Archeology and Espionage
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I don't own Castle, Beckett, Nikki Heat, the Middle East…but you know that. Rating: K Time: in the near future after the story The Treasure of the Penelope.
The trip down to the Tsunami was relatively quick and Rick went in through the lockout chamber and into the sub. He found Chief Brown waiting for him.
Aboard USS Tsunami
"Welcome aboard the United States Special Forces Ship Tsunami, sir."
Rick started laughing. The crew were all wearing green berets.
"Where did you get those?" He asked.
"Chef Jimmy had some green napkins, and the Saudi ladies know how to sew, and now we're all green berets, sir."
'Okay, let's go look around. Have you seen anything in the last couple of days?"
"Less and less, sir. Usually, the Red Sea is bumper to bumper, so to speak, with cargo ships headed to or from the Suez Canal. Since things got interesting, there's hardly any traffic. We picked up radar from a surface ship, probably an Egyptian frigate and we got sonar from a submarine. Our sonar library IDed it as Israeli. Probably headed for the Arabian Sea to shoot at the Iranians. Their version of a boomer, sir. Um, a guided missile sub."
"Anything else."
"More radio chatter than you'd normally hear, but less in the last day or so. I think that means everyone has their orders and are just waiting for the word "Go."."
"Okay, let's go look in on the Chinese. The EW vans on the Helen of Troy have picked up very little radio chatter, but their radars are going non-stop."
They arrived at the edge of Sudanese territorial waters well after dark.
"We're picking up something on passive sonar, Colonel. Probably an old Chinese Type 056 corvette they gave to the Sudanese Navy. He's going at maximum speed, about 25 knots, which means his engines and screws are making so much noise his sonar couldn't detect anything. I want to take a look at him."
Rick nodded and the ship came to periscope depth.
"I was right. Want to take a look, sir?"
Rick looked through the periscope but saw little but a grey blur in the dark.
"You can get a better view from the computer monitor, sir. The periscope is rigged with both night vision and thermal imaging and it feeds into the ship's computer."
Rick looked at the image. He could more clearly see the ship.
"What the hell is he doing running around like that?"
Brown shrugged.
"I'm betting the Chinese sent him out to attract any missiles headed towards them. Cheery bastards,"
"Do we have a location on the Iranian vessels?" Rick asked.
"Not too far south of here, sir. We'll give them a look-see."
The large Bandar Abbas class ship was anchored not too far outside of Saudi territorial waters. The Iranian frigate was moving slowly around the anchored ship.
"Maybe waiting for orders?" Rick guessed.
They were interrupted by the radar tech.
"I think the shit is about to hit the fan. We've got nothing on radar, sir."
"Nothing?" Rick said.
"We're being jammed. Jammed worse than I've ever seen. Seems to be coming from the Saudi side. I'm betting there's a whole bunch of warplanes or missiles behind the jamming, raring to go."
"We'd better take her down. I know missiles are supposed to be smart, but one could lock onto our radar mast, snorkel and periscope and ruin our whole day. We'll move to the west and put fifty fathoms of water between us and trouble."
As the sub nosed down, the sonar tech called out.
"Both ships are getting ready to move. The Bandar Abbas is just getting under way and the frigate is powering up."
"Do we have any offensive weapons, Chief?" Rick asked.
"No, sir. We were built to take SEALs farther and faster than swimmer delivery vehicles could. Adding torpedo tubes, torpedoes, fire control and a lot of other stuff wouldn't leave enough room for people, unless you made the ship a lot larger. The Navy has attack subs for that."
After about ten minutes, they could clearly hear explosions above them.
"I counted five explosions." Rick said.
Brown was about to respond when there were three more explosions.
"Engines have stopped." The sonar tech said. "I can hear sounds like a ship breaking up. Shit. Something crunched."
"Crunched?" Rick asked.
"Airtight compartments on a warship will collapse when the water pressure outside gets to be too much. Crunched." Brown said.
"I don't hear anything topside." The sonar operator said.
Brown thought for a second.
"We'll give it ten minutes, then we'll come to periscope depth. We're several miles away from them now."
The periscope showed one large ship, burning, in the distance.
"The frigate must have been the one to go down. I'm betting someone will send an airplane or a drone to look things over after dawn. We'll stay submerged until well after that."
They waited for several hours, then came to periscope depth. Both the radar and the sonar showed no sign of anything above them. Brown checked things through the periscope.
"Nobody home. We didn't hear any sounds indicating the other ship went down. Doesn't mean she didn't, but she's probably afloat somewhere. Or maybe run ashore."
"What now?" Rick asked.
"We'll contact the Site and see what happened."
What had happened was what they had thought was happening. The US led coalition had attacked Iranian and Iranian allied forces all over the Middle East, including in the Red Sea.
Lieutenant Commander Borghese told them what was happening locally, and it wasn't good news.
"The Bandar Abbas class ship, now IDed as Booshehr, managed to beach itself about fifty miles south of here. They landed both sailors and commandoes from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, maybe fifty or sixty people all told. Colonel Nayef has been ordered to go after them and we've been ordered to go along. But, everyone has all of their airlift assets tied up elsewhere. It'll be tomorrow at least before we get anything. In the meantime, CWO Wozniak took his two birds out to look around. He said it looks like the Iranians are trying to remove whatever ammo, weapons and supplies they can from the wrecked ship."
"Okay, tell Wozniak to keep an eye on them and we'll be back ASAP. What about the archeologists?"
"Everyone's okay and they're all on the Helen of Troy. If anything happens here, we'll send them north to Jeddah. There's a Saudi Base there."
"Did the Chinese or Sudanese do anything?" Rick asked.
"Nothing at all. The area the missiles were fired from was shot up, but aside from some small arms fire from the ground, nothing happened."
It was night when Tsunami pulled into the Site, after running all the way back on the surface at the ship's top speed. Rick was glad to see the Helen of Troy was still there.
Aboard Helen of Troy.
"Are you okay?"
Kate laughed.
"You're the Special Forces soldier always going downrange. Shouldn't I be asking you that?"
"That tells me you're fine."
"It's been as quiet here as could be. What happened on the Tsunami?"
Rick told her what had happened and that he'd never been in any danger.
"I don't quite believe the part about never in danger." She said. "But I won't argue with you."
"I hate to say this, but I have to get to work. Where's Wozniak?"
"He's arming the helicopters on the flight deck."
Rick headed there and found Wozniak, his people and volunteers from the military, the Helen of Troy's crew and archeologists hard at work. Wozniak was swearing a blue streak.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Colonel. Whoever loaded our weapons and other shit must have been drunken, blind orangutangs. Everything I need is under something I don't need, I've got stuff I haven't found yet that I damned well know is here 'cause I saw it myself, and don't get me started on…"
"When will you be ready to fly a mission?" Rick cut in.
"Give me four hours, sir. And I'll have Agony Zero One ready to fly an armed mission. As you can see, I sent Agony Zero Two out to look over the jihadis. I sent Lieutenant Graham with Oblansky and told both of them not to get close enough to ding one of my birds. Once I get all of this shit organized, it'll only take an additional hour to get Agony Zero Two ready. We can shoot them up while it's still dark and come back."
"Heard anything about when lift birds will be coming?" Rick asked.
"Colonel Nayef, Lieutenant Commander Borghese and Captain Fellowes have all been calling their chains of command asking for more birds. All I've heard is that we gotta be patient. Appears there's something like a war going on."
"Okay, I'll check with them. You need anything, let me know."
"I just gotta find that orangutang, sir." Wozniak muttered.
Rick talked to Nayef, Borghese and Fellowes. All they could say was that higher headquarters hoped to get a company sized lift to them tomorrow.
An hour later, Agony Zero Two returned without so much as a scratch on her. Warrant Officer Oblansky debriefed Rick and the others.
"They've got more people off the ship, but not that many and they ain't gonna be much use. They're wounded and injured. A few were carried to their perimeter so I guess they're not mobile but can still shoot. There's maybe six or eight that are under a canvas awning they've rigged. They must be wounded that are too bad off to be any help. We got shot at a couple of times, just small arms fire, but I didn't see any anti-aircraft weapons of any sort. I know their ship had some, but it looks like that all got trashed."
"Any idea what they have in mind?" Rick asked.
"I talked to Colonel Nayef earlier. There isn't shit for miles and miles. Yemen is too far away to walk, even if they leave the wounded behind and there's nothing in Saudi they can reach either."
Rick thought for a moment.
"Wozniak, do you have room for an observer in your birds? Colonel Nayef and I are going to be assaulting the place and I'd like us to get a good look for myself and I'm sure the Colonel will as well."
Wozniak ran his hand along his jaw and thought.
"Yeah. One of you in each bird. Luckily, we're not too far away from the bastards, so a little extra weight won't cut our range too much."
"Okay, get to work."
The MH 16 had replaced the Special Forces MH 06 Little Bird helicopters. It wasn't much bigger than its predecessor, but it was faster, a bit longer ranged and could carry a heavier payload. It had contrarotating rotors and a pusher propellor in the rear. Stripped of weapons, they could be fitted with exterior benches to carry troops.
Aboard Agony Zero One.
Rick was wedged behind the two pilots between a radio on one side and a fire control system on the other. He was wearing a fireproof Nomex flight suit, a flak vest and night vision goggles. He was also very, very uncomfortable.
He leaned as far forward as he could being stopped by a jury-rigged seat belt.
"How far?"
"We're eleven minutes out, sir." Wozniak said. "I wish they'd sent us some heavier weapons, but what we have should be enough."
Rick thought about that.
"We have 70mm laser guided rockets and a 7.62 mm minigun. It's not like we're going after tanks or something, is it?"
Wozniak laughed.
"I've been at this a while, Colonel. I always want more and bigger weapons. But the jihadis have had a chance to dig in and build sangars out of the local rocks. We'll just see what happens."
The minutes passed rapidly and they were soon at the area where the Iranians had dug in. Both birds stayed up out of small arms range to check the area.
"I don't see anything." Rick said.
"Oh, they're there, all right." Wozniak pointed to his left. "There's a sangar. And another. Agony Zero Two and I are going to attack in a figure eight configuration. That way is some jihadi sticks his head up to fire at one of us as we go past him, the other bird can shoot his ass up."
Wozniak spent a brief time coordinating with Agony Zero Two.
"Hang on, Colonel. Here we go."
TBC