Still, the wonder was that the ASDS was operational at all. A long and at times vicious battle had followed the project from its very inception.
Until the 1990s, SEAL delivery vehicles, like the workhorse Mk. XIII Mod 1 SDV, were all wet submarines, meaning the SEALs were fully suited up and exposed to the ocean for the entire run. The Mk. XIII was twenty-two feet long and rated to carry six SEALs — two operators and four passengers. It had a maximum speed of six knots and a range of about seventy nautical miles… but that was a polite and usually overlooked fiction. Seventy miles at six knots meant almost twelve hours in a wet suit, unable to move, and in water that ranged from chilly to frigid.
SEAL training — the BUD/S course at Coronado — emphasized building the would-be SEAL's endurance to the point where he could tolerate severe discomfort and hypothermia. But twelve hours in freezing water without being able to move or stretch, followed by swimming ashore to carry out an operation that might involve long marches, hours of motionless surveillance, or the supreme rigors of combat? Forget it. Even SEALs had their limits.
For decades the SEAL community had tried to get a dry delivery vehicle, one that would allow them to ride all the way to their drop-off point underwater, but warm and in relative comfort. It was an important distinction. Even in a wet suit and even in relatively warm water, hypothermia sets in fast, and few things are as debilitating.
Hypothermia. SEAL recruits are deliberately exposed to it during BUD/S, especially during the sadistic rite of passage involving sleeplessness, torture, and exhaustion known fondly as Hell Week. Tangretti could still remember his last hours of Hell Week, sitting in a water-filled clay pit with a dozen other anonymous tadpoles, coated with black and slimy mud, teeth chattering, body shivering so violently he thought he was going to rattle himself to death. He would have stood up and rung the bell, signaling his decision to drop out of the program, except that he'd been too tired to move. To have even considered engaging in a firefight after that would have been sheer fantasy.
He'd also completed numerous training operations with the Mk. XIII, as well as two other SEAL wet SDVs, the Mk. VIII and the Mk. IX. In all of them, the range limitation had not been battery life, but the endurance of the SEALs on board.
The Navy Special Warfare community had fought long and hard for dry submarines, a seemingly reasonable request that repeatedly had been refused. The reason, irrational as it might have seemed, was simply that the line Navy insisted that dry submarines belonged to the submarine service, not to NAVSPECWAR. For the SEALs to get their own submarines would be an intolerable trespass of the line Navy's turf.
At long last, though, Navy Special Warfare had gotten their dry submarine, the ASDS. But the victory had come with a price. Until then, SEAL vehicles had been operated by SDV platoons attached to the SEAL Teams, with SEALs as their drivers. The Navy Department would permit the ASDS project to go forward only if the minisub were commanded, not by a SEAL, but by a line Navy officer.
It was an uncomfortable compromise. SEAL training emphasized complete reliance on your fellow SEALs. You knew you could rely on your teammates, because each and every one of them, including the officers—especially the officers — had been through the same training you had, including Hell Week. Once they exited the ASDS, Delta One and Two would be under the command of Lieutenant Mayhew, a SEAL. Until then, however, they were under the command of Lieutenant Commander Taggart, a submariner, and an unknown quantity.
It wasn't that they didn't trust Taggart, exactly. They simply… didn't, well, trust him. Not like another SEAL.
Tangretti leaned back on his bench, elbows propped on knapsacks to either side. Seven and a half hours. Back when he was stationed in Coronado, when he had liberty he sometimes drove up the coast to visit a friend in San Francisco — four hundred and some miles. The way he drove, that was about seven and a half or eight hours.
He would try to enjoy the ride, or at least endure it.
"Jesus, Skipper! Lookit this!"
"Is that any way to deliver a message, sailor?"
Lieutenant Commander Chisolm said, his voice stern and sharp-edged.
The sailor, a twenty-year-old radioman second class, stopped in his tracks, ashen-faced. "Uh, sorry, sir."
"That's okay, sailor," Creighton said. "What do you got?"
"This just came through, sir!" He handed a translated message flimsy to Creighton.
TIME: 25JUN08/1415HR
TO: CO PITTSBURGH, SSN 720
FROM: HQNAVCENT, JUFFAIR, BAHRAIN
PRIORITY: MOST URGENT
SPEECH BY KHAMEINI ON AL JAZEERA TV JUST ANNOUNCED CLOSING OF STRAITS OF HORMUZ BY IRAN. LARGE SCALE MILITARY ACTION BY IRAN PROBABLE WITHIN 12 TO 24 HOURS, BUT ACTIONS AGAINST GULF SHIPPING POSSIBLE AT ANY TIME. KHAMEINI HAS THREATENED US FORCES, SAYING THEY WILL BE DESTROYED IF US DOES NOT EVACUATE GULF.
SSN 720 IS HEREBY DIRECTED TO ASSUME DEFENSE POSTURE BRAVO AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT REPEAT DO NOT INITIATE HOSTILE ACTIONS.
SIGNED
RUSSELL SCOTT, ADM CONAVCENTCOM
"Christ on a crutch," Creighton said slowly, almost reverently, when he finished reading the flimsy. He glanced at the sailor. "Comm has acknowledged this?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Very well. Go back to your station."
"Aye aye, sir!"
Trust the Pittsburgh's internal communications grapevine. Every man aboard would know about this within thirty minutes.
Pittsburgh, at the moment, was at a depth of 150 feet, in the main shipping channel just north of tiny Abu Musa Island. Abu Musa was a point of contention in this region, seized, along with two other flyspecks, the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, back in 1971 by Iran and from the United Arab Emirates. Even before the Shah had been deposed and the clerics seized power, Iran had coveted control of the straits between the Gulf and the open ocean. Seizing those islands had been a vital step toward gaining control. All three had had Iranian military forces posted on them ever since their takeover. Abu Musa, in particular, was rumored to have a Chinese-made Silkworm battery, one capable of taking out tanker traffic in the main shipping channel. Pittsburgh had been trying to get close enough for a look-see when the message arrived.
Iran's complete control, however, would be accomplished only by two things — the seizure of the Musand'am peninsula, on the south side of the straits, from Oman and the UAE… and the neutralization of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
Until now, neither possibility had seemed likely. But if Iran's Supreme Leader had just announced the closing of the straits, that might very well change.
"Defense Posture Bravo." That was one of a number of alternate battle plans laid up against the possibility of open hostilities in the Gulf. Creighton would go break the orders out of his safe shortly, but he already knew what they entailed, in general.