Chapter 5 Reinforcements II
Richard looked through the powerful binoculars as a set of three long and sleek grey hulls were coming closer and closer at what seemed like a snail’s pace. It had been a long three days waiting for the next attack to fall onto Richard’s little fleet. The only easy thing had been that there had not been any more attacks on his command. It was “just” the stress of waiting for that next shoe to fall onto your head that you and everyone else just “knew” was coming.
After the first two days of non-diving, Richard had sent his divers back into the water to work on recovering more “gold” from the wrecked cargo ship. The deep diving team had worked to free more and more plastic covered vehicles from the chains in the cargo hold. Those few divers had used every lifting bag that Richard had been able to beg, borrow, or take in the dark of the night. Then they had used every other thing that they could come up with to lift the valuables out of the underwater wreck. It looked like a lot of trash attached to small hills of white plastic floating in the water column. They also had used all of the ropes, cables, and lines that the three ships carried and were not currently needed for some other purpose. That last part had not made the senior NCO’s on all three of those vessels very happy with the mission commander or the rest of the command staff. It was always the officer’s fault even if it was the NCO that had to be the one to deal with the cleanup.
Very quickly the ships that Richard had on hand were almost filled to rough water capacity worth of cargo. Then the divers had only put enough lifting bags left to clear the cargos from the deck of the wreck. They were like a string of oddly colored pearls floating in the water column just waiting for someone to finish the job of getting them out of the salt water. A heavier line was attached from the aft of the Savior going towards the highest balloon in that string. Then a line went from there to the next hovering white hill, going all the way down to the sunken ship about 100 feet below the last recovered cargo.
Robert had hoped that this would help speed up the loading of whatever ships were being sent down to relieve them from Mombasa. After all it was not like they were going to leave heavy weapons here, not after it was now proven that there were hostiles working in the local area. Richard had taken a risk of doing so much work without a plan on finishing the job, but he was hoping that even if they were ordered to pull out immediately. That they had cargo ready to be lifted out of the water would delay them leaving the area by only a few hours. It was a gamble, but one that Richard was confident he could win.
Richard called all of his ship’s senior officers onto the USS Boulder for an official meeting. This was going to be the official change of command for this mission, and it fell into his lap to make sure it went smoothly. Richard looked around at the gathered officers and part of him wanted to smile at some of the looks he was getting from the more regular navy types. Richard’s head came forward as the hatch to the bridge of the USS Boulder opened and in walked a well-known red head naval officer. One with a habit of breaking people with her hands and feet even if she had not taken the time to have a few drinks beforehand.
LTCR Denise Moore walked up to Richard, and he gave her a salute that was at odds with the clothes he was currently wearing. She returned the salute from Richard, and then put her hand out for a friendly handshake. “Good to see you, Richard.”
She makes sure the whole room can hear what she is saying, then she would let her Boats let rumor control spread the story to the rest of the ships. “You have done a great job. I understand that when you get back to Mombasa, that high command will have got another little surprise for you. But before you go, I want you to be my second in command of this mission. I never would have thought a mudleg, much less one like you would turn out to be such a resourceful and successful navy commander. You also have a habit of being able to pull off jobs that “normal” navy officers’ thought was impossible.”
Richard smiled, and he understood the act that was being played out by her to the rest of the staff. He had been half expecting her to drop kick his... jewels instead of returning his salute. He knew that she was still mad about his last “stolen kiss” from her. He had taken it the night that he had sailed out to start this mission.
“I will do my best, Commander. I was getting a little board out this way with just being a ground commander lording over a few small little vessels.” Richard had a smile on his face that only the red head could see. He could clearly see the flashing of her eyes that said she was going to make him pay for the veiled insult to “her” navy at a later date.
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A few hours later Richard was on the large warship called the USS Richard S. Edwards that had just come down this far south, and it had not been this way for a very long time. Richard was here to help the new commander understand what was happening in the local area, and what he had done to keep things moving along that had not been risked in being sent over the radio. He was just about to enter the main super structure of the destroyer when he saw a figure leaving from closer to the aft of the warship. Richard had no problem recognizing the CO of the USS Boulder as he stormed off with what looked like a full head of steam. Even from this angle he could tell that the other man was pissed, and Richard had a pretty good idea on what or who had caused that issue.
Richard looked over to the Boson of the warship and he did a chin point toward the retreating man. “That is a man that looks like someone tore a strip off of his ass, or maybe someone just took his favorite toy and flushed it down the toilet.”
The Boson looked toward the aft of the warship, and he had a tight little smile on his face. “He had a private meeting with the Captain, by direct order of the Fleet Commander back in Mombasa. You could say that someone was not very happy with him back in “our” home port. It might have had something to do with jumping the chain of command and a few other regs he decided not to follow because he felt like they didn’t apply to him. Our good Captain was explaining the facts of life to the ring knocker as well as delivering a personal letter from higher up our chain of command.” The CPO did a head nod and used his right arm to point to the open hatch. “The Captain is waiting, sir.”
Less than 10 minutes later Richard was entering the main cabin of LCDR Denise Moore. She looked up and nodded to her top NCO on this combat vessel. “Richard, please have a seat. So how are things?” She was talking as the other man moved toward the office chair. This was not a sign of disrespect; it was just the way that the LCDR did things.
Richard took a seat and got comfortable for what he felt like was going to be a very long grilling, if his instincts were right. “It has been very quiet after that last attack, and we have not seen any fires at night on the island. If you have good night vision devices? Then I would suggest that you might want to have your night watch check it out after sun set.”
Now Richard got visibly concerned. “I think we will be hit again, and soon. They should have hit us by now, but they haven’t. I don’t think we took out or damaged all of their boats. Don’t get me wrong, and I’m not playing down the gun crews. We did a lot of damage to them in that attack, but there should be more fishing boats on an island this size that should be repairable or used as parts to repair the damage we did to most of them. The only issue I think they might have is fuel, and I would not bet my life on that. I just think that they are taking their time and planning something now that they found out we were not going to be push overs.”
LCDR Moore smiled a smile that one of the Bull sharks under the hull would have wished to have. “I was thinking about the same thing, and that is why Edwards is keeping behind one of the larger ships. I want to make sure that if trouble happens, that she will be ready for them with a few surprises all on her own. I have been telling command for some time now that we needed to run a few counter pirate mission sweeps down this way. I think this is a perfect time to at least take a few steps in that plan. We need to clean out any trash that might have been collecting in the local harbors before they can spread out and cause us more trouble on their own timeline and battle plans.”
Richard now gave a smile of his own. “Well, I can’t disagree with you after the last attack we were able to beat off. I wanted to send the Patriot looking for the group that fled, but I was not sure that someone would not see the move and swing a force in from the south and hit us from behind. The Boulder has two pairs of 3inch guns, but they don’t have the best coverage for her own defense or the rest of the small boats under my command. They were a surprise to the pirates last time, but they’re not something they could not plan around. But speaking of larger other ships now sitting so close together in this part of the ocean. I can see the logic about bringing your ship and the Mauna Kea down here, but why did you drag the Rainer down with you. I don’t remember her name being on the ships list being ready for deployment outside of Mombasa when we planned this mission.”
The red headed woman let a friendlier smile come to her face. “While you were gone, the intel people went digging around for more data on what you found. Now that they knew this was not some kind of wild goose chase the big brains invested more effort. Then the USS Parche stopped by for some shore leave after running some mission for the RDF. It turns out that the Captain of that submarine had some Janes’s books on merchant ships going back to the start of the Cold War in his CIC. That data let us know that the M/V Nordland is a diesel-powered boat and not the oil-fired boilers most merchants were packing back then. Looks like you were right all along.”
She held her hands up to stop Richard from saying something that didn’t need to be said. “Yes, I know that was what you said, but there were some people that needed more information that they trusted and not just maybe hearsay by some army puke about a ship built almost forty years ago a third of the world away from the US.”
Denise was watching Richard very closely as she was talking. “After we pull up everything in the cargo holds on that ship. We are going to see about getting anything else we can pull up, to include if anything was left within her fuel bunkers. Good steel is hard to come by in any large blocks, even scrap is mainly in sizes measured in a couple of feet square. The Kenyan government and AFRICOM are already sending out small groups to recover any wrecks in less than 60 feet of water within a few hundred miles of any Kenyan port. Their first mission had been to make sure that those ports and coves were really clear of any recoverable items.”
The Naval officer raised an eyebrow at the man. “This is all your fault Richard. If you had not gotten someone looking out of the box they were sitting in, this would not be happening. But back to this mission. How long do you think it will take to restart pulling out those tanks or other vehicles from down there?”
Now Richard smiled, but he was still concerned about what was going on. Everything that had been said were items that he had put down in writing when he had pitched this mission, and almost every one of those ideas had been shot down in one form or the other. “Before we get to that. I don’t think that I’m the best person to be your second in command for the rest of this recovery mission. Captain Don Esteban on the Savior would be a better pick for that job. This is a salvage mission, and he is the salvage expert. As you said, I am good at thinking outside of the box, but that is because I’m a grunt at heart. There are a lot that are held back by training in the Navy stuff that tells you what others have done and failed. So don’t do that again or it will reflect negatively in your next eval.”
Denise sat deeper back into her commander’s chair. Everything Richard had said was true. But at the same time Richard’s army background and the time he had spent surviving on the battlefields of Germany was now hurting him. “Richard, you have changed a lot from just being an NCO with some time in small sailboats on Lake Michigan. This war might be coming up on the end date for the history books, but combat is only going to keep going on. We need people that can think outside of the box, and with command experience. This is the time for you to get some of that same command experience and to see if this is your cup of tea or if you have reached the limit of your command rise. Oh, and you pointed out that Don would be a better person for this task because he is the salvage expert. That is just proof that you’re right for the job. You have been working with him and know how to get the best out of him along with the rest of his crew. It would take time for me to develop that kind of relationship, and that might be time that we don’t have. Now you avoided my question about when we can expect to restart operations dictated in “our” orders.”
Richard was a little stunned by what Denise had just said, but he reacted pretty quickly to the changing situation of his world. “I have a few loads almost ready to be pulled out of the water right now. We pulled them out of the holds while we were waiting on you, and we have them suspended under salvage balloons hovering over the wreck. I think the only major delay will be in getting the King post cranes on the Mauna Kea rigged up to support this kind of operation, it’s not like she was designed to be used in a salvage mission like this.”
“I will have to pass along that statement to her captain.” The mistress of the warship used just enough sharp in her tone of voice to let Richard know that she would take it as a challenge to see how fast that crew could get ready to do…. some heavy lifting. After all if a little modified tugboat, LCU and an old LST could get the job done….. then the larger and more powerful devices on the old ammunition ship should do it better.
Richard smiled again, and he thought back to that last kiss he had stolen from this woman. “I bet you will. I will have the shallow divers in the water at first light and the deep team ready by noon. As soon as the Mauna Kea can get the balloons recovered, and please tell them to be very careful with them. I have no idea where we will find any of the large one’s again. It’s not like we can order more of them from back stateside or from Bremerhaven.”
Richard was not going to say that they had damaged three of those hard-to-find massive lifting balloons already, but they had been able to recover and repair them, but it had been a close run thing. “Anyone we lose to damage is going to slow down any active recovery operation that we are doing. We can start bringing up the rest of the cargo as soon as the lifting bags are sent back down to my deep divers. I take it, that I will not be heading back to port for a while. That whole bombshell you dropped on me with that XO thing kind of has me leaning that way.” All he got was another smile from the woman.
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Just as Richard had said to the new mission commander last night. The shallow water Scuba divers were in the water just as the sun was coming up in the East. The deep-water teams could not go into the water until they had some more lift bags to use. They would just be wasting dive time and gas waiting for the bags to be sent down to them, in heavily Bull Shark infested waters. Besides, the deep-water team could always use a few extra hours of sleep or just resting on the deck while they waited for a work shift.
A zodiac carried the shallow water team that used a mix of scuba and free diving equipment to do the work in the choppy waters. The salvage ship’s boats were meeting at the mostly surface lifting balloon by a wood and metal hull ship’s boat launched from the ammunition ship. That mostly wood boat was dragging a metal cable from the two most forward King post on the 500-foot-long ship. These new ships sent down from Mombasa had been fitted with almost triple the length of heavy line and cables for this mission. Normally they only carried enough cable, chains, and lines to run lines from the spool, up the King Post and down to a deck plus 30 feet for safety measures. That was not going to work for this mission, and thanks to Richard’s reports on what was going on in the real world. Time had been spent collecting all of the lines that they could, even if most of the lines were not up to prewar US Navy regs. Needs must, when the devil drives.
During the night while they waited to make the first lift of the day. The 15,000-ton Suribachi class ammunition ship had moved so that the Savior was in the protected “lee” of the larger ship. The huge ship was “only” 500 meters from the smaller salvage ship when the sun started coming up over the horizon. The wooden hull boat was still 50 meters short of the balloon when the first free divers hit the water. Without needing to be told, the crew in the hard sided boat hooked a flotation device to one end of the cable. No one wanted to deal with a heavy cable that fell onto a shipwreck and that might get hung up like catching a huge bass on the end of a thin line. That would not have been good for anyone on this mission.
One team of Richard’s divers worked on releasing the balloon from the lines going to the string of pearls going down towards the wreck, and the other team released the lowered rope to the next balloon. The last two divers moved the metal cable to the shackles below the first lifting devices. Even if something happened to the balloon, the cargo would not be lost to the ocean depths again. They might have to drag it across the ocean bottom for a few dozen meters before getting it back into the water column, but it would not be lost. While the two-man diving team worked on attaching the King post line, other parts of the plan were in action. While that was going on, the ship’s boat returned to the Mauna Kea to retrieve a line from the ship’s aft most King Post. That one would be ready for the second lift of the day if things worked out even close to the plan.
It would not take long for the two long reaching set of King Posts to be fully engaged and begin lifting the balloons to the side of the ship. There the work was handed off to the center set of King Posts. They were to be used to lift the white plastic hills fully out of the water and into the middle empty cargo hold. When they had caught up to what Richard’s people had set up for them from that one wrecked cargo hauler? The crews on the Mauna Kea and a few other vessels started working other areas further away from this spot of the ocean.
You see the Patriot was a mine hunter, and she was of the class of vessels that were the best ever made for the US Navy before the start of World War III. When she was not engaging in fighting local pirates with her many “smaller” weapons. She had been scanning the ocean floor while her surface lookouts kept an eye out for other attacks on Richard’s command. It had found a lot of contacts that the homemade equipment on the Bluenose had not “seen” when they had been looking for the main wreck. Then the mine hunter’s modified oil rig welding ROV had taken a look at what the high-tech sonar might have seen. The ROVs had been used even before the 1989 film “the Abyss” brought them into mainstream knowledge of the general public. Many of the Nordland TEUs or TEUs lost over time had been found within a square mile of the sunken wreck the rest of this little Task Force was working on.
The Patriot’s ROV even had a set of claws and didn’t need to worry about the bends or an air supply. Those claws had originally been used to help clear or recover underwater mines in ports and ocean traffic lanes. After a few tries to get the ROV operators experience, it was able to attach a harness to the corner mounted lifting points standard on all TEUs. Then a heavy line from one of the King Post cranes was taken down to be fixed to the center of the harness. There were not any lifting balloons available for this TEU. But the main limiter to this operation was that the mine sweeper was not a tugboat, and that limited it to what it could tow, and thick metal cables were heavy. Oh, and they only get heavier the longer the cable becomes.
Only the first 400 feet of cable were not fitted with lobster trap floats to keep the line from dragging down the ROV or let it get stuck on the ocean floor on some half-covered rock. It was not an easy job, but the ROV operator was able to attach the surface line to the homemade metal wire cradle. When the very rare ROV was safely back on board the mine sweeper, the large ammunition transport ship started to pull in the line attached to that harness, that was attached to the sunken TEU with its King post. Without any lifting bags, the containers were “dragged” across the ocean floor. Most of the time it was moving the metal box over a sandy bottom, but sometimes they would “hit” something and then a little more force would be applied to get the container onto the Suribachi class ammunition ship without ripping it apart.
The first “found” container was lifted onto the ship and was quickly swarmed over by the ship’s crew. That proved to be a mistake by a crew that had not been paying attention to the reports coming from the rest of the ships that had been doing this mission for over a week now. When one of the deck crew that was more used to working with ammunition containers and not working with something that had been underwater for an unknown amount of time opened it. It was not a smart choice and now a lot of others were going to pay for that lack of judgement.
A few seconds after the shipping lock was cut, the locking bar had been beaten into releasing from the upper and lower kick plate. The water those doors had been holding back now had a way to exit the shipping container. So, it did so, and the team of six sailors took the “dirty” water to the face like they were standing in front of a large door sized firehose set on max. It would have been funny… as long as you were not one of the ones that had to be subjected to that assault.
They were just lucky that no one was blown off the ship’s top deck by the slamming of the out rushing water. Then the smell hit those sailors that happened to be standing around the recovered container. As the water made its way off the ship, it left behind a brown…. something….. on the ship’s deck. One of the deck hands leaned down and picked up a mass of brown mush that was like a brown sponge, which was also rotting under the sun. While the first sailor was looking at the smelly mass of brown slime, a second sailor picked up another brown mass. She grasped the object with both hands and gave it a hard flick that sent brown slime flying to land on the deck and up about a foot of the side of the rusting metal sea/land van. With the slime gone from the object, but the writing not legible to the average person, but the dark brown plastic bag was familiar to any military person. It was a Meal Rejected by Everyone, as they were known before the war. Now with hunger so rampant in this part of the world so late into World War III, these little brown bags were worth almost as much as an ounce of gold to the right person.
This was one of the lost shipping containers that should have been lashed to the deck of the now sunken cargo ship. This one 50-foot-long container was filled with pallets of MREs. The cases of MREs were in a wax impregnated cardboard. Cardboard that was water resistant, but not waterproof enough to last for two years under the sea at almost 400 feet deep. Whatever organics that had been on the wood parts that made up the pallets had “eaten” the wood, and then they had gone to work on the wax covered cardboard. Those same organics had not been effective on the thick plastic that held each meal of the MRE box. But without the cardboard and wood to support the load of long shelf-life food. The deck sailors had to pick up each slime covered brown plastic packaged meal, which had not been blown over the side of the vessel by the wave of water one at a time. But at least the MREs floated, and many hundreds were picked up by the ship’s boats before the ocean spread the small objects too far as to not be viewable from the ship’s boat or mother ship.
It was a job that sucked for both the deck crew and the small boats crew that were not supporting the recovery effort. It was thought that “only” about half of the MREs were recovered, but there was no way for the crew on the ammunition ship’s crew to know this for sure. They still had thought that they had a huge windfall of food when compared to the starving that was more normal in Africa for the last few years. In the next few years those “lost” MREs would find themselves being washed up over all the shores that made up the Indian Ocean. Less of them would make it to Australia, but that was more due to the sun UVB and UVC rays rotting the already damage plastic and not the currents. That passive act by the sun would cause the food to sink to the ocean floor to feed the life in that carbon poor area.
It took an hour for the Mauna Kea to recover the second shipping container from the ocean floor. The cranes had been needed to help pull another white plastic hill from the primary wreck, you know supporting the primary mission to be in this part of the ocean. The deck crew had learned a few things after the mess that the first container had caused, and some pointers were re-given from the crew from both the USS Boulder and the LCU. And amazingly, this time they were listened to. Now the deck crew had made sure that some nets were strung up on the edge of the ship to stop anything from being blasted over the side that could be used, and then the crew rigged up a way to stop the metal doors from being blasted fully open by the water pressure.
These were good ideas, and the other ships had done much the same thing. But what this deck crew didn’t know was that this next container was not off the Nordland. Later more than one of the deck crew would remark that the smell was stronger coming from this van, but with all of the damage and water leaking out holes in its side. They had just thought it was more of the same rotting cardboard and pine boards and that the smell would get better once the metal door was opened. Oh, how so very wrong they were.
When the metal door to this van was wedged open a wave of water that should not have been called water if it smelled this bad came out. With the smaller opening it took longer to empty the container of water. But after just a minute of opening of the rusty container, the deck crew started to retch out their breakfast all over the ship’s metal deck. Then the contaminated water reached into the cargo hold, and then the down deck crew joined the top deck crew in tossing their cookies all over the place. The NCO’s would not have been pleased with this… if they were not bent over side by side with the rest of them.
To make matters worse, the ventilation systems picked up the smell of rotting food and vomit and pushed it threw to every cabin and room within the whole ship. The container had been carrying food items that had been frozen when it had “fallen” off a ship into the waters in the very early days of this now world war. That food was still solidly frozen when the container had hit the sea floor. Then the biomaterial had done what it does, and it ended up feeding a huge number of small animals that could enter and leave the container through the growing number of holes rusted into the metal. It was like a multi ton bait bag. The cold water had slowed the breakdown of the organic material by a huge amount but not stop it. That just made the smell that much stronger when that door had been opened by the unsuspecting deck crew of this vessel.
That smell would have stopped the loading of more containers recovered from the sea floor, but another one, one they had started pulling before the smell wagon had been starting to be pulled in was almost ready to come up. So, they were committed to recovering the third one, unless it got too hung up on another old reef or other pile of rocks. They were only able to open one of the doors to release the water from that second TEU. The smell was already so bad on the top deck that they could not tell that this one smelled any different. The second recovered TEU was mostly “empty” of anything that was worth keeping after the water was drained away. Rotting food soaked in sea water for years has a smell that cannot be explained to those that have not had the…pleasure of that experience.
It was only after the things calmed down that they noticed the smell was less, at least on the top deck now that the third TEU was opened. The deck crew had started working on that one after they cleared another plastic hill. It was very late that night when the first person stepped into the fully loaded container filled with Amstrad made but soaked consumer electronic devices. Those devices had been going to their new home in high end electronic shops all-around India. All of the shipping cardboard was rotting but many copies of user manuals in heat sealed plastic bags to go along with the computers were found. All of them had been deep under water, powered off, and protected by the metal container when the Thanksgiving Day Massacre happened. In other words, this was a massive gold mine………. if they could be fixed.
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