The Shark Mutiny

murmured the Lieutenant, reaching for the latest edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships, the bible of the world’s navies.

Now let me have a look here…right…Jianghu frigates…they can hold sixty sea mines apiece…and that destroyer has rails for forty more…now…how about the Kilos…. What’s it say here? They can carry twenty-four torpedoes or twenty-four mines…not both. So if those little bastards were carrying mines, that’d be seventy-two, plus the two hundred twenty in the surface ships…that’s close to three hundred…. My oath, you could cause a lot of trouble with that little lot.

The Lieutenant knew he was just trying to connect two separate mysteries. The first: What the bloody hell happened to all those sea mines that ended up in Zhanjiang? Second: What the hell are all these bloody Chinese warships doing in the Indian and Arabian Seas?

He had of course not the slightest shred of evidence there was one single solitary mine on board any of the ships. Certainly nothing that showed on the satellite photos, except for the big covers.

But still, he considered it his duty to alert his immediate superior, Admiral Borden, as to the possibility, even if it did mean rejection. So he drafted a short memorandum and sent it in.

Fifteen minutes later he was summoned to the Acting Director’s office, knocked firmly on the door and waited to be instructed to enter.

“Lieutenant, I appreciate your diligence in these matters, but I heard earlier this morning from Langley the Iranians are staging some kind of a forty-eight-hour military hooley with the Chinese Navy down there in Bandar Abbas. Bands, parades, red carpets, dinners, speeches, television, the whole nine yards. Apparently the surface ships are scheduled to arrive there next Monday.

“So I’m very afraid your theory of a large traveling minefield is out. Thank you for your efforts, though…but do remember, I did warn you to forget about it…If someone’s laying a minefield, we’ll see them…all in good time. That’s all.”

“Sir,” said Lt. Ramshawe, making his exit, muttering, “Supercilious prick. Serve him right if the bloody hooley was just a cover-up and the whole U.S. tanker fleet was blown up.”

2015. Tuesday, April 3.

Navy Base. Bandar Abbas.

The festivities were over for the evening. The last of the Iranian public were driving home out of the dockyard and the great arc lights that had floodlit the magnificent parade were finally switched off. The huge fluttering national standards of the Islamic State of Iran and the People’s Republic of China had been lowered.

A 60-strong guard of honor from the People’s Liberation Army, resplendent in their olive green dress uniforms, hard flat-top caps with the wide red band, were retiring back to their quarters in the Hangzhou. The lines of electric bulbs that had floodlit the masts and upper works of both nations’ warships were methodically being extinguished.

But as yet, no air of calm had settled over the fleet. They were running down the flags, but turbines were humming, senior officers were on the bridge, lines were being cast off. It was a curious time to arrange a night exercise after such an exhausting day of preparation and celebration. But that, ostensibly, was precisely what was happening.

The three Chinese frigates were already moving, slowly, line astern, led by Shantou, out through the Naval basin into the main channel, now dredged to a low-tide depth of 33 feet. Thirty minutes later, China’s 6,000-ton Sovremenny-class destroyer, the largest ship ever to enter this harbor, was escorted out by two 90-foot harbor tugs, the Arvand and the Hangam.

Astern of the destroyer, a 900-ton twin-shafted Iranian Navy Corvette, the Bayandor, almost 40 years old, originally built in Texas, followed, still flying the green, white and red national flag despite the late hour of the evening. Her sister ship, Naghdi, also armed with modern Bofors and Oerlikon guns, awaited the flotilla one mile southeast of the harbor, ready to guide them around the long shallow outer reaches of the shelving Bostanu East Bank.

Their 65-mile journey would take them past the great sand-swept island of Qeshm and on into the deeper waters of the Hormuz Strait. Forty miles farther on, east of the jutting Omani headland of Ra’s Qabr al Hindi, they would make their rendezvous, at 26.19N 56.40E. Admiral Mohammed Badr himself was on the bridge of the Hangzhou, accompanying the Chinese Commanding Officer, Colonel Weidong Gao (Chinese Navy COs are all three-star Colonels).

Under clear skies they pushed on southeast through light swells and a warm 20-knot breeze out of the west. Finally at 56.40E Colonel Weidong ordered a course change to one-eight-zero, and running over sandy depths of around 300 feet they headed due south for the final six miles.

Gradually the little flotilla reduced speed until the sonar room of the big destroyer picked up the unmissable signal of the Chinese Kilos, patrolling silently at periscope depth in the pitch-dark waters off the jagged coast of Oman.

The plan had been finely honed several weeks before. The Kilos would take the southerly six miles of the designated area where the water was now 360 feet deep. Each of the three submarines would make a course of zero-nine-eight starting from the deep trough off Ra’s Qabr al Hindi. They would thus move easterly a half mile apart, launching out of their torpedo tubes a one-ton Russian-made PLT-3 contact sea mine every 500 yards — the ones made at the Rosvoorouzhenie factory in Moscow: the same ones that had so vexed young Jimmy Ramshawe on their top-secret journey all the way across Asia to the South China Sea.

At the conclusion of these three death-trapped parallel lines, six miles long, the minefield would make a 10- degree swing north, and then run for 24 miles dead straight, all the way across the Strait of Hormuz to the inshore waters of the Iranian coastline, at a point 29 miles due south of the new Sino-Iranian refinery outside the little town of Kuhestak.

And right now the three Chinese mine-laying frigates were moving into position. Shantou, Kangding and Zigong, a half mile apart, heading east-nor’east, slowly in the darkess, the soft thrum of their big diesel engines interrupted only by the splash, every 500 yards, as they sowed their treacherous seed in a barrier across the world’s most important oil sea-lanes.

The 60 mines on board each frigate would last for 17 miles. The final coastal area would be handled by the destroyer, and they would designate a sizable three-mile gap through which Chinese and Iranian tankers could pass, principally because they would be the only tankers informed of the position of the safe passage.

Meanwhile the newly laid mines sat at the bottom of the ocean secure on their anchors, awaiting the moment when they would be activated electronically, released on their wires to rise up toward the surface and then hang there in the water, 12 feet below the waves, until an unsuspecting tanker man came barreling along and slammed it out of the way, obliterating his ship in the process.

It was a two-and-a-half-hour journey back to Bandar Abbas and the surface convoy set off at 0400, leaving the Kilos to make their own way back to Chah Behar, running at periscope depth (PD). There was time to spare because the big U.S. satellite did not pass overhead until 0800.

The frigates and their 6,000-ton bodyguard docked in Bandar Abbas at 0630, when the next stage of Admiral Zhang’s plan went into operation. The Hangzhou was immediately reloaded with 40 PLT-3 contact mines, plainly visible, as her original cargo had been the previous evening. When “Big Bird” took her photographs a few minutes after 0800, the fully laden Chinese destroyer would look precisely the same as she had on the last daylight satellite pass, just before the grand parade yesterday evening.

The signal back to Zhanjiang was as agreed, in the event of a successful mission: DRAGONFLY.

1130 (local). Tuesday, April 3.

Fort Meade, Maryland.

There is an irritating eight-and-a-half-hour time difference between the East Coast of America and Iran. This is caused by a time zone that runs bang through the middle of the country near Tehran. Instead of one half of the nation being four hours in front of GMT, and the other half only three, they compromised and put the whole place three and a half hours ahead of London, which is of course five in front of New York.

Thus satellite pictures taken at 1930 (Iran) were shot at 1100 (Fort Meade) the same day. And this particular set of pictures of Bandar Abbas Dockyard landed on Lt. Ramshawe’s desk just as he arrived a half hour early for work.