“There are many in my country,” Ashani said, “who think you were behind the destruction of the Isfahan facility.”
Kennedy looked him straight in the eye and said, “I can promise you, we had nothing to do with the attack.”
“That may well be the case. I am just telling you, the hard-liners will want something more concrete than the possibility that American banks might invest in our country.”
“American financial institutions will follow the U.S. government. That is why the president is prepared to offer you a billion dollars in guaranteed loans.”
Ashani was surprised. “What is the catch?”
“The money must go toward building new refineries. The loans will be interest-free for the first three years, and after that they will be locked in at five percent.”
“The money has to be used to build refineries?”
“The president feels it is the only way he can get a majority of the Congress to back it.”
“You want us to renounce our nuclear program?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not publicly.”
“But privately.”
“It would help.”
Ashani winced. “There are those in my country who are obsessed with becoming a nuclear power.”
Kennedy leaned in and whispered, “Your economy is close to collapsing. You are on the verge of another revolution, only this time, you guys are going to be the ones thrown out of power. This is a chance for you to stave off disaster.”
Ashani scratched his beard, looked past Kennedy and the dusty front door. With just his limited view he counted five men in urban combat gear holding their weapons at the ready. This could be Tehran in a year or two if economic stability wasn’t reached. One thing bothered him, though. Ashani looked carefully into Kennedy’s eyes and asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you offering to help us?”
Kennedy nodded. Despite Ashani’s relatively open mind, there was no getting over the fact the he had spent all of his adult life in a country that blamed America for virtually every woe. “Because we feel,” Kennedy started out slowly, “that there are enough people like you, Azad, decent people who want to put an end to the hatred and violence. Who knows what type of government might take over after a second revolution? Who’s to say it won’t be more fundamentalist and anti-Western than the current government?” Kennedy shook her head. “We have learned the hard way that economic instability in Middle East is not in the best interest of the United States. The lack of opportunity makes it all too easy for the clerics to preach their hatred. We want to see a resurgence in Persian pride. We want you to take control of your own destiny. We want to see you make advances in science and health. We want to see you succeed, if for no other reason than we stop getting blamed for your failures.”
Ashani had a look of intense concentration on his face. Everything she had just said was true, but selling it to men whose entire power base was dependent on a hatred of America would be exceedingly difficult.
Kennedy knew what he was thinking. “I know this is risky. That is why I am here and not Secretary of State Wicka. My president sent me because he knows you and I have proven that our two countries can work together.”
“That is true, but this is a big step.”
“What is your alternative, Azad?” Kennedy put her arms out and motioned in each direction. “Is this what you want? Car bombs and sectarian violence, kidnappings and bloodletting? We both know your country is closer to this than the mullahs would ever admit.”
With downcast eyes, Ashani slowly nodded.
“Then what is your answer?”
In Ashani’s mind there was no doubt this was the right thing to do, but selling it to the Supreme Council would be extremely difficult. His mind kept returning to Amatullah. The Peacock President would hate this with every fiber of his body. Still, there was a chance that the Supreme Leader would see it as an opportunity for his people to avoid years of pain and suffering. Finally, Ashani looked at Kennedy and said, “It is my sincere hope that this will be recorded as the moment our two countries forged a new and lasting friendship. I must warn you, though, that this is going to be very hard for me to sell to the Supreme Council.”
“I know it will, but I hope for the sake of both our countries you succeed.”
33
U.S.S. VIRGINIA, GULF OF OMAN
Captain Pete Halberg was a prime candidate for an ulcer. The forty-five-year-old graduate of Annapolis never lost his temper. Not with his wife, not with his six kids, and never with his crew. He internalized stress by shoving it down into the pit of his stomach, where he fed it with black coffee. Usually ten cups a day or more. His only saving grace was the twenty minutes he put in on the heavy bag in the bowels of his sub’s engine room. That and the bottle of Tums antacid tablets that he went through every week. On this particular morning the pucker factor on the bridge was running high.
Command of any submarine was an intensely stressful, yet rewarding job. Commanding one of America’s newest fast attack submarines was in a league all by itself. The United States Navy had entrusted Halberg with the two-billion-dollar technological marvel and given him 134 submariners to lead. The cruise had been fairly routine up until two days prior when they’d received a flash message from Submarine Task Force Commander or CTF 54. Their orders were to leave the Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group, which was on patrol in the Persian Gulf, and proceed to the Gulf of Oman, where Halberg and his crew were to locate and track one of Iran’s three Kilo-class subs that had left port in a hurry.
Shortly after midnight they’d followed a Liberian supertanker filled with crude through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the deeper waters of the Gulf of Oman. At 377 feet the U.S.S. Virginia was seventeen feet longer than the depth of the main shipping channel. There wasn’t a sub in the world, other than her sister ships, that could come even close to her capabilities, but she had her limits. Halberg and his entire crew had breathed a collective sigh of relief when they reached the deeper water of the Gulf of Oman. The Virginia’s strength lay in her stealth, firepower, and speed. To use those, however, she needed room to maneuver. If the Persian Gulf was a six-lane divided highway on a dry sunny day, the Strait of Hormuz was a narrow dark alley on a dark rainy night. Twenty-seven miles at the narrowest point, it was dotted with islands and packed with shipping traffic. Most of its supertankers were nearly 1,000 feet long. The currents were quick and once outside the main shipping channel there were countless uncharted wrecks.
Based on the information provided by CTF 54, Halberg and his executive officer, Dennis Strilzuk, agreed on the most likely location of the Kilo. They set up a patrol grid and then Halberg turned over the command duty officer watch to the exec so he could grab a few hours of sleep. Four hours later he woke up refreshed and returned to the bridge. Traveling at five knots on an easterly heading, the lightweight wide-aperture array picked up the Kilo running at the same speed in the opposite direction, parallel to the Iranian coast.
It was a predictable maneuver that they had seen the Iranians use dozens of times. They would run their subs out of their base in Bandar Abbas in broad daylight for all the world to see and then transit through the strait on the surface. Once clear of the shipping channel they’d dive and then put the pedal to the metal. Usually, just north of Muscat, Oman, they would decrease speed to five knots and begin a series of lazy figure eights to make sure no American subs were trailing them. Then they would slowly work their way north and skirt the Iranian coastline just inside territorial waters, looking for an American warship they could fall in behind and tail back through the strait.
When Halberg arrived in control, Strilzuk explained what was going on.
“About thirty minutes ago, he broke for international water and started running the race track right here on the shelf.” Strilzuk pointed to a location on the chart that showed where the Gulf of Oman stepped its way up from a depth of 1,000 meters to 100 meters. The
location was right on the doorstep of the Strait of Hormuz.
Halberg sipped his coffee. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. Why go to all that effort to disappear and then start beating your chest?”
“Unless you want to be found,” Halberg mused.
“That’s what I was thinking.” Strilzuk handed the skipper a printed message from CTF 54. “This came in about an hour ago.”
Halberg scanned the message without the aid of glasses. With his oldest child already in college, he was very proud of the fact that he didn’t need reading specs. According to the message the Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas was a beehive of activity. Her two remaining Kilo subs, the Tareq and Noor, had rushed out of port in the middle of the night along with four of their minisubs.
Strilzuk pointed to the nearest color monitor and said, “These satellite photos were taken at zero four hundred. Every frigate in the harbor is glowing. They’re getting ready to put their entire navy to sea.”
Halberg looked down at the plotting table. The old paper charts had been replaced by a flat computer screen that provided real-time tactical information. With the aid of a complex navigation system, the display showed the exact location of the Virginia, the Iranian Kilo they were shadowing, and virtually every other ship in the Gulf of Oman. Halberg pressed a button and the screen changed magnification to show the tactical situation in the Persian Gulf. Two of the six Iranian subs were already missing. The other four were all headed northwest toward the Eisenhower strike group. Halberg assumed the missing subs were also headed in that direction. He’d been patrolling these waters on and off for nearly twenty years, and this was as aggressive as he’d ever seen the Iranians.
Halberg changed the plotting screen back to his immediate area of responsibility. He looked at the location of the Iranian Kilo that they had identified as the Yunes, the most modern of their subs. She appeared to be guarding the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.
“Why don’t you grab some sleep,” Halberg said to Strilzuk. “I’ll start the next watch early.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” Halberg settled into his chair in the Command and Control Center and asked for a cup of coffee. As he studied the battlefield layout on the array of screens in the CACC, he got the feeling that this was not going to be another boring day at sea.
34
MOSUL, IRAQ
Rapp was wearing a loose-fitting pair of pleated black dress pants and a gray dress shirt that was untucked. He stood behind Stilwell looking down at one of the flat-panel monitors. The screen was split in two. The left half showed Kennedy. The right half showed Ashani. Their conversation was relayed via a pair of desktop speakers with reasonable clarity. As Kennedy had predicted, the dialogue was progressing without conflict. This should have reassured Rapp, but it didn’t.
Something didn’t seem right. He ran a hand through his thick, black hair and then scratched his beard. His eyes moved to a second monitor showing four separate shots of the street. The policemen at the north barricade looked tense and a bit jumpy. It was decided that they would not be told any specifics about the meeting. Especially that the director of the CIA was one of the two principles. The Iranian demand that no U.S. military personnel be involved with the security complicated things a bit.
The local police were the next best choice for crowd control. At least that’s what Ridley thought. Rapp was having second thoughts. The police seemed to be more concerned with what was going on inside the security perimeter than what was going on outside. Their job was to screen pedestrians and make sure no vehicles gained access to the block.
Fortunately, pedestrian traffic was sparse. The natives knew to stay away from the police checkpoints for the simple fact that they provided ripe targets for the fundamentalist suicide bombers. As Rapp was trying to get a read on the situation, two more police vehicles pulled up. They were pickup trucks, each with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted to the roof of the cab. Two .50-caliber heavy machine guns was a lot of firepower. The gunners were wearing flak jackets and black hoods, but beyond that they were standing fully exposed in the back of the pickups. It was the perfect job for a young recruit who would think himself invincible behind the heavy gun. In reality, though, they were ripe targets. In a gunfight they wouldn’t last long, standing and exposed like that. Any decent marksman could pick them off. Rapp noticed that the men handling the big guns also appeared more concerned about what was happening inside the security cordon than what was going on outside.
Rapp shifted his gaze to a picture of the men who were providing transport for Minister Ashani. They were parked directly across the street from the café and their American counterparts. As they were dressed in street clothes and wearing black hoods to conceal their faces, Rapp guessed they were either Quds Force or members of a local Shia militia. They were all holding AK-74s. He understood why the militants had to conceal their faces, but the fact that the police did as well spoke volumes about the lawlessness of the city.
Rapp tapped Stilwell on the shoulder and said, “Am I just imagining it, or does it look like the police and these guys in the hoods are itching to get in a gunfight with each other?”
“Nope,” Stilwell kept his eyes on screen, “you’re not imagining anything. It’s the same old story. Most of the cops are Sunni, and these guys in the hoods are Shia. They’re like Yankees and Red Sox fans, except they’ve hated each other for a lot longer.”
“Yankees and Red Sox fans don’t kill each other.”
“They might…if they had to live in the same city.”
Rapp didn’t like any of this. The last thing they needed was Kennedy getting caught in the crossfire between the Hatfields and the McCoys. “Can we trust these militia guys?”
“How do you mean?”
“How do we know they’re not going to start a fight?”
“We don’t.”
“Wonderful.”
“Mitch, the only people I trust in this town are my Kurds.”
Rapp looked down at all the cops. “Not even the police?”
“Least of all the police.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I sure the hell am. They’re one of the most corrupt groups in the damn city. If a fight starts there’s a better than fifty percent chance they’ll just run.”
“Then why are we using them?”
“Because we don’t have a lot of options.”
“Shit.”
“Mitch, it’s not as bad as you think. These guys have no idea who they’re protecting. All they know is they’re going to get a nice big cash bonus from us if this thing goes off without any problems.”
Rapp looked at the security monitor with renewed concern. He pointed at the screen and said, “Look at these two idiots. They’ve got those fifties pointed in the wrong direction.”
Stilwell checked out the screen and shook his head. “There is no such thing as muzzle discipline over here. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t have to tell some idiot to lower his gun. And they’re all walking around with the damn things chambered, safeties off, and their fingers on the trigger. Accidental discharges are as common as car wrecks…and they aren’t good drivers.”
Rapp swore to himself. An accidental discharge in a situation like this would likely result in a thousand plus rounds flying through the air in every direction. He walked over to the window and looked through a slit in the curtain down at the street. Rapp had a secure radio clipped to his belt and a wireless earpiece in his left ear. He touched the transmit button and said, “Mac, how are you feeling?” Rapp looked directly at Kennedy’s security chief who was blocking the entrance to the café.
“Just great,” he said sarcastically. “I’m surrounded by men in masks carrying bigger guns than mine who would love nothing more than to kill our boss. Other than that it’s a wonderful morning. The sun is out, the temp’s in the mid-sixties. I feel like I’m on vacation.”
“I know.
It sounds like they’re wrapping it up. Irene’s gotten through all her main points. It shouldn’t be much longer, and then you guys can get the hell out of here and back to the airport.”
“I’m counting the seconds.”
“Hang in there.”
Rapp clicked the secure radio out of the two-way mode and looked to the far end of the street. Several of the cops were now milling about with Russian-made rocket-propelled grenade launchers resting on their hips.
“This place is fucking crazy,” Rapp mumbled to himself.
There was way too much unsecured firepower. Subconsciously, he brought his left hand up and touched the .45-caliber Glock 21 pistol on his left hip. Underneath his oversized gray shirt, Rapp was wearing level-three body armor with a ceramic chicken plate over his heart. The Glock was in a paddle holster with two spare magazines clipped to his belt. Rapp turned his attention away from the street for a moment and eyed the small arsenal Stilwell had assembled on the other side of the room. On the floor was a black composite case with two locking clasps.
Rapp walked over, knelt, and popped the two clasps. He lifted the lid and revealed his personal arsenal: a 5.56mm rifle with a suppressor, a spare .45, and a Glock 17 with a suppressor, all sitting in foam cutouts. The M-4 was made by Sabre Defense. It was a Massad Ayoob special broken down into a lower and upper receiver. Rapp assembled the weapon in a few seconds, screwed the silencer onto the end, and loaded it with a thirty-round magazine. He checked to make sure the safety was on, then chambered one of the .233 rounds, grabbed two spare magazines, and walked back to the window.
“Call the base,” he said to Stilwell, “and make sure the quick-reaction force is at the gate ready to move, and I mean locked and loaded, engines running.”