“Immediately to the south, around ten miles, we have the northernmost island of the Indian archipelago…you know, the Andamans and the Nicobars, stretching five hundred miles to the south toward the Malacca Strait. No one in the area feels safe, with Chinese warships constantly on patrol there.”
“I’ll tell you something else,” added Jack Smith. “On average there are three hundred ships passing through the Bay of Bengal every day. A lot of them are tankers to and from the east. There’re some new economic projections which suggest that in the next twenty years, fifty percent of all world trade will center on the Pacific-Asian countries. God knows how many more ships that will mean.”
“And China sees itself as the great controller of those seaways,” said Bob MacPherson. “But the elimination of the base on the Bassein River would set them back a quarter of a century.”
“So what are our priorities?” asked Admiral Morgan.
“I think we make it plain to the Chinese that we will sink any of their warships in the clearance zone in the Strait of Hormuz. We then quietly mastermind a problem in their refinery in Iran, and cause it essentially…er…not to work. That gets them out of the western waters of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The oil issue is irrelevant because it’s from Kazakhstan and the Chinese are going to get it anyway, probably via a pipeline into their western territories, and on to Shanghai.”
“Christ,” said Admiral Morgan. “That’s, what, five thousand miles or something? They can’t do that.”
“With respect, Honorable National Adviser,” said Harcourt in his best Cantonese accent. “They built a very long, very high wall. They’ll probably manage to dig a fucking hole.”
Arnold Morgan chuckled. But he was very preoccupied. “And our next priority?” he asked.
“I think you know the answer to that. Let’s chase them out of the Bassein River. Somewhat secretly. And probably earn the thanks of many millions of people.”
Admiral Morgan sat thoughtfully. He and Harcourt Travis had been through a few run-ins, but, despite everything, he liked the Secretary of State. And he liked him for one overriding reason…smooth sonofabitch really knows his stuff…he’s a scholar, a realist and a cynic. A guy you can count on for important opinions.
“Harcourt,” he said. “I thank you. I thank all of you. Civilians may consider the meeting concluded. CNO, Tim, I’d like a half hour more to discuss tactics.” He stood and shook hands with the departing chiefs of Foreign Policy, Defense and Energy.
“I scarcely need to remind you of the hugely classified nature of the matters we have discussed,” he added. “There is no one who needs to know, save ourselves.”
Then he walked to the end of the room where Kathy had pinned up a large chart of the Strait of Hormuz, showing the coastline all the way from Bandar Abbas to the desert town of Kuhestak, way over on the long, near-barren eastern shore, forty-eight miles south of the Iranian Navy HQ.
“Come up here and take a look at this,” he said. “You see this place right here, Kuhestak? The Chinese refinery is situated right here, two miles along the coast to the south. It’s big. There’s a massive pipeline system running in here, all the way from the oil fields in Kazakhstan, one thousand miles, right across the heart of Iran.
“This precious Iranian seaport is soon going to give China its energy from the heart of the second-largest oil producer on earth. Because it can run tankers in here of virtually unlimited size, and then drive out straight across the Indian Ocean, through the Malacca Strait and into the South China Sea.
“In my view, that’s basically what the trouble is all about. That is precisely why China wants this growing military presence in the region…and precisely why we cannot allow it.
“You just heard the assessments of Harcourt and Bob. Now I want you to tell me how a dozen SEALs can take out that refinery. I say a dozen because the water’s shallow and well patrolled. We’re going to need an SDV, I’m certain of that. And we only have one in the area — the one stowed on the deck of the good old Shark. The good news is it does not take a whole lot of high explosives to blow up an oil refinery. Sonsabitches are apt to blow themselves up if you give ’em a head start.”
“Guess you’re referring to the Big Bang in Texas City back in 1947, eh?” said General Scannell. “I had an uncle lived somewhere out near Galveston. He told me when I was just a kid you coulda heard that explosion from one hundred fifty miles away.”
“I was about three years old at the time, and we didn’t live that far from the disaster,” said Arnold. “I remember my daddy told me the ship that blew it exploded with such force its one-and-a-half ton anchor was flung two miles and embedded itself ten feet into the ground at the Pan American refinery.”
The recollection of the Texas City disaster reminded all three men of the enormous problems involved in taking out a major refinery, with its attendant sites of sprawling petrochemical plants; just about every square foot of such industrial time bombs is filled with highly volatile, flammable materials, including vast pressurized storage tanks for natural gas. And the new Chinese installation at Kuhestak had all that, and more.
Hundreds were killed, thousands injured in Texas City, buildings all over town were blasted beyond recognition. And the devastation was not restricted to the waterfront, or to the refining towers and storage areas. It just about ripped the entire town apart. A radio announcer simply yelled, “Texas City just blew up!” The mushroom cloud rose 2,000 feet into the air. Massive, white-hot steel parts from the French merchant ship SS Grandcamp were hurled into the holding tanks hundreds of yards away, setting off secondary explosions, which in turn caused immense damage.
The burning Grandcamp with its heavy cargo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was responsible for what remains the worst industrial catastrophe in U.S. history. At the time, so soon after World War II, there were few modern safety precautions in place. And of course there was none of the grim voyeurism of late-twentieth-century television, with its voracious, insatiable appetite for agony, heartbreak and disaster, which it finds so helpful in its endless, somewhat childlike, quest for drama and action.
Texas City 1947 remains a milestone in U.S. industrial calamity. And Admiral Arnold Morgan, a native-born Texan himself, had no wish to involve civilian casualties in the little Iranian town of Kuhestak, even though he gave not one jot for the lives of the Chinese technicians at the refinery…. You guys wanna fuck around with the free passage of world oil and gas…guess you should have thought about that real deeply before ordering those mines from Moscow.
In any event, the Chinese refinery had to go. The remaining questions were how quickly and how to get the SEALs out before the whole shooting match went up in smoke and took our guys with it.
Meanwhile, Admiral Dixon stared at the little numbers on the chart, checking out the water depth, turning over in his mind the equation…Shark can’t operate in depths of less than one hundred fifty feet…How near can she go before the guys have to leave in the little electric SDV, running until she touches the sand, and then unloading the SEALs to swim in the rest of the way?
“What d’ya think, Admiral?” Arnold Morgan was stepping aside to allow the CNO some space.
“Shark’s gonna need passageway through the minefield…then she’s got a twenty-mile submerged run nor’nor’east up to this point right here…’bout twelve miles off the Iranian coast…. She’ll be in at least one hundred eighty feet of water all the way there, say 26.36N, right on 56.49E.”