“As for Europe, with their North Sea Oil beginning to run out, sitting there with virtually no resources except a lot of damned expensive people, and welfare programs big enough to stop the Earth on its axis, well, hell, God knows what’s going to happen to them without Arab oil.”
“Arnold, I have to make a move. I have to do something. I cannot let this all go unremarked on by the United States. Do we have the gulf under control?”
“It’s under control but not yet safe. We got enough forces in there to conquer anything up to World War Three, including the sun, the moon and the planet of the fucking apes.”
The President laughed, but his concern overrode any humor there may have been in his mood. “Arnold,” he said, “we gotta show a major presence. We gotta frighten everyone to death, show ’em we mean what we say.”
“Sir, we could show ’em we mean what we say with one CVBG. Christ, they carry eighty fighter aircraft and right now we don’t have a damn thing to shoot at. And we’ve got five carriers either in or on their way in. If the oil starts flowing again, those warships could almost suck the place dry.”
“Arnold, there has to be something very odd about this Sino-Iranian pact. I just cannot tell what they’re up to. I only know we cannot drop our guard.”
“Maybe. But I have a feeling there’s a goddamned hidden agenda right here that we are not tuned in to. There simply is no obvious motive for this action by the Chinese. But I do still think there is one thing we must do: lock ’em right out of the Indian Ocean.”
“You mean what we discussed before?”
“Yessir. We’ve gotta get rid of that oil refinery they just built. And then get rid of that Navy base on the Bassein River. Send the little bastards home, right back to the South China Sea.”
“Arnold, I think to do that, we will need the support of at least one ally, and I don’t know where that might come from.”
“Jesus, that’s an easy one. We don’t even need to frown over that.”
“We don’t?”
“Nossir. The Indian Navy would give their eyeteeth to get China out of the Bay of Bengal and all points west of there. Remember that old animosity is as ingrained as that between Iraq and Iran. The Indians do not want the Chinese Navy prowling around in their backyard…. Remember, too, India is very nearly bigger than China in terms of population, and richer. I have thought for years they should be our best friends in the East.”
“Hmmmmm. You think they’ll support us kicking some Chinese ass?”
“Basically I think we tell no one what we’re about to do, except to tip off Admiral Kumar about our approximate plans. He’s gonna love it. So’s his Prime Minister.”
“You still favor the actions of your favorite troops, the cutthroats of the Navy SEALs using their world-famous techniques of solving all problems with high explosives.”
“Those are my methods of choice, sir. Mainly because no one quite knows what’s happened. And yet they can’t fail to know it must have been us.”
“Well, Arnold, since I’ve been in this chair, I’ve allowed you to unleash these guys on several targets, and I’m obliged to say they always bring home the bacon, some of it nicely fried.”
“This time it’s gonna be stir-fried. I’m sick to death of this Chinese crap.”
“Okay, Arnold, do your duty as you see it. Send ’em in, the silent destroyers.”
“That’s the way, sir. Maximum effect, minimum blame. We’ll give ’em seventy-eight bucks a barrel. Crazy pricks.”
He turned away from the Chief Executive and walked slowly out of the Oval Office. And his thoughts cascaded in on him, as his rich imagination took him into the hot, dark recesses of the sprawling refinery on the Strait of Hormuz.
And he thought of the guys, coming in hard and silent, out of the sea, moving across the sand, watching for armed sentries. And in his mind he felt their fear, and their strength, and their patriotism.
And he walked right by Kathy O’Brien’s desk without stopping, snapping out briskly just one command as he opened his office door:
“Get me Admiral John Bergstrom on the line. SPECWARCOM, Coronado Beach. Secure line. Encrypted. We’re talking Black Ops, Kathy. Usual procedures.”
5
Admiral Morgan’s call to SPECWARCOM was essentially a request to Admiral John Bergstrom to put two teams of Navy SEALs on 24-hour notice in Coronado, prepared to embark immediately for Diego Garcia. That conversation took less than four minutes.
“Just one thing…. Degree of danger?”
“High. But your guys probably won’t work up a sweat.”
The next call was likely to be more complex, since even Arnold Morgan could not take the United States to war all on his own. He asked his sole serving noncommissioned officer, Kathy O’Brien, to secure President Reagan’s old Situation Room on the lower floor of the West Wing.
Then he ordered her to summon the Secretary of State, the Defense Secretary, the Energy Secretary, the Chief of Naval Ops and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to a meeting, top priority, classified, 90 minutes from then. He excluded the President, since he already had verbal Oval Office clearance to mount whatever military operation he saw fit. He assumed this particular President would deny all knowledge if the operation went wrong, which it had better not.
It was 1500 when General Tim Scannell came hurrying through the big wooden doors flanked by two saluting U.S. Marine guards. The door was closed firmly behind him, and he walked to his place at the head of the big table, at Admiral Morgan’s right hand. “I’m sorry to hold you up, gentlemen,” he said politely. “It’s just that we’ve got more going on in the Middle East than we’ve had since Saddam got above himself seventeen years ago. We’ve got more ships out there, too.”
To the left of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs sat the Secretary of State, the steel-haired veteran diplomat Harcourt Travis, and the Energy Secretary, Jack Smith, probably the best CEO General Motors ever had. Opposite them were the recently appointed CNO, Admiral Alan Dixon, former Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, and the Defense Secretary, Robert MacPherson.
And because the meeting was convened and chaired by Admiral Morgan himself, the seating of the military men always placed them in some kind of ascendancy. Civilians have their place, of course, but when you need to get stuff assessed and then acted upon, in a serious hurry, the military leave ’em standing. The Admiral’s view on that subject was both uncompromising and generally accepted, since he was unlikely to change his mind.
“Gentlemen,” he growled, frowning deeply, “right here we got a major shit fight on our hands.”
Jack Smith, attending his first effective war cabinet, smiled at the Admiral’s poetically worded appreciation of the situation, and added formally, “There’re reports of four-dollars-a-gallon gasoline in the Midwest.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Admiral Morgan.
He shook his head, and muttered, “If we’re not damned careful, this could get right out of hand.”
He then called the meeting to order and proceeded to outline the standoff in the gulf, and approximately what he proposed they should do about it.
“You all know roughly what’s happened. The Iranians and the Chinese between them have constructed a deep, we think three-line, minefield, clean across the Strait of Hormuz, distance of about twenty miles. So far three tankers have been hit and burned. We have the Indian Navy in there sweeping the field, trying to open up a seven-mile-wide freeway for the world’s tankers to start entering and leaving the gulf. But it’s slow and somewhat perilous.