However, if push came to shove, Rusty would insist, and no CO wants to go against the express wishes of a SEAL commander on the edge of a dangerous mission, probably on orders directly from the White House.
And so they prepared for their final talk together. Spread out before them were the chart and the map. As they pulled on their wet suits in a temperature deliberately turned right down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, they listened to Rusty, who was saying that the ASDV driver would take the vehicle in as far as possible, until the keel touched the sand.
“Right then we’ll move into the dry hatch, one at a time; as soon as it floods, each man will drop straight through. The man with the attack board goes first, then his partner drops through and they move immediately, swimming east, bearing zero-nine-zero, until the water gets too shallow to swim comfortably. The six two-man teams rendezvous in the shallows. They should be around five minutes apart. After that, you know what to do.”
For forty minutes more the SEALs made their final preparations, and at 1750 they began to embark the ASDV, dragging in the gear, each man slipping expertly up through the hatch, finding his allotted seat and placing his equipment in the tight overhead space. The loading took all of half an hour as the SEALs struggled to find a reasonably comfortable position for the two-hour ride inshore in this sturdy 65-foot-long electric submarine.
Down in the control room Lt. Commander Headley had the ship, assisted by the Sonar Officer, Lt. Commander Josh Gandy, and the Navigator, Lt. Shawn Pearson.
“Right now I have us at our destination, sir. That’s 26.36N 56.49E on the GPS.”
“Okay, Lieutenant. Depth?”
“I was just coming to that, sir. We’ve still got plenty of water. I’m showing ninety feet below the keel, and we’re sixty-five feet below the surface right now. You wanna save the battery on the ASDV, I’m certain we could run in maybe another three miles. This chart’s kinda pessimistic about depth.”
“You agree with that, sonar?”
“Yessir. I’m showing total depth right here of just over two hundred feet, and Shawn’s chart gives one hundred seventy. We could certainly go on.”
“Okay…conn-XO. Make your speed eight, steer zero-four-five…depth six five…call out fathometer reading every five feet.”
“Aye, sir. We just saved the ASDV a half hour’s battery each way.”
“Good call, Navigator.”
At which point Commander Reid entered the control room, looking less than thrilled at the way the submarine was being run.
“Did you just countermand my orders, XO?”
“I adjusted our rendezvous point by three miles northeast, sir, because of clear and obvious discrepancies in the chart. We’re still in deep water, and we can save the battery on the ASDV.”
“The battery on the ASDV is not your concern, Lieutenant Commander. What is your concern is a set of orders, issued to us, by the flag, and signed by me as your Commanding Officer. I do not permit leeway in orders such as those.”
“As you wish, sir.” Dan Headley looked bewildered. But he replied with a calm demeanor.
“XO, turn the ship around and return to 26.36N 56.49E. The rendezvous issued by the flag.”
“Sir, with respect, could we not let the guys out right here, a couple of miles nearer their objective?”
“I think you heard me, Lieutenant Commander. Turn this ship around immediately and return to our correct position. I have no desire to take my ship any nearer to the shores of Iran than is absolutely necessary.”
And with that he turned on his heel and walked out of the control room, leaving all three of the ship’s operational officers speechless.
Shawn Pearson spoke first. “Now that, gentlemen,” he said, “was rather interesting.”
“If you meant that the way I think you meant it, I do not want to hear any more,” replied the XO, somewhat severely.
Lieutenant Commander Gandy just shook his head.
And they all felt the slight lurch as USS Shark made an underwater U-turn and began to transport Rusty Bennett’s SEALs away from their target area.
Nonetheless, within 20 minutes they were back on station at 26.36N 56.49E, facing the right way, 17 miles southeast of the Chinese refinery, and the underwater deck crew was wrestling the ASDV out of the flooded shelter and clear of the big submarine’s casing.
Rusty Bennett proved an enormous help to the four-man team, and they shoved the miniature submarine out in near-record time. It was on its way before they blew out the dry-deck shelter, and up in the bow Lt. Brian Sager was conning the little ship in, on instruments only, assisted by his navigator.
Behind them the SEALs were dry but cramped, and they traveled mostly in silence. The journey was made at six knots all the way, and Brian Sager kept on going well beyond their estimated point of departure at 26.45N 56.57E. He pushed on for another mile and a half, just below the surface, until they gently brushed the soft, sandy bottom, less than three miles from the beach. The sonar on the ASDV had picked up no vessel within 10 miles.
It was exactly 1900 and growing dark when Lt. Commander Ray Schaeffer, wearing his wet suit, hood up, goggles and flippers on, Draeger connected, attack board in his left hand, slid down into the dry compartment, ready for the flooding. Three minutes later he dropped through the hatch into the warm waters of the Strait of Hormuz.
Ray stared at the compass, breathed steadily and was grateful that his limpet mine, Draeger and weapons seemed to weigh nothing. He tried not to think of the abrupt difference there would be when they hit the shallows.
Moments later, one rookie combat SEAL, Charlie to his colleagues, knifed downward through the water next to him. Breathing carefully, he placed his right hand on Ray’s wide shoulder. The Lieutenant Commander from Marblehead swung around until the attack board compass told him EAST, and then the two SEALs kicked toward the oil refinery owned by the Republic of China.
The extra distance covered by Lt. Sager meant the swimmers would essentially run aground inside of two miles. And the two lead SEALs kicked and breathed steadily, swimming about nine feet below the surface, covering 10 feet each time they snapped their flippers. After 30 minutes Ray estimated they had covered 1,200 yards, two-thirds of a mile, and right then nothing was hurting.
Behind them on Attack Board Two came Lt. Dan Conway, guiding another rookie; Clouds Nathan swam powerfully five minutes back; then Rob Cafiero, then two rookies, both ace swimmers. Last of all swam the tall Petty Officer from North Carolina, Ryan Combs, both hands on his attack board, leading his rookie, who dragged the machine gun in a special waterproof container, which made it nearly weightless.
The entire operation would have been a thousand percent easier if they had been able to row inshore in a couple of big eight-man inflatables. But senior management at SPECWARCOM had dismissed that as a possibility out of hand…one alert Iranian patrol boat moving through its own waters four miles offshore could, legally, have blown the U.S. Navy SEALs to pieces.
As Admiral Bergstrom had mentioned at the time, “Guess I’d rather have a dozen tired SEALs wallowing around in the surf than twelve dead ones floating faceup in the fucking Strait of Hormuz.”
Ray Schaeffer had sat in on that meeting, and he smiled to himself as he thought of the diabolical difference between planning in an air-conditioned room in Coronado and making a swim like this thousands and thousands of miles from home.
Ray kicked and counted, kicked and counted, keeping his eye on the compass, staying on zero-nine-zero. They’d been going for an hour and a half now, and by Ray’s reckoning that spelled 3,600 yards covered, which was two miles, give or take the length of a submarine. There was a rising moon now, and phosphorescence in the water. He thought he could make out the ocean bottom right below, but he was unsure and he did not want to waste energy, or his precious air, in finding out.