hundred of them, divided among their three fleets. Lieutenant Longo spotted it way up ahead, with its distinctive low freeboard, making 30 knots through the water, with a big white wake astern, almost as if it had nothing to do with the Chinese Naval dockyard off to the west.
Lieutenant Mills whipped down the periscope and took the ASDV as deep as she would go, cutting her speed, and steering left toward the edge of the Haing Gyi Shoal, trying to put a mile of the Bassein Delta between the U.S. SEALs and the oncoming Chinese patrol.
She was not transmitting, but Lt. Mills was taking no chances. He cut the engines and allowed the submarine to drift down and settle on the sandy bottom. And everyone heard the Hainan go charging past.
“You know what I think?” whispered Matt Longo. “I think she was Burmese, coming straight down the estuary from their Naval base up at the city of Bassein, several miles upstream from here. She looked too settled on her course, and she was going too fast, to have just exited the dockyard. And she sure as hell didn’t look like a patrol boat snooping around the deep waters beyond the Chinese jetties. She was in a real hurry.”
Lieutenant Mills started the engine and engaged the shaft. The ASDV moved immediately forward, bumping off the soft bottom, heading northeast again. Another three miles, and they’d be right off the jetties. Thirty minutes from right now, the SEALs’ four hit men would be on their way.
They moved on slowly, transmitting on the fathometer occasionally. At 2250 Lt. Mills slid quietly up to PD for a visual, and there, 500 yards off their port beam, he could see the lights along the jetties. He could also see the shape of one small frigate moored dead astern of a large destroyer.
“Okay, guys,” whispered Longo, “we’re a bit too close. Get out right here. We’re still in the fifty-foot channel. Targets are five hundred yards to our west. Steer course two-eight-five and you’ll come in right against the hulls.”
Rick Hunter came forward to take a visual on the targets. And Lt. Mills decided they could exit on the surface, since there was not a single sound of any ship, radar or even a remote sonar. The dockyard was silent, unsuspecting, as everyone had expected. And of course the little ASDV is dead flat along its upper casing. There is no sail and it’s invisible from 500 yards in dark water, just a jet-black steel tube in the night.
The Lieutenant, already at periscope depth, lowered the mast, quickly pumped out some more ballast. The ASDV rose another five feet, just breaking the calm harbor surface with about one foot of freeboard, and stopped in the water. Lieutenant Mills opened the deck hatch and Catfish Jones, mask on, flippers on, hood up, Draeger connected, a heavy limpet mine harnessed to his back, attack board under his arm, heaved himself up and over, rolling silently into the water without as much as a ripple.
Buster Townsend, similarly equipped, minus the attack board, was next. Then Chief Petty Officer Mike Hook, and finally Commander Hunter. The SEALs sorted themselves out, treading water, heads above the surface, waiting for their adrenaline to die down. Adrenaline eats oxygen. And the wait was frustrating. They were already running at least 20 minutes late. The detonator clocks would be set for 0345 instead of the planned 0330.
Commander Hunter would lead the way, with Mike Hook on his left shoulder. Catfish Jones, his attack board set on course two-eight-five, would swim in right behind them, with Buster’s right hand on his left shoulder. They would not use their arms or hands for the swim, just their legs, kicking the oversized special SEAL flippers every five seconds, covering 120 feet per minute. It would take them around 13 minutes to reach the Chinese warships.
It was 2307 when Rick Hunter, facing east, finally held his attack board out in front of him with both hands. And then the big farm boy from central Kentucky drove himself forward, kicking hard and counting for distance. He was a human torpedo, scheduled to inflict about a billion dollars worth of damage on the People’s Liberation Navy. And Commander Hunter could kick like one of his dad’s stallions. Battleships have left their jetties with less power.
The four SEALs drove forward, the three younger men settling in to their leader’s now-easy pace…kick… one…two…three…four…kick and glide all the way in. After eight minutes, the Commander came to the surface for his last look through the mask. Their course was accurate, and he paddled quietly back down to their regular depth, 14 feet below the surface. They were exactly on schedule, heading for the twin propellers of the destroyer, almost underneath the bow of the frigate.
Five minutes later, they were there, right under the shafts, in the shadow of the stern, and Rick signaled them to wait while he went deep to check the distance the keel floated above the harbor floor. As he suspected, it was only about three feet. This meant he and Buster would swim from the stern to the halfway point of the 500- foot-long ship, just about two minutes at 12 kicks every 60 seconds. Then Buster would swim right under the keel and place his mine exactly opposite Rick’s. The subsquent detonation would hopefully break the back of the Chinese destroyer.
Catfish and Mike had only 60 yards to swim, which translated into 18 kicks, each taking them 10 feet, at which point they too would be just about halfway along the hull. Then Mike Hook would swim right under the keel and place his charge. Swimming under a hull is a nerve-wracking business when it’s tight, as this most certainly was. But they were on a rising tide, which was lifting the ship higher, and that’s a lot less stressful than a falling one.
Rick Hunter rejoined the other three, about eight feet now below the surface. They could hear the hum of the big generators inside the destroyer. Rick and Catfish clipped their attack boards on their belts and then they separated into two pairs, diving down into the dark, kicking their big flippers, driving along the steel hull of one of Zhang Yushu’s most prized warships.
Rick Hunter counted carefully. On the twenty-fourth kick he stopped, confident now he was right under the section of the destroyer where all the guided missiles and torpedoes were stored. Right here he could see the lights of the ship reflected in the water, but both SEALs knew it would be pitch-black when they reached the keel.
Rick felt the surface of the hull as he went, and it was very rough, covered with barnacles and small sea growth. None of this was good news unless you happened to be a naturalist: the magnetic clamps of the mine were never going to grip this. Buster would realize the same thing when he reached the other side.
Within a few seconds both SEALs were standing on the sandy bottom in water black as oil. They could feel the rough surface, and they unclipped the harnesses that held the limpet mines on their backs. Rick saw Buster turn and swim underneath the keel, feeling his way in the dark. And he himself again ran his hand against the metal of the ship.
He uncovered his magnetic clamp and screwed it into the mine with its five pounds of explosives. He tried it on the hull, but it would not grip. So he drew his kaybar fighting knife and, holding the blade with two hands, he scraped a section clean on the hull. Again he tried the clamp, and this time he felt it pull, then lightly thud home. He could see the small dial of the timer glowing lightly, showing its 24-hour setting. Rick checked its timing again against that of the clock on his attack board. Then he set it for 0345. Then he ducked under the keel and showed the exact time to Buster, who was just finishing scraping with his kaybar knife.
Thus synchronized to the split second, they made the fix to the hull of the ship, took a compass reading and kicked straight back down course one-zero-five, straight back to where the ASDV awaited them. Fifty yards in front were Catfish Jones and Mike Hook, whose swim down the hull of the frigate had been much shorter, and whose hull had been much cleaner.
They picked up the intermittent homing beeps from Matt Longo’s fathometer, and kicked in toward the hull of the minisub. Only when Commander Hunter signaled with four knocks on the hull, that all four of them had made it back, did Lt. Mills return to the deserted surface of the water, and one by one they clambered up and into the dry compartment. They were all breathing heavily as they unhooked their Draegers, pulled off their masks and sat down. Again the hatch was shut and clipped, and Lt. Mills took her 20 feet down once more, right in the now- desolate main channel.
“Okay, guys?” asked Rick Hunter.
“No problems for us,” replied Catfish. “What took you two so long?”
“Much longer swim down the hull, and when we got there it was coated with barnacles. You know what little bastards they are to clean off. We couldn’t get the magnets to pull until we’d scraped a section. But it’s fine. All set for 0345.”
“Same,” said Catfish. “Damn creepy down there under the hull, though. Wouldn’t wanna do it every night, I’ll tell you that.”
Lieutenant Mills ran back down the channel, steering course two-zero-zero from the 16-degree line of latitude on the GPS. They ran for just less than 20 minutes at six knots, then they all felt the ASDV make a turn to starboard, slowing down while Lt. Longo scanned the water for Wolf Rock. He found it just to their north, and then
