Another voice on the headset: “This is Bahraini Navy patrol craft to LNG Jamal. We are proceeding to your location. Come to full stop. Prepare to be boarded.” Buford checked the tactical plot on his secure wireless laptop. The Bahrainis were about twelve minutes away. Buford was now about two minutes from executing his play.
“Brrrt…. Brrrt….” Buford could hear arms fire and he saw flashes from the Jamal’s bow and port side, but not another antitank missile. Whoever was on board the Jamal, they were firing automatic weapons, trying to keep away frogmen who they assumed would be there. If there had been time, the SEALs would have, in fact, approached the target ship on diver sleds. The shooters seemed to know that.
A starburst flare overhead lit up the night sky, followed by another off the starboard side. The Zodiacs would be clearly seen now, without night-vision devices. Another missile could be coming from the Jamal any moment. The ship seemed huge now as she plowed up the channel toward the Zodiacs at full speed.
“Alpha Three Three, fire at will, repeat, fire at will,” Buford said, and he gave the go sign to his chief. A second later there was a crack, a whoosh of air, a shock of light. The Zodiac bucked like a horse hearing a cherry bomb go off. Then, half a kilometer away, another Zodiac also let loose with a Javelin antitank missile. As soon as they fired, the two Zodiacs began evasive action before anyone on the bow could fire at them. Buford’s Javelin hit the tower of the ship and it lit up like a dry Christmas tree. Then the second Javelin hit and the flames on the conning tower shot higher. If anyone was steering the ship and controlling the speed from the tower, they were now toast. If the SEALs had missed and hit one of the five round gas tanks protruding from the deck, the entire harbor would have been on fire. If the fire on the tower spread, that might still happen. But the book said it wouldn’t spread.
The Jamal continued to move closer and farther up the channel toward the base at high speed. Buford saw the Black Hawk in his peripheral vision and switched to the FAST frequency. “FAST one moving into position for stern assault. Where are my other three birds?”
“Oh Christ,” Buford mouthed over the roar of the Zodiac. His chief signaled back, “What’s wrong?”
Buford yelled into the chief ’s ear above the din of the motors. “The Marine FAST Commander seems to have gotten frustrated waiting for his rides and launched only one squad with the first chopper he could get. Worse yet, he’s going to do a stern rappel just when Alpha Three Two and Three Four are about to shoot out the props on the tanker.”
Buford was only a Navy lieutenant, and the FAST commander was a Marine major, but Buford was going to have to tell his superior officer up there in the Black Hawk that the SEALs, on the Zodiacs coming around behind the tanker, were about to fire rockets at its propellers. If done properly, there was no danger of the ship’s fuel igniting, but there might be a problem for Marines roping down onto the deck above the props.
“FAST-One, this is Alpha Three…” Buford began, when he saw the light jump up from the ship’s deck. Then the Black Hawk exploded into an orange-yellow burst and he could see the fuselage buckle in the middle while the rotors still turned. The men on the Jamal had fired a Stinger missile or Russian SA-14 at the Marines, twelve of whom were now aflame as the Black Hawk fell to the sea.
Buford now heard the thuds from his two Zodiacs attacking the propellers. If they had succeeded in hitting the large propellers, the ship would slow, but its forward momentum would continue to push it up-channel toward the Navy base. He yelled to the chief, “If they are going to blow the LNG, now’s the time they will try to do it. We got to get on board now and stop them.”
“Boarding party, aye, sir,” the chief screamed back.
Buford coordinated with the other Zodiacs so that all four would launch their climbers up different parts of the ship, then pull back to give the climbers covering fire from the machine guns.
As his boat pulled up next to the tanker, that 200 feet to the deck seemed like a mile of steel looming above them, and moving ahead. Buford yelled to three SEALs in his Zodiac, “Pull out the beanstalk.” They brought out a titanium device that looked only 6 feet high, but its two thick poles contained extensions. Buford pressed the launch button, and the poles shot 75 feet into the air. Between the poles, thin, narrow steps made a ladder. Suction cups and magnets on the sides of the poles attached themselves to the tanker. They moved their Jack and the Beanstalk tower so that it hooked onto a scupper on the side of the tanker, then started to ascend, Buford first.
The Zodiac pulled back out, to get an angle where they could take any people on the deck under fire. Normally, the SEALs would have had their own helicopters, Little Birds, with SEALs sitting outside on the landing gear, providing covering fire. Unfortunately, the Little Birds were training on barges out in the Gulf with most of the SEAL team. Buford was left at home to guard the fort, literally.
As the Zodiac moved off from the tanker, Buford was startled by a noise and a motion above. He looked up from the water to see flames from the tales of two Bahraini F-16s as they shot by 500 feet above the sea. He hoped they knew they should do nothing but look good. Then he heard another, more familiar sound: Black Hawks. The rest of the FAST had arrived on three or four more birds, and so far they were not being targeted with Stingers.
Buford quickly switched to the FAST frequency. “FAST Commander, this is Alpha Three One, I have a dozen men climbing up the sides at positions one, two, and six. I need covering fire from your helos. Suggest we put all men on board on one tactical freq. Over.”
“Roger, Alpha, we will rope down into positions three, four, and five. We will fire at the deck near your positions until you get topside,” the Marine in the lead chopper responded, using the numbers that the SEALs and Marines both employed to designate locations on a ship being assaulted from the air or from the sea’s surface. “Alpha, have your men switch to tac freq 198.22, over.”
Buford and his team had climbed the beanstalk, hooked onto the side, and pulled the ladder up behind them. They then fired it up another 75 feet and hooked on. After the second climb of the tower, they shot ropes onto the deck. When the ropes seemed to be securely caught on something on the deck, the SEALs began climbing the last stretch of the steel behemoth.
Buford could hear small-arms fire now. He imagined some terrorist leader inside the ship lighting charges that would explode the five gigantic gas-carrying spheres. Even from here the explosion would create a blast wave and fireball that would kill hundreds at the ASU. Any moment now…
Above it all, Buford heard a siren. Turning, he saw the Bahraini patrol craft charging at full speed up the channel, all lit up and with a blue bubble-gum light blinking on its tower like a highway patrol car. Then he heard someone on the headset saying, “Hovering above the debris of the Defender…No joy…No joy.” They weren’t seeing survivors of the Coast Guard boat.
Machine guns on the Zodiacs and the Black Hawks were now ripping at parts of the deck area of the Jamal where someone might try to shoot at the SEALs as they climbed up the sides or at the Marines, who were about to rappel down ropes onto the ship. “Keep your fire way from the spheres,” Buford heard someone say on his headset.
Then, as the SEALs neared the deck, he heard, “Cease fire, cease fire, only targeted fire on hostiles.” Finally, he was on the deck. The muscles in his forearms burned, his biceps and back throbbed. He had designated the four SEAL assault units of four men each red, blue, green, and gold. He and the three other SEALs from his Zodiac were gold. “This is Gold One. We are on deck,” Buford said, swinging his assault weapon from his back to his right hand. The other SEAL squads soon confirmed that they, too, had made it on deck. Sixteen SEALs were aboard the Jamal. None had been lost in the perilous climb up the side of the ship.