Gold and Zambezi fanfic

[cawest]

These were the best pics for the LST. One shows her two twin 3inch guns and how they are mounted. Next is how the bow crane was used to land the tanks. Next is how hellfire and other missiles are shipped. It is waterproof, during DS/DS i help pull out a sea/land van full of ours after being in the water for two days. they were dry and worked. i was one the team that checked them out before they were put on trucks. I also helped recover ammo after the flooding in Korea in 1998 when and ASP went down the river. the AT-4s were not worth even looking at, but the TOW, Stinger, and fuses were dry even after over week in the water and mud (yes fresh water but the water was not clean either)

[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.

[cawest]

The room did not erupt into noise, but it just slowly built up in volume. When Richard thought that he had let them vent enough spleen he took back control of the meeting. “It will only be two days of no diving, and that is to make sure that we are not attacked again with divers in the water. Now you are all thinking, why are we not heading home? Well, that is thanks to the good captain of this boat and yours truly.”

This got a mix of groans and laughs from the group, just like Richard had been hoping for and then he dropped his bombshell on their heads. “High Command is sending a second group of ships out this way. They are to help with finishing pulling out what we have discovered. We are ordered to stay on sight until relieved by the second force coming out of Mombasa. After they arrive on station, in about three days or so? We then will fall under the escort and new mission commander’s orders, so some of you real navy people can relax. What do they have in mind when the new mission commander gets here?...... I was not told, so I’m as in the dark as the rest of you. But if I was a betting man? Then we will be pulling everything, but the galley sinks off that wrecked ship.” Richard pointed to the deck towards the area that the sunken cargo ship was laying under them.

Richard looked around the room as the meeting broke up. He caught a few side long looks from those in “a real” uniform. But if these Navy “combat” personnel could not handle the job of combat? Well, that was not his problem to have to fix. And he knew someone that he would be talking to about reporting that little issue. Richard suddenly rocked forward as he was slapped on the back and a tall man in marine field dress walked past him before he turned around a little. As Richard tried to suck in air to refill his lungs the Marine was giving him a thumbs up and a devil may care smile as he cleared the cabin they had been using as a briefing room.

“Well at least the Marines know what their job is,” thought Richard.

####

On the side of the mountain overlooking the American “Fleet” Fatiha Mejjati was having a full blown hissy fit. Well, it was as much of a visible hissy fit as she allowed herself were so many of “her” men could see her. She had high hopes that the Fleet of Mohammad would have swept these American ships from the seas. Before the attack, she had had time to view the American weapons mounted on those vessels, and they had not seemed that impressive to her. To her they looked like little more than “normal” civilian ships before the attack had started. And they seemed to have been not unlike the ones she had ridden in on to reach the holy land. Then the Americans had opened fire, and things that she had not thought of as weapons turned out to be very effective weapons against the attacking true believers.

She knew that the Fleet of Mohammad had chosen the wrong tactics to attack as soon as the large ship with the ramp hanging off its nose started to turn its back toward the attacking small craft. “Her” people had come to attack Americans like a pack of pigs and fired their weapons in the air like they were in some movie or something. After the second or third of the prophet’s boats had started to burn. She thought that the local commander was going to at least swarm around and take out one of the smaller American vessels. But then one of those smaller American boats had turned out to be armed to the teeth like something out of a nightmare.

From her point of view of the battle. That one small American boat fitted with what seemed like a dozen heavy automatic weapons had been the one that had broken the attack of the Fleet of God. But it had not pursued the remaining boats that had fled the area seemingly claimed by the Americans. She had watched the American ships for another hour before having a member of her group keep tabs on them. That was while she went to find out some needed information from the nearest local that she could lay her hands on. She wanted to know where the local fleet was going now that the battle was over. At least it was over for the time being.

Fatiha had an idea on how to stop and hurt these Americans, all she needed to do was find out what was left of any local assets not blown out of the water already. The key was not the grey American ships, it was what they were recovering from the ocean. She needed to find this group of boaters and get them to be more effective in the use of their resources to hurt The Great Shaitan and not just wasting them and the lives of the crews in more pointless attacks.

It was when night had fully fallen over the island, when Fatiha leads most of her group to the port that the fleeing ships took cover in. After so many years working with a certain type of person in this part of the world. Fatiha had no problem finding the true key leaders of this “town” after only a dozen minutes of observations. She might have “only” been a woman in the eyes of the faith, but Fatiha had a lot of armed men behind her who would follow her orders if she phrased them just right. It also helped with the locals that she had a reputation of fighting in the holy land. That carried a lot of weight, even if it might have been exaggerated on some points in the stories that were told to the dumb locals. She also had done the Hajj, twice, were as none of the locals had done that journey even once as the profit demanded.

All of this let her metaphorically blast through the port village like a Category 5 typhoon on steroids. Her people “only” had to shoot one person to get the idea across that they would talk to her….. or else. She would have to shoot three more of the locals during or right after that meeting that she had called that night. However, how many of these surviving people that would be shot over the next few days, as Fatiha worked on supporting the plan that she had come up with is not known. In the days of a working international press service and the internet, maybe someone would have found out about the actions of her organization. But this was the start of the new Dark Age for more than just this part of the world and so murders like this were happening in the “dark” all over the place, every day, and twice on Sunday.

[cawest]

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.
 

[cawest]

this gives you some idea of the support ships used for this part of the growing mission.