by Jon Stock
It took time to work out how to operate the big bay doors in the floor of the boatyard, but after twenty minutes he was at the wheel in the cockpit as the automatic derrick lowered the ersatz Bladerunner slowly towards the sea. There was no one to switch off the derrick, so his plan was to start up the engines once the boat was afloat and accelerate out of the two thick lifting straps.
As soon as he felt the water take the weight, he turned the ignition key. The engine failed to start. A moment later, he heard shouting above him. Armed guards were out on the gantry he had stood on earlier. More were peering down through the empty bay doors. He tried the key again, pulling out a gun from his trousers. This time the engine started, just as the guards above him began to shoot. He returned fire, roaring away from the oil rig into the Strait.
122
Dhar eased the throttle forward, taking the Bladerunner’s speed up to 30 knots as he passed the main entrance to the naval base at Bandar-Abbas. It was a calm day, the sea flatter than it had been all week. The base was on a natural promontory to the south-west of the city, and was shaped like a trident. There was a central channel with two docks forking off it.
The last assault boats had left the base ten minutes earlier. At Mousavi’s request, Dhar had stood on the eastern dock and watched them depart, acknowledging the cheering crews in their streaming bandanas. Dhar’s brief appearance was high-risk, but the base was secure and his presence seemed to give the crews heart. The air had filled with cries of ‘Allahu akbar!’, the mood defiant, incendiary, as Iranian flags were waved and American ones burnt. Every vessel in Bandar-Abbas seemed to be on the water, including an impromptu gathering of fishing boats that formed their own swarm, the men on board sounding horns and firing AK47s in the air.
The first boats to leave the base had been the unmanned Ya Mahdis. Even these had received a cheer, perhaps because no one expected to see the ghost boats again. Operated remotely, they formed the sacrificial front line of the swarm. Their purpose was to provoke the Americans into an engagement by not turning away from their warships. Once the first shots had been fired, their role was to keep drawing the fire of the Phalanx Gatling guns. Over-eager radars would lock on to the multiple contacts, expending all the Phalanx ammunition by the time Dhar finally arrived on the scene.
At least, that was the plan. Dhar wasn’t convinced. In his mind he was ready to die, and he had prepared himself accordingly, asking Mousavi for a copy of the Holy Qur’an to take on board. After the last boat had left the base, he had turned to it in the incongruous surrounds of the Bladerunner’s sleazy cockpit. Now, as he increased his speed to 50 knots and steered a course between the islands of Qeshm to starboard and Larak to port, he recalled verse 8:65 again:
O Prophet, rouse the believers to fight. If there are twenty among you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred; if there are a hundred then they will slaughter a thousand unbelievers, for the infidels are a people devoid of understanding.
Battle had already been joined on the horizon. He could see plumes of smoke, but it was impossible to tell if damage had been done to any American warships. He doubted it. The early phases would be a massacre. After the unmanned Ya Mahdis had come the Bavar 2 flying boats, looking like giant water boatmen as they had filed out of the naval base, with only their wings to stop them sinking. The fast-attack Seraj vessels had followed, 107mm rocket launchers bolted onto the tops of their cockpits, machine guns strapped to their decks. Then, finally, the more sophisticated Zolfaqar assault boats, named after the sword of Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, in the belief that their missiles would bifurcate the infidel’s ships.
All Dhar could hope for was that Mousavi’s calculations were right, and that by the time the Bladerunner arrived on the scene the American warships’ guns would have fallen silent. Inshallah, it would then be up to him. Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan.
According to Mousavi, his two torpedoes had an 80 per cent kill probability at a range of four miles. Dhar had wanted to be on his own in the Bladerunner, but the launch mechanism for the torpedoes was complicated, and there hadn’t been enough time to train him. Mousavi had insisted he took an experienced operator, who was in the seat next to him. No one needed to know, Mousavi had said. The operator was a man of few words, which suited Dhar.
He wished the same could be said of Mousavi, who was gabbling away now on the encrypted ship-to-shore radio.
‘Everything is going according to plan,’ he said. ‘Our boats began to fire their rocket launchers eight miles out from the Truman, not at the enemy ships, but a little in front of their own. The plumes of spray where the rockets are falling will partially block the enemy’s line of sight, disrupting their anti-ship weapon systems until we are within firing range.’
‘Has the enemy lost any ships?’
‘We have shot down one of their Seahawks.’
A single infidel helicopter wasn’t exactly a victory. Dhar didn’t want to ask how many Iranian boats had been destroyed, but he soon found out.
The scene ahead, as he rounded Qeshm island, was one of devastation, smoke rising from numerous small boats, some of them sinking, others limping away. The sky was thick with helicopters, many more than Mousavi had predicted, the air reverberating with gunfire. Anti-radar chaff shimmered above the sea like celebratory tinsel, mocking the scene below. Beyond it, a solitary rocket streaked away from one of the few Iranian boats still operational. It was clear that Mousavi was lying. Nothing was going to plan.
The engagement was taking place at a point in the Strait where the shipping lanes, each two miles wide, passed through the territorial waters of Iran. International ships traversed the Strait under maritime transit passage laws, which meant that the USS Truman was technically in Iranian waters. Dhar knew it would never be more vulnerable. That was why Mousavi had chosen the moment to unleash his swarm. But the Americans appeared to have been expecting it. Was it Marchant? Had he warned Washington?
Dhar accelerated to 70 knots. The Bladerunner was so much smoother than its poor relation on the oil platform. A moment later, it was strafed by deafening gunfire that ripped a hole in the roof. The damage appeared to be superficial, but Dhar now knew he was within range of the Phalanx Gatling guns, and that they hadn’t run out of ammunition.
‘Range to Truman?’ he asked the operator.
‘Seven thousand metres,’ he said. Dhar glanced across at him, and spotted a small bottle in his hand.
‘What’s that?’ he shouted.
The man’s hands were shaking.
‘Give it to me,’ Dhar said, taking the miniature of whisky. He threw it out of the open cockpit roof. ‘And prepare to fire the torpedoes.’
He took the Bladerunner up to 80 knots. Despite the wake from other boats, it maintained its stability in the water, a perfect firing platform.
‘Six thousand five hundred metres and closing,’ the operator said.
Perhaps Mousavi’s plan had worked after all. The closer he could get to the target, the higher the chance of success. The boats in front of him seemed to move apart, clearing a way for their flagship. For the first time, Dhar allowed himself to look properly at his target, the vast bulk of the USS Truman, the ‘Lone Wolf’. It dominated the horizon, unwieldy, aggressive, arrogant. ‘Give ’em Hell’ – wasn’t that its crew’s motto as it policed the world? Inshallah, he would send all six thousand of them to hell.
But just as he was about to give the order to fire, his eye was caught by a boat approaching fast on the starboard bow. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Where had it come from? And why did it have no markings? A collision seemed unavoidable. It took him a split second to realise what it was, and who was at the helm.
123
Marchant knew now that Dhar’s target was the USS Harry S. Truman. It was too big to resist, too iconic. And whether by fate or chance, his Bladerunner had not yet been shot out of the water. Perhaps it was its speed, or
its lack of military markings. Either way, it was bearing down on the Truman, a crisp white wake spraying up at its stern like a fantail as it steered through the wrecks of burnt-out boats. By Marchant’s crude calculations, it would reach the aircraft carrier in three minutes. Unless he could intercept it first. Marchant kept his hand firmly on the throttle, taking his own boat up to 60 knots as he steered a course towards Dhar.
Thirty seconds until impact.
Black smoke billowed out of his boat’s struggling engines, making it look as if it had been hit by American fire. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been hit either. Or had the Americans concluded that an unmarked boat heading away from their warships didn’t pose an immediate threat? They would target it if they recognised the man at the wheel.
Twenty seconds until impact.
Unlike Dhar, Marchant was standing in the open air. His boat’s canopy had fallen off soon after he had accelerated away from the oil platform. He was drenched – the boat shared none of the Bladerunner’s ability to cut through waves. But despite its inferior specifications, it was closing in on Dhar’s boat. He was approaching at an angle, and he still seemed to have the element of surprise.
Ten seconds until impact.
As each second passed, Marchant wondered at Dhar’s endgame, the scale of his ambition. The sound of gunfire from the US warships was less intense than earlier, and the Seahawks seemed to be holding back after one of their number had been shot down. What was Dhar doing? Marchant could see no obvious weapons on board, no crude rocket-launchers or machine guns. Had the Bladerunner been packed with explosives in Bandar-Abbas? Was it a martyrdom mission?
Time had run out for both men, two brothers united by a father, divided by loyalty, racing towards a shared fate. If Marchant had been asked what his own endgame was, he might not have answered, except to say that he was prepared to lose his life to stop Dhar taking the lives of six thousand others. It wasn’t an act of heroism, just a simple case of maths.
Dhar had a clearer vision as he ordered the torpedo to be fired.
‘Allahu akbar!’ he cried.
There was a moment before their boats collided when the two men looked across at each other. Dhar saw his father; Marchant his twin brother Sebbie, lying in the wreckage of a car crash in Delhi. A second later, both boats disintegrated, engulfed in a fireball that could be seen for miles around, but not before twenty-five feet of steel had exited an improvised firing tube and accelerated away at 200 knots towards its target, propelled by a liquid-fuel rocket.
124
Rajan Meena didn’t hear the bell the first time it rang. He hadn’t heard much since his daughter had died.
‘There’s someone at the door,’ his wife said, coming into the living room. He looked up from the chair by the window, catching a glimpse of Lakshmi in her eyes. He wasn’t cross at her for not wanting to answer the door. The last relatives from India had left the day before, and she couldn’t face another expression of condolence, more flowers, however well meant. They had wanted to take Lakshmi’s body back to Chettinad, but she had once told them that she wished to marry, have her children and be cremated in Virginia. ‘I’m an all-American girl now,’ she had smiled. It was after she had been accepted by the CIA, and they hadn’t known if she was joking.
Rajan rose to his feet and walked over to the front door.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘My name’s Daniel, Daniel Marchant. I knew your daughter.’
‘I wanted you to have these,’ Marchant said, handing Meena’s mother a pair of silver ankle bracelets. Her husband had shown him in to the living room of their house, a modest residence near the main shopping mall in Reston.
‘Did she give them to you as a present?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ It was a lie. He had removed them from her ankles before he had carried her into the hospital in Caen. In a weak moment after she had betrayed him.
‘Then you should keep them.’
‘I think it’s better they’re here, with her things.’ Marchant glanced up at the mantelpiece, where a chorus of candles was burning around a photograph of Lakshmi and a statue of her eponymous goddess. He tried not to linger on either.
‘As you like,’ she said.
‘I also wanted to tell you something.’ He paused, gathering himself. Her mother had something of Lakshmi in her, the way she bit her lower lip. ‘Lakshmi had to make some difficult decisions in her work.’
‘We were very proud of her,’ her father said.
‘You were right to be. Other people might have struggled, deciding who to be loyal to, sometimes who to betray, but she was always guided by her parents, her love for you both. And her love for this country.’
Marchant let himself out and walked over to the waiting car, a black Chevy Suburban with darkened windows. When he returned to Britain he had another grieving parent to visit, but it would be a very different conversation with Salim Dhar’s mother.
‘How was it?’ Fielding asked, sitting next to him on the back seat.
‘Awkward. I’ve never found love or patriotism easy things to talk about, particularly when they involve America.’
‘You’d better get used to it. The night’s still young.’
‘Are we heading straight to the White House?’
‘A drink with the Defense Secretary first.’
‘And we really have to go through with all this?’
‘Turner Munroe’s laid on a dinner in your honour. It’s the beginning of a beautiful new relationship between Britain and America. And Jim Spiro’s proposing the toast.’
Two hours later, Marchant adjusted his bow tie as he watched Spiro rise to his feet in the East Room at the White House. He recognised some of the people around the table – Munroe, the DCIA, top US Navy brass and Harriet Armstrong, who had arrived late – but most of them were faceless, just as they should be.
It was a ‘one plus’ evening, which at least meant he wouldn’t be grilled on operational details, even though all the guests had been heavily vetted. That would come later in the week, at Langley, where he had been invited by Spiro. Spiro’s wife, Linda, intrigued Marchant. He hadn’t even known he was married until they had been introduced at the bar.
Since Marchant didn’t have a ‘plus’, vetted or otherwise, he had been put next to Fielding, who was similarly partnerless. Armstrong, also single, was beside the DCIA. As Marchant marvelled at the surprising longevity of Spiro’s marriage, Armstrong caught his eye. They hadn’t had time to talk properly about the second cell, but he knew how grateful she was. Five men had been arrested in a basement flat on Hoxton Square, minutes before they were about to leave for a lock-up in Spitalfields that was packed with explosives. A second network of smaller cells had been arrested around the country. Their targets remained classified, but he would find out from her later.
The sound of spoon against glass cut through Marchant’s thoughts. Spiro waited for silence.
‘We’re gathered here tonight to give our thanks to a very special British colleague,’ he began. Spiro didn’t have to do this, Marchant thought. It would be killing him. Munroe must have insisted on it as part of the healing process. ‘I think it’s fair to say that Daniel Marchant and the CIA have not always got along.’ Fielding let out a loud, solitary laugh. ‘And in recent months, there hasn’t been the normal warmth that characterises relations between London and Washington.’ A few nervous eyes turned to Fielding, but this time he remained silent.
‘But I’m not here to rake over the past. We’re gathered tonight to salute Daniel, whose bravery in the Strait of Hormuz saved many thousands of American lives. The world’s a safer place without Salim Dhar. I’ve always said that. His body might not have been found, but all he stood for has sunk to the bottom of the Gulf, where it belongs. His personal, bigoted jihad, aimed at ripping out the heart of America, should never be confused with other Islamic struggles around the world, in places like Ramallah, which deserve a fresh approach from all sides.’
&nb
sp; Marchant noticed Spiro give the briefest of glances at his wife. ‘And on that note, I’d like everyone to raise their glasses to Daniel Marchant, to the special relationship reborn, and to Iranian technology. They reckon the torpedo missed by a frickin’ half-mile.’
Spiro sat down as laughter rang out all around him. A few people came over and slapped Marchant on the back, and for a moment it almost felt good to be in America. It was a lavish scene before him: Bohemian glass chandeliers, fine food, decent wine – Burgundy, of course – and the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington staring down at them. (Fielding had pointed out that it was in fact a copy. The original was at the Smithsonian Institution.) In a nice touch, there was even Bruichladdich on offer afterwards. But when a waiter tapped him on the shoulder and whispered to him that he had a phone call, which he could take in an adjoining room, the candles seemed to begin to burn rather than glow. Nobody knew he was here, except those who were in the room. Perhaps there had been a news leak, and a reporter was trying to interview him?
He couldn’t tell anyone anything, of course. The story of how he jumped clear of his boat moments before it collided with Dhar’s would never be known beyond the walls of Legoland and Langley. And no one would ever hear how the torpedo might have hit its target if it hadn’t been knocked off course at its launch. Or how he had stayed under water for as long as he could, rising to the surface after the boats had exploded and being picked up by a US launch. His only injuries were from burning oil on his forearms. If the second torpedo had exploded, he would have been killed, but the thermobaric charge was faulty. Dhar hadn’t appeared, dead or alive. A body would have been helpful, closed a chapter of Marchant’s life. Instead there was only flotsam.
