Again Jazz kicked for the surface. When he broke free the situation seemed worse. One moment he and T-Ball were in the trough of a wave, rising up with it. The next they dipped under while it passed over them. He thought the two of them would be lost before they could ever be recovered onboard the RHIB. They were saved by the fact that their teammates had their lines.
“Grab the diver!” Keating yelled.
Jazz reached up with his right hand. Sinclair grabbed it with both arms.
Someone called out, “Dee, get those lines in!”
Delgado picked up where Quinn left off on T-Ball’s line and began pulling in the slack.
“LT, off gas!” commanded the chief.
Jazz closed his barrel valve and ripped the mask from his face.
“Whatcha got?”
“O2 hit. Primary flashing green….”
Jazz got a mouth full of seawater as he and T-Ball disappeared in the rising sea. When they emerged he spit and continued.
“Couldn’t read secondary. I closed O2 valve and brought him up.”
“Okay, okay, get ‘em…”
Keating’s next words were lost again in the ocean. Suddenly Jazz felt T-Ball being wrestled from his grip. A second after T-Ball was retrieved, Jazz felt Sinclair trying to pull him in. Jazz kicked hard helping his tender and struggled into the boat.
When he lay on the deck Jazz immediately felt ill again. He had swallowed a lot of salty water. The motion was compounded in the boat. Jazz saw his shipmate lying prone on the deck.
“Was he convulsing!” the chief asked.
“No.”
“Damnit, T-Ball, I wanted you to convulse!”
Suddenly T-Ball was no longer limp.
“Off-gas.”
The primary diver closed his barrel valve and removed his mask.
“Sorry, Chief. I didn’t seem him coming in time. I was glad just to get my light flashing.”
Jazz knew he had been had.
“SON OF A BITCH!”
“No, no, sir. You did well. Didn’t he, T-Ball?”
“I’ll dive with him as my standby any day.”
“Me too. What was your depth and time?”
T-Ball grabbed his secondary and read the timer/depth gauge.
“Sixty feet for twenty minutes.”
“Good. Find anything?”
“Mark-52 bottom mine.”
“Did you put a pinger on it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay gentlemen, time for a little boom-boom. LT, you are sick, sunburned, and tired. On top of it, the seas are definitely getting rough. You want to get unjocked? Or do you wanna blow shit up?”
“I wanna blow shit up, Chief.”
“Right answer.”
FIFTEEN
Gabriel remembered that compartmentalization of information was one of Nasih’s pillars for success. Nasih taught them to develop cells of four or five members, ten at the most. Liaison with other cells or with outside entities could only be conducted through a single member.
When the group needed explosives they considered breaking into a commercial magazine, perhaps at a mining operation or quarry. This blunt method, however, would likely draw some attention through subsequent police or ATF investigations. Therefore, the group decided to employ a more subtle means. Gabriel realized he knew a source of explosives that the ATF did not monitor. He recruited a supplier who seemed more motivated by ideology than cash. Nonetheless, Gabriel paid him well.
Gabriel chose the rear parking lot of a San Antonio hotel as the meeting point. He recognized The Supplier’s vehicle and pulled into the spot next to it. The Supplier lifted two ice chests from his vehicle and put them into Gabriel’s trunk.
“How much is there?” Gabriel asked.
“About two-hundred pounds,” The Supplier answered.
Gabriel handed him a small backpack.
“When you get the chance, look inside the smallest pocket.”
The Supplier slung the bag over his shoulder.
“This may be it for awhile,” The Supplier said nodding toward Gabriel’s car. “My situation has changed.”
“I understand,” replied Gabriel. He did not want to lose this asset. “Still, we will keep you on the payroll as before. This has been a mutually beneficial situation and I’m sure that your services will be required in the future.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Keating leaned over and put a hand on Jazz’s shoulder.
“Okay, LT, you are about to go under sixty feet of water with no visibility in a computerized diving rig built by the lowest bidder while carrying enough explosives to vaporize a skyscraper. And you’re going alone. Are you scared?” he laughed.
Jazz shook his head in the affirmative.
“Good. Don’t forget to follow the detonating cord to the surface to ensure it is not fouled and that you’re not tangled in it. That would be a bad thing in about four different ways.”
Jazz nodded his head up and down again. Keating turned back to the coxswain.
“Okay, Dee, talk to me.”
“Forty feet!”
Keating turned back to Jazz.
“LT, try to find it with the sonar first. If you can’t, go to passive and find it with the pinger T-Ball put on it.”
“Ten feet!”
“Neutral!” Keating called. “Go, LT.”
Jazz rolled backwards into the sea. He quickly surfaced again turned toward the boat. Keating handed him the demolition charge.
“Go!” the chief yelled again.
Jazz descended. Once on the bottom he sat on his knees. Grabbing the witness line, Jazz yanked on it like a bell ringer.
“One. Diver on bottom.”
He looped his left arm through the bungee cord woven into the charge the det constructed on Scout’s fantail the day before. With the demolition package resting on his arm, Jazz turned on the sonar.
The return from the mine was loud. Jazz kept the sonar pointing toward it as he swam through the water. He strained to see the mine through three feet of visibility and listened for the return to get louder.
Detonating cord trailed from the demo charge of C-4 on his arm to a float on the surface comprised of bubble wrap. The Techs called the float a “dogbone” because of its shape. Encased in the bubble wrap was the initiation train for the explosive system. Two igniters each with a spring-released firing pin were married to two lengths of time fuse, wrapped within the dogbone. The time fuse had blasting caps crimped on the opposite end, which were taped to the det cord.
When a Tech released each firing pin, the time fuze would begin to burn. Upon reaching the end, the heat from the time fuse would set off the blasting caps, which would subsequently initiate the detonating cord. When the det cord exploded, it would sympathetically detonate the charge. Initiating in this way would give Det Four time to move to a safe distance before the charge detonated.
As he swam through the water, the dogbone bobbed in the waves, straining the det cord and pulling on the demo charge on Jazz’s arm.
The explosives began their journey ten days before. First, four men carefully removed a crate of composition four military plastic explosive, or “C-4,” from a shelf in the magazine of Naval Station Ingleside. The forty-pound crate was transported slowly via forklift to a special vehicle configured to transport explosives.
An inspector certified the truck safe to transport explosives and ammunition prior to each trip. He verified that the driver was a qualified to drive explosive laden vehicles, possessed the proper documentation, and that the driver’s medical record was up to date.