Commander Hunter was drifting in and out of consciousness now, and they strapped him into the stretcher while they lowered it through the hatch on its way to the medical room, where the Navy doctor and his assistants awaited him.
Lieutenant Commander Dan Headley was also down there to meet his old buddy, but Rick was very weak and needed a blood transfusion. Buster’s tourniquet may have saved his life, because a bullet had hit within millimeters of the femoral artery, the one that almost always causes matadors to die, if the horn of the bull happens to rake through their thigh.
He was awake for just a few seconds under the lights of the medical center when he saw Dan standing next to him.
“I can’t believe this…. I thought the game was up,” said Rick.
“You didn’t think I’d leave you to die, did you? You didn’t leave me.”
“Hey, thanks, shithead,” muttered the SEAL Commander, as they wheeled him into the emergency area.
And Now Lt. Commander Headley was alone with the consequences of his actions. He returned to the control room and ordered Shark back into deep water. Then he found a quiet corner to draft a signal back to San Diego, and it took him longer than he had spent saving the SEALs.
In the end it read: “To: COMSUBPACFLT. 070700JUN. At 16.00N 94.01E. At 0540 this morning under Section 1088 Naval Regulations, I took command of the ship, and placed Commander Reid under arrest on grounds of psychological instability. Commander Reid refused request for assistance from U.S. Navy SEAL assault team operational in Bassein Delta. All senior executives in agreement with my actions. USS Shark subsequently carried out rescue. Four SEALs killed in action before we arrived to save remaining eight men, including badly wounded Commander Hunter. Two Chinese Helix helicopters destroyed with missiles. Submarine undamaged. Request immediate orders to return either Diego Garcia or San Diego. Signed: Lt. Commander D. Headley, CO USS Shark.”
Dan put the signal on the satellite a little after 0700. He then appointed an official second-in-command, the Combat Systems Officer, Lt. Commander Jack Cressend. Then he retired to sleep until 0900, having been awake for almost 24 hours. To sleep, perhaps to come to terms with the word mutiny, and to await his fate.
It was 1430 in Pearl Harbor when the communication from Lt. Commander Dan Headley landed on the desk of Rear Admiral Freddie Curran, Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet. In fact, it did not actually land; it just fell right out of the sky with a resounding thud, like a time bomb. Not in living memory had there been a mutiny in a United States warship on the high seas.
Rear Admiral Curran just stared at it for a few moments, and tried to decide whether to have Shark routed back to Diego Garcia to rejoin the Harry S Truman Carrier Battle Group. Or to order the submarine to make all speed home to its base in San Diego, a distance of more than 12,000 miles — three weeks’ running time.
As far as Admiral Curran was concerned, most of the U.S. Navy was already in the area of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, so it was scarcely imperative to get USS Shark back on station. And right now he was holding not so much a hot potato as an incandescent potato, and that three-week cushion would give everyone time to decide a reasonable course of action.
It was clear from the signal that Shark’s XO had acted with the highest possible motives, and there was no doubt that the veteran Commander Reid was something of an oddball. But Christ! thought Admiral Curran. Mutiny is mutiny, and it took place in a United States warship on the high seas. And he hit the secure direct line to the Pearl Harbor office of CINCPACFLT, Admiral Dick Greening, and read him the signal.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet gulped. Twice. “Mother of God,” he said. “Mutiny?”
“Well observed, sir. I’d come to a similar conclusion myself.”
“I assume you’ve ordered the submarine back to San Diego.”
“I was about to do so. And I will have done it in, say, fifteen minutes.”
“Okay.”
Admiral Curran’s signal was carefully worded…“Lieutenant Commander Headley. Received your signal 1430. Return USS Shark San Diego immediately. Admiral Curran. COMSUBPAC.”
Dan Headley read it minutes later. “Wonder if they’ll give me a job at Hunter Valley?” he pondered. “Because if the Navy court-martials me for mutiny, it’s all over in dark blue. This is probably my first and last command. Kinda unusual end to an otherwise exemplary career.”
Meantime the surgeon operated on Rick Hunter’s ripped thigh. The bullet had mercifully not damaged the femoral, but it had wreaked havoc with all the other blood vessels. And the doctor stitched carefully for three hours, after a major blood transfusion for the mighty SEAL leader.
It was several hours before Rick could sit up in his bed and make any sense. During the late afternoon he listened to Dan Headley’s account of the mutiny in the privacy of the sick bay.
At 1800 he decided to send in his own short satellite signal to Coronado. It read: “SEAL mission on Haing Gyi Island accomplished. Naval base plus two PLAN warships destroyed. Four of our platoon killed, including Lt. Allensworth, Petty Officer Jones and Buster Townsend. We also lost combat SEAL Sam Liefer. Both Riff Davies and myself were wounded. We would all have died but for the actions of Lt. Commander Dan Headley. Signed: Commander Rick Hunter, on board USS Shark.”
That signal went straight in to SPECWARCOM and arrived on the desk of Admiral John Bergstrom in the small hours of the morning. Its result was to put the Navy of the United States of America into one of the biggest quandaries it had ever experienced: whether to court-martial for mutiny a man who was not only an outstanding commander but also a plain and obvious hero.
13
Lieutenant Commander Headley had offered Commander Reid every courtesy, including the freedom to send in his own signal to CINCPACFLT in Pearl. It went, of course, directly to Admiral Dick Greening and portrayed the actions taken by Shark’s XO as nothing short of “making a mutiny.”
It stated: “My command was removed by my own Executive Officer in the most shocking and totally unjustifiable manner. The XO was tacitly supported by other senior officers in the crew, but not verbally. They merely failed to object to this plain and dangerous breach of Navy regulations. I am thus drawn to the opinion that Lt. Commander Headley stands guilty of making a mutiny, and ought, by rights, to be court-martialed forthwith. Signed: Commander D. K. Reid, Commanding Officer, USS Shark.”
“That,” pondered the Commander-in-Chief, “is not the message of a man looking for peace.” And in that moment he understood that battle lines were about to be drawn, despite the obvious danger that press and public opinion might consolidate behind the hero who had saved the embattled SEALs, and against the right and proper Commanding Officer of the nuclear submarine.
And so, as USS Shark made her way home across the wide Pacific Ocean, the High Command of the United States Navy was forced to acknowledge the probability of a court-martiaclass="underline" a court-martial that could very well split opinion in half, both in the service and in the entire nation, if the press managed to grasp its significance.
Admiral Greening viewed the situation with such seriousness, he consulted immediately with the Pacific Submarine Chief, Admiral Freddie Curran. And the two men left Hawaii that evening for Washington, to consult with the CNO, and then with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, before taking the matter inevitably to the White House.