Frontal Assault

14

The SEALs made it down the river to the Persian Gulf with no more problems, and then on to Kuwait City. The next morning, they had a big breakfast at the air base near Kuwait City before they flew on a COD back to the carrier. There Murdock pigged out on a big steak dinner for lunch, with all the trimmings he could find. At 1300, he and the SEALs were working over their gear in the assembly room, when Stroh boiled in the door, waved at the two officers, and put them down in chairs at the far end of the big room. He told them the problem quickly.

Murdock and Ed DeWitt looked at Stroh with surprise.

“What do you mean, the Navy minesweeper guys don’t know what kind of mines those are across the Strait of Hormuz? They must know, that’s their rice bowl.”

“They’ve been probing the area for the past day and a half while you were playing float down the river. They report that none of their usual testing and search-and-find operations are working.

“They have located a rough line of chunks of serious metal on the strait floor in a rough line spanning the three-mile channel. The metal chunks haven’t been there before, and the specialists say that they must be some kind of mines. They don’t know for sure. There are nine of them. Presumably, there were ten before the tanker went down.

“Incidentally, about half of the oil slick is washing into the Gulf of Oman, and the Southern Iranian coastline will also take a hard hit from the oil pollution. Not much of it burned off.”

“So how did the Navy find the chunks of metal that may be mines?” DeWitt asked.

“The usual metal detection equipment and a batch of other mine identification and neutralization systems on board the mine sweepers.”

“So why don’t they neutralize them?”

“They didn’t say, exactly. I understand that many marine mines are suspended on cables from anchors on the bottom. They hang in the way of ships passing by, and when one is hit, boom, there goes another rubber tree plant. The mine experts on the Ardent and the Dextrous say that these mines are not the hanging variety. Instead, they are down there on the bottom of the strait. That’s from three hundred to three hundred and fifty feet below the surface.

“So they can’t send divers down unless they get a submersible, and that much metal might set off the thing,” Murdock said.

“Now you’re starting to see the problem. Too deep for free diving, no way to shoot a torpedo at the things to detonate them, kind of hog-tied until they figure out exactly how to set the things off without sending another tanker to its grave.”

“These mine countermeasure craft are the ones made out of a lot of wood, right? And they had no trouble moving over and around the nine mines. But one tanker rocked one of them, and it hit and sank the ship. So, how does the bomb get from the bottom, three hundred feet below, and into a tanker?”

“Some kind of cutting-edge electronics and radar and target ID and tracking system?” Ed DeWitt asked.

“Not a chance,” Stroh said. “Our people have ruled out any late-tech stuff. They say the things have to be some sort of torpedo to get from down there up here.”

“So, what kind of a torpedo?”

“Who the hell knows?” Stroh said. “Oh, the Iraqi know, but they don’t return any of my phone calls.”

“Ed, remember those torpedo classes we had to take at the academy? They had some on World War II torpedoes. Not nearly as sophisticated as what we have today. But wasn’t there something about one the Germans developed late in the war but didn’t get to use?”

Ed scowled for a minute. “Yes, some kind of a mine that activated, fired a torpedo that then charged into the ship. Yes, the devices were set on the sea floor. Designed for the North Sea and shelves around British ports. They never got to use them. Two to four hundred feet depth. It fits, but where would Iraq get German torpedoes from World War II?”

Stroh kept nodding. “Yes, yes, yes. It fits. Why don’t we get the Ardent on the phone and talk to them.”

“Stroh, these are the torpedo specialists. They must know all about those German mines and how they work.”

“Know, but maybe they forgot. I’m calling. Don’t go away.”

They got through on the radiophone, and a few minutes later, Murdock was talking with Commander Johnson on the mine sweeper.

“Commander, I know you’ve thought of this, but what you have there sounds a lot like the German torpedo mines they developed near the end of World War II.”

There was a moment of silence. “Keeeeereist. You’re right. The same type of setup. They had them programmed in some hand-wired way with electronics and a kind of target-seeking device we didn’t understand. That fits the parameters. But where the hell would Saddam get German torpedo mines from WW Deuce?”

“That and the fact that they would be nearly fifty-five years old,” Murdock said. “Would they even work?”

Commander Johnson’s hand shook so much he almost dropped the phone. “Now, why didn’t we come up with something like this?”

“You’re too advanced in your field,” Murdock said, laughing. “Hey, I’m just a SEAL hoping I don’t have to dive to three hundred and fifty feet and deactivate nine mines.”

“So how… how did you come up with this?”

“We were just kicking around the problem. All that mine would need is a magnetometer. They’ve been around for a hundred and fifty years. So the Germans would have them. Then the electrical circuits, and a primitive circuit board, some propellant, and you’ve got it.”

“But how would the torpedo track the ship once it gets a big dose of magnetic signature that its system required?”

“Not the slightest, Commander. Unless maybe it has some way to home in on the magnetic source. Some of your people might know. But it isn’t important. All you need to do is ram a high frequency of magnetic force into the strait toward those mines, and they should fire and come to the surface.”

“Sure, and blow up any boat they can find.”

“True. You have something that could send a magnetic signal into the water?”

“Well, we usually don’t do that, but I guess we could. Yeah, possible.”

“Only don’t do it from a ship. Drop a lead into the water from a chopper and send it that way. The little brain inside that mine gets the magnetic signal, it’s large enough to be the right magnetic signature for the firing device to work, and it blasts off and looks for the source of the signal. The thing must have a contact fuse so it couldn’t be set off by a foot-square box.”

Commander Johnson’s voice rose with his excitement. “Yes, yes, it could work. We have a few choppers in the area to launch a missile at the torpedo once it surfaces and starts hunting.”

“Good idea, Commander. I just hope I haven’t upset your whole schedule.”

“Hey, with this we will have a schedule.” The officer paused. “If this works, I want you to be on board when we activate it. This is a rush project. We’ve got over seventy-five tankers lined up on both sides of the strait. Washington says do it today. You’re on the Enterprise?”

“Right, Commander.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“Gent named Stroh. He’s right here.”

“Let me talk to him.”

Two hours later, Murdock and Ed DeWitt stepped off a chopper to the deck of a frigate that roamed an area a mile off the line of mines the minesweepers had located. The frigate’s choppers were refueled and had full loads of missiles ready to go.

Murdock was called to the phone. It was Commander Johnson.

“Sorry, Commander, as close as I can get you. We don’t have landing pads on these mine ships. We’ve been busy. We have our target picked out. In an hour, one of the choppers from your frigate will come over for a wild pickup on a hook and take up a device we’re sure will activate the mines. I’ve talked to the brass and the chopper pilot. He’ll have a fifty-foot lead, drop the device into the water directly over the mine, and broadcast those intense magnetic signals down to the mine. If it doesn’t work, it’s all your fault.” Commander Johnson gave a short, nervous laugh. “Just kidding. You can imagine the intensity of the tension around here.”

“One suggestion, Commander. The mines must have a good pickup range. Why not aim your signals directly between two of them. That way you might get two to take the bait at the same time.”

The line was silent for a moment. “Gawddamned if you ain’t right, Commander. We’ll give it a try. We just had the pickup of the device and we’ll position the chopper.

“We’re about ready to get this moving. We’re about a quarter of a mile off the line of mines, but I don’t think one could sniff us out with a bird dog. The chopper is in position, and we have two other choppers from the frigates working their torpedo-finding gear. Here we go.”

Murdock could see the choppers in the distance. The frigate captain had been ordered to stay at least a mile away.

Murdock put the radio signal on a speaker, and half the ship’s crew listened.

“Okay, we have contact with the water; the device is sending a huge magnetic signal down to that magnetometer that must be in the shell of the mine somewhere. We’ll keep sending for three minutes.”

The energy level of the magnetic signal decayed the deeper it went, but by the time it reached the mine, it was still strong enough to pulse the acoustic diaphragm on top of the mine. The sensitive diaphragm made a small compression in the heavy oil reservoir just beneath it, which moved a piston through a magnetic coil and generated an electrical current in direct proportion to the strength of the sound.

Electrical circuits in the mine studied the frequencies of the energy, judged the fundamental frequencies of the complex waveform to the discrimination standards hardwired into it. The mechanical device determined there was a match. It was a large ship. The device moved on to the next step by determining the strength of the signal to see if the target was close enough. It was.

A relay tripped as all parameters were met for a firing. Power surged into the mine’s firing circuit, first arming the torpedo-shaped charge, then activating a small electric motor, which provided the propulsion. The torpedo shot away from the metal casing that had housed the detection devices for so long, determined the direction of the massive electromagnetic signal, and automatically homed in on it.

Another voice came on the frigate’s speaker.

“Ardent, This is Cover Two. I have a torpedo moving toward my position, still moving. Slow rate of speed. Torpedo approaching the surface, yes, surfacing. I have a visual. I have a missile lock on and firing at the torpedo. It’s on a straight course on the surface. Estimated speed twenty knots.”

Murdock heard the explosion from a mile away and a great geyser of water spouted into the air.

“We have a hit, mine people. Splash one torpedo.”

A great cheer went up on the frigate.

The voice of Commander Johnson came on again. “Now repositioning the chopper between the next two mines. We’re ecstatic here, hope for good results eight more times.”

The next report from the radio came four minutes later. The chopper was in position and had begun sending the magnetic force into the water aimed at the second two mines.

The voice of the chopper pilot came on again. “Yes, frigate and mine ship, we have one, now two torpedoes coming to the surface. They seem to be converging at the point where the chopper is with the array in the water. Still converging. Chopper with the array, get out of there, move it fast, these two torpedoes could converge all the way and seek out each other.”

“Yes, we’re out of there, moving away quickly,” the chopper pilot said.

The next thing they heard was a pair of dramatic explosions that came so quickly they sounded like one. The helo watching the scene was shaken in its flight but did not go down.

“That’s three torpedoes destroyed, Ardent. Are we going for more?”

Before the afternoon was over, the sub-hunting helicopters had destroyed seven of the mine torpedoes with their missiles and two more had triggered at the same time and come to the surface and sought out each other and detonated.

The Ardent and the Dextrous plowed through the Strait of Hormus for an hour, but their sensitive metal detectors could find no more metal on the bottom except the sunken tanker, which was about half a mile toward the Gulf of Oman and in three hundred feet of water, so it posed no transit problem. Neither did they attract any more mines.

Word was passed to all tankers backed up on both sides of the strait that the mines had all been removed. To prove the point, the United States sent through an empty, midsized tanker after giving the captain and owner an ironclad guarantee that if it hit a mine and sank, the U.S. government would replace it. The crew and the watching naval vessels’ personnel held their collective breaths as the big tanker plowed through the strait at twenty knots. When it was well clear, the radio crackled with ships getting permission from home ports to let them transit the strait.

On the helo ride back to the carrier, Murdock asked the pilot what would keep Iraq from planting more mines in the strait.

“Hey, we know what they did, there will be a round-the-clock watch on that strip of the gulf. If we see any size ship messing around in there night or day, it will come under considerable attack.”

Murdock grinned. “Just wondered. Once burned, twice you not gonna get me again, you turkey.” They both laughed.