Everyone, involuntarily, held their breath as Lt. Mills eased the ASDV along the southern edge of the shoal. They could hear the tiny click of the sounder, testing the seabed.
Lieutenant Longo’s monologue never stopped…. “We got twelve feet below the keel…make that ten…steady at ten…looks like we got it first time. We need a course of zero-eight-zero.”
Lieutenant Mills: “Zero-eight-zero it is.”
Longo: “Sir, this must be the channel. Suggest we speed up a touch…sounding still steady at ten.”
Five minutes and 300 yards later the ASDV was in 50 feet of water, right in the trench northwest of Thamihla. The Chinese had dredged precisely where the engineers in Coronado had said they would. And Dave Mills again brought the ASDV to periscope depth. Right in front of him the mast slid upward, and he peered through the viewfinder, ranging right, from dead ahead to zero-four-zero. There it was, about a mile off their starboard bow, the light flashing every two seconds on the red can they had imagined so often on the chart.
Slight course change at 15.53N 94.16E on the GPS…come to zero-four-zero through the dredged channel…but we’re in patrolled waters…advise visual every three minutes.
“That Longo. Clever little prick, right?” Lieutenant MacPherson whispered it just loudly enough for the Navigator not to hear.
“Shut up, Dallas,” hissed Rick Hunter. “I’d like to see you doing what he’s doing.”
“Me? Sir, you must be joking. How many times do I need to tell you? I can do it all.”
“As a navigator you’d probably hit it all.”
There was a lot of stifled laughter, which defused some of the tension but not all of it. And the ASDV crept forward through the dark narrow channel, its only “eyes” an occasional look through the periscope. It took them another 40 minutes to move all the way to the north end of the dredged channel, and right at the entrance to the natural deep water they spotted a patrol boat through the periscope.
And it was coming straight toward them, the unmistakable Hainan Type 037 fast-attack patrol boat, heavily gunned, with a phalanx of ASW mortars. This ship is the coastal warhorse of the Chinese Navy. They have a hundred of them, divided among their three fleets. Lieutenant Longo spotted it way up ahead, with its distinctive low freeboard, making 30 knots through the water, with a big white wake astern, almost as if it had nothing to do with the Chinese Naval dockyard off to the west.
Lieutenant Mills whipped down the periscope and took the ASDV as deep as she would go, cutting her speed, and steering left toward the edge of the Haing Gyi Shoal, trying to put a mile of the Bassein Delta between the U.S. SEALs and the oncoming Chinese patrol.
She was not transmitting, but Lt. Mills was taking no chances. He cut the engines and allowed the submarine to drift down and settle on the sandy bottom. And everyone heard the Hainan go charging past.
“You know what I think?” whispered Matt Longo. “I think she was Burmese, coming straight down the estuary from their Naval base up at the city of Bassein, several miles upstream from here. She looked too settled on her course, and she was going too fast, to have just exited the dockyard. And she sure as hell didn’t look like a patrol boat snooping around the deep waters beyond the Chinese jetties. She was in a real hurry.”
Lieutenant Mills started the engine and engaged the shaft. The ASDV moved immediately forward, bumping off the soft bottom, heading northeast again. Another three miles, and they’d be right off the jetties. Thirty minutes from right now, the SEALs’ four hit men would be on their way.
They moved on slowly, transmitting on the fathometer occasionally. At 2250 Lt. Mills slid quietly up to PD for a visual, and there, 500 yards off their port beam, he could see the lights along the jetties. He could also see the shape of one small frigate moored dead astern of a large destroyer.
“Okay, guys,” whispered Longo, “we’re a bit too close. Get out right here. We’re still in the fifty-foot channel. Targets are five hundred yards to our west. Steer course two-eight-five and you’ll come in right against the hulls.”
Rick Hunter came forward to take a visual on the targets. And Lt. Mills decided they could exit on the surface, since there was not a single sound of any ship, radar or even a remote sonar. The dockyard was silent, unsuspecting, as everyone had expected. And of course the little ASDV is dead flat along its upper casing. There is no sail and it’s invisible from 500 yards in dark water, just a jet-black steel tube in the night.
The Lieutenant, already at periscope depth, lowered the mast, quickly pumped out some more ballast. The ASDV rose another five feet, just breaking the calm harbor surface with about one foot of freeboard, and stopped in the water. Lieutenant Mills opened the deck hatch and Catfish Jones, mask on, flippers on, hood up, Draeger connected, a heavy limpet mine harnessed to his back, attack board under his arm, heaved himself up and over, rolling silently into the water without as much as a ripple.
Buster Townsend, similarly equipped, minus the attack board, was next. Then Chief Petty Officer Mike Hook, and finally Commander Hunter. The SEALs sorted themselves out, treading water, heads above the surface, waiting for their adrenaline to die down. Adrenaline eats oxygen. And the wait was frustrating. They were already running at least 20 minutes late. The detonator clocks would be set for 0345 instead of the planned 0330.
Commander Hunter would lead the way, with Mike Hook on his left shoulder. Catfish Jones, his attack board set on course two-eight-five, would swim in right behind them, with Buster’s right hand on his left shoulder. They would not use their arms or hands for the swim, just their legs, kicking the oversized special SEAL flippers every five seconds, covering 120 feet per minute. It would take them around 13 minutes to reach the Chinese warships.
It was 2307 when Rick Hunter, facing east, finally held his attack board out in front of him with both hands. And then the big farm boy from central Kentucky drove himself forward, kicking hard and counting for distance. He was a human torpedo, scheduled to inflict about a billion dollars worth of damage on the People’s Liberation Navy. And Commander Hunter could kick like one of his dad’s stallions. Battleships have left their jetties with less power.
The four SEALs drove forward, the three younger men settling in to their leader’s now-easy pace…kick…one…two…three…four…kick and glide all the way in. After eight minutes, the Commander came to the surface for his last look through the mask. Their course was accurate, and he paddled quietly back down to their regular depth, 14 feet below the surface. They were exactly on schedule, heading for the twin propellers of the destroyer, almost underneath the bow of the frigate.
Five minutes later, they were there, right under the shafts, in the shadow of the stern, and Rick signaled them to wait while he went deep to check the distance the keel floated above the harbor floor. As he suspected, it was only about three feet. This meant he and Buster would swim from the stern to the halfway point of the 500-foot-long ship, just about two minutes at 12 kicks every 60 seconds. Then Buster would swim right under the keel and place his mine exactly opposite Rick’s. The subsquent detonation would hopefully break the back of the Chinese destroyer.
Catfish and Mike had only 60 yards to swim, which translated into 18 kicks, each taking them 10 feet, at which point they too would be just about halfway along the hull. Then Mike Hook would swim right under the keel and place his charge. Swimming under a hull is a nerve-wracking business when it’s tight, as this most certainly was. But they were on a rising tide, which was lifting the ship higher, and that’s a lot less stressful than a falling one.