would take the USS
Behind them, the steel door was shut and locked. Two Naval guards remained on duty immediately outside, with four more patrolling the area beyond the main door to the otherwise-deserted building. No one, including the C-in-C of the Fleet, was permitted to enter. Even to exit the ops room, each SEAL needed to have his notepad personally signed by the Team Leader.
No one was permitted a phone call. There was absolutely no further contact with the outside world. Nor would there be until they were back in the USS
Commander Hunter immediately introduced his second-in-command, 28-year-old Lt. Dallas MacPherson, a wide-shouldered southerner from South Carolina who had started life at The Citadel, the state’s near-legendary military academy, but had switched after only a couple of semesters to the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
He rose rapidly in dark blue, making Lieutenant in double-quick time, and serving as a gunner and missile officer in an Arleigh-Burke destroyer before the age of 25. This was good, but not good enough for the restless Dallas, who suddenly, to the surprise of his colleagues, requested a transfer to the US Navy SEALs.
He crashed through the BUD/S course, finishing in third place, complaining he’d probably “been stitched up”—most SEALs are happy to pass through in the first 30. And throughout his short, but meteoric, career people had been more or less divided on whether he would end up in Admiral Bergstrom’s chair, or in a box with a posthumous Medal of Honor. He was tough as hell, brave as a lion and smarter than almost everyone. But there was a daredevil in his soul, and that might either save the lives of an entire squadron or, alternately, get them into terminal trouble.
Commander Hunter was in no doubt. Lieutenant MacPherson was reputed to be the most brilliant young explosives expert on the base, a progressive Naval scientist on the subject of demolition in all its forms. Rick Hunter would take Lt. MacPherson any day, on the strength of his swiftness of thought. When he appointed him, he had said, “Dallas, where we’re going, the only thing that’s gonna keep us alive is brains. Keep using ’em, and we’ll make it out.”
In fact, Lt. MacPherson’s father was a distant cousin of the veteran Secretary of Defense, Robert MacPherson. And when news of this had seeped through various wardrooms, one senior commanding officer had remarked playfully, “Well, young Dallas, you can’t beat a few family connections in the military to ensure you advance your career.”
“Sure can’t, sir,” replied the twenty-two-year-old Midshipman. “I taught that Bob MacPherson damn near everything he knows.”
And now, right here in the most secretive room in the most remote American Naval base, Dallas was about to undertake an awesome responsibility, not only to accept command of the entire force, should anything befall the leader, but to ensure personally the total destruction of the geothermal power station on the island of Haing Gyi.
Rick Hunter introduced him carefully, as a young officer in whom he had the utmost confidence, and from whom they must take orders unquestioningly while working in the Chinese electricity-generating plant.
He then introduced his personal bodyguard, Lt. Bobby Allensworth, with whom he had served on another highly classified mission the previous year. He provided no background, certainly not the information that young Bobby had fought his way out of a life of petty crime in south-central Los Angeles and obtained his commission in the U.S. Marine Corps. He said merely that Lt. Allensworth would be personally responsible for the safety of the force, particularly if they had to fight their way in, though he hoped this would not be necessary.
Chief Petty Officer Mike Hook, also from Kentucky, a medium-sized supreme athlete and swimmer, was included as the number-two explosives expert on the team. He would be personal assistant to Lt. MacPherson during the time setting of the charges and the guardian of the special bomb they would carry in — the one Dallas said would split the steam shaft asunder, releasing a massive geothermal force, which might very well blow up the entire base.
“How far in the clear do we want to be when that happens?” asked someone.
Before Commander Hunter could reply “One hour,” Lt. MacPherson remarked he thought back in Coronado would be just perfect.
That was the deceptive side of Lt. MacPherson’s character. He sometimes sounded merely flippant, but the truth was he was always a few strides in front. He knew “one hour” was correct, but he’d gone past that and was instinctively trying to defuse the tension, trying to reduce the fear factor, the prospect of the unknown. Some officers think this approach has no value whatsoever. But you still have to be extremely able to do it. And Commander Hunter laughed anyway.
Only Lt. MacPherson understood the perfect timing required to send that armor-piercing, steel-cased bomb thousands of feet down the main steam shaft, to blast the giant well-head valve apart and release the seismic energy from the core of the earth.
“Gentlemen,” said the Commander, “details of the in-base mission will be clarified during the three-day journey to the Bay of Bengal. Right now I am intending to show you precisely where we are going, how we land, where we get off and the main drive of our objective.”
Briefly he introduced other key members of the team: two SEALs who had also served under his command the previous year in the South China Sea, Riff “Rattlesnake” Davies and Buster Townsend, the radio operator. Both were from St. James’s Parish down in Louisiana’s Mississippi Delta. Both had served in surface warships.
He also brought forward the toughest man in the squad, Petty Officer Catfish Jones, an ex-deepwater fisherman from the coast of North Carolina. Catfish, 29, was a combat veteran of the Kosovo campaign. He had a 19-inch neck, and forearms of blue-twisted steel. Bobby Allensworth had instructed him in unarmed combat. And these two represented the front line of the Assault Team’s heavy muscle if they came face-to-face with the Chinese inside the Navy base.
For his opening remarks, Commander Hunter played down the danger of the mission. “We are going into a lightly defended Chinese Naval base,” he said. “It’s a relatively new facility, and we’ve had it under observation for several weeks. Our Intelligence conclusion is that the owners do not anticipate a serious attack from anyone. Which should give us a reasonable chance of accomplishing our mission. Which is, incidentally, to take it off the face of the earth as quickly as possible.”
At this point a ripple of disquiet could easily be sensed in the room. And the Commander elected to clear up the question that was on everyone’s mind: Why are we doing this?
“As most of you know, we are in the middle of a world oil crisis, caused principally by the Chinese. In the judgment of our colleagues in National Security, China has further plans for disruption at the other end of the Indian Ocean. But she can only instigate this disruption by maintaining a major Navy base in the area.
“This one, at the mouth of the Bassein River, is the sole means by which China can have a catastrophic effect on the free and peaceful flow of the world’s oil. Our instructions come direct from the White House. We are to take that Naval base out, on behalf of the government of the United States of America.
“The successful achievement of our objective will not only send the Chinese right back to their home waters, where they belong. It will also deservedly earn the gratitude of every person in the industrialized world. Although they will not know, of course, to whom they are grateful. But we’ll know. And that’s what matters.”
Everyone in the room nodded approval. And Commander Hunter told them that for the purpose of this initial briefing he wished to demonstrate to the entire group precisely where they were going, and how they were going to find their way in, in the pitch dark.
“Okay,” he said, “look at your own charts, and follow my bigger electronic one as we go.” He used a long ruler and pointed it at the rendezvous point where the
“Right here,” he said pointing precisely, “we get into the ASDV, in about one hundred sixty feet of water. We then take this route, down toward this little island here…and according to our experts we take this route, to this slightly deeper water right here. We believe this flashing light on the red can, marked here, will guide us into a newly dredged channel. Then we pick up the main throughway up to the island of Haing Gyi, where the base is.
“You’ll see right here on your chart, we adjust our course to zero-two-zero and run on up here in the main
