Then there was the USS Inchon, towering over her charges. The Mine Warfare Command Ship was converted from an Amphibious Assault Ship six years before. A ship of the Iwo Jima class, she was the shape and size of a World War II aircraft carrier. Inchon looked very much like her older sister, USS Lexington, which now sat across the bay in the Corpus Christi Harbor, a museum and memorial of Admiral Marc Mitscher and the other men who served aboard her.
After Desert Storm, the Navy needed a ship to conduct command and control of mine warfare forces. Inchon became the answer to this problem. She was to command the MCM triad of EOD divers, surface ships, and helicopters.
Jazz drove in the main entrance and turned left, heading for the building that housed Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Six Detachment Ingleside. He smirked remembering that his new commanding officer disapproved of the title, “Detachment Ingleside.”
Two weeks earlier, the Jascinski family stopped through Charleston, South Carolina, on their way to Texas. Charleston was home to Jazz’s command, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Six. Stationed here was the command element including the commanding officer and his staff, a training department, a diver locker, a detachment of minehunting sea lions, and five MCM detachments.
Jazz spent two days there in order to meet the commanding officer, the executive officer, the operations officer, and the men of the training department.
The captain, Commander Solarsky, was insistent that there was no such entity as “Det Ingleside.”
“Don’t ever let me hear or see anything with ‘Det Ingleside’ on it,” he had said with a raspy voice.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“When that place was established there was some fool notion that the folks down there would not deploy, that it was a shore det. They decided on their own that they were to develop Mine Warfare Tactics. Horsepucky! I have seven MCM detachments, two of which just happen to be in Texas. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Solarsky and Jazz had a long philosophical discussion about being an EOD officer. As the commander explained it, there were two types of 1140, those who belonged to the SEALs, and those who belonged to the fleet. The pseudo-SEAL officers in his mind were “wanna-bes.” They focused on fast-roping, parachuting, and small arms training. These men tended to be weak on demolition procedures and dangerous as divers and EOD Technicians.
“Most of those somabitches couldn’t render safe a candle with a bucket of water,” he said.
The other type according to Solarsky were pseudo-SWOs, they were ship-drivers, and divers. They focused on diving, demolition, and render safe procedures.
“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Jascinski, we are operators. All of the mobility skills are important. Just remember that they are not why you are here. You wanna cut throats and eat snakes, go with the frogs. You wanna swim into enemy waters and blow up mines, or render safe IEDs then this is for you.”
Jazz actually found the discussion interesting. He sensed the division within EOD already, but Solarsky was the first to verbalize it.
“Which kind are you gonna be, Lieutenant?” he challenged.
“Uh, the second kind, sir.”
“Damn right.”
Solarsky’s final remark was a reminder that Det Four was a mobile detachment and did not have the full responsibility of a shore detachment to respond to improvised explosive devices offbase.
“Warrant Officer Fontaine will explain in detail. In any case, if you have to respond to an IED always report to the command duty officer here so we know what you’re doing. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
As Jazz pulled into the parking lot he noticed that all three high bay doors were open. Inside he spied rubber boats of all sizes, pickup trucks, HUMMVEEs, and horse trailers. He saw dive gear hanging on racks drying and Mark –16s and scuba jugs laid out on a cart. Several EOD Techs were moving around the compound, shirtless in khaki UDT shorts and boots, the divers called “utes and boots.” It was obvious that they just returned from an early morning dive.
I am gonna love this, he thought. The captain was right, these guys are operators.
The front of the building was all office space. The first offices were empty. Jazz guessed they must belong to Det Two. The second set then belonged to Det Four, his detachment.
A barrel-chested diver was sitting at one of the desks. Jazz noted immediately that he was wearing salt-stained shorts and a T-shirt.
Is this always the uniform here? he wondered.
“Good morning.”
The man looked up from his paperwork.
“Good morning, sir. You must be the new OIC.”
“I am.”
The diver stood, came from behind the desk and extended his hand.
“Welcome aboard, sir. I’m Chief Keating.”
“Lieutenant James Jascinski.”
“Great. Well you actually came on a bad day, sir. Most of the det is gone right now. Warrant Officer Fontaine, Senior Chief Reed, Petty Officer Quinn, and Petty Officer Sinclair are on a Secret Service job. Petty Officer Ball, he’s a new guy, is at Hazardous Materials Preparer’s Course. So, SK1 Delgado and I are the only ones in house.”
“What did you say Ball was doing?”
“Haz-Prep Course, sir. We have to have at least one person on the det certified to ship hazardous materials on aircraft. They learn how to properly package, store, and most important to prepare the paperwork required when we travel with explosives, diving gas, ammunition, fuel…”
“Got it. Fontaine and the others on the Secret Service op, where’d they go?”
“Houston, Texas, sir. The President comes in there about once a quarter.”
“Hmm… good. We do much Secret Service support here?”
“Not really, sir. We pretty much eat, sleep, and breathe MCM.”
“That is what I’ve heard, Chief. So, are you busy right now? I’d like to get the lay of the land.”
“A tour? No problem, sir. We can do that.”
Adjacent to the offices in the front of the building was a conference room. After the conference room was the passage to the rear of the building. There was a locker room with showers and a large vault shared by both detachments that housed all of the classified material.
The six inch steel door was open but an inner door that looked like a gate was closed. Inside was a skinny black man dressed in utes and boots. His blue t-shirt had bold yellow letters on the back that read:
BOMB SQUAD
TECHNICIAN
IF YOU SEE THIS MAN RUNNING
TRY TO KEEP UP!
Chief Keating knocked on the cage.
“Hey Dee, come meet the new OIC.”
The Tech stood and opened the cage.
“Hi, sir. SK1 Delgado. Guys call me ‘Dee.’”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Lieutenant James Jascinski.”
“Welcome to Ingleside.”
“Thanks.”
Keating spoke up.
“Delgado’s is in charge of publications and manuals. He maintains all pubs classified and unclassified. He also controls all of the crypto gear, radios, encrypted GPS and the like.”
“Good, I’m sure we’ll be doing a turnover of secret material in the next few days. I look forward to getting to know you.”
“Me too, sir.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Downloading message traffic. We get it right here in the vault via that desktop computer over the base LAN.”
“Great. We’ll let you get back to it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rear of the building had a dive locker for maintenance and storage of all the diving gear, an equipment office, an equipment storage room, and the highbay.