The Shark Mutiny

He looked at his audience and noticed that he still had their attention. “Gentlemen,” he said, “out here on the northwest of the plant you can see yet another large grouping of tanks. Jack thinks this is the chemical area, maybe a lot of ammonium nitrate for fertilizer. I realize that you are going to be shorthanded, only twelve of you can go in…but if you found yourselves with some spare time, with a little spare explosives, you could do a lot of damage out there with the stuff that once blew up Texas City.”

“Arnold,” interrupted Admiral Bergstrom, “were you proposing to nail down the entire plan here for us to go away and…er…well, refine?”

“Absolutely not, John. I’m done. I just wanted us to be singing from the same hymnbook for the seaward insertion and getaway. And for the extent of the mission, the amount of TNT required and the main targets you must attack. The number of SEALs going in is dictated by the size of the ASDV. The rest is up to you, how and when you break through this high wire fence to get in, how you deal with possible alarms and guards. I’ll have any and all information from Fort Meade fed into Coronado at all times during the next few days. And the Navy will be ordered to supply anything requested by either Commander Hunter or Commander Bennett during the missions. By that I mean, of course, heavy backup firepower. Whatever it takes.”

“Okay, Arnold. Now, how about the Bassein River? Mission Two?”

“I’m in the process of taking some heavy-duty advice on that, John. But I have prepared charts for you and Rick to take back to California. I’ve also got a few godawful black-and-white pictures of the place, but NRO are working on some better, clearer stuff, which I’ll get to you.

“This whole operation is strictly Navy. That’s why Alan Dixon is taking overall command of it personally. Especially during this extremely classified stage. He and I will be in constant communication, but I’d prefer that you two work directly together. Depending on the advice we get, we may have to change tactics. I just don’t want to get into anything that might be obsolete next Thursday.”

“Understood, sir.”

By 1145 the meeting was over. The three SEALs declined lunch and left to board their helicopter immediately: White House lawn to Andrews Air Base — Andrews direct to San Diego. Military aircraft. As Admiral Morgan would have phrased it, “No bullshit.”

1000 (local). Thursday, May 10.

Headquarters, Eastern Fleet.

Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.

Admiral Zhang was puzzled. Here was the United States with the biggest concentration of Naval power assembled since the war with Iraq seventeen years ago, and they had made absolutely no communication with either of the nations that laid down the minefield in the first place.

“You think they may not know who the culprits were?” he asked the C-in-C, Admiral Zu Jicai.

“They know,” he replied. “They saw our warships down there. Indeed, they just crippled our leading destroyer. At least I think they did. No proof, of course.”

“Well, if that’s the case we have a rather strange silent war going on, wouldn’t you say? Two of the most powerful nations, plus the guardians of the old Persian Gulf, grappling in some three-way sumo headlock without one word being spoken by the protagonists.”

“And, unhappily, no referee,” said Admiral Zu.

“It’s bizarre. The Americans have uttered no formal protest about the minefield. But they have moved a staggering lineup of Naval power into the area, and it’s standing there like that ridiculous ape they all admire so much…. What’s his name? Hong Kong?…No, Emperor Kong…King Kong, that’s him…fists flailing, but no one to strike.”

Admiral Zu chuckled. “The trouble with the Americans is they always have a hidden agenda. We cannot drop our guard. And we don’t want our warships anywhere near them.”

“You think they have an agenda for striking back at us? We have, after all, been responsible for the total destruction of four extremely expensive oil tankers.”

“It’s hard to know, Jicai. I don’t think they would come after us and attack one of our cities, or even a Naval base. So what’s left?”

“Well, we do have a very large oil refinery in Iran.”

“Oh, yes. But the Americans won’t attack that. They revere money too much, and oil is currently the world’s most precious commodity. They might one day try to buy shares in it, but they wouldn’t destroy it. That would just turn them into reckless cowboys like Saddam Hussein, ignoring the ecology of the region, not to mention a lot of civilian deaths.”

“Nonetheless, Yushu, I think we should strengthen the guard at the refinery, perhaps borrow some of those attack dogs the Navy has at Bandar Abbas.”

“It certainly could not be harmful, Jicai. And I agree with you. We ought not to underestimate the innate viciousness of those men in the Pentagon.”

“Even if, for the moment, their actual agenda remains hidden, Yushu.”

“As indeed does ours, my Jicai.”

6

101200MAY07. USS John F. Kennedy. 10.40S 146E.

On the face of it, Big John was not making much progress. The giant carrier was back in warm waters 200 miles off the Australian state of Queensland, having passed once more through the narrows of the Torres Strait. There was still no wind, they were still running at flank speed and it was still hotter than hell. The only difference from one week ago was they were heading east, rather than west. Big John had been diverted.

No one had given a reason. There was just a terse signal from the Third Fleet HQ in San Diego to come about and head right back the way they had come. Forget Diego Garcia. Make instead for the Pacific, steer east of New Guinea and head on north, taking up station off the east coast of Taiwan.

There was a widespread suspicion on board that China must as usual have been prowling around too close to the independent island in which the USA had such a major investment, and for which she was pledged to fight, very nearly, to the death.

However, the truth was more mundane. The Nimitz-Class carrier Ronald Reagan, just out of major overhaul in the San Diego yards, was simply judged to be in need of a considerably longer workup period than one week.

And with Constellation, Truman, Stennis and Roosevelt all in the Hormuz area, it was decided the Reagan ought to take the proper time to get into front-line shape, and that the JFK could perfectly easily swing around and make the Taiwan patrol, leaving the other four CVBGs to take care of the oil problems at the gateway to the gulf.

Those four battle groups packed enough of a punch to deal with any problem in the entire history of the planet. The mere presence of Constellation and Truman had frightened away the Iranians, the Chinese and anyone else wandering around trying to make a buck.

Which still left Big John thundering along toward the Coral Sea, with everyone sweating themselves half to death, wondering what the hell the Chinese had done, and what indeed the hell they had done to deserve making this lunatic circular route south of Indonesia, in seas that were of no interest to anyone.

0800. Thursday, May 10.

U.S. Navy Base, Coronado.

Even in the shadowy, unlit inner sanctum of SPECWARCOM, this was as secret as it gets. Deep in one of Coronado’s underground ops rooms, behind locked doors and armed guards, twenty-four handpicked Navy SEALs were undergoing a two-day briefing by three of the toughest men who ever wore combat boots: Admiral John Bergstrom, Commander Rick Hunter and Commander Rusty Bennett.

The task before them was relatively compact by SEAL standards — the destruction of two foreign installations, one of them loosely guarded. But the overall intent of the operation was Herculean…to drive the