Ian Slater - Warshot

The eight-man team — Robert Brentwood, the Bullfrog, and the other six enlisted men — knew, of course, that regardless of whatever the specific mission was, they’d be issued with special UBA — underwater breathing apparatus — specifically, the military version of the COBRA— closed-circuit oxygen breathing apparatus — a rebreather system which, apart from not issuing any telltale bubbles while you were going into a beach, for example, allowed the swimmer by means of the carbon dioxide filter canister to rebreathe the same gas, additional oxygen being bled as needed from a front waist tank into the inflatable bag. It was much better than the standard SCUBA, or scaphandreautonome, system. There were still problems, however, and during the motivation week, one diver, Seaman Michael Rose — his last name reminding Robert Brentwood of his wife Rosemary back in England — ran into what the chiefs report blandly designated as some “difficulty” at 120 feet in Pearl. Being in saltwater, the helium inject needed at that depth to prevent nitrogen narcosis, or “nitrogen drunkenness,” was bleeding in too slowly, and Rose, despite his wrist fathometer, lost all sense of direction, going down to 240 feet, thinking he was going up, before being located by the Bullfrog and Robert Brentwood.

On the third day, the team, under Brentwood’s direction, practiced egressing from a submerged sub’s forward escape hatch with the sub under way at one and a half knots. For Brentwood it was the first real indication of what their mission might be. On the fourth day, the eight of them were split into four two-man UDT-IBS — underwater demolition teams; the IBS, or inflatable small boat issued each of the four pairs, a thirteen-and-a-half-foot-long F-470 fiberglass-hulled Zodiac. Each pair of SEALs was then assigned to a landing craft.

The first of the four two-man teams consisted of Brentwood and Dennison, a stocky man who, despite his shorter height, was probably the strongest swimmer of the group, and who possessed a wry sense of humor. As the landing craft started its run, he crouched low in the Zodiac on its outboard side and then, on the signal from Brentwood, rolled over the rubber boat’s outer tube into the roiling water on the landing craft’s port side, a quarter mile out from Pearl’s sub net.

Brentwood followed and they began casting, Dennison unreeling a.065-gauge nylon fishingline marked “for feel” every one hundred feet, at which point Robert Brentwood let a knot-marked lead sinker line down to the bottom, quickly recording the depth by scratching it on his plastic knee slate and noting any other underwater obstructions, apart from the sub net, that an amphibious landing might encounter, including the positions of channel markers and angle of breakwater to the beach. Each number-two man in the four two-man teams had to keep radio contact with the other team via waterproof cigarette-pack-size walkie-talkies, it being vital for the teams to act in concert to effect a proper “extraction” or pickup. If the Zodiacs didn’t cut out from the LCTs at the same time, on full throttle — the muffled thirty-five horsepower outboards streaking at right angles from the landing craft to pick up the swimmers, each man’s left hand raised high to mark his position — there wouldn’t be a second chance to be “snared” by the rubber loop held outboard from the fast-moving Zodiac. Once a swimmer’s arm passed through the loop, he would immediately bend his arm to a V and kick toward the Zodiac as an LCT crewman, grabbing his webbed belt at midriff, hauled him quickly aboard, where he would ready himself in turn to “snare” the second man, until all eight swimmers had been accounted for. The four rubber boats would then turn and head out to sea, away from the enemy shore, to await their submarine pickup.

“You did good,” Bullfrog told Dennison. “Remember, we lost more marines from drowning off Tarawa than we did from Jap shore fire. If we’d known just how deep some of them holes were in that coral, we could have saved a lot of guys.” The chief hesitated for a moment, then added, “But we still got a problem.”

For the moment the other seven men, including Robert Brentwood, said nothing, sitting back on the gunwales of the tender, exhausted from more than six hours in the water. Brentwood, though he didn’t show it, was sure he was the most fatigued. He was old enough to be some of these men’s father.

“What problem?” asked Dennison, reaching tiredly for a squeeze bottle of Gatorade. “None of us drowned!”

“Speak for yourself,” put in Rose, the California tan of the twenty-five-year-old contrasting with the stubble of what had been a full head of straw-colored hair.

“No,” conceded the chief. “Swimming was okay. But it was a screwup on the walkie-talkies.”

“Hell,” said Dennison, “ours worked fine. Didn’t it, Captain? Waterproof one hundred percent.”

“Oh, they all worked fine,” said the chief. “That’s the problem.”

“Did Pearl pick it up?” put in Brentwood. “On the hydrophones?”

“Pearl!” said the chief. “Captain, they heard you up off Diamond Head. Frightened the fish in Hanauma Bay.” He grinned. “So now you guys know why you were made to learn American Standard.” He meant the sign language used by the deaf and mute.

“Hold on!” said Robert Brentwood. “I don’t know anything about sign language.”

“Oh—” said the Bullfrog, clearly caught off base for the first time since the refresher courses had begun. “Special orders from General Freeman, sir. Thought you knew.”

“Hell, no!” answered Robert, who, despite the normal give-and-take of profanity in the service, wasn’t in the habit of swearing, even mildly.

“Then, Captain,” said the chief, “you’re going to have to learn, sir. Rose — you’re the best with a bunch of fives.” The chief turned back to the commander of the USS Reagan. “You have twenty-four hours, Captain.”

Brentwood gave an “Aye aye, chief — the only situation in which the captain of one of the most powerful warships in history would have done so, at least so obligingly. Besides, Brentwood’s momentary annoyance was mitigated by the growing conviction that he was now solving the puzzle of the mission’s precise location. Well aware, as a commander himself, of the “need-to-know” rationale for keeping an operation secret until the last, he couldn’t help taking pride in the certainty that he had divined Freeman’s plan. He wondered whether any of the enlisted men had put it together — a sub approach offshore, casting for obstacles, sinker line depth measurements, width of approach… General Douglas Freeman was about to do another MacArthur, another Inchon, launch a daring seaborne invasion across the China Sea. And unless he, Brentwood, was all wet, the SSN USS Reagan would be used to insert a survey UDT — underwater demolition team. And, once the underwater terrain was known, the Reagan would most likely use its torpedoes to clear any major underwater obstruction just prior to the amphibious assault.

The giveaway from Brentwood was the concern over the walkie-talkies. If they were going to be that close to shore that they had to worry about the walkie-talkie sound being picked up by a beach garrison, then it had to be a pre-invasion mission. The final clue was the sign language. It meant they were going to be very close to the enemy, plus sign language wouldn’t help you in the dark. A dawn invasion. He put this last conclusion to the Bullfrog without revealing any of his other deductions, and couldn’t resist a quiet satisfaction in seeing the chief completely surprised.

The chief looked quizzically at him, and Brentwood got the distinct impression the chief was thinking that perhaps at forty-four the sub skipper was getting a bit old for it. “Dark’s no problem,” responded the chief, explaining, “We’d have PVs.” It wasn’t equipment that they used on a sub much — unless they surfaced at night — and the Bullfrog could see Brentwood had been caught off base. “Infrared,” added the chief, unconsciously adding insult to Brentwood’s injured pride. “Same kind they used in the Iraqi War. Pick up hand signals no problem. Warm arms in a cold sea — stick out like you got a hard-on.”