He had a couple of VLCCs (giant tankers, Very Large Crude Carriers) in focus to help him, and the conclusion he reached was the submarines were all together, moving on the calm blue surface about a mile apart, heading north. More important, they were Russian Kilo-Class boats, the deadly little diesel-electric attack submarines, currently being exported by the old Soviet Navy to anyone with a big enough checkbook to buy them, especially the Chinese, the Indians and the Iranians.
Lieutenant Ramshawe was in the process of identifying the nationality of these particular ships. And now he was more or less certain. He had located all three of Iran’s Kilos, one in Bandar Abbas, two in their submarine base at Chah Behar, outside the gulf on the north shore of the Gulf of Oman.
So far as he could tell, the Indians had no submarines at sea, which meant, almost certainly, the three Kilos were Chinese and they were headed directly to Chah Behar.
This was mildly unusual but not earth-shattering. Chinese warships were no longer rare in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. They were occasional visitors to the Gulf of Hormuz, and just today there were new satellite pictures of a four-ship Chinese flotilla, including their big Sovremenny destroyer, heading across the Bay of Bengal toward the southern headland of the Indian continent.
“Wouldn’t be that surprised if the whole bloody lot of ’em were going up to Hormuz,” pondered Jimmy. “What with that new refinery and Christ knows what else up there.”
Lieutenant Ramshawe was thoughtful. The four surface ships had been steaming very publicly all the way from the South China Sea. “No worries,” he muttered. But the Kilos had been much more secretive. No one had spotted them since they had left their base, since they’d mostly been deep, only snorkeling for short periods. But here they were now, large as life, making their way up to their close friends on the southernmost Iranian coast.
“That’s seven Chinese vessels, possibly going in the same bloody direction to the same bloody place,” murmured the Lieutenant, reaching for the latest edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships, the bible of the world’s navies.
Now let me have a look here…right…Jianghu frigates…they can hold sixty sea mines apiece…and that destroyer has rails for forty more…now…how about the Kilos…. What’s it say here? They can carry twenty-four torpedoes or twenty-four mines…not both. So if those little bastards were carrying mines, that’d be seventy-two, plus the two hundred twenty in the surface ships…that’s close to three hundred…. My oath, you could cause a lot of trouble with that little lot.
The Lieutenant knew he was just trying to connect two separate mysteries. The first: What the bloody hell happened to all those sea mines that ended up in Zhanjiang? Second: What the hell are all these bloody Chinese warships doing in the Indian and Arabian Seas?
He had of course not the slightest shred of evidence there was one single solitary mine on board any of the ships. Certainly nothing that showed on the satellite photos, except for the big covers.
But still, he considered it his duty to alert his immediate superior, Admiral Borden, as to the possibility, even if it did mean rejection. So he drafted a short memorandum and sent it in.
Fifteen minutes later he was summoned to the Acting Director’s office, knocked firmly on the door and waited to be instructed to enter.
“Lieutenant, I appreciate your diligence in these matters, but I heard earlier this morning from Langley the Iranians are staging some kind of a forty-eight-hour military hooley with the Chinese Navy down there in Bandar Abbas. Bands, parades, red carpets, dinners, speeches, television, the whole nine yards. Apparently the surface ships are scheduled to arrive there next Monday.
“So I’m very afraid your theory of a large traveling minefield is out. Thank you for your efforts, though…but do remember, I did warn you to forget about it…If someone’s laying a minefield, we’ll see them…all in good time. That’s all.”
“Sir,” said Lt. Ramshawe, making his exit, muttering, “Supercilious prick. Serve him right if the bloody hooley was just a cover-up and the whole U.S. tanker fleet was blown up.”
The festivities were over for the evening. The last of the Iranian public were driving home out of the dockyard and the great arc lights that had floodlit the magnificent parade were finally switched off. The huge fluttering national standards of the Islamic State of Iran and the People’s Republic of China had been lowered.
A 60-strong guard of honor from the People’s Liberation Army, resplendent in their olive green dress uniforms, hard flat-top caps with the wide red band, were retiring back to their quarters in the Hangzhou. The lines of electric bulbs that had floodlit the masts and upper works of both nations’ warships were methodically being extinguished.
But as yet, no air of calm had settled over the fleet. They were running down the flags, but turbines were humming, senior officers were on the bridge, lines were being cast off. It was a curious time to arrange a night exercise after such an exhausting day of preparation and celebration. But that, ostensibly, was precisely what was happening.
The three Chinese frigates were already moving, slowly, line astern, led by Shantou, out through the Naval basin into the main channel, now dredged to a low-tide depth of 33 feet. Thirty minutes later, China’s 6,000-ton Sovremenny-class destroyer, the largest ship ever to enter this harbor, was escorted out by two 90-foot harbor tugs, the Arvand and the Hangam.
Astern of the destroyer, a 900-ton twin-shafted Iranian Navy Corvette, the Bayandor, almost 40 years old, originally built in Texas, followed, still flying the green, white and red national flag despite the late hour of the evening. Her sister ship, Naghdi, also armed with modern Bofors and Oerlikon guns, awaited the flotilla one mile southeast of the harbor, ready to guide them around the long shallow outer reaches of the shelving Bostanu East Bank.
Their 65-mile journey would take them past the great sand-swept island of Qeshm and on into the deeper waters of the Hormuz Strait. Forty miles farther on, east of the jutting Omani headland of Ra’s Qabr al Hindi, they would make their rendezvous, at 26.19N 56.40E. Admiral Mohammed Badr himself was on the bridge of the Hangzhou, accompanying the Chinese Commanding Officer, Colonel Weidong Gao (Chinese Navy COs are all three-star Colonels).
Under clear skies they pushed on southeast through light swells and a warm 20-knot breeze out of the west. Finally at 56.40E Colonel Weidong ordered a course change to one-eight-zero, and running over sandy depths of around 300 feet they headed due south for the final six miles.
Gradually the little flotilla reduced speed until the sonar room of the big destroyer picked up the unmissable signal of the Chinese Kilos, patrolling silently at periscope depth in the pitch-dark waters off the jagged coast of Oman.
The plan had been finely honed several weeks before. The Kilos would take the southerly six miles of the designated area where the water was now 360 feet deep. Each of the three submarines would make a course of zero-nine-eight starting from the deep trough off Ra’s Qabr al Hindi. They would thus move easterly a half mile apart, launching out of their torpedo tubes a one-ton Russian-made PLT-3 contact sea mine every 500 yards — the ones made at the Rosvoorouzhenie factory in Moscow: the same ones that had so vexed young Jimmy Ramshawe on their top-secret journey all the way across Asia to the South China Sea.