[cawest]

Chapter 4 reinforcement and heavy recovery.

Colonel Thomas the head of ISA was in his office again talking with LCDR Denise Moore. “Rick passed me some information. It would seem that there are some groups that are wondering what Richard is up to.”

Denise made a sour face. “First thing, Rick is a criminal, and half full of crap most of the time. So, I hope that you didn’t pay too much for that bit of information.”

Teddy had to snort at what the redhead had just said. “You’re right… mostly. But not about the people looking at Richard and looked to be that they are out to kill him. Or maybe it is that they are not out to kill him….. currently. We know that the South Africans, French, and even some of the staff of CENTCOM have heard about our boy. But word on the street has it that Richard’s reputation is rising in the world stage, but not as high as you have.”

Denise gave Teddy the single finger salute with flare, but he let it roll off his back. “I also was told to pass along a thank you for helping the Parche and staying with her to escort her into the harbor. That engine trouble could have ended her, and “we” don’t have many of them left. Also, the CENTCOM commander sent an official note of thanks for your records.”

Denise picked up her chin a little at the praise. “I was out looking for that pirate sub and found her. She is just lucky that I didn’t put her down thinking that she was who I was looking for. Did they say why they were out that way in the first place?” She was not going to say how surprised she and her crew had been to find out that the USN still had working submarines much less one that was operating in the Indian Ocean.

Teddy took a sip from a beer bottle that was still cold enough to be still sweating on his desktop. “Because I am part of the ISA they can talk to me a little more than the average bear. The USS Parche is a Sturgeon class SSN, and most people don’t know this, but she is a spy boat complete with her own assigned SEAL team. So, she is just not your run of the mill attack boat. She had been in and around the Persian Gulf keeping eyes on some radical elements that seem to be taking root there. Then CENTCOM got word of our little pirate submarine issue that we had been chasing for the last two years. They put that together with things they had been hearing on their side of the world, and off she went.”

The pirate sub had been Denise’s white whale for some time now. Teddy knew this and would keep his ear to the ground for her so that it would be Denise’s kill. “They were using what was left of the SEAL team to check out what might be on some of those islands that no one has been able to put under any kind of control. They didn’t go into details, but the sub’s commander was pointed to the Gulf of Aden to start looking. They found the Glafkos from the Hellenic Navy off an island near Yemen and put a torpedo in her, but they don’t know if she was the one that we all are looking for. Still her SEAL team had been looking around and they think that she is the one or one of the pirate subs causing all of the trouble. The subs crew and team were very happy to get some time off this far from the Russians.” Teddy’s face looked a little sour for some reason.

Now it was time for Denise to snort. “Yea, I heard that Rick’s Nightclub is going to be closed for a few days for repairs after the first night they were in port. I don’t remember the last time a brawl did enough damage to shut it down for more than a few hours.”

Teddy gives the naval officer a level look. “Yea, and they are going to be on R&R for the next week, so God help the bar district. And before you get “that” idea in your head. You’re on call for the next two weeks. We cannot afford for you to be out of commission for any reason. If we need to send even more support down to Richard? you will be the one leading it.”

##

It was five days later that a pair of large rust-stained grey painted ships came over the western horizon. The Savior, much less the LCU didn’t have radar of anything of the like at least one that was good for anything but navigation. It was not like anyone thought about putting something like that on them before the war, and after the war had started. Well, by then there were other things that were more important that needed Radars than the LCU. After The Thanksgiving Day massacre of 1997, there were not going to be any spare parts being made, much less brand-new Radar sets filling the supply chains of the US military.

The two different groups of ships could have used the powerful radios built and maintained within their hulls to keep track of each other, but these were not the friendliest of waters on the planet to be using radios in that way. Even if you were using encryption, and that kind of thing was getting harder and harder to keep up as the supporting system aged. Besides direction finding was a thing that dated back to the earliest days of Radios. After Richard’s contact with home base and the required check ins, his pair of ships had gone back to only listening mode on all of the powerful radios the two ships carried. That didn’t mean that shorter ranged radios were not used to keep the operation going, only anything of real power that could be heard over the curvature of the Earth was not used unless it was a dire emergency.

###

Captain Horace Blackwood scanned the eastern horizon as his ship “raced” along at a dozen knots through the short waves of the deep ocean. He was not happy about having to pull out of the South African harbor so fast. The whole idea for his mission had been to set up closer ties with the South Africans by sending a shipment of oil and fuel for trade. He was to have picked up two rebuilt tanks, two G-6’s self-propelled artillery systems, and a mixed bag of five APCs of a type he didn’t recognize that the ground forces in Kenya could use.

The ground forces in Kenya needed those heavy weapons, but Blackwood thought that they could be sent to support the RDF fighting in Iran against the Soviets. Now those heavy weapons would be taken in South African flagged hulls, at a very high cost to Mombasa, and at the best case it would take a few more months to get to the warfighters. All so he could “help” and upstart army officer in recovering “something” from the ocean. His ship had been “forced” to carry that damn LCU most of the way from Mombasa to this part of the Indian ocean, so that they could do some exploring while his ship did the real work in South Africa. If those updated orders had not been signed by the head of naval forces in Africa, he would have told them to bugger off while he loaded those cargos for shipment back to Mombasa.

Horace soon saw the two small craft on his ship’s radar two hours before his lookouts saw them on the horizon as dark dots with a light sky behind them. He had first tried to refocus his handheld binoculars to see them, before giving up and walking over to the bridge wing and using the pair of big boys fixed mounted there. It still took him a few tries to find what he was looking for through those metal and glass tubes almost longer than his arm.

After doing some fine tuning on the focus. Captain Horace Blackwood almost shoved his head into the huge binoculars fixed mounted on the wings of his ship in surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned. They did find something.” He could see what looked like four shipping containers in the well deck of the LCU from his higher position over the wave tops. And he knew that those TEUs had not been on that vessel when they had last parted ways a few days ago.

No one was around the captain, but when he returned to the bridge of the Newport class LST, he had a slight smile on his face. “Drop our speed and contact the Savior and ask them where they want us. I think we are about to help recover some very heavy items in the next few days.” He had no idea that his chief boson saw the slight smile before the top Naval officer on this ship removed it.

Captain Blackwood could not believe that he was saying those words. He still thought they were only going to be recovering junk that this army officer had found. It was not like they were going to find any new heavy weapons for the US Armed forces…. well outside of South Africa or France. He still was not happy with not picking up those heavy weapons he was at first asked to pick up. He was already planning out his post mission brief and pointing out that leaving those combat vehicles behind on short notice was a bad idea and a waste of “his” ship’s valuable time.

The tone that the LST’s Captain had used was light, and more than one of the six other people on the bridge gave the captain a side long look. The Captain didn’t say too much more, and he spent most of his time looking at the two other ships through his field glasses as they got closer. The rest of the crew went to work, and a call was sent down to the main well deck of the LST to let them know that they were about to be doing some very odd work. Doing some odd work was nothing new for any members of this ship’s crew, after all it was World War 3.

Three hours later, the Boulder had her old long hull sitting at anchor right where the Savior and the Patriot told her to be down to the meter. The last thing they wanted was to drop a tens of tons of armor called an anchor onto the sunken wreck they were working on or do something that would make the divers’ job any harder. That was some amazing bit of navigation in the time without GPS working, and they only had some outdated paper maps to guide them. The other ship with the Bolder was a counter mine boat, and she was setting out of the way of the working boats but not at anchor. She was fully manned with all four of her 50 caliber machine guns ready for action at a second’s notice. Getting the Boulder in place had been the most time consuming of the operation, and it had stressed the whole bridge crew on three of the vessels doing that job. That it would look bad on his evaluation, was what worried the navigator on the LST the most.

While Captain Blackwood fumed at the delay in getting his ship set at anchor. He saw a small, almost lifeboat sized power boat leave the side of the Safeguard class vessel and it made its way towards the Landing Ship Tank. After checking to make sure that he knew who was coming over to his ship, Blackwood exited the bridge to go to his day cabin/office. He was expecting this to be an interesting meeting with what was about to be his boss. At the thought that some jumped up grunt was going to be his boss, Blackwood almost tripped down the ladder.

###

Richard was led into a cabin that was within the superstructure of the LST about a third the way down from the forward sweeping heavy crane. Richard was not “in uniform” of the US Army, much less being in one that was connected with the US Navy. He just didn’t have time for those types of games, and Richard didn’t care about those that cared about such things if the truth was told. Still Richard was smart enough, and he had been around the world enough, to know that he did not want to bend this ship’s commander the wrong way. At least Richard needed to not go out of his way to upset the naval officers, at least as long as the same said officer was with the game plan to get the assigned job done. If he was going to risk the mission, this navy officer was going to be bent, broken, sore, and tired when Richard was done with him.

Richard was surprised that the cabin he was brought to by the senior enlisted person on the ship was not the ship’s commander’s main room. Richard knew that on this class of ship it was the office nearest the bridge of this vessel. That knowledge was thanks to him talking with a lot of navy people over the last few years while on duty and in the port bars. Richard thought that this was a good sign that they would not have to start with some dick measuring contests right off the bat. Another mark in the plus column of Richards was that the Chief Petty officer followed Richard into the room and closed the hatch behind him after entering this room. That spoke to his inner NCO.

Captain Blackwood was sitting behind his desk and waited until Richard was in the room and the hatch was closed behind him before speaking. “Good to see you Mr. Mtendere. I can say that I was surprised to get the word to come out this way so soon. I knew it was in our orders, but I must say that I didn’t expect them to be exercised……… much less so soon after we had arrived at our main port of call for what was listed as being our primary mission. I knew about your reputation….. for let’s call it finding diamonds in the oddest places.”

Blackwood stopped talking and waited for Richard to say something, but he was disappointed when the other man didn’t go for the bait. “I did see the shipping containers on the LCU when we approached. I take it that there might be more to recover from the shipwreck under my hull. Would you please give me a rundown of the current situation?”

The naval officer was more than half expecting that they were to recover those shipping vans and the LCU before heading back to Kenya. It was only thanks to his training that he didn’t lead with what he thought was the most likely course of action. If you were a lower ranked officer than leading with the most dangerous action was trained into you. Only after that did you talk about the most likely… especially if the later was against what your commander wanted.

Richard took a seat and noticed that the CPO of this ship took another seat to his front, but it was off to one side of the LST’s commander. Richard was going to start with something the Navy officer could not see before he got to the good part. “No problem, Captain Blackwood. But please call me Richard, I think that it will keep some of the confusion down. As for the wreck. We have already opened up all of the cargo holds on the ship, and then my divers covered them with some old cargo nets that we brought or recovered off part of the ship we have explored. We are currently using those nets for two functions on this mission. One is to keep anything from floating out of the now open cargo holds. All of the deck cargo that this ship was supposed to have been carrying is gone, but we have found some TEU’s that had enough air to let them float around in a cargo hold at the most inopportune time. We also are using some of the nets to keep the local population of sharks out of the now fully opened cargo holds. I understand it is very unnerving to come face to face with a bull shark in the darkness of those compartments.” Richard didn’t laugh, but by now some of the divers were joking about that in a gallows humor kind of thing while they waited in the depressurization tank between dives.

Blackwood made a sour face at what the other man had said. “I saw the containers on the LCU. Even if they were floating, the stuff inside is going to be just a load of wet and salt-soaked crap.”

Blackwood was still thinking that this was a waste of time, but then again metal was metal. The few Iron and other mines still in operation were not producing what they had done before the war had started. If they could get this metal to a few of the operational smelters in Kenya or even down to the ones in South Africa? It could be recast into some of the things that the war needed. Still, it was a lot of effort for very little current pay out.

Richard let a smile come to his face at seeing the look, and he was having a good idea what the other man was thinking. “Maybe, but I was told to recover any floating cargo containers by the head of NAVAFRICOM in person. We have found seven of them already, but we have run out of room on the LCU for anymore. There could have been more floating TEUs a few months ago, but the air finished leaking out of them before we got here. My divers report that they are spread out all over the place in each of the cargo holds like pick up sticks from hell.”

Richard shifted in his chair and went into command mode. “Now what I’m going to do, is send over the LCU where your aft crane can reach it. It is to lift what we found to date and put them on your helo deck. If you have the people with the right skills? Go ahead and pop the TEUs open and see what we found and start getting the salt water and muck cleaned off of them.”

Richard could see the shocked look coming from the naval officer before the face went blank at the orders he had just been given. “I have four deep sea divers and another dozen that are “civilian scuba” divers. Besides the TEUs we have seen. It’s so dark down there, and everything is covered in that shipping shrink wrap that the divers can only tell size as small, medium, large, and holy shit batman. The Captain on the Savior thinks that we can pull two loads up at a time with the teams at their current level of training.”

Richard was on a roll, and he powered threw the “stone face” being given by the navy man. “The largest targets will be pulled up by your crew, and the small or lighter ones will be pulled up by the LCU with support from the Savior. This is something that we broke the code on while waiting for your ship. When the LCU is full or at max weight? We will either move some of that lighter stuff over to your ship, or just have both ships focus on filling your boat. I am up in the air on this until we know more about what we can pull up from the wreck.”

Blackwood lost control of his face, and it had just had a frown that was getting deeper and deeper as Richard had spoken in that tone that should not be coming from a jumped-up army NCO. Finely he had enough. “Why……are we wasting all this effort? That stuff has been submerged in salt water for almost two years! It’s going to be worthless, so why should I risk my crew to support “your” plan?” He started drumming the desk with three fingers on one hand and one of those fingers held his gold academy ring on display.

Richard didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and he was as still as ice. He was thinking about being friendly to help smooth along this working relationship, then changed his mind. The other man had not even addressed Richard by his rank or the honorific of Major that was how you kept there from being two captains on one ship. “Because you were ordered to do so by people above both of our pay grades. Second? It is that we need that “stuff” as you called it, but I think you meant to say trash. Now I learned when I helped recover the Looking, you know that destroyer protecting your base back in Mombasa. It was that the Kenyan people are great at repairing the things we are fighting this war with, but it takes time, and they need items that we cannot get from home to speed up this process.”

Richard had to fight to make his voice get a little softer and not the sharp tone he had just used. “I also just happen to know from firsthand experience, that a suspension system for the Marine AAVP can handle the salt water without too many issues. I also know that our Marine battle groups can use more of them or just parts to get others back into service. Even if it is a wreck on the inside, and only the outer hull of an AAVP is sound? That hulk would help get a few other AAVP’s back into combat for the Marines that your LST was designed to support. If you have enough money, time, and manpower? They can repair almost any bullet, fire damaged, and sea waterlog wiring harness that you can think of. I know! I have seen them do it more than once. How do you think they had gotten that frigate without a bow powered back up, when she made it back to port after that sub hit her with that torp?”

Blackwood had to admit, the other man had made a point. He knew that AAVP’s could handle salt water, he launched them a hundred times. And as a navy man, Blackwood knew how badly the Lockwood had been hit and how much had been repaired to get her ready for Harbor defense. “Okay Richard, you have a point. Now what do we do next?” He was not going to use the officer’s rank that some piece of paper had said was his due. The only real officers were ones that had come out of the US military academies.

###

Later that night Captain Blackwood was still in his day cabin. He only looked up when this CPO walked into the cabin. “Hey, Boats. How goes the waste of time?”

The Chief Petty Officer had been with this captain even before this war had started. “Better than you would think. We pulled those four shipping containers up and put some of them on the old helo deck, and then we sent the LCU back to set up with the Savior.”

When the old NCO saw the look coming from the old man, he clarified. “We couldn’t get them all to fit on the helo deck, so some are still on the LCU. That would be too much weight for the Helo deck to handle. It’s only rated for a fully loaded, fueled, and crewed CH-46. We only have two of the 52 footers there, and the other 20- and 52-footer are tied down between the funnels and in open air. We have all of them open. Most of the water had drained out while they were still sitting on the LCU, but they still had a few inches of sea water in each of them when we popped the hatches.” He didn’t have to say that the NCO had made sure that someone would be cleaning up that mess when the sea water had come out of those containers.

Blackwood took it all in. “Well how much is just going to be thrown over the side to save room or to keep the smell from killing someone in the well deck?”

The Chief gave the other man a level look. “I don’t think any of it will be dumped over the side, at least not on my order. The small 20-footer was filled with small arms ammo, and they are in multiple layers of air and watertight wrapping that seems to have held up. I would be surprised if more than 10 percent is not salvageable in some way. I was checking on the other 52-footer when you called, and I have teams power washing the tires, track pads, and tank tracks with freshish non salt water as we speak. I didn’t have time to look that closely at the other two containers, but “our” boss is going to be very happy with us just from what I have seen so far.”

Blackwood could not help but blink his eyes rapidly as his brain processed the data that the ship’s most senior NCO had just told him. If his chief of the boat was happy and was right, maybe this was going to be worth their time after all. It also made him wonder if he was going to have to send that coded message sitting in his private safe. “Okay Boats. I know you did something like this before. You’re in charge of the deck gang and any person that you feel might be halfway useful for these tasks. If anyone gives you grief, call me, and I will take care of them. I know that the Starboard double funnel needs cleaning if anyone gets underfoot if you have to many looky lus.”

The senior CPO gave a knowing smile to the captain of this vessel, and he went to pour beers for each other out of an end table. Now that they were off the clock, the two of them could have a little heart to heart talk. The NCO was thinking that the old man might need to take some more time off of the clock, or he was going to lose his ship. After the Soviet nuking of key areas of the US East Coast, this was the only home that both men had anymore. It would hurt both men if Blackwood lost this command and that was the feeling that he was getting. The way that the captain had treated the other officer was going to cause issues back at base, if it was not fixed before they dropped anchor again. The scuttlebutt had it that the army officer over on the tug was one of the few bright spots of the US Military in this part of the world.

####

Karl was leading his team of four deep divers across the hull of the sunken cargo ship before splitting into pre-planned teams. He had enjoyed having a full day out of the decompression chamber before having to put his diving gear back on. He had wanted more, but the LST had been seen coming over the horizon at dawn and everyone knew that they were going to be back on the clock again. Now it was time to get back to work.

Karl was working with Diver 4 over in Hold Number 3 to rig and send up another shipping container. Their team mission was to get the last three floating containers in this hold up to the LCU. After that, the pair were going to be helping Diver 2 and 3 with their part of the mission. Those two other divers were going into Hold Number 1. They had to get a “medium” sized package out of the hold so that they could get to one that they called “holy crap” sized blob that was still chained to the deck. They knew it was some kind of huge artillery piece, but that was about it. They had to get that one monster out of the way so that they could finish getting to the rest of the equipment. Only then could they work on clearing out that particular cargo hold.

Karl looked over just in time to see the last set of flippers disappear into the cargo hold and then the covering cargo net was “opened” by that diver. With him out of sight and more or less safe. Karl looked around to make sure the school of bull sharks was not around. Then Karl grabbed a yellow flagged line that went up and threw the LCU’s well deck and over to the Savior’s aft mounted crane. The other team had a red flagged line, and it would help “guide” their target to the bow of the large LST anchored near enough but not too near to the working divers.

With one last look around to check for sharks, Karl lunged and went through a small opening in Hold Number 3’s covering cargo net. Diver 4 was going deeper into the mostly dark cargo hold while Karl reclosed the covering net to keep the sharkiness out of play. Their first load of the day should be ready to go very quickly. They had already rigged two of the Mombasa made lifting drums to the TEU container for their first lift. They would just need to fill them with air and maybe put the third set of old oil drums on a shorter center mounted line to add a little more lift to the metal rectangle.

Diver 2 was watching Diver 3 and Karl from inside the lip of the cargo hold. He might be Diver 2, but he was not in charge of Team 2. He might have taken that he was “just” Diver 2 as an insult, but he did not have the certs the US Navy wanted to “prove” that he could do this type of job without getting himself or someone else killed. Karl might be in charge of Team 1 and the mission, but Diver 2’s team was going to be the first team to lift out a real tank from this wreck. That was going to look very good on his dive sheet at the end of the day. Maybe it would be good enough that he could get a full-time job with the US Navy when they got back to Mombasa. Not only was that his dream job, but they also paid a lot better than any other group in Kenya. Oh, and they had very good support staff to keep you alive while you were underwater. If you got hurt or even killed on the job? They were known to at least try to look after your family. All of that was a lot better deal than he could get on any other diving team in Africa.

###

Diver 2 waved for Diver 3 to come over to him. The pair of them were bringing down a plasma torch and a pair of super heavy duty bolt cutters that was standard fare on a ship like the Savior. They had tried to release the tie down shackles on an earlier dive as part of the testing, but they just could not get enough leverage to break the rust or just break them open enough to relax the tie down chains. He was not surprised when this happened, and neither was the dive boss. Those shackles had held all of that mass in one spot even after an underwater mine had cracked the long ship’s hull just to one side of the keel spine like a dried twig. So, it was very little surprise that the divers could not get enough leverage to break them and release the vehicles by hand. But they had to try, just to see if they could do something now instead of having to wait for more equipment to be sent down to them. Even with the support of a counter Bend tank, time was in short supply at the bottom of the ocean.

Diver 2 hooked up one of the huge lifting balloons, which really looked like a balloon when enough gas was pumped into it. He quickly attached a line to each of the four special lifting points that had been put on the target when it had left the continental United States years ago. If this had been one of the Roll on Roll off ships? They would have just driven the vehicles right onto the ship and not lifted from a pier into a cargo hold. But those Ro/Ros type ships were already sunk or needed to support the war in Europe more than they were needed in the Indian Ocean by the time this vessel had left the Virginia port.

Now those lifting points would get one more use out of them. With his work done Diver 2 hopped/swam to help his younger partner with the heavy steal chains that held this mass of slime covered white plastic in place. He saw the other diver with the plasma cutting torch working on one set of chains. This left the bolt cutters not being used, and Diver 2 took them to work on the last set of chains on this target. Thanks to his skill as a miss spent youth, he had cut through the last set of chains before the other diver had used the flame cutter to do the same amount of work. It was all about leverage and how you could find the oddest ways to increase yours.

Diver 2 pulled the airline, hard, to give him a little more slacked line for him to use. This next part was going to be touchy, and he was more than a little nervous about it. He could have just opened the valve fully and let the air rush into the last balloon. Only that action would have caused him more issues and time than it would help in getting the job done. The huge balloon would have quickly gotten tangled in the roof of the cargo hold over their head, so faster was not the best way to move along…this time.

Slowly the diver turned a nob, and he could feel the air flowing into the balloon threw his gloves. From his point of view, Diver 2 could see the device start to change shape very slowly. After two very long minutes of slowly filling the fat balloon, the diver could feel the floating around of the target of today’s lift in the water filled cargo hold. He thought it was a wheeled vehicle, but he was not sure. They looked to be flat, if they were wheels under that plastic. The white hill of plastic slowly came off the hull as the balloon filled with a slow supply of air.

The diver moves around the floating target that was the slime covered object to get to the next lifting device, but it was still so low to the deck that he scraped his regulator on the ship’s hull when he went under the target. With his return to the main valve to the last lifting bag, he turned it on at the full setting for a fast count of twenty. The diver looked over to his buddy diver who did a slow negative shake of his head after the valve head been re-sealed.

Diver 2 hit the air valve again and when he hit a ten count, he quickly threw the lever to close it again. He was planning on doing another twenty count, but he felt the balloon shift and he did not need to see his buddy diver giving him the sign that the target had visibly left the ship’s deck to about a man’s height. The two divers make their way to the topmost floating balloon, and they pulled it so that it was angled to lift straight out of the cargo hold. That did not take long or need much effort to get this work done. The target was almost directly under the open hatch as it was. The pair of divers checked out the area above the net very closely. It was getting close to the time that the school of Zambezi sharks normally paid their first visit of the day to this wreck site. Even before the start of this world war Zambezi sharks were not afraid of man, by now they were even less so.

After seeing that the way was clear of sharks, Diver 2 and 3 quickly pulled the mix of cargo and fishing netting back from the opened hatch. They were just in time to see the other dive team moving two long shipping containers out of the other cargo hold. While Diver 3 watched for sharks while Diver 2 went back to the controls and started to fill and shift the target deeper in this hold. It was a case of valve on, then valve off and pull. Then he would have to repeat as they slowly rose higher and higher over the deck of the cargo ship. It was something that you could get lost in as you worked. That was why you needed a dive/working partner, so that you didn’t get lost in your work enough to get a quick case of dead.

Diver 2 was a little surprised when the other diver suddenly passed him the red flagged guide cable going to the LST. They also tied a quick release rope to the bottom of the “guide” balloon after the red flagged line was tied just the right way. With that last rope secured, Diver 2 turned the valve to max and gas rapidly filled the balloon to join the size of the other three. Within a few minutes, they could physically see the strain that the last rope was under. With a cut across the throat, the divers stopped filling and removed the gas valve from the bottom of the huge balloon. With a hard tug on the dead man rope running from the top of the balloon going down to a shackle near the lip of the cargo hold. The knot released and the balloon with the attached target shot past the two divers going towards the surface, and it gained speed as it raced toward the wave tossed blue green ocean surface. They only watched it until it was out of sight, before the pair of now smiling divers went back into the cargo ship. That had been the easy target, now the hard part was about to start.

###

The CPO adjusted his safety line, and he looked down into the water below his boot covered feet. Only then did he look back towards the main body of “his” ship. He was standing on the inverted C shaped crane on the bow of his ship. Normally it was used to lift, hold, and then recover the long heavy metal ramp that gave the Landing part of this type of ship its name. Captain Blackwood was right; he had done something like this before. Only it had been off the coast of New Jersey, and it was over a cargo ship that had been sunk by a Soviet torpedo.

The CPO looked down again, and one part of his mind noted that the twin cup shaped parts of the ship’s bow were opened and clear of any chains that the crane was going to be using this morning. He kept moving from looking down into the clear water, to looking back at his deck crew, to looking at a pair of small rafts with what looked like four scuba divers sleeping on the yellow air-filled plastic hull tubes. He knew that they were only resting as they waited to get back into the water. Diving was about energy management more than most of the skills you would think of.

Thanks to the good old navy grapevine. The CPO had already heard about the large school of Bull Sharks that like to stop by the wreck a few times a day like a city bus making her rounds. Anyone who would knowingly get into the water with one bull shark was nuts in the CPO’s book. To have a full school of the beast that was stopping by every other day for eight to ten hours. That went into the category called, someone needing professional help and not to be trusted with anything sharp.

The CPO almost missed it, but he did see the three lifting balloons a heartbeat before the top one cleared the ocean surface. The round top first balloon rose four or five feet out of the water, before it settled a little deeper back into the water so that only the surface of the very top of the balloon was visible to anyone on the local ships.

As the CPO kept watching, the divers on the rafts went into and under the low wave turned blue water. They were attaching four “normal” rope lines to the target at the bottom of the balloons short lifting lines. While they were doing that, the CPO ordered the ship’s crane and deck Capstan to take up the slack in the cables. It didn’t take long for the recovered target to be fully supported by the pair of lifting devices on the LST. The CPO looked down at a remote strain gauge in his hands. It currently reads “just” over 12 tons, but it had read more than that until the target was fully out of the water. That was telling him that this target might be full of Poseidon’s blood before the slime covered white hill was pulled fully out of the water.

He put the radio to his lips. “Okay it is out of the water. I want to slowly lower it down with the landing deck crane, and at the same time I want a medium pull back on the Capstan.”

The CPO watched from his high perch as the light tank was lowered and pulled toward the flat part on the open bow of “his” ship. He would have to stop the down drop of the crane he was standing on, while the capstan deep inside the huge door at the base of the superstructure caught up. While the small hill of white plastic was still slightly in the air, the ship’s top enlisted person made his way down one of the cranes twin boom arms.

When the target was “only” four feet off the deck. The CPO turned over the job to a younger woman for the easy part. This was going to be the start of her training to be a “real” CPO, but you could not just throw them into the deep in on something that there were not even SOPs written about. That was not fair, even for a CPO. She did the job well, and soon the red flagged line was on its way back down into the cold depths below the LST.

The young woman and older man watched as a mixed team of Navy and Marines swarmed over the mound of white plastic now sitting safely on the reinforced forward top deck of the LST. As the pair of NCO’s watch they noticed that the team just did not rip into the outer covering on what had been just recovered from the ocean floor. In this day and age, you don’t know when you might need something that was not currently being made anywhere on the planet. So, the team was being very careful with the unwrapping of this possible very important gift from the seas. Still, it didn’t take long for the three layers of materials to be carefully removed from the object now sitting on the bow of the USS Bolder. By the time that the support team had reached the second layer, the CPO knew that they had recovered a LAV of some kind from Davie Jones’s locker.

CPO and the CPO in training walked over to one of the Marines directing work on one side of the package. The older man was about to ask the other NCO what they had recovered when the woman’s voice boomed out of her small frame. “Perkins, get your ass away from that hatch!!!!”

The warning was too late for the young man. Seaman Apprentice Perkins had already loosened the hatch that he should not have been even touching yet. The vehicle’s hatch was disturbed enough for the Nitrogen that had been pumped into the body of the craft via the NBC system before the craft had been loaded on to the Nordland to react. The now weakened NBC seal suddenly let go, and the metal hatch came flying up and hinged over to slam onto the armored top of the vehicle. The top edge of the flying metal hatch hit SA Perkins just below his short ribs. It hits him with enough force to knock him off the top of the LAV, and he impacted with the hard metal of the LST’s reinforced deck with a crash and not a thud. If the enlisted man had not had on his hard hat and life vest while working on this project? He might have died on that deck or soon later in the infirmary deep within the ship. But he had lived, and after he was released from the ship’s medic, he only wished that he was dead. The CPO and the CPO in training made sure of that, and then the marine gunny had his turn at the unlucky young man when the navy was done with him.

While they were taking SA Perkins to the infirmary under close escort by his training CPO. The real CPO of this boat looked at the Gunnery Sergeant. The CPO could tell by the look in the eyes of the marine that they young man being carried off was going to be in for some “unofficial” hell. “Okay Gunny, it’s a LAV. But what kind, and can it be useful for your boys?”

The Gunnery Sergeant’s head snaps away from the stretcher and looked from Boats to the 8x8 with 8 flat tires. “Boats, it’s a LAV-AA or M17 if you want to get technical, and it is 12 tons of meanness. I have no idea if the TOW launcher is any good, but the insides are dry. Even if we can’t get it running back at base camp? I bet that we can get three or maybe four other LAVs out of the workshop back in Mombasa into the field.”

Boats nodded his head and let the deck crew continue to work the problem. Moving a LAV that was busted was something they had done a few thousand times already, and they better not need his input to do that kind of job. If they did? They were going to have way more problems to have to deal with than moving a busted up LAV sitting on the deck. That being a very upset Boats, who would make sure that the Gunny was just as upset with the matter of training of his people as the CPO was going to be.

Just as the sun was setting in the western sky. A massive artillery piece comes to rest on the deck of the LST. All the CPO could do was thank God that all of the vehicles loaded for transport were left in Neutral on the transmissions and not “in gear” while shipping. Still, it might have given him more gray hair in heavy weather If he knew something this size was in neutral. That would explain the regulation that said it would require a huge number of chains to tie them down while in Neutral. But now he was very thankful for that requirement when shipping large military vehicles.

It was supposed to have helped in getting heavy combat tanks off a ship that had broken down in transit. It also was supposed to have been worth the effort when arriving at a port that did not have the right transport to handle something like that. Still the Capstan was going to have problems moving 31 tons of “tank” on tracks that might be a little tight with rust and lack of grease on the tracks. The sound it was making as the artillery piece was pulled deeper into the LST would make your teeth hurt. A lot of the deck crew would be spending most of the night power washing the two recovered combat vehicles as well as those four containers that were brought up today. It was a lot of work, and they were just getting started.

The CPO was looking forward to having a crew filled with tired people. Tired people tended to cause him less issues than a board crew. As he turned and looked around, the CPO stopped moving like he had hit an invisible brick wall. He was looking to the north and east of his ship, and right at the island that was only a kilometer from his nose. He thought he saw a glint on the island, but just when he thought that he had been seeing things. He saw it again, and then it winked out again. The CPO did not move for long minutes until the sun was fully down behind him. He knew that the main reason you got flashes like that was when you were panning your field glass over a spread-out area. Like the way these four vessels were spread out on this part of the open water.

The CPO had a deep frown on his face as he went to go check on the two twin 3inch gun turrets that his ship mounted “for self-defense”. When he was done making sure that the turret crews all were both awake and aware, then he went looking for the Gunny to make sure that he was not losing his mind. Maybe they could put out at least a few more lookouts, and a few Marine crewed Light MG or two to thicken the ship’s defenses. All of these hands being on guard duty would cut deeply into what the CPO had wanted to get done. He made a face, but these were dangerous waters these days. At least now they didn’t have to worry a lot about Russian attack Subs or other merchant raiders. Both had been used in this part of the world in this war right up until they had been blown out of the water, but good old pirates were still bad enough.

####

Late the next day, Richard was looking over the ships working the wreckage site that he had found. Over on the LCU, they had pulled up a 2 and half ton cargo truck that they were currently working on cleaning up. He had to smile when some of the deck crew started spraying each other with the water hoses. When the yelling started, he made sure that he was looking the other way. Now he looked down at the forward deck of the LST to see what they were up to. He knew what they were lowering to the deck, that was thanks to the mission for the now named USS Looking. So, Richard knew that was an AAVP and how important that type of track was to the mission of the US Marines.

The LST had been able to pull up two other tracks before this box on tracks. Both of them were currently sitting inside the open hatch at the base of the superstructure. Things were going a lot slower than Richard had hoped that they would when he had come up with this idea. Still, he would call this a successful mission with what they had recovered just so far. If they could pull more out, and not run into any trouble, it was going to be a huge success for the US Military when they all got safely back to the port of Mombasa.

While Richard was standing outside watching the last recovery of the day being delt with by the ship’s deck crew and Marines. Captain Blackwood was standing in the radio shack of the LST. Some powerful people within AFRICOM might trust the current mission leader, but not all of the people in his chain of command were in the same boat. That was why Captain Blackwood was here and following the orders that had been locked in his safe in a special sealed envelope. He was passing along a specially encrypted message back to Mombasa using his own contacts and codes. Richard did not know what was more surprising to him. Blackwood sending this message, or that the Captain was embarrassed that he needed to send this message in the first place. Richard thought that someone might have lost a personal and large side bet with someone back “home” when he found out about these goings on in the background.

Captain Blackwood had waited until the Radio operator received a confirmation that the message was received, if not decoded or delivered. He had no idea if it had been read, but someone on the other end had received this message. The Captain looked down at his watch before picking up his steps to make up some time when he left the radio “shack”. There was a mission brief on the old helicopter landing deck on the aft of the ship that he was expected and required to attend. The US military still had a few helicopters that worked, but they were only used very sparingly, and this was not listed as being that important. This was due to a mix of lack of fuel and the lack of spare parts to support them. Besides space was short on a US Navy ship and any space that was not currently being used would find a new use, like this evening.

####

Richard was looking in one of the open containers, this one was listed on the manifest as having been carrying an estimated 40 tons of miscellaneous M551 “Sheridan” parts. Robert turned when he saw the last person needed for this briefing walking up from deeper within the ship. “Looks like most of the stuff in this one can be saved. Do we know what to send our people down to look for to bring up more ammunition that a Sheridan type tank can use?”

Before Captain Blackwood could reply, his CPO spoke up. “I do, but it won’t matter. Even late in the war, they did not put much ammunition on ships like this. We might be able to find a few more small arms ammo or missile crates, but nothing big like 8inch shells or powder bags for that monster we pulled up on the first day.”

Richard made a face and his army training kicked in like a charging Abrams main battle tank. “I thought each weapon was supposed to be loaded with a basic load-out of ammunition to support that system as soon as it was off loaded at whatever port?”

Again, the CPO did the talking for the ship’s master. “For small arms, and a few high value items like anti-tank missiles you would be right, but not for things like artillery and other major combat vehicles. That is why they had special ships just made to be ammunition transports, and they are named for Volcanos. The last thing you want is for a ship to take a hit from a Sandbox type missile and it sets off some stored ammo somewhere in her holds. I saw ships take two or three of those SS-N-12s, and they still made it to port without so much as needing a tow or tug. But if a ship were packing large types of ammo and took a single hit like that?”

The CPO gave a little shiver before continuing with his information when the flashback of one of those ammunition ships being hit went away. “They just turned into iron dust floating down on the rest of the convoy.”

Richard was lost in thought as he digested this information that was new to him. One of the things that he knew was that his people were in short supply for all types of ammunition. He didn’t realize that he was about to speak out loud. “Well, that is going to throw a monkey wrench into things that I had hoped to do.”

Richard was not going to say that it was going to make the divers work a little easier, now that they would not have to worry about something left soaking in seawater for years that would make a large boom. Water would not compress, but the air in the lungs of a diver would have no problem compressing. That would be a very bad way to die, and there would not be anything that the support ships could do to help the divers as their lungs filled up with blood.

The CPO snorted and Captain Blackwood had to smile at the response his NCO had given. He just enjoyed seeing this upstart get taken down a peg or two and it had been in public. Without thinking about it, he jumped on the bandwagon of bashing the ex-army NCO. “It’s a double hit for something like that 8inch SPG we pulled out. It’s so old that all we will need to do is power wash any salt off, grease her up, and she could fire her big hawking gun again. Only we don’t have any rounds or charges for her to shoot. Such a waste of time and effort.”

Richard picked up on the tone the navy man had used, and now he was going to show that the Navy officer might not know everything. “Only it’s not all as bad as you might think Captain. We might be able to get those types of rounds and the right powder from Israel or Iran. Hell, we might even be able to trade it to one of them for something that we can use. We did the same thing with those French officers that were traded back to the French Government.”

Richard turned and gave the snide Officer a level look, and he took control of the situation. “How are you doing for cargo space?”

Blackwood made a sour face as he worked on the words that the upstart had just used on him. He had read about the trade of the DGSE agents back in Mombasa, and the official reports had it that the French had traded the military for a whole C-160 full of badly needed cargo to get them back. That story was used as an example of what to look for by all senior leaders. One of the things that Blackwood knew was that Richards name had not been on that report, and an Army Captain should not have the rank to be brought into that data compartment.

Blackwood had to fight to get his mental feet back under him. Blackwood loved his ship and the crew that she carried, and the Captain was also surprised by how much raw crap they had recovered, and he had an idea on how much was still down there. “Between the LCU and my ship, we can lift about 690 tons in our current configuration. We have pulled out about 240 tons of cargo and containers, now that the water has drained out of them. That has left us with about 450 tons of usable cargo lift remaining, without risking both vessels if we get hit with some bad weather on the way back to port. Between the last two days of vehicle recovery? I say that we are down to about around 360 tons. That is give or take water load and any surprises that will happen.”

Richard knew the math, but he was being nice this time around. “In other words, we have about two more days of work, and then we will be full of cargo.” Richard turned and looked at Karl and the Dive Master standing off to one side of the group. They had been looking at what had been brought up and cleaned already before being packed back down. “How much more do you think the divers can pull out, in a perfect world?”

The Dive Master turned and looked also at Karl and gave the lead diver a nod to answer. “Herr. Kurnet equipment? 15 maybe 17 or wenig more. More? Need more……. stuff.” Karl was having a hard time grasping the right technical terms to use between German and English.

Richard looked around at the gathering officers of his four ship fleet and he had to fight down a smile. Being in charge of four Navy ships was not bad for an Army NCO. “We will continue as planned. I will call Home Plate and let them know what we have found so far. If they want us to pull up, or if no orders come down. We take what we can, and head for home when we are as full of salvage as we safely can. We can always return, if we need to.”

Richard now let his smile fall. “I don’t like those lights and heat points that the Patriot picked up last night. So, I want each ship to have weapons and body armor handy if things go sideways on us on short notice.”

He noticed an odd look on the LST’s captain’s face, but he decided to drop it. He would find out days later that his Boats had reported seeing lights for a few days now, but Blackwood had not passed this information along to the mission commander. And somehow the Mission commander had known about them, and worse he even had a good idea on how to plan to counter them.

#####

Fatiha Mejjati looked at the small group of ships about a kilometer from the shore of the island that she was currently living on. She was something very rare to be seen in her part of the world. She was a woman and in charge of other Muslim men. Not only were they Muslim men, but they were also Muslim “combat” men. She had not started out this way when she was so much younger. In her youth, she had liked wearing short skirts and smoking back in her homeland in Morocco. Then she had met a man, and then she had undergone a massive change. Her now husband had led a radical group “to standup” to Americans in the holy land. Soon the two of them had moved out of Morocco to be closer to the holy land and the seat of their religion. The pair of them had worked to “enforce” proper behavior and beliefs to those around them in their new home. Their group “of friends” had grown rapidly and that had turned out to be a bad thing.

It was only by luck that she had not been by her husband side the night that he had died. He had gone to a meeting, one that he had not been invited to attend in the first place. Karim had picked up on a rumor that a deal was being done in “his” part of town between another likeminded group and some outsiders. He had been told, in this rumor. That these outsiders were offering weapons, ammunition, and money if they would kill the interlopers in the holy land. Karim had wanted into that deal, and he wanted in very badly. Only that meeting had been a trap of some kind.

Fatiha had tried to find out what had happened to her husband, but as near as she could tell from any questioning, she had been able to do. Sometime during the meeting, it had become heated and then the Saudi police had raided the meeting with all of the violence they were known for. The meeting had quickly broken down into a major firefight that had left many dead or dying, including her husband. Her first test of leadership had been a twin pair of revenge attacks launched for her husband’s unjust death. Those attacks had not been bloodless for her people or her targets. Still, it had cemented her as the group’s new leader.

Fatiha Mejjati had been doing very well in her “war” with her group growing with every successful “operation” she was able to pull off. That is until one of her cell leaders had planned and led an attack on one of the few oil refineries the Russians had not fully leveled in this worldwide war with nuclear weapons. That one unsanctioned attack had gone badly in too many ways than she could count. The local defense force had not been as asleep at the wheel as her cell leader had been led to believe in the planning phases of the operation. The attack force had been almost wiped out during the opening phases of their attack on the refinery. Then the army had “followed” some of the survivors of the cell back to the support houses they had used, and some of those support houses were not supposed to have been known by that attacking cell.

It was all Fatiha had been able to do to get a few of her most “trusted” survivors and supplies on a quartet of Dhows and out of Manama harbor before they were picked up by the Saudi police. She had first made it to Yemen, but her group was too small to compete with the already established locals. She had been able to evacuate “her” people one more time before they lost anyone or too many of her horded supplies to fight “her war”.

Fatiha had been lucky that she had been on this island before this war had turned nuclear in a major way. When the TDM was over it had made what the Soviets did in China soooo seem like a side show event. She had picked this island out more out of half remembered good times, than any real plan to survive. The move to this side of the island was more to find fresh water, food, and to stay out of the way of any problems with the locals. She had planned to wait here and come up with a workable plan to go back north to pay the House of Saud an explosive visit. She just needed time for her people to recover from what they had been enduring for the last few years.

All of these thoughts had flowed through her brain at the speed of a memory from her past. She put the field glasses up to her face for the hundredth time today to get a better look of something she had already memorized. The first night on this side of the island, she had to run around the area like a mad woman putting out fires her people were making. The rest of them had not noticed the ships just sitting off the coast of the island in their focus to just relax from a hard day of traveling. She about had a heart attack at dawn, the next day when she had seen the hated flag flying on those three vessels only a kilometer from her.

By the time of the noon day meal, she was a lot calmer than she had been the night before. This was not an attack fleet of warships of the Great Shaitan. She had no idea what they were doing for many hours after the sun had risen in the eastern sky. She watched the ships and ignored those near her and what was going on behind her in the little camp “her” people were setting up. Fatiha was still watching the hated enemy, and she was surprised when she saw some kind of tank as it was pulled out of the ocean water. It was covered in some kind of white glossy covering, but she would not have known the difference between a tank and an artillery piece if she had a book.

She watched all afternoon, and she saw something she had missed that morning. She saw men in diving helmets coming out of the water on some kind of lifting system mounted on the back of the tugboat like vessel. While the men were being helped out of their diving gear, four small fishing or pleasure craft came into her view from where she was laying on her belly on the hillside. She had no problem seeing the heavy weapons that each fishing ship had mounted on their bows. Soon more armed small craft came into her field of view. Fatiha had to fight to keep her breathing steady as she saw the great warriors of Muhammad come to kill the Great Shaitan’s soldiers.

####

Richard was looking over the group of tired divers on the deck below him. Civilian Captain Don Esteban was walking in the area around them, and he seemed to be talking to each of the divers as they finished getting out of the bulky diving gear. They had put in another hard day of salvaging and four more military vehicles were pulled out of this part of the ocean. Richard’s head came up as the sound of alarms sounded over the water, one that you normally only heard in drills. It took Richard a few seconds to realize that sound was coming from all of the ships in his little fleet. That last part was the key that said this was not a drill. Richard was running to the bridge of the civilian crewed salvage ship before his mind knew what was happening. Years of combat had kicked in and his heart rate was climbing like a missile reaching for the stars.

The USS Bolder swings around on her bow anchor line, and her two turret mounted twin 3 inch cannons mounted high on the LST started to turn independent of the hull of the parent ship. The two turrets opened fire now that the normally aft pointed twin turrets now had a better field of fire. This type of LST’s turrets were on the aft quarter of the ship, this gave the aft more firepower than any of the other angles of the ship. The four 3inch cannons went into high firing rate, and soon 76mm HE rounds started to fall around the advancing fleet of armed small boats like a real-life version of the old kid’s game Battleship.

It didn’t take long for the pirate fleet to break up, but only after three of the small boats were on fire and or sinking into the blue/white waves of the local waters. At first it looked like the remaining fleet of small ships would try to circle around the gathering of US ships. That might have been their plan, but when the MCM-7 Patriot came “charging” from around the flame spurting LST, and she started firing her two 50cal heavy MGs right into the thin hulls of the converted fishing vessels. Not long after the mine sweeper had cleared the LST’s line of fire, those two heavy weapons had support from the two M60s and two MK 19s that the little vessel was fitted with to raise some hell on the pirate fleet. That was enough for the locals, and the survivors of this band of pirates turned back towards the island that they had seemed to have come from as fast as they could. Facing this much firepower had not been in their attack plan.

###

Richard looked around the large cabin on the USS Boulder, and he did not like the looks he was getting from the group. Richard pushed his shoulders back, and his already not small chest seemed to grow in size by six or more inches. “Okay, well we had thought that there were some sea-based pirates on this island. And now we know that they are there, and we are being watched by at least one group of them. I am suspending all diving ops for the next two days, but we are not pulling out of this area just yet and heading home.” Now Richard waited for the room to react to what he was expecting to be an unpopular plan.