The Shark Mutiny

gulf and its waters anytime they see fit.”

“Ah, yes. So they might. But remember we were there as welcome guests and trading partners with the Arabs half a millennium ago, and longer. Remember, too, in recent years Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty has been discovered along the shores of Hormuz. We have long historic roots in that area, and the Persians want us back to help them in the struggle against the West…. Oh yes, Jicai. We belong in those ancient waters of our forefathers.”

“And we’re taking a lot of high explosives to prove it. Eh, Yushu?”

Shantou eased out into the main channel, the driving rain gleaming on her big surface-to-surface guided-missile launchers. Her six twin 37-millimeter gun houses stood stark against the shore lights. Her five-tubed fixed antisubmarine mortar launchers could still be seen through the rain squalls.

What could not be seen, however, were the principal weapons of her forthcoming voyage, the 60 Russian made sea mines, secluded under heavy tarpaulin from the prying eye of the American satellite that had passed overhead two hours previously.

Out on the pitch-black horizon, there waited Shantou’s two Shanghai-built sister ships, Kangding and Zigong. They were in company with the first of China’s new $400 million Russian destroyers, the 8,000-ton, 500-foot-long Sovremenny Class, Hangzhou, with its supersonic guided missile, the Raduga SS-N-22 Sunburn.

But the Hangzhou was not there to engage in surface-to-surface warfare. Her mission was strictly clandestine. She would lead her three frigates on the 6,000-mile journey to Hormuz, essentially to carry 40 more mines, but also because in the event of a confrontation she was best equipped to fight the little fleet out of trouble — though she would be no match for a determined U.S. commanding officer in a big cruiser.

Their voyage would take them down the South China Sea, up through the Malacca Strait into the Bay of Bengal, where they would immediately rendezvous with the 37,000-ton Chinese tanker Nancang, operating out of their new Navy base on Haing Gyi Island, at the mouth of Burma’s Bassein River, across the wide, flat, rice-growing delta, west of Rangoon.

Haing Gyi Island had occupied many a sleepless night for the American President’s National Security Adviser, Admiral Morgan, who was suspicious of Chinese motives at the best of times. The creation of a big Chinese fueling base, and Naval dockyard in Burmese national home waters, sent a shiver right through him. Particularly since the Chinese had constructed a railroad from Kunming, the 2,000-year-old capital of Yunnan Province, straight across the Burmese border to the railhead city of Lashio, from where heavy military hardware could easily join the rest of the $1.4 billion worth of weaponry China had already shipped into Burma.

Back on the rainswept dock at Zhanjiang, Admiral Zhang pulled his greatcoat around him and stepped out to watch the Shantou heading out toward the black shape of the harbor wall, and beyond to the South China Sea.

“Don’t you get a thrill from this, Jicai? Just seeing our great modern Blue Water Navy moving into action on this dark night, bound for a major foreign adventure, the first for more than five hundred years?”

“I suppose so, Yushu. I’ll let you know more when we discover how seriously infuriated the Americans are by the exercise.”

But even the wise and experienced Jicai looked quizzical at the non sequitur that served as a reply from his lifelong friend.

“A mere diversion, my Jicai. The merest diversion.”

1200 (local). March 13.

The White House. Washington, D.C.

“Now where the hell are they going?” demanded Admiral Morgan, staring at the grainy, poor-quality satellite photographs taken through the rain clouds above the Chinese coast. “Looks like three frigates and a Sovremenny destroyer, going south. What the hell for? And how far? And who the hell’s going to refuel ’em? Answer that.”

“I’m afraid I’m not really qualified to do that,” said Kathy O’Brien sweetly.

“Well…er…you ought to be. Ought to be general knowledge for anyone in Washington….”

“Oh…I hadn’t realized.”

“How far do you think they’re going, then?”

“How could I possibly know?”

“I know you don’t know. I’m just asking for guidance. Is that too much?”

“Well for all I know, they’re just going on a picnic,” she replied.

“Well, I wouldn’t care about that…nice basket of chop suey in the pouring rain on the South China Sea. But that may not be what’s happening. What I’m interested in is whether they are going on a long voyage, maybe to visit their friends in Iran. And if they are, those frigates are gonna get refueled from that damned new base of theirs on that frigging Burmese island.”

“Which Burmese island?”

“Haing Gyi Island, their first serious Navy base of operations outside of China — EVER,” the Admiral thundered. “Right now we’re returning to the goddamned fifteenth century, when their fleets dominated the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

“And another thing,” he yelled. “What the hell happened to all those sea mines from Russia…the ones we saw getting unloaded at Zhanjiang? Where the hell are they? And why isn’t anyone keeping me up to speed on this? Where the hell’s George Morris?”

“As you well know, my darling, he has cancer of his right lung.”

“Serves him right for smoking so much,” grunted the Admiral, puffing away on his cigar. “Where is he right now?”

“He’s undergoing intensive chemotherapy, as you also well know. Since that awful treatment has been making him extremely ill, I imagine he’s asleep.”

“Well, have someone wake him up.”

“Honey, please,” said the best-looking redhead in Washington with a sigh.

Two weeks later. March 27.

Fort Meade, Maryland.

Lieutenant Ramshawe was sifting methodically through a pile of satellite photographs. He had singled out a dozen shots, and he was trying to fit them together into a montage, trying to see if the three submarines were actually forming some kind of a small convoy, out there in the Arabian Sea.

He had a couple of VLCCs (giant tankers, Very Large Crude Carriers) in focus to help him, and the conclusion he reached was the submarines were all together, moving on the calm blue surface about a mile apart, heading north. More important, they were Russian Kilo-Class boats, the deadly little diesel-electric attack submarines, currently being exported by the old Soviet Navy to anyone with a big enough checkbook to buy them, especially the Chinese, the Indians and the Iranians.

Lieutenant Ramshawe was in the process of identifying the nationality of these particular ships. And now he was more or less certain. He had located all three of Iran’s Kilos, one in Bandar Abbas, two in their submarine base at Chah Behar, outside the gulf on the north shore of the Gulf of Oman.

So far as he could tell, the Indians had no submarines at sea, which meant, almost certainly, the three Kilos were Chinese and they were headed directly to Chah Behar.

This was mildly unusual but not earth-shattering. Chinese warships were no longer rare in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. They were occasional visitors to the Gulf of Hormuz, and just today there were new satellite pictures of a four-ship Chinese flotilla, including their big Sovremenny destroyer, heading across the Bay of Bengal toward the southern headland of the Indian continent.

“Wouldn’t be that surprised if the whole bloody lot of ’em were going up to Hormuz,” pondered Jimmy. “What with that new refinery and Christ knows what else up there.”

Lieutenant Ramshawe was thoughtful. The four surface ships had been steaming very publicly all the way from the South China Sea. “No worries,” he muttered. But the Kilos had been much more secretive. No one had spotted them since they had left their base, since they’d mostly been deep, only snorkeling for short periods. But here they were now, large as life, making their way up to their close friends on the southernmost Iranian coast.

“That’s seven Chinese vessels, possibly going in the same bloody direction to the same bloody place,”