They walked companionably toward the main door to the West Wing, and the agents handed both SEALs special passes before they set off down the corridor to Admiral Morgan’s lair. Kathy O’Brien greeted them as they arrived and informed the Admiral that Alan Dixon and General Scannell were waiting inside. She had just received a signal from the base at Quantico that Commander Hunter was in the area and that his helicopter would put down on the White House pad in five minutes, direct from the SEALs’ east coast h.q. at Little Creek, Virginia, home of Teams Two, Four and Eight.
Inside the office the introductions were made, principally for the benefit of Rusty. The rest of the officers knew one another. Kathy ordered coffee for everyone but returned almost immediately to announce the arrival of Commander Rick Hunter, the SEAL team leader who had operated under deep cover in a murderous attack on Russian Naval hardware in the late Joe Stalin’s northern canals; and who had been in overall command of the attack on the Chinese jail the previous year.
He walked through the door, a tall, hard-muscled warrior, standing 6 feet 4 inches tall and tipping the scales at a zero-body-fat 220 pounds. He was dressed like Rusty in a dark gray suit, with a white shirt and highly polished shoes. Like Rusty, he wore the gleaming golden trident of the combat SEAL on his left lapel.
Admiral Morgan vacated the big chair behind his desk and walked across the room to meet the battle-hardened SEAL leader from the Bluegrass State. He told him, as he had told Rusty, that it was an honor finally to talk to him.
“Sir,” said Rick Hunter, “I had no idea you had even heard of me.”
“Rick,” said Arnold Morgan, “for me to refer to you as one of the finest combat commanders our Special Forces ever had would be to damn with faint praise. I know who you are, and I know what you have done. Please go over and sit in my chair, behind my desk, and allow me to bring you a cup of probably disgusting coffee. It’s the best I can do.”
Everyone laughed. And the big SEAL went and sat in the Admiral’s chair.
“If you only knew, Commander, how many hours I’ve sat right there, wondering about you, and your missions, and whether you could possibly succeed…Well, you ought to feel right at home, right there. That’s my Rick Hunter worry-myself-to-death seat.”
Admiral Morgan poured coffee for everyone, then directed their attention to the electronic chart he had pulled up on a big screen at the end of the room. It showed the southeast coast of Iran and it was highlighted by three dotted lines, close together, joining the Omani coastal town of Ra’s Qabr al Hindi to a point 20 miles east on the Iranian shore. It stretched like a wall across the strait.
“That the minefield, Arnie?” asked Admiral Bergstrom.
“That’s it. And we should have a pretty-good-size seaway through it in a few more days. The Indian sweepers have done well. We’re looking for a cleared gateway of three or four miles.”
“Tankers start moving this week?”
“We’re not that clear.”
“Okay, boss,” said the SEAL chief. “Lay it on me. What do we hit?”
“Up here, John. Twenty-nine miles to the north. See where it says Kuhestak? The new Chinese oil and petrochemical refinery is right there, two miles south of that little town. It’s huge.”
“You want it put out of action?”
“Uh-uh. I want it vaporized.”
“Jesus,” said Rick Hunter.
“What’s the water depth inshore?” asked Rusty Bennett.
“Damn shallow,” replied Admiral Morgan. “We got about five miles under nine feet, the last two miles are under four.”
“Can we get a submarine in close?”
“Probably seventeen miles, then an ASDV into the shallows. The last five miles you have to swim, walk or wallow. Water’s warm. No military presence that we know of. A deserted coastline.”
Commander Hunter nodded. “We got the new ASDV, the one that holds fourteen guys?”
“You have. It’s on board Shark right now. Two-man crew, twelve SEALs.”
“Range?”
“Sixteen hours at six knots.”
“Will it wait, using zero power? Or come back for the guys later?”
“It’ll wait.”
Commander Hunter nodded again. He turned to Admiral Bergstrom. “Am I going in, sir?”
“Not this time. You’re leading Mission Two. That’s two weeks later. If you agree. You’ve served your time on active duty, as you well know. I’m not ordering you in. But I’d be grateful if you’d answer in the affirmative.”
“But I don’t know the nature of the attack.”
“It’s on a Chinese Naval base in the Bassein River in Burma,” interjected Arnold Morgan. “It’s going to be dangerous, but highly organized. Failure is unthinkable.”
“Well, sir, I’m not too bad at wiping out Chinese military.”
“You’re also the best team leader the SEALs have had since Vietnam, according to John. Except of course for the now-retired Rusty, here. Quite honestly, Commander, I’d be real unhappy with anyone else in charge.”
“Will it be my last active mission, sir?”
“It will. And it will guarantee you make Admiral in the shortest possible time. Admiral Dixon, here, will give you that personal guarantee…Ask him, John.”
“Commander Hunter, will you accept command of Mission Two, the forthcoming attack on the Chinese base in the Bassein River?”
No hesitation. “Affirmative, sir.”
The three Admirals nodded curtly in the time-honored Naval code of recognizing a big decision, well made. And then they turned back to the screen, where John Bergstrom was pointing at the course Shark would steer up to the ops area. Arnold Morgan had already coded in the rendezvous point at 26.36N 56.49E, where the submarine would wait in 180 feet of water, 17 miles southwest of the Chinese refinery.
By now Commander Bennett was assiduously taking notes. Two big blue, yellow-and-white charts had been provided for him and John Bergstrom to take back to Coronado. Rusty had drawn in the lines of the minefield and was now marking water depths.
“That’s a darned long way in those shallows,” he said. “Is there any radar down there?”
“Not that we can see. Certainly no Chinese radar. We detect no military presence whatsoever by the Chinese. Nearest radar is down by the missile sites at the end of the minefield. That’s around thirty miles away. If the guys are kicking in along the surface, even in three feet, there’s no way they’d get picked up.”
“It’s the last coupla miles I’m concerned about,” said Rusty. “Water’s just about ankle deep, then a kinda swamp area, then flat rough sandy terrain. No cover.”
“SEALs can move across that in under twelve minutes,” replied Admiral Morgan. “It’s gotta be ten thousand to one against a towelhead with a radar screen picking anyone up thirty miles away while the guys are going in.”
“It wasn’t that I was so much worried about, sir.”
“Sorry, Commander. How do you mean?”
“My guys can get in,” said Rusty. “I’m more worried about getting them out.”
“Okay, Commander. I have given this thought,” said Admiral Morgan. “Let’s take a worst case. The refinery blows before your guys are clear. Let’s say you did not hit the control tower hard enough, and the nonmilitary guards hit the buttons to their Iranian Navy buddies at Bandar Abbas. That’s nearly fifty miles away. Too far for a patrol boat. Their only shot at catching you is helicopters, and by the time they’ve saddled a couple of them up, that’s twenty minutes. Flight time at one hundred seventy knots is, say, fifteen minutes. By which time you’ve had thirty-five minutes to get into deepish water. It’s pitch-dark, and they gotta find you.