they were carrying weapons, a direct result of an instruction from the Chinese Navy, received 48 hours previously. The guards were in fact military personnel from the People’s Liberation Army and they had been in residence for two months, although they had not found it necessary to mount any form of patrol. The area was, face it, deserted.
The SEALs flattened themselves into the ground as the jeep drove past, but then they moved quickly to the fence and the clips were removed to open their own personal gateway. Once inside, they placed three clips back on the wire to hold it, more or less in place, to attract no attention.
At this point they again checked their synchronized black pocket watches and the time clocks, which would be adjusted as the charges were put in place. Then they fanned out into three groups. They would meet again 90 minutes from then, at 0030, in the dark deserted area of the towers.
The first team on station was Dan Conway’s. He and Charlie led the two rookies deep in the shadow of the hot crude-oil pipes, which cleaved a gantry right down the middle of the refinery. They moved slowly, creeping quietly along, directly beneath the great three-foot-diameter pipes. They provided excellent cover all the way to the central storage area. The four SEALs waited for 15 minutes until they were certain they were alone, then they bolted across the flat well-lit ground to the left and dived into the shadow of the first tank, remaining motionless on the sand for 10 minutes, heads down, but knives drawn.
Meanwhile Lt. Commander Schaeffer and his 2 I/C, Lt. Clouds Nathan, had made it to the tower area. They had crossed two sets of railroad tracks, well to the right of the central pipeline system, and were now crouched in the dark on the south side of a giant holding tank. The towers looked massive, but there were three very close together in the center of the separating plant, and these were the targets.
The problem was four Chinese technicians who had plainly arrived in a parked jeep, testing what looked like a large valve halfway up the biggest tower. “Oh, Jesus,” said Ray, “if they’re not outta here in thirty minutes, we’ll go and place the two mines out in the petrochemical area, and then come back. We can’t risk being seen, not yet, not until the stuff’s in place.”
They waited. So did the technicians. And finally Ray whistled up both of the other teams on the little radio, and announced he was going to the distant chemical area, and would use two of the mines. Dan Conway was instructed to get among the towers as soon as possible with the two extra mines his team was carrying.
They carried out their regular mine placing on the tanks, in precisely the swift, efficient way Clouds had worked the previous night. The time was precisely 2345, and they set the time clock for three hours and fifteen minutes.
Then they rushed back across the open ground into the shadow of the pipeline, and began working their way up to the tower area. Meanwhile, Ray and Clouds were jogging along the eastern perimeter fence, right in the shadow, directly under the lights, headed for the wide area of the plant owned by SINOPEC (China National Petrochemical Corporation).
When they arrived, the place was not only silent; there were also huge dark areas to the west of the tanks, and they worked right in there, shoveling a shallow six-inch trench in which to lay the det cord. By the time they’d finished, it was 0015, and Ray set the clock for two hours and 45 minutes. Then he buried it lightly in a plastic bag.
By the time SEAL Team One was out of the chemical area, Rob Cafiero and Ryan Combs were making steady progress around the control center. They had placed one mighty charge of plastic C4 explosives hard on the wall below the main downstairs window, and they had seen four white-coated technicians enter the building and four come out.
Both SEALs could also see there was a basement in the building, and realized this was the place to set a major C4 charge because it would surely bring the entire construction down, wrecking all the control systems, and allowing the hot crude to keep on flooding through the pipes, feeding the fires, just as it had in Texas City, 60 years previously.
And now they were ready. The center was plainly being staffed by the minimum number of people, and Ryan Combs told the two rookies to take the machine gun and cover them while he and Rob went through the front door, which had been unused for at least 25 minutes.
They raced across the yard, Rob carrying the explosives, detonator and plastic, Ryan now with a silenced, even lighter, machine gun, the regular MP-5, right behind him. They pushed open the door and moved into the hallway. Right in front of them was a down staircase, and they took the steps four at a time, swinging hard left at the bottom, and going to work under the stairs setting the plastic bomb for a timed detonation.
It was just 2350, and they set the clock for three hours and 10 minutes. They swung back out of the stairwell at exactly 2351, just as two Chinese staff members came out of a lower-floor operations room. The four men stared at each other in total disbelief, and the two refinery workers, confronted with two armed green-and-brown-faced monsters, turned to run back into their room. One of them shouted one word in Chinese before Ryan Combs cut them both down in cold blood with a burst from his MP-5.
Instantly the two SEALs dragged the bodies back under the stairs, before there was too much blood to clean up. They made sure the two victims would not be easily seen, and then they bolted back up to the main hall, opened the front door and raced back to the shadows where the two rookies waited.
“Everything okay, sir?”
“Except for a couple of Chinamen.”
“Christ, did they see you?”
“Not for long.”
Right then the radio light flickered, and Ray Schaeffer was on the wire informing them of the new meeting point at the first tower at 0100. He was also on the line to Dan and Charlie checking their progress. And shortly after midnight the SEAL team leader knew that all their objectives had been achieved, with the exception of the giant towers.
By 0030, Rob and Ryan had placed their third and final plastic bomb right under a nest of incoming electric wires, and the Chief Petty Officer considered that this wrapped up the entire operation very tidily. He set the clock for two hours and 30 minutes, and, safe in the knowledge that this particular control center was not going to control anything after 0300, he led his men back toward the main pipeline for the shadowy 500-yard journey toward the refining towers.
When they arrived there, they found a scene of silent consternation. The Chinese were still there, still up on the tower, still working. At least two of them were. The others had gone.
“There’s no way we can place the mines on that metal without those guys seeing us,” said Ray Schaeffer. “The risk is too great. We’ll have to shoot ’em. And that’s not easy either.”
“Well, they don’t have a phone up there. How about a diversion, something to get ’em down? How about we set fire to their jeep? That’ll do it.”
“Yeah, and it’ll bring a lot of other guys out here as well. Fire in a refinery is a goddamned nightmare.”
“You don’t say.”
And then the SEALs received what looked like a piece of luck. Both the Chinese technicians began to climb down the ladder from the refining tower.
“How about that? They’re going.”
And so they were. They stepped into their jeep and drove off, leaving the entire area to the three teams of U.S. Navy SEALs, who instantly split up and clamped the magnetic mines onto the designated towers and primed the fuses.
Lieutenant Nathan raced between them, playing out the det cord, splicing it into place and then running it out for the three strands to meet at a central point in the shadows of the number-two tower. Behind him two SEALs carefully buried the cord in the sand, and Clouds checked his watch. It was 0150, and he set the timer for one hour and 10 minutes. It was time to leave.
For the SEALs, that is. Not a two-man patrol of Chinese guards hanging on to the leashes of two huge, brown-and-black, straining Doberman pinschers. They were just arriving. And they had been especially briefed, directly from Shanghai, to be on the lookout for U.S. Special Forces inside the refinery. And alert they were. They came around to the edge of the main tower and were confronted with eight big men, two of them with shovels, four of them with MP-5 machine guns, and all of them with hideously camouflaged green-and-brown faces.
At the moment of sighting, there were 40 yards between the forces of China and the U.S. SEALs. The guards reacted strictly in unison, unleashing the dogs at the touch of a button, and both blowing whistles loudly. Dan
