He was on the line before 0200. “Arnold, the ship is Greek, Liberian registered. Only two years old. It’s huge, three hundred thousand tons deadweight. Loaded with Saudi crude. The Captain and the crew are still on board. The ship is not sinking but it’s ten degrees bow down, and it’s currently belching seventy thousand cubic meters of oil from its for’ard tank.”
“Any word from the Captain?”
“Yes, he made a statement to the Omani coast guard. Says there was a massive explosion, for no reason, way up at the bow. It completely ruptured one of the five holding tanks.”
“Was she double hulled, Dick?”
“Oh, yes. Very heavily built in the Daewoo Shipyard, South Korea. Compartmentalized, too, throughout the hull. She’d be just about unsinkable…I expect you know, but she’s only twelve miles away from the Global Bronco, which blew up yesterday.”
“Yeah. We do know that. And right now I’d have to say that this, Sir Richard, ole buddy, is not good.”
“This, Admiral Arnie, old chap, is becoming deeply unattractive.”
3
With Lieutenant Ramshawe on his way home now, sworn to total silence, Admiral Morgan stood alone in his office at 0230. It was a situation not entirely unfamiliar to him, even on a Saturday morning. He yelled through the door for someone to bring him some fresh HOT coffee, and debated whether or not to call the President.
“Maybe not,” he muttered. “It won’t do any good. And as soon as the President knows, everyone knows. I think we need a little more time before the crap really hits the fan.”
The first thing to do was to get a couple of minesweepers into the strait and take a closer look. Jimmy Ramshawe was to spend the morning screening all satellite pictures to check whether any tankers were making a successful through-passage. Arnold Morgan suspected any big fuel-oil carriers that did make it through would be either Chinese or Iranian. And that their cargo would either be direct from the refinery just east of Bandar Abbas, or from the new Chinese refinery farther down the coast. But Lieutenant Ramshawe would find that out.
The problem was minesweepers, the little specialist warships that locate the mines by towing a sweep wire through the water until it hits and cuts the mine’s cable. The USA had some extremely effective sonar mine hunters in the Avenger Class, but they were mostly based along the Texas coast, and made only 13 knots. “Damn things would take forever to get there,” the Admiral grumbled.
He pondered the Brits, wondering about the Royal Navy’s excellent Hunt Class minesweepers. But again, the same problem…slow, and half a world away from Hormuz. No. He had to get someone much nearer, which meant, essentially, the Indians…. What the hell time is it in Bombay?
The question was rhetorical. Arnold Morgan knew more or less what time it was everywhere. And right now in the great Indian city of Bombay it was somewhere around midday. He picked up the telephone and asked his night-duty secretary, whom he’d never even seen, to connect him immediately to the Indian Embassy in Washington.
When the duty officer answered, the Admiral said simply, “This is Arnold Morgan, National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. I’m in the White House. Take down the following phone number, and have the Naval Attaché call me in the next four minutes…. Thanks. And hurry up.” Click.
Three minutes and 22 seconds later, the telephone rang on his private line.
“This is Vice Admiral Prenjit Lal speaking. I believe you wanted me?”
“Hey, thanks for calling. I do appreciate it’s the middle of the night, but my request is easy. I would like Admiral Kumar, your Chief of Naval Staff, to call the White House immediately and ask for me. I guess he’s in Bombay?”
“Yes, Admiral. Today he is. I’ll contact him right away.”
“Stress that it’s extremely urgent, will you?”
“The hour of the night tells me of the urgency, Admiral. I’ll do it personally and immediately.”
It took eight minutes. Admiral Kumar came on the line, insisting that he would be honored to provide any assistance he could to India’s very great friends in the White House.
Arnold Morgan, however, knew this was only half true. What the mannered and apparently pliable Indian officer had not said was “Just so long as it will not damage our relations with our neighbors or allies, and so long as the U.S. would assist with whatever the cost might be.” Unspoken hurdles.
Admiral Morgan elected to lay out the facts as swiftly and brutally as he could. He pulled no punches. And he went very carefully over the iron-clad fact of Jimmy Ramshawe’s Straight Line. And he ended his little speech by saying: “I’m afraid all of the world’s oil consumers are in this together. But yours is the nation with the most easily accessible minesweepers…. Admiral Kumar, you will have the full backing of the USA. I’ll have two destroyers there to meet you, and you may assume all costs will be met by the big oil consumers, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France, Germany, everyone.
“I’m sure you can appreciate the urgency…we simply cannot just sit here and wait for another tanker to blow up…we have to get in there, check it out and if necessary sweep a safe channel…and your Pondicherry Class minesweepers are the nearest.”
“Admiral Morgan,” replied the Indian Navy Chief, “I am indeed grateful for your call and your trust. If the Iranian Gulf was closed for even three weeks, my country would be in the most terrible trouble…aside from the regular petrol supplies, almost all of our propane gas for cooking comes from there. My country could come to a complete halt.
“Obviously we had noted the two tanker accidents. But no one had any idea it might be a concerted plot by the Iranians and the damnable Chinese. You may assume we will sail six of the Pondicherrys in the next twenty-four hours. You think we should take a tanker?”
“Yes I do. And escorts. Admiral Kumar, we do not yet know precisely what we are dealing with here. But I can assure you of massive U.S. protection once your ships arrive at the strait…. One squeak out of the Chinese or the Iranians, and we’ll put ’em on the bottom of the ocean. That’s a promise.”
“Excellent, Admiral. My attaché in Washington will be in contact in a few hours to give you times of sailing, an ETA, and further details of our escort. It’s one thousand miles to the strait from Bombay, but the Pondicherrys make sixteen knots. We’ll aim to sail at first light tomorrow morning, which should put us in the strait before dark on Tuesday.”
“Thank you, Admiral Kumar. We look forward to working with you. I just wish the circumstances were less serious.”
Arnold Morgan replaced the telephone, checked his watch at 0320 and opened up his private line to the Pentagon. He told the duty officer in the Navy Department to get the CNO on the line right away.
Sixty seconds later, Admiral Alan Dixon, former Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, betrayed no sign that he had been called in the small hours of the morning. The new Chief of Naval Operations said crisply, “Morning, sir. Sorry if I kept you waiting.”
“Not a bit, Alan. But what I have to say is rather long and complicated. Can you come to the White House right away? Where are you, in the Yard?”
“Yessir. Give me thirty.”
“See you then. West Executive Avenue entrance.”
The minutes ticked by slowly for the National Security Adviser. He debated the rather appealing possibility of waking “that stuffed shirt, Borden,” but decided there was nothing to gain from such a malicious act. So he waited. Sipped his coffee, thought of Kathy. And waited.