Twenty-four members of America’s most elite, ruthless Special Forces, against the collective will and determination of 1.3 billion Chinese citizens, and their 300,000-strong Navy. The odds, by any standards, were not in any way promising. For the Chinese, that is.
In fact there was a total of 28 battle-ready SEALs in the ops room, counting four “spares” should anyone be injured. Commander Hunter himself was one of the main group, and would personally lead in his team of 12 on Mission Two.
Right now Commander Bennett was going over the initial insertion of troops, the final four or five miles that Assault Team One would swim/wade, en route to the sprawling Chinese refinery on the shores of Hormuz. Before him was the chart of the shallow waters all along the beaches.
“Well, guys,” he said, in the SEALs’ usual informal method of command, “you can all see these depths…if you’re lucky, the ASDV will get in to within four miles, but this damn chart is obviously not reliable…if the submarine can make it right in here to the ten-meter line, that’s about the best you can hope for…that’ll be a three-mile swim in warm water not more than nine feet deep.
“Then it looks like you may have to wade the last mile. But the good news is there is no formal military surveillance. We’ve swept and surveyed it thoroughly and found nothing. The nearest foreign military is thirty miles away. Also you have tremendous cover right offshore, a U.S. Navy presence that for the past couple of weeks has plainly frightened everyone else to death.”
Rusty paused and asked for questions. There were none. And now he flicked off the chart of the seaward approaches and zoomed in on the Chinese refinery. “Right here I want you to start taking notes,” he said. “Each of you will be provided with a clear ten-by-eight print of the objective you see on the screen. And obviously you will make your approach from the west, through this marshy area, up the beach and across these sand dunes. You’ll see from the satellite shots, there is cover in here, within four hundred yards of the perimeter fence, and that’s important.
“Because we want you to make two separate entries. First night, you’ll reach the perimeter fence at around midnight. I want you to cut it cleanly on three sides, a gap big enough for two men at a time to go through. I want a team of four, each armed with ordnance, to go to work right away on this near group of storage tanks.”
He pointed at what looked like a cluster of 28 giant white tin cans, 30 feet high, 60 feet in diameter. “I want you to place the explosives at the base of three of these,” he said. “They’re made of cast concrete, with steel casing on the outside. Each one is full of just-refined petroleum — see this pipeline?…You can follow it due west and then pick it up out near the new offshore loading bay. It’s gotta be gasoline, which, as you know, burns up pretty good.
“This is not a time-consuming task. I’m talking twenty minutes’ work, maximum, from the time you get in through the wire. Of course, if you should be caught or attacked, the entire mission is canceled.”
Rusty paused again, took a long swig of iced water, and proceeded. “Three more of you will take care of cutting the wire on the outer fence, and then folding and clipping it back into position at the conclusion of the first night ops. That team will also be responsible for observing and avoiding guard patrols. For obvious reasons we do not want to be detected, because our main assault will be on the following night…. Questions?”
“How many bombs do we carry in, sir?”
“Six for the holding tanks, three for each of the two groups. Three for the towers, which could be overkill since I suspect one would blow the hell out of ten square miles of oil pipelines. And three more for the control center, two ground level, one higher up if possible. If there’s time you’ll need another couple for the petrochemical area, but I realize there may not be. That’s a total of fourteen — one each for most of you. However, three mines go in through the wire the first night, eleven the second.
“I know that’s a lot to do, with your own personal weapons, plus the Draegers, the attack boards and the detonation kit, but it’s not that bad, except for the long wade-in through the shallows.”
“Are we taking in any heavy weapons, in case we get into real trouble?”
“No. Nothing real big. If anything unexpected happens, you’re one radio shout from help. We’ll have helicopters ready to take off from Constellation at one minute’s notice, get you the hell outta there.”
“How about the goddamned Iranians get helos up if we’re detected?”
“Anything takes off from any Iranian military or Navy base, we take it out instantly. As far as I’m concerned, your safety is not an issue. You’re protected by the heaviest front-line muscle we have…. Danny, it’s secrecy we’re interested in. Just don’t get detected.”
“Okay, sir,” replied Lt. Dan Conway, another decorated veteran of the South China Sea operation last year. “Softly softly, catchee Chinese monkey.”
“Never mind Chinese monkey, sir. How about Chinese woofer — attack dogs? If they’ve got Dobermans or shepherds, we’d have to shoot them or they’ll try to tear us to pieces…we’d be into a goddamned uproar at best.”
“Right now we’ve seen no evidence of any guard dogs in the refinery. In fact, we’ve not even located formal guard patrols. Langley tells us there are no guard dogs. However, I agree we should consider the matter, because one damned dog going berserk and barking like hell could wreck the secrecy of the operation. Which would not be fatal, because our main objective is destruction. But we would very much like to get in, and out, unseen and unknown.”
“If we shoot any dogs, they gotta know we’re in there, right?”
“Correct. But we might find a way to silence a couple of Dobermans without killing them, if we were unlucky enough to run into a couple on the first night. Second night doesn’t matter so much, since I don’t plan any survivors.”
The intricate details of the SEAL attacks wore on through the whole of that Thursday, and, after dinner, into the night. They reconvened on Friday morning, and concluded late in the afternoon, each man now fully acquainted with his task and how to carry it out to the letter. No one ever suggested it was going to be easy.
The huge U.S. Navy Galaxy, which carried the SEAL assault teams, was making 400 knots above the Pacific, bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After a short refueling stop there and the unloading of several tons of marine spares, the remainder of the 13,000-mile journey to America’s Indian Ocean base at Diego Garcia would be nonstop.
The SEALs sat together in the rear of the aircraft, their personal gear stowed in packing cases with the rest of the combat equipment they would haul into the Chinese oil refinery. Each man had carefully packed his flexible, custom-made neoprene wet suit. His big SEAL flippers, for extra speed, were also custom-made. On the instep of each one was the lifetime identification number awarded to him after passing the BUD/S course.
All of them had packed two modern scuba-diver’s masks, the bright Day-Glo colors for amateurs carefully obscured by jet-black water-resistant tape. The attack boards, which the lead swimmers would use on the swim-in, had been carefully stowed. To a marauding SEAL, this piece of equipment represents almost certain life or death.
The leader holds it with both hands out in front of him, his eyes constantly flicking between compass and small clock, neither of which betrays even a glint. No SEAL ever goes into the water wearing a watch, for fear a shaft of light off its bright metal casing might reflect back and alert a sentry or a harbor-wall lookout.