by David Poyer
Five hundred yards? Five minutes? Whatever, they didn’t have long. He flipped on the “stand by” light and gave Sumo five fingers, too.
Dan started as the man next to him stirred, and opened his eyes. He’d been almost out, asleep, when Kaulukukui had flicked his mouthpiece. His heartbeat ratcheted as the screw descended the scale, as he felt a bump and lurch, a skating hiss underfoot. His teeth tightened on rubber.
Everyone was inventorying gear, checking valves, feeling for the mesh bags that held what they’d need. His own fingers started doing the walking. Knife, pistol, grenades, spare C4 and detonators, the flat pack with his references, all printed on waterproof plastic. The Navy didn’t have much on a Juliet’s combat system, but that would be his main job, aside from kicking the Shkval out of the torpedo tube, if indeed they could do that: keep Wenck and Henrickson on task, make sure they got what they needed.
And bring all your guys back, he reminded himself.
Yeah, that above all.
He felt woozy. He couldn’t quite make out the gauge. But he still felt as if he needed to breathe, when he already had. He fingered around and found the Add button. Gave himself an extra shot.
His brain seemed to rev, step up to a deeper comprehension. But only to realize more keenly how dangerous this was. Going under the enemy’s radar, under his table, roaches scurrying in the dark beneath the chairs of giants with swatters, with cans of insect spray.
Another lurch, a sliding, canting bump. Wasn’t this supposed to be a soft landing? On a mud bottom? The screw caught something and went clacketaclacketa before the pilot cut it off. A thunk. He grabbed Henrickson, next to him. Jesus, what were they hitting? The banging and scraping sounded like they were landing in a junk pile. If an enemy sonarman caught this, he’d jerk his headset off and start yelling. He tensed, bracing for whatever they’d smash into at the end of the ride. But it smoothed and they bumped once more before sighing to a creaking, rocking halt.
A red light went to green. Kaulukukui uncoiled like a moray. Hinges creaked as an access panel pushed open. He oozed out, fins licking, making the hull rock again as his weight left it.
Dan was next. He faced the black hole, counting the seconds off rather than checking his Seiko, which had burrowed up under his wet suit sleeve as if hiding from some sharp-eyed predator. The SEALs wanted three free minutes so they could make sure they were where they were supposed to be, then dig in the anchors so what Oberg called “the pig,” the SDV, would stay put.
He counted, panting, but not wanting to hit the add button too often. If these things malfunctioned . . . the body couldn’t detect carbon dioxide buildup. You just lost consciousness, instantly and without warning. The pilot was moving around in the cockpit, doing something that involved a repetitive, muffled thudding. Wenck suddenly started up; Henrickson grabbed the straps on his Draeger and hauled him back to his seat.
. . . Fifty-eight thousand, fifty-nine thousand, sixty, sixty-one thousand, sixty-two. . . .
The bridge of a destroyer—that was where he wanted to face the enemy. Not from under the sea, in the dark, crouched like an oyster in the forgotten muck of a harbor bottom, carrying enough plastic explosive strapped over his liver to blow them all into scraps of drifting fish chow.
He grabbed the jambs of the exit, sucked a breath of moist somehow earthy-tasting recycled gas, and launched himself into an inky void.
19
Bandar-e Abbas Harbor, Iran
Arms going rock hard, putting all his strength into it, Obie took a final turn on the anchor, boring the stainless steel corkscrew deep into the mud and sand. He backed away, fins brushing the ooze, and felt for the line. Just right; so taut it wouldn’t kink or coil, but with a little slack to accommodate tide or a passing boat. Though, this deep in the basin, he didn’t think tidal current would be a problem.
It was almost completely dark, though random beams glittered down, probably from pierside lights. He aimed his Maglite down the line and pulsed it. An answering blink told him Kaulukukui had the aft anchor in place. He held his glove over the lens, shielding it from above, and sent out another blink.
A shape coalesced in the dark. A hand waved. Teddy re-stowed his flash and sculled around, orienting himself with the luminescent needle of the compass on his wrist. Due east. He checked his gear again, patting himself here and there, and began swimming.
Twenty yards on he collided with something massive covered with hundreds of razor-sharp edges. He backed away from the concrete piling. Felt for the sling of the HK, which had fouled on his rebreather. Then slowly, slowly finned upward.
His glove, groping above him, met a roughness. He finned backward, fending off, until there seemed to be nothing but clear space overhead. He took a deep breath, held it, and drifted upward.
He broke the water with the back of his head, so the black hood would be all that would show at first. Slipped off his mask with face still submerged. Then, trying to match his motions with the jostle of the waves, slowly raised his eyes.
He’d surfaced at the end of a massive baulk of timber. This must be the camel the overhead imagery had shown inboard of the Juliet. He was in the shadow it cast from a row of brilliant lights that stretched off down the pier. They were haloed by what looked like fine dust blowing past. The air was much hotter than he’d expected. Sweat began prickling under the wet suit. He took his time looking things over, despite Kaulukukui’s meaty hand gripping his ankle. Stealth and patience. His heart was pumping hard but he felt good, alive the way you never did outside a mission. Probably how his dad had felt, closing some big film deal.
He shoved that away and finned slowly back, getting a better look down the pier. It lay deserted under the silent light, white concrete marked with black ribbons from tires. Pretty much like the old proposal from Bechtel had pictured it, though getting shabby. Still, every bulb was burning in the standards, which meant somebody was paying attention. There’d probably be sentries too. Cameras? It was possible. They’d have to stay in the shadows as much as they could.
Which was standard practice, anyway. He gripped the edge of the camel with both hands. With one smooth motion, staying behind the concealment of the piers he levered himself up and over.
He froze, prone on the splintering tar-smelling wood. A faint splash behind him as his swim buddy broke the surface and brought his weapon up to cover him. That was the thing about the Teams. Working with the same guy over and over, you didn’t need to talk. You communicated with a nod, the flick of a finger, maybe just a look.
Slowly as a sprout reaching for the sun, he got first to his knees, then millimetered up into a crouch, until he could see over the concrete edge.
The pier was a thousand feet long, with four massive ramps bridging to shore. Across it, abreast of him, was a large metal warehouse surrounded by chain link. He squinted through the wind-driven dust. There it was: chain-link behind the warehouse, too.
Their escape and evasion route, if everything hit the fan, was through that fence and across a perimeter road to a canteen building for what intel said was a beach club. He’d memorized the topography for three miles around, but that was the shortest road home. Hang a right from the canteen and the beach was two hundred meters on, down a gully then over low dunes, with a half-obliterated and maybe abandoned emplacement of some kind on the right flank to watch out for. The oblique imagery hadn’t shown any wire, and there were no signs of minefields. They’d squirt a call for help on the SatCom, swim out to sea, and hope the friendlies got to them before the Indians.
Feeling better with the escape route eyeballed, he returned his attention to the pier. A frigate at the far end, but no other ships. So the fleet maneuvers had, as they’d expected, pulled the other subs out to sea.
Now, finally, he turned his head, examining the sloping bullnose, the long foredeck, the massive black sail towering against the startlingly close Middle Eastern stars, visible even through the glare and dust. He searched for motion or human form on its
deck, but saw none. Looked for a line, a fender, any way of getting aboard that didn’t involve going over the brow, but didn’t see that either. And the sloping sides were too smooth and steep to climb.
So, it was the pier. He examined it again. Perhaps a hundred feet away a couple of containers stood on what looked like foundation blocks. He took his time. Vitamin S, for stealth. If you had enough Vitamin S, you didn’t need to be a shooter. The Invisible Man would have been the perfect SEAL. He didn’t see any sentries, and after a moment more, beckoned to Kaulukukui to join him on the camel.
It rocked as the Hawaiian’s weight came out of the water. They crouched, Oberg surveying their route up onto the concrete, across the brow, and onto the submarine.
Headlights gleamed, coming over the northern access ramp. The SEALs shrank back into the shadows. Just before the vehicle reached them, its beams silhouetted a figure that strolled out from behind one of the containers. It carried an AK. It leaned into the window of what Teddy saw was a pickup, then straightened. The engine gunned, missing, as if running on dirty fuel or too low an octane, and rolled slowly past as they froze. Then turned, tires squealing in the night air, and shrank off back toward the northern section of the base.
The sentry remained standing. Teddy cursed, feeling moments ebb away. They couldn’t wait all night. They needed time to offload, then get clear. He turned his watch enough to make out the hands. Then stared at the sentry again. They hadn’t been able to rock drill this. No way of knowing what level of security the base maintained. But he figured now, seeing it on the ground, they had at least an hour before the truck made its rounds again.
Neither reluctantly nor with eagerness, just part of the job, he decided they had to take the sentry down. The question was how. The HKs were suppressed, but they weren’t soundless. The only quiet way was up close.
He watched for several more minutes, willing himself into immobility each time the Iranian turned his head. He stood smoking, from time to time hitching the slinged rifle up on his back. Finally he began walking toward them.
Oberg tucked under the lip of the pier. If the guy looked over, he’d see them. Then they’d just have to shoot, and hope he went down quiet. Unfortunately, in Teddy’s experience, having a bullet hit you didn’t shut up most people. Usually you got half a second as they tried to figure out what’d hit them, then they started hollering their heads off and shooting back. Unless you were close enough for a head shot, in which case it was as easy to use a knife.
But he hoped the guy didn’t look. Like a lot of missions, this one would be fully successful only if no one ever knew it had taken place.
The steps dawdled closer. The guy hawked his throat clear and spat over the side. The spittle landed beside Obie. He brought the HK up.
A red ember flew over them and hissed in the water. The guy cleared his throat and spat again. Then walked on.
The moment his back was turned Teddy rolled up over the edge and curled down behind a bollard. He got an arm around it and stuck a hand down for Kaulukukui. The Hawaiiian came up with a seallike heave. The sentry was still pacing away. Teddy held his weapon muzzle down, shaking the last drops out of the barrel, and checked that the selector was on single shots.
The sentry suddenly turned back. He walked directly toward them. Teddy heard a jingle, like a sling coming off a shoulder.
“Pelvis,” Kaulukukui whispered.
“Head. One, two, three.”
They leaned around opposite sides of the bollard and fired. The sentry was ten yards away, bending over a cigarette. The lighter-flash showed startled eyes. They must have caught him just right because he went down at once, the rattle as wood and steel hit concrete louder than their firing.
He choked as Kaulukukui cut his throat, and died convulsing in their arms as they patted him down for grenades or a radio. He carried neither. Teddy scrubbed his bootie over the blood until it blended with the oil-spotted concrete. The overhead lights buzzed. The dust spun in whirlwinds. Kaulukukui tried on the man’s hat, then handed it to Teddy. They rolled the body over the side next to the pier, into the water. The splash was no louder than a fish jumping. It sank instantly and without a trace.
Without speech they rose and moved forward. When they reached where the brow leapt from the pier and passed overhead they paused again. Teddy stripped off his hood and put on the sentry’s cap. He surveyed the pier once more.
Rising into the light, he turned calmly, ambling along as if it had been a long night on duty, and paced up the brow. He stepped off onto the sub and at once melted into the shadow of the sail. He waited. No one moved. No headlights showed.
After a few minutes Kaulukukui rolled up onto the pier, rounded the brow and sauntered up it. He made no noise, sure-footed as a tiger. He bent and wires snicked as they parted. Obie pointed aft, to a canvas tent. Sumo lifted a flap and vanished.
Teddy went forward, staying outboard on the narrow slice of deck by the sail. He’d hoped the forward hatch would be open, but it wasn’t. He faded aft, swept the pier again, the light-dotted darknesses of the warships at the pier to the north. Had to be sentries there, too, but no sign they’d noticed anything yet. Okay, Sumo Man had the phone wires. He knuckle-walked to the canvas tent and slipped in.
The access trunk was a ghostly place, the wind moaning above, the dust grating under his feet on the rungs. He went quickly down and turned and went down again, following the muzzle of his MP5.
At the bottom, in the forward torpedo room, Kaulukukui waited. The night lighting was dim amber. The air was hot, stale, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of it. Teddy took in leatherette-covered bunks, gauge panels, and, up forward, the stacked inner doors of the tubes. The Hawaiian brushed his ear with his lips. “Went aft as far as the control room,” he whispered, less sounding the words than shaping them. “Two hostiles. Both asleep.”
“You put ’em down?”
Kaulukukui nodded. “They’re still in their bunks.”
Once they had the Shkval in tow, a charge of C4 on one of the other torpedoes would blow off the sub’s bow. Any bodies recovered would be written off to an accident. With luck, the Iranians would never realize their most advanced weapon was in American hands. “Let’s check aft. I’ll take the upper deck.”
He winced at the squish his booties made. He peeled them off, bent through a circular pressure door, and padded aft in damp wool socks past a dimly lit pantry and officers’ staterooms paneled in dark teak. He eased each door open carefully as a burglar, aiming the light on his weapon at each bunk. They were empty. Kaulukukui peeled off down a ladder to the lower deck.
Juliets were subdivided into eight watertight compartments. Next was another cabin area, with larger rooms, motor generators, a ship’s office. So far he’d noticed six motor-generator sets, which seemed like a lot.
He found a man Kaulukukui had missed asleep in a large cabin behind a huge hydraulic assembly, possibly for one of the radars. Teddy didn’t want to use the HK unless he had to. Recovering a bullet from a body would raise too many questions about the “accident.” The thin blade of the Glock was fast and quiet, but left a mess. He pulled the sheet over it and kept going.
No question what this next compartment was; the periscopes and consoles said “control room” even before he saw the brightly colored ballast control valves. He checked what looked like a weapons control space, a sonar nook, and headed aft. Galley, showers, mess table, all bereft and spooky in the dim amber.
He ducked through another pressure door and found himself in engineering territory: engine and motor control stations, electrical panels. Aft of them were the engines. He paced the length of the space, making sure no one was flaked out on the deckplates behind the lube oil coolers, and came to a sealed door.
Not good. Just the grinding of the gears, the thump of the dogging bar would be loud enough to wake a sleeper. The aft torpedo room was on the far side, and probably more bunking as well . . . He hesitated, then quickly spun it open and stepp
ed inside.
Into darkness. He triggered the light on his weapon.
The beam caught two startled pale faces dawning from sleep. Shading their eyes as they peered from pipe bunks. He double-tapped them one after the other, catching the second in the back as he rolled off the bunk. He checked pulses and used the knife again on one. By their pallor, and the words they’d shouted as he began firing, they weren’t Iranian. Most likely Russian technicians, here to fix any problems during the turnover. Had the others, up foward, been Russian, too?
Kaulukukui, at the doorway. “All secure?”
“Two sleepers. Have to drag them forward.”
“Could have made ’em walk.”
“Shit. You’re right.” He wiped the knife and sheathed it. Looked around, and finally pulled a steel bar off the bulkhead. He hefted it, not sure what it was—a torpedo-handling pry, most likely—and took a good swing and whanged it into the pressure hull. Two more left his ears ringing and his palms stinging through the gloves. “Think that was loud enough?”
“Should be,” said the Hawaiian, deadpan.
They grabbed the first body, it was in that fresh-meat stage where everything still lolls so loosely it’s hard to carry, and headed forward, careful, despite everything they’d just done, not to strike its head against the coaming of the door.
Dan stood hunched in the sail’s shadow, where the big SEAL had pointed him, until the last man was out of the water and across the brow.
Iran. The blowing dust, the dry heat felt familiar. Even since Operation Earnest Will, every time he’d deployed here he’d found himself pushing back against Iran. Now they were on a roll, with oil prices higher than ever before. Buying fighters from the French, missiles from the North Koreans and Chinese, weapons like Shkval from the Russians. Moving toward the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, and cut off the lights and motors of half the world.
