Also he was asking serious questions of his granite-hard body, and there were nagging pains high up in both thighs. His calves and ankles were mercifully fine; that was where the pain usually hit on a long swim. And there had been times when it had hurt like hell.
The kid behind him was only twenty-one years old, and there was no way Ray was going to betray tiredness, so he gritted his teeth, dug ever deeper and forced himself forward, ignoring the lactic acid now flooding into his joints and muscles, making every yard an ordeal.
Seventeen minutes after the two-mile mark, Ray felt his board sliding through sand. Instinctively he straightened up and was surprised to find himself standing up to his chest in about four feet of water, still holding the attack board. Charlie bobbed up right beside him and they both shut down their Draegers, reclining back in the water, resting their aching limbs.
They took their mouthpieces out and stored the air lines neatly. “You all right, sir?” asked Charlie.
“No problem, kid,” replied the Lieutenant Commander. “Let’s take five, then walk forward slowly for another five and wait for Dan to show up.”
“Sounds good…. Can you see anything up ahead, sir?”
“I thought I could just then, a dark shoreline directly in front, maybe a half mile. But the moon’s gone behind that cloud, and I can’t see a fucking thing now.”
By now the lead SEALs had removed their flippers. They were walking slowly forward, and they were quickly in less than three feet of water. The Draegers were beginning to weigh heavily; so were the mines. They were comfortable with the rest of their gear.
About 100 yards back, Dan Conway and his teammate broke the surface, and began to walk forward. By the time they caught up with Ray and Charlie, Clouds was in, then the rookies, only two minutes behind. Big Rob Cafiero and his rookie were in next, but they had to wait 10 minutes for Petty Officer Combs, who was of course carrying the M-60 machine gun, which might save all their lives in an emergency.
Ray Schaeffer aimed them all east, and they set off on the stretch they had all been dreading, wading, now in 18 inches of water through the long shallows, each man hauling 80 pounds plus. After 100 yards it was like walking through glue. No one complained but it was a muscle-throbbing exercise, and there was no efficient way to do it, except to keep pushing forward, lifting their feet just enough to take the real “tug” out of the water.
However, it was pleasantly warm, there was no surf to speak of and up ahead they could see the shore. And that was the good news. This walk could have been a mile and a half. As things looked, it would be only a little more than 1,000 yards. Ray ordered them to fan out and draw their weapons, which made a long line of black-hooded figures 30 yards apart. When they reached the beach, assuming it was deserted, they would close in to Lt. Commander Schaeffer’s central position to check the GPS. The numbers they were looking for were 26.47N 57.01E.
The last 100 yards were easily the worst, and they struggled through a kind of kelp field, knee-deep and clinging. But eventually they walked up onto a completely empty beach of coarse sand and occasional rocks. There was not a light, and certainly not a person, to be seen. The numbers on the GPS were right on, which explained a lot. Nothing on this particular stretch of wasteland had been picked up after a hundred satellite passes carefully logged and studied at the top-secret National Reconnaissance Office in Washington. The even more beady-eyed operators at Fort Meade had found nothing either. One mile dead ahead, across slightly hilly terrain, was the sprawling Chinese crude-oil refinery.
It was 2130, and Lt. Commander Schaeffer ordered the SEALs off the beach and into the rougher ground behind. With exquisite timing the moon came out again, and they could more or less see where they were headed without using night goggles. Up ahead they would be approaching the southwestern corner of the refinery, and somewhere before that they would make the rendezvous point, dumping most of their gear.
Four SEALs only would enter the refinery that night. Two more would cut and fold back the wire, and Petty Officer Combs would ride shotgun over the operation with the big gun, and also join the wire cutters as lookouts. No one knew what to expect in the way of guards, or even lights. They knew only that Ray Schaeffer, Dan Conway and Clouds Nathan were going through the wire perimeter fence, assisted by Charlie, to lay down the pile-driver explosives contained in the limpet mines, which they would attach to the inside-facing walls on the big gasoline holding tanks.
Chief Petty Officer Rob Cafiero would take charge of the base camp, when they found it, unloading groundsheets, setting up the radio, posting sentries, preparing the mass of explosives for the main assault the following night. But it took another hour before they found a three-corner outcrop of warm rocks, five feet above the ground at its highest point. It provided protection from the north and from the seaward side. The SEALs used the wire cutters to cut scrub and cover the camouflage nets. It had to be 1,000 to 1 against anyone stumbling across their “hide,” and from the sea it was totally invisible.
They all removed their wet suits and wore only light camouflage combat trousers and jackets. They pulled on their desert boots, and the warriors going in that night increased the greasepaint on their faces and tied their matching green-and-brown “drive on” rags around their heads, in the style popularized chiefly by Willie Nelson.
They ate a couple of protein bars and drank water. Then shortly after 2300, Lt. Commander Ray Schaeffer led Assault Team One forward, a total of seven SEALs, carrying the three limpet mines and all the detonation equipment required to take out the group of holding tanks hard against the fence in the southwest corner of the refinery. No explosions until the next day, but a lot of the groundwork completed, with, hopefully, a thorough knowledge of the defense system the Chinese operated in their new refinery.
“Don’t expect us back before zero-four hundred, Rob. We wanna take a very careful recon of this place. And it will take time.” Lieutenant Commander Schaeffer’s words were almost inaudible, and a light breeze from the ocean scarcely ruffled the poor, rough, brown grass that grew sporadically on this warm moonlike landscape.
They drew their weapons and marched forward, moving softly over the ground. Up ahead there was a glow in the sky, and they all knew what that was. The main surprise as they pushed east away from the ocean was the amount of light there was both inside and around the refinery.
Within 10 minutes they had a clear view of the western perimeter, which Ray Schaeffer knew was two miles long. They could see a line of lights, set high on steel pylons every 200 yards. But they were aimed into the refinery and cast almost no light on the dark wasteland around the outer edge. That was good and bad, because it made their approach easy. But one of the lights was throwing a lot of illumination right into the group of storage tanks toward which they were headed.
They lay flat on the ground, staring at the fence 20 yards in front of them.
“Christ,” said Clouds, “it’s gonna be like the stage of the New York City Ballet in there.”
“Great,” muttered Dan Conway. “We’ll probably get a round of applause.”
“Shut up, comedians,” whispered Lt. Commander Schaeffer. “That light second from the end has gotta go. Guess we could shoot it, but I’d rather cut it.”
“That would sharpen up the guards if they found the cut,” said Dan.