The Shark Mutiny

“Come in, XO,” called the CO. “I’ve got us some coffee. Let me pour you a cup.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dan, heading for the second chair at the little desk, and noticing for the first time a small framed print hung on the wall, a portrait really, just a head and shoulders of someone who was obviously an eighteenth-century nobleman.

While the CO splashed the hot, black coffee into their mugs, Dan Headley leaned over and took a closer look at the little portrait. The gentleman wore a tricorne hat, with a sash across his chest. Beneath the picture were the words L’Amiral, le Comte de Villeneuve.

Dan found that unusual, and he said cheerfully, “Nice little picture, sir. But why a French admiral?”

“Oh, you noticed that? It belonged to my grandmother. She was French, you know…my mother’s mother. Lived in a little town called Grasse in the south of France, up in the hills behind Cannes…I went there a coupla times as a kid. Pretty part of the world.”

“Yessir. I was in Nice once, just along the coast. It was crowded, but kinda warm and cheerful…my dad and I went together, trying to buy a racehorse…little provincial meet down there in the spring….”

“I didn’t know that was horse-racing country.”

“It’s not really, sir. But they have a meeting down there before the weather gets warm farther north in Paris. We went especially to buy back a mare we’d sold as a yearling. She’d won about four races, one at Longchamp.”

“Long way to go to buy a horse.”

“Yessir. But she was from a family that’d been real fast back in Kentucky. My daddy’s the senior stud groom on a very big farm out there, and the owner just wanted her back as a broodmare.”

“Did you get her?”

“Yeah, we got her. Probably paid too much, what with the shipping and all. But when Mr. Bart Hunter — that’s my daddy’s boss — wants a mare, he’ll usually pay the price.”

“Was she worth it?”

“Not really. She never bred a stakes horse. But one of her daughters was very good, produced a couple of hotshot milers in New York. Then her next foal, by a top stallion called Storm Cat, fetched $3 million at the Keeneland sales. He couldn’t run worth a damn, but I guess that sale probably quadrupled ole Bart’s money in the end.”

“I find that very interesting, Dan. The way the talent of a fine family just keeps coming back, sometimes skipping a generation, but still hanging in there, ready to surface.”

“That’s the way it’s always been in the horse-breeding business, sir.”

“And it’s not a whole lot different with people, if I’m any judge,” replied Commander Reid.

“I’m not sure that’s altogether politically correct, sir…breeding people’s a tricky subject — aren’t we all supposed to be born equal?”

“Believe that, XO, and you’ll believe anything.”

“You got any hotshot ancestors yourself, sir?”

“Well, we never really delved into it, but I certainly have some deep connections with the French Navy. Very deep.”

“Not Admiral Villeneuve?”

“Non.” Commander Reid paused, almost theatrically raising his head. “We have a connection to the man who effectively won the American Revolution, Comte Francois-Joseph de Grasse, victor of the Battle of the Chesapeake.”

Commander Reid dipped his head, as if in deference to the memory of the French Admiral who had held off the British fleet at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on September 5, 1781.

“Hey, that’s really something, sir,” said Dan. “Was your grandma named de Grasse?”

“Oh no, the family of Francois-Joseph merely adopted that title, and named themselves after the town.”

“Good idea, eh, sir? We get those SEALs in, and then out of Iran, I might do the same. How about Lieutenant Commander Dan of Lexington?”

Commander Reid never even cracked a smile. Le Comte de Grasse was plainly a man about whom he did not make jokes.

And this Friday afternoon was plainly a time when he did not make plans. The two men finished their coffee more or less in silence, and the CO suggested a more formal planning meeting at 1100 the next day.

The new XO left with two unimportant, but nagging, questions in his mind. One, what was this “NON” crap all about? And, two, what the hell was the CO of a U.S. attack submarine doing with a picture of the ludicrous Admiral Villeneuve on the wall? This was a man who had narrowly escaped the annihilation of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, and then commanded the new fleet at the absolute catastrophe of the Battle of Trafalgar, where he was taken prisoner, escorted to England and six months later committed suicide.

Dan Headley walked back to the control room confirming to himself that he was a loyal XO, resolved to support his immediate boss under any and all circumstances. But in his deepest, most private, thoughts it occurred to him that this Reid weirdo might be a half-dozen cannonballs short of a broadside.

0400. Monday, May 14.

U.S. Navy Base. Diego Garcia.

Indian Ocean.

The Galaxy freighter came thundering onto the runway in the small hours of the morning, 34 hours after having left the North Island Air Base in San Diego. Most of the men had slept during the second half of the journey, from Pearl Harbor, but they were all tired, in need of a stretch; and the stifling heat of the island, only 400 miles south of the equator, took them by surprise.

Unlike most arriving passengers after a trans-Pacific journey, the SEALs had to supervise their own cargo. Crates that were accompanying them on the next leg of their journey, up to the flight deck of the Harry S Truman, 2,600 miles to the north, had to be carefully separated for reloading, while the rest of the explosives, which would ultimately be used at the far eastern end of the Indian Ocean, were taken on fork-lift loaders to the main storage area.

Lieutenant John Nathan and Commander Hunter took care of this task, and Rusty Bennett checked off the materiel being reloaded into a much smaller aircraft for that afternoon’s flight up to the carrier.

They were escorted to specially prepared quarters, 15 small rooms set aside for the men who were going to work in Iran, 14 more for those who were waiting in Diego Garcia for their orders to embark for the Bassein River.

The SEALs hung around for only a half hour, during which time they demolished ham, cheese and chicken sandwiches and several gallons of sweet decaffeinated coffee. By 0600 they were all asleep, and would remain so until 1300, when they would eat a major lunch of New York sirloin steak, eggs and spinach, as much protein as they could pile in, before boarding the aircraft for the northern Arabian Sea.

That journey was of almost seven hours’ duration, and the Navy pilot put down on the Truman’s deck in a light subtropical sou’wester just before 2200 on that same Monday night.

The carrier was busy that evening, and the howling Tomcats were coming in, in clusters every two minutes. The Admiral had ordered a separate crew to disembark the Special Forces fast and then move their gear down to the hangar for storage, before it would be ferried with the SEALs by helicopter to USS Shark, which would be waiting a half mile off their port beam at 1600 the next day, Tuesday, May 15.

Their ranks were thinned out now. Commander Bennett and Lt. Commander Ray Schaeffer supervised the opening of the crates and removing of the personal kit each SEAL would require before the short 30-mile submarine run up to the rendezvous point. Lieutenant John Nathan took care of the separate interior boxes that contained the weapons, breathing apparatus and attack boards, before carefully marking the containers of high explosives that would take down the Chinese oil refinery.

Forty minutes later, the three officers joined their colleagues in a corner of the huge ship’s dining room for what carrier men call MIDRATS (midwatch rations). Tonight they ate specially prepared Spanish omelettes, french fries and salad, and they all ate together, no separation of officers and men. SEALs always ignore this distinction, particularly on the eve of a truly lethal operation, such as this one might very well become.