Central American countries, including Cuba. He spoke perfect Spanish and had perfected dialect accents specific to those countries and regions he worked before coming to Washington. Marks and Simon had worked together before on other operations. They understood Latin American politics and had a good working relationship and respect for each other’s capabilities.
The Prowfish incident Task Force was immediately formed after initial contact with the Russian sub by phone calls between two senior Pentagon officers. Marks was designated to head the Task Force with Simon as his second in command. Task force operatives were individually selected by Marks and Simon. The first order to the team was to collect data from various agencies on all Soviet submarine and surface ship movements in the Gulf.
From the moment the taskforce was formed, Marks and Simon were in around-the-clock meetings with their staff, reviewing data to prepare for their meeting with Captain Hodges on the Prowfish. When illness broke out on board, Hodges was forced to break off contact with the Russian sub and come to shore. It would be two days before the Prowfish would dock at Biloxi. Marks and Simon would be there to meet Prowfish when it arrived.
Naval Intelligence and other U.S. intelligence agencies had extensive tracking systems for all Russian ships, including submarines. Shore intelligence tracked the construction of subs from the time a project was approved until it was completed at one of three main Russian ship building facilities. Aerial surveillance identified when a ship was launched and monitored its movement, using a series of classified systems of underwater sonar buoys and underwater sonar receiving cables aligned in grids — in oceans all over the world. This system was in existence and was called SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System). The buoy system and SOSUS were coordinated with the Naval Anti-Submarine Warfare office to detect movement and respond to Soviet submarines when they left international waters. At the time Prowfish identified its target, the U.S. believed all Soviet submarines and their locations in the Gulf had been identified. Soviet submarine and surface ship activity had been monitored closely due to increased tensions with Cuba and the build up of Soviet military aid and missile installation activity.