The Shark Mutiny

He saw the two service chiefs out, and then walked slowly back to the chart of the Strait of Hormuz. And he muttered to himself, “They must know that goddamned refinery is vulnerable. They must know there will be some form of retribution if the U.S. finds out they helped lay that minefield. Or maybe they figure we’ll never find out for certain….”

He paused for a full minute. And then he muttered, “Nah, they’re just not that stupid. They must know we’ll find out….”

And if that’s the case, he pondered, there’s only one question left: What in the name of Christ are they up to?

072200MAY07.

Flight Deck, USS Constellation. Strait of Hormuz.

26.30N 56.50E. Speed 30. Course 225.

She was turned along the southwesterly run of the minefield now, the U.S. Navy’s beloved forty-year-old “Connie,” plowing forward into the hot wind of this sweltering Arabian night. Right now she was about five miles north of the field, and the area seemed quiet as the Indian Pondicherrys moved steadily about their hazardous business, cutting the mines free and then blowing them on the surface.

But still the howling F-14D Tomcats, courtesy of U.S. fighter wing VF 2—the fabled Bounty Hunters — gunned their aircraft off Connie’s 1,000-foot-long flight deck, up and into the black skies that now blanketed the most lethal stretch of ocean in the entire world.

Each pilot wore on his right sleeve the Bounty Hunters’ triangular emblem, the yellow delta-winged fighter- bomber on red-white-and-blue stripes. Most of them also sported the jaunty gunslinger patch, the cowboy tomcat leaning on a big D, with the new stitched lettering, Anytime, Pal.

And they flew right out on the edge of the envelope, banking in hard over the Iranian coastline and then back out to sea. This really was Anytime, Pal, because right now the U.S. Navy meant business, and everyone knew it. One squeak out of an Iranian antiaircraft battery, one illumination, one suggestion, and that battery would be obliterated by a phalanx of missiles with an accuracy record of around 100 percent.

Navy pilots are used to being accused of “U.S. bullying.” But they were not bullies tonight, while the whole world awaited the reopening of the gulf to oil tankers.

Tonight the Navy fliers were the fearless White Knights of the Skies, the way they mostly saw themselves anyhow. And they hurled their Tomcats through the high darkness of Islam, the single most threatening airborne cavalry ever assembled, on a mission to shut down the menace of a known aggressor. Anytime, Pal. The patches said it all.

Back on Connie’s flight deck in the controlled chaos of a hectic night’s flying the 22 -ton Tomcats were slamming down in batches, because the carrier has to keep making ground downwind, altering course, between landings and takeoffs. Swarms of flight-deck personnel surrounded each aircraft as it thundered in, a team ever ready to rush forward and ram the Sidewinder safety pins into the pylon firing mechanisms. The hot swirling air, stinking of JP-4, burned rubber, searing hot metal and salt water, assaulted everyone’s senses as the air boss snapped out commands through the 88,000-ton ship’s tannoy system. This was Connie’s last tour of duty.

Out on the stern, oblivious to the earsplitting shriek of the incoming jets, the duty arresting gear officer, a lieutenant junior grade, sweating in his big fluorescent yellow jacket, was in contact with the hydraulic operators one deck below. The wires were ready to withstand the 75,000-pound force of the Tomcat hitting the deck at 160 knots, the pilot’s hand still hard on the throttle just in case the hook missed.

The 28-year-old Lieutenant, Bobby Myers from Ohio, could feel his voice rising now as he snapped down commands to the hydraulic men…“Stand by for Tomcat one-zero-seven…two minutes.”

He looked back over the stern, 90 feet above the water, straining to catch the lights of the fighter-bomber. He knew the pilot personally, and, as it did every single time, his chest began to tighten, and his heart was racing. Nothing ever dismisses the nerve-twisting tension that grips the arresting gear officer when a fighter-bomber is on its final flight path. Every arresting gear officer who ever lived, that is.

Bobby had him now, five miles out, and he checked the wires again, checked on his radio phone that the huge hydraulic piston was ready to take the strain in the forthcoming controlled collision between deck and plane.

“GROOVE!” he shouted into the phone, the code word for “She’s close, STAND BY!”

Two miles out now, bucking along in the warm erratic air currents of the gulf, the Tomcat pilot fought to hold her steady, watching the landing lights, always watching the balls of light, an iron grip on the stick. He could see the carrier’s stern rise slightly on the swell, and the precision required for the high-speed landing would be measured in inches rather than feet. Every pilot knows he is a split second from death during every carrier landing he makes. One in five Navy pilots dies in the first nine years of his service.

Seconds later Bobby Myers snapped, “SHORT”—the critical command for everyone to stand right back away from the machinery.

And now Bobby saw the Tomcat right above, screaming in.

“RAMP!” he bellowed, and every single eye on the flight deck was lasered in on the hook stretched out behind. The blast from the jets shimmered in the night air. The ear-shattering din of the jet engines made speech impossible. One mistake now and it would not be just the pilot who died. A pileup on the flight deck could spark a jet-fuel fire that could put the entire ship out of action.

And hundreds of battle-hardened flight-deck technicians, already swarming forward, silently breathed Thank God, as the hook swung, and then grabbed the wire, hauling the Tomcat to a standstill. Just as they would all breathe Thank God again, one minute from now, as they coaxed yet another F-14D out of the sky to safety, refueled her and prepared her to go again.

So it is, out with the frontline steel fist of the U.S. Navy, where men face danger every minute, where they operate in harm’s way every single day, always under orders, always working for the cause. Their rewards are modest, at least financially. But in a sense they have the biggest paychecks of all: not written out on some bank transfer. Written out on their own hearts.

And meanwhile 200 million citizens back home grouse and moan about the rising price of gasoline.

“Tomcat one-zero-six…one minute…STAND BY!”

080600MAY07. USS John F. Kennedy.

10.00S 137E. Speed 30. Course 270.

The 88,000-ton carrier was halfway between Pearl Harbor and Diego Garcia, steaming at flank speed through the Arafura Sea south of the Indonesian archipelago, heading for the near-bottomless waters above the Java Trench. They were well through the narrows of the Torres Strait, there was almost no wind off Australia’s Northern Territory and it was hotter than hell. Big John’s 280,000-horsepower Westinghouse turbines were working. The giant four-shafter was fully laden with more than 40 fighter-attack F-14A Tomcats, F/A-18C Hornets and a dozen more radar-spotter aircraft, prowlers and ASW squadrons.

The flight wing patches worn by the aviators bore the names of legendary U.S. Navy outfits: the Black Aces; old Fighting 14; the Top Hatters; and VFA-87, the Golden Warriors. There might not yet be a full-scale war raging in the Gulf of Iran, but you’d never have known it watching Big John, armed to the teeth, driving forward on the second half of her 10,000-mile mission to Jimmy Ramshawe’s minefield.

And now 5,000 miles of the Indian Ocean stretched before them. They would be the fifth U.S. CVBG to arrive on station, almost certainly to move north from Diego Garcia immediately, up to the gulf to relieve the Constellation Group.

On the bridge of the carrier, Rear Admiral Daylan Holt was studying the plot of his group, one cruiser, two destroyers, five frigates, two nuclear submarines and a fleet tanker. At this speed they were burning up fuel, fast. But his orders were clear: Make all speed to DG and stand by for gulf patrol.

That was one way to send someone on a 10,000-mile journey across the world. But Admiral Holt was prepared, even though it was difficult to get a handle on how serious things really were in the Strait of Hormuz.

He sipped black coffee in company with his Combat Systems Officer, Lt. Commander Chris Russ, as the sun