“No. You didn’t. I didn’t. You’ll see now. If you can see the harbor from where you are, go look.” He disconnected and began driving again, more carefully, to the hospital.
Kate was at a bar on the Corniche. She looked around. Across the street and a block away was the Banc Bahrain Tower office block. She ran for it. Darting across the street, she walked into the lobby and noticed a sign for an express elevator to the “Top of the Corniche.” Minutes later, stepping out of the elevator fifty-three stories up, Kate Delmarco ran into the rooftop bar, walked to a window, and scanned the horizon.
“Wanna borra dees, miss?” the bartender said in some version of English as he thrust a pair of Nokia binoculars across the counter. “Your ship coming, yes?”
The klaxon finally stopped.
“… assume Force Protection Condition Threatcon Delta, repeat, Threatcon Delta…” a voice of God said from seemingly everywhere on base. Marines poured out of the security barracks, throwing on flak jackets and carrying M16s. Humvees with blue lights blinking moved down the middle of the street toward the main gate.
At the SEAL dock, Lieutenant Shane Buford was on the red Alert Phone to the COMNAVCENT Operations Center on the other side of the base. “It will be hard to coordinate with the Marines’ helos, Commander, if we move this fast….Aye, aye, sir.” Bufordlooked at his chief, a seasoned, gnarled enlisted man with twice as many years in as Buford. “Chief, launch all three boats. We are to marry up with the duty boat and move toward the channel and…get this… board the LNG tanker Jamal near the R-12 buoy.
“We are to presume the LNG may have been seized by heavily armed men who may have explosives. The Marine FAST, if it can get going, may rappel from Black Hawks onto the deck, simultaneously with our assault if possible. And”—the young SEAL shook his head—“this is no drill.”
Eighteen SEALs ran down the dock into the Zodiacs. Each boat was rigged with three heavy machine guns. The lines were untied and the boats away in seconds. Moving abreast, the Zodiacs cut through the water off the Navy base into the channel. Buford looked
back at the gray hulls tied up in the main dock area. He saw the tower of an Aegis-class destroyer, the masts of two minesweepers, the big mass of a munitions resupply and under-way replenishment ship. Three littoral patrol craft were tied up to one another at the end of one pier.
It was dinnertime and many of the base personnel who lived “on the economy” were in private apartments nearby, but at least four thousand Americans were in the ASU at the moment. Another two thousand were probably within a few kilometers, within the blast radius if the LNG tanker went up.
The Zodiacs were speeding through the main shipping channel now, and Buford was monitoring several frequencies on his headset. His call sign was Alpha Three One.
“Alpha Three One, be advised harbormaster reports suspicious responses to his hails to LNG Jamal. Bahraini navy patrol craft is getting under way from Juffair East.”
And another voice: “ASU Ops, this is Coast Guard D342. We are about three klicks from R-12, have subject vessel in sight. She is proceeding east at eight knots.” Years ago the Coast Guard had sent a maritime safety and security team to help the Navy patrol Bahrain harbor. They were still there and drove 25-foot Defender-class boats designed for harbor-security missions.
In each of the three Zodiacs, the chiefs were going over the rules of engagement with the teams: “Possibly heavily armed men, possibly explosives, but we are not sure, so do not pop some Japanese merchant marine guy without identifying him hostile.”
The fourth SEAL Zodiac, the duty boat, had been patrolling to the west of the ASU and could now be seen speeding to rendezvous with the three alert boats. Buford hailed it on a tactical frequency: “Alpha Three Four, you will team with Alpha Three Three and move down the port side of the target vessel.” As he said that, he realized that they would have none of the tactical surprise that they normally counted on when storming a ship. The sun had just set, but there was still enough ambient light from the city and the refinery that they were not exactly operating in the dark that they normally used to protect them. Buford’s laptop, which he had strapped to the deck, beeped, and he looked down to see a new PDF file with the deck plans of the LNG Jamal. They had just been sent to him from the N-2 at the base.
“ASU Ops, this is Coast Guard Delta 342, subject vessel is turning toward the Juffair Channel and making wake. We will close in three mikes. What are our orders?”
There was a pause before the ASU Operations Center answered the Coast Guard Defender boat. Then, “Roger, 342, you are to hail the target ship on radio, with lights, flares, and loudspeakers. Advise them they are entering into a restricted area and must reverse at full speed. After they clear the zone, tell them that you want to board. Do you have a Bahraini officer for boarding?”
The Defender, like all the Coast Guard boats and ships in the region, typically carried a host country rider, who had the legal authority of the sovereign state in whose waters they sailed. With him on board, they could enforce local laws and come aboard any vessel without permission from the ship’s master.
Buford could now see the orange Coast Guard Defender boat two kilometers out ahead, but the tanker had to be running with few lights. He could not make out the huge ship with his binoculars, so he raised the night-vision glasses from his belt. In the green light of the glasses, at the distant setting, the big LNG tanker, with its spherical containers, was clear. It was now heading straight up the Juffair Channel toward the ASU. A bright light erupting in the nightvision glasses forced him to pull them quickly away from his eyes.
“Coasties are shooting up flares at her,” the chief said. “She has stopped talking to the harbormaster, ignoring his hails.”
Buford switched to the Coast Guard frequency and heard in English, “LNG Jamal, LNG Jamal, this is the United States Coast Guard. You are entering a restricted area. Switch to reverse full power. Repeat…”
He saw it come from the bow of the tanker, a flash there and then a line of light shooting forward in front of the tanker, then… a ball of fire where the Coast Guard Defender had been and a thud and a crackling sound moving across the water. Someone on the Jamal had fired a heavy, man-portable antitank weapon at the Defender, which had exploded, sending flaming pieces up into the sky and sideways to the right and left.
“Alpha Three One to all Alpha patrol boats, target is hostile, repeat, target is hostile,” Buford called into his headset. “Change of plans. Implement Redskins Blue Two, repeat Redskins Blue Two. Alpha Three, join me at point; Two and Four, play stopper.” Buford called out a prearranged maneuver from the SEALs’ playbook, just as he had called plays as the Springfield High quarterback seven years earlier.
The Zodiacs were running full out, without lights, changing their patterns repeatedly to avoid being targeted the way the Coasties had been, by a gunner with night-vision devices on the bow of the Jamal.
Buford heard the Marines’ Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security team commander on another frequency. “Where the fuck are the Black Hawks? My team is ready for pickup.” Probably as many as thirty-six Marines were suited up in body armor and waiting at the ASU landing zone for the ride that would take them to points above the deck of the target ship. The plan was that, as the helicopters hovered in the dark, the Marines would rope down onto the ship. It was only slightly more crazy than what Buford planned to do with the SEALs at some point tonight, which was to launch rope rockets onto the ship and then climb up special ladders onto the deck, 200 feet above the sea.