The Persian Gamble

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “Grenade!”

  Even as he was yelling this, Marcus realized there was not going to be time to take proper cover. The grenade was going to blow the door to smithereens, and the force of the blast was going to be exponentially magnified inside the steel stairwell. Rather than retreat, Marcus found himself doing the exact opposite. He burst through the door, pressed the trigger of his submachine gun to give himself a bit of covering fire, and kicked the grenade back down the hallway. The moment he did, he saw the eyes of his attacker grow wide. He was crouched in a doorway and clearly had not anticipated Marcus’s move. As if in slow motion, both men watched the grenade ricochet off the walls, reach the far end of the hallway, and detonate. The man was dead before his decapitated body hit the floor.

  Almost simultaneously, Marcus heard Warner open fire at someone either trying to enter the stairwell or moving through the galley downstairs. Whoever it was returned fire. Tempted though he was to look back, Marcus couldn’t assume he was alone. Nor could he wait for Warner to help him clear the crew’s quarters. There simply wasn’t time. The fires above them were raging. So were the fires on the deck. It couldn’t be long before the oil would catch fire and blow. What’s more, he knew there must be an unrelenting gun battle under way belowdecks as the remnants of Red Team engaged the Revolutionary Guards. Even if the heat from the fires wasn’t yet enough to set off the oil reserves, one stray bullet and they were all goners.

  Marcus pivoted into the first room on his left. He found a row of bunk beds on each side of the room and a smoking .50-caliber Gatling-type gun in the center of the room mounted on a tripod facing out of the blown-out window—and hundreds if not thousands of spent shell casings littered across the floor. Someone had been there not minutes before. Perhaps it had been the man he’d just killed. Regardless, the room was empty now and glowed red and orange from the flickering flames of the burning choppers in full view on the deck.

  Marcus cautiously reentered the hallway. Seeing it was clear, he crossed into the bunk room across the way. It, too, was clear, though it had no windows and no smoking guns. Again, he entered the hallway and crept forward, his MP7 pointed forward, his finger poised on the trigger. He entered the third bunk room, the last one on the right. The room was empty, but there was blood. Then he saw the severed head of the man who had tried to kill him moments before. It was not only lying on top of one of the bunk beds, but actually resting on the pillow.

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  The vacant eyes stared back at him.

  Blood was splattered all over the ceiling. Marcus could only assume that upon the grenade’s detonation, the man’s head had bounced off the ceiling and landed on the pillow. Yet Marcus forced himself not to look away from the ghoulish sight too quickly. He had to study this face.

  The man’s hair was jet-black. His beard was thick and full. But there was no four-inch scar. He was too young, barely twenty years old, Marcus reckoned. This was not Alireza al-Zanjani, and that was too bad. He knew President Clarke had ordered them to capture the Iranian alive. Then again, that was the order of a commander in chief who had never been in combat.

  Marcus shuddered and turned away, moving back into the hallway, where the heat was unrelenting. There was just one more room to check. He could still hear Warner engaged in a firefight. It occurred to him to simply toss a fragmentation grenade into the last room and sprint back to give Warner a hand. Yet he knew they were also under orders to gather any intelligence that they possibly could. He’d found no papers or computers thus far, but there was always a chance he could stumble on something useful.

  Crossing the hallway, he stepped into the last bunk room, this one also bathed in the eerie glow of the flickering flames. Through the blown-out windows, he could see a half-dozen SEALs down on the deck gathering bodies of their fallen brothers along with their weapons and ammo. Just then, Marcus heard someone on the radio saying the deck had been cleared of tangos and asking Callaghan—now effectively the commander of this operation—if the choppers could return from their holding pattern and start picking up the dead and wounded. But Marcus never heard the answer.

  For that split second, he’d let himself get distracted by the scene unfolding on the deck. He never saw the man crouched on the top bunk to his right. But suddenly the man leaped at him. Blindsided, Marcus collapsed to the ground. His weapon fell from his grip and skittered across the floor.

  Marcus was sprawled out on his stomach. All his attacker needed to do was shoot him in the back of his head or run a blade across his throat.

  Instead, the man lunged for the MP7. Marcus realized the man either had no weapon or was out of ammo. He also realized the man—clearly an Iranian commando—had made a terrible mistake. Marcus sprang forward and tackled him, flipping him over. He drove his right fist into the center of the man’s face and felt the cartilage of his nose crunch. Marcus’s left fist landed the next blow with nearly equal ferocity. Blood flowed down the man’s face and beard as Marcus kept raining savage blows down one after the other until the man was able to pull up a knee and with surprising force kick Marcus off him. Marcus was flung across the room and crashed into one of the bunks.

  The man sprang for his jugular. Marcus smashed him across the face again before he could get a firm grip. The two men were rolling across the floor, each trying to gain the upper hand until the Iranian again lunged for the gun. This time he got it and began to pull it toward him. Marcus kicked him as hard as he could in the stomach and sent the man reeling. It bought him about half a second. He scrambled to his feet and leaped on the man, trying to pull the gun away but without success. All he could think to do was to chomp down on the man’s arm and bite. The man screamed. The gun went off. But Marcus didn’t release until the man finally dropped the gun. Marcus kicked it away and then began pummeling the man’s face again.

  It wasn’t going to be enough. Marcus wasn’t going to be able to simply knock the Iranian unconscious. He was going to have to kill him. He reached for his Sig Sauer, but the man shifted his weight and maneuvered a stunning reversal that put him on top.

  Marcus was on his stomach again, and before he knew it, the man had grabbed a bedsheet, wrapped it around Marcus’s throat, and was squeezing it tighter and tighter. Marcus knew he was either going to be strangled to death in the next few seconds or the man was going to snap his neck. Marcus tried to scream for help but couldn’t get any air in or out. He felt his face turning purple and his eyes bulging out of their sockets. His lungs were burning. Nothing he did to break free was working. The man was simply too heavy to shake off.

  An explosion rocked the room. An instant later the man went limp and slumped to one side. Marcus—his ears ringing—feverishly unwrapped the sheet from his neck and began to suck in as much air as he could while he turned over to see just what had happened.

  There in the doorway stood Warner, the barrel of his pistol still smoking. He had saved Marcus’s life for a second time.

  “Clear,” the SEAL said quietly.

  Marcus nodded and Warner pulled him to his feet. Together, they rolled the Iranian over. But it wasn’t al-Zanjani.

  As they exited the first-floor, port side door, Warner broke right and Marcus broke left.

  The storm was rapidly worsening. Jagged sticks of lightning flashed all around the tanker, nearly blinding Marcus until he switched off his night vision goggles. Bone-rattling booms of thunder made it almost impossible to hear anything over the radios. Unrelenting sheets of rain completely drenched him. And the deck was now pitching and swaying with growing ferocity.

  Marcus checked the stern section of the ship. He found plenty of dead Iranians, though none of them was al-Zanjani. He checked them all for intel but found nothing. Nor did they have any weapons or ammo. All of that must have been cleared earlier by the SEALs he’d seen from the second-floor window. Finding no one alive, he finally came around the engine house and rejoined Warner, who had found Callaghan. Together, they were guarding the starboard door to the ship’s lo
wer levels and waiting for him.

  “Anything?” Callaghan yelled.

  “No,” Marcus yelled back. “All clear.”

  “And upstairs?”

  “Secure.”

  “You okay?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

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  Only then did Marcus realize blood was streaming down his face.

  Given the adrenaline pumping through his system and the soaking rain, he hadn’t noticed it. Callaghan pulled a first aid kit out of his backpack, but Marcus waved it away. They had far more important matters to deal with.

  “What’s the plan, Commander?” Warner asked.

  “Now that we’re secure up here, I’ve ordered the Seahawks back in,” Callaghan shouted back. “The first wave of choppers will load up the wounded and get them back to the carrier. The second will load up the bodies of our dead and take them back as well. They’ll come back empty to pick us up—us and the warheads.”

  “What’s the status down below?” asked Marcus.

  Callaghan shook his head. “It’s bad. I’ve already lost three men. Another is critically wounded. That’s why I need you two. Follow me and pick up those boxes of ammo. We need to finish this thing off, get those nukes, and get off this wreck.”

  Marcus nodded and followed Callaghan and Warner down the stairs, each man bringing ammo to resupply their brothers down below. They soon passed two members of Red Team guarding the entrance to the second level below deck. But the main firefight was on the third level. There, Marcus found two more SEALs, each exhausted, running dangerously low on grenades and magazines, but maintaining their positions and preventing any IRGC fighters from reinforcing the troops on the main deck. At the same time, though, Iranian fire was making it impossible for the Americans to press forward and reach the warheads.

  It was now clear why Red Team had gotten to the engine room without incident. The Iranian fighters hadn’t been guarding the engine. They’d concentrated their defensive force here.

  “That corridor goes down the starboard side of the ship,” Callaghan shouted over the gunfire, ordering Warner to cover it.

  “That one runs down the port side,” he told Marcus while handing him an M79, the so-called pirate gun.

  Marcus took it, moved to his position, and quickly fired a 40mm grenade down the darkened hallway. The explosion was deafening, the sound magnified by the steel walls and close quarters. Little good it did, however. The return fire commenced almost immediately. Marcus had never seen anyone use tracer rounds inside a building, much less a ship, but that’s exactly what the Iranians were doing. When one tango paused to reload, another seemed to open fire almost instantly. These guys didn’t seem worried about running out of ammo. They clearly had prepared for this eventuality.

  But what was their endgame? They’d obviously planned for the possibility of an American assault and figured out the best way to secure the only pathways to the warheads. But how did they expect to win? Were IRGC reinforcements coming? From where? The closest city was Shanghai. Were the Chinese coming to rescue the Iranian Revolutionary Guards? That seemed a stretch. But if it were true, why weren’t they here already?

  It was far too dangerous to stick his head into the corridor to get a look, even for a moment. So Marcus reloaded the M79, poked it around the corner, and fired without looking. There weren’t many grenades left. Maybe a dozen—certainly no more than fifteen. Then what?

  Marcus waved Callaghan over. He fired another grenade down the hallway, then pressed close to the commander’s right ear. “Are we absolutely certain the warheads are down there?”

  “Why else would they be holding their positions so fiercely?” Callaghan replied.

  “Right, but are you certain, 100 percent?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Has anyone used a Geiger counter? Have we picked up any radiation?” Marcus fired another grenade, then looked back at Callaghan.

  “No,” he said. In all the chaos, no one had thought to do it. Callaghan told Marcus and Warner and the other two SEALs to keep firing. He’d be right back. Two minutes later, he returned with a black box about the size of a small suitcase. Inside was a dark-green handheld device. The moment he turned it on, the audio began crackling, and the needle began oscillating wildly. There was no doubt about it now. Radioactive materials had been through there, and recently.

  Warner fired a burst of ammunition down his corridor, then borrowed the M79 to launch several grenades in the same direction.

  Marcus turned to Callaghan. “Sir, it just occurred to me—I don’t think there’s oil on this ship. Why would there be? Any oil Pyongyang purchased from the Iranians would have been offloaded in North Korea, right? Why send the ship back to the Gulf unless it was empty? But in this case, it’s not empty. I think the warheads are being stored in one of the steel bladders down below. It’s possible the bladders have been retrofitted specifically to carry the warheads and that the access hatches to get them out have likely been welded shut.”

  “Maybe,” Callaghan said. “What’s your point?”

  “Even if we could fight our way down to those hatches, it would take us hours, if not days, to get them open—so why should we? I know the president wants the warheads and al-Zanjani for that matter. But look at our situation. How many men have we lost so far?”

  “No idea. Eleven just from Blue Team and my own guys.”

  “And how many wounded?”

  Callaghan grimaced. “Too many.”

  “How many more Americans are we prepared to give up to fight a losing battle?”

  “We’re not losing, Ryker,” Callaghan snapped.

  “We sure ain’t winning.”

  “And what exactly are you suggesting?”

  “That we get out of here,” Marcus said. “Let’s get the dead and wounded off like you’re already doing. Then order a full retreat and call in an air strike and blow this tanker to kingdom come.”

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  WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “They want to do what?”

  Every eye in the Situation Room was now riveted on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Mr. President, that was Admiral Campbell, head of Pacific Command,” the chairman began, trying hard to compose himself. “He reports that the situation on the tanker is deteriorating rapidly. To begin with, we have another SEAL commander KIA.”

  There were audible gasps around the room.

  “Sanchez?” Clarke asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  They had all watched numerous Americans go down. But given the problem they were having with radio communications—no doubt because of the storm—none of them until that moment had realized that Sanchez had been one of them.

  “Sir, the number of SEALs KIA and wounded is rising fast. All the injuries are critical; many are life-threatening. The admiral tells me that just moments ago another chopper went down out at sea during a refueling operation. No word on survivors or casualties yet. Rescue choppers are heading to the crash site as we speak.”

  McDermott had seen a lot of death during his time in the Corps. But the loss of so many of the bravest and most capable men who had ever worn the uniform in one night made him physically ill.

  “Who’s currently in command on that ship?” the president asked.

  “Donny Callaghan.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “First-rate officer. Was serving as Sanchez’s deputy and head of Red Team. Thirty-four years old. Joined the Navy when he was eighteen. Married. Two kids. From the south side of Boston.”

  “Do his men have control of the warheads yet?”

  “No, Mr. President, they do not,” the chairman said. “Nor do they have al-Zanjani. Yet they’ve asked me to bring you an unusual request.”

  “Which is?”

  “That you authorize a full extraction of all our men off that tanker, followed by air strikes.”

 
“Air strikes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “To sink the ship?”

  “That’s affirmative, sir.”

  At this, CIA director Stephens blew up. “What are you telling us, Mr. Chairman—that your men want to cut and run before the operation is finished, before they get the warheads, before they grab al-Zanjani? That’s their recommendation?”

  “No, Director, it’s not my men making that recommendation,” replied the chairman.

  “Then who is?” Stephens demanded.

  “Your man.”

  “My man?”

  “Ryker.”

  “You’re telling me Marcus Ryker is recommending we sink the tanker?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “We’re losing too many men, and we’re going to lose more if we keep those choppers out in that storm any longer. He’s arguing that if the objective is keeping Iran from getting the warheads, then we could just end this thing in the next two minutes with no further loss of American lives. The water where they are isn’t super deep, but it’s deep enough to make a recovery operation difficult to impossible—certainly not without a lot of preparation and activity. It couldn’t be done in secret. There’d be no chance of an enemy getting the warheads later without us knowing about it and stopping it.”

  “Is he right?” asked the national security advisor.

  “About the depth? Yes, sir. Admiral Campbell confirms they’re in waters deeper than six hundred feet. It’s not the Okinawa Trough, but it’s deep enough.”

  “And the recovery of the warheads would really be impossible?” Clarke asked.

  “Correct,” said the chairman. “We’ve got the most sophisticated recovery equipment in the world. Yet the admiral says he doesn’t think we’d be able to do it without surface support vessels and a lot of production. There’s no way the Iranians or the Chinese or the Russians could pull it off without us knowing exactly what they were up to.”