Quest for Honor (34 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Pacific Ocean

T
he radar operator
stared at his computer screen, but in vain. The contact had disappeared, assuming it had ever been there in the first place. “I am sorry, Captain,” the harried sailor said, “but I swear it was there a few minutes ago. Very faint, but it was there.”

Nariman put a comforting hand on the radar man’s shoulder. “Keep a sharp eye, Rahimi. Notify me if you get another contact, surface or air.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Resigned, the operator glared at the screen. Nariman returned to his bridge, where he had an unimpeded 270-degree view of the vast Pacific. Aft of the ship, the sun was dipping below the horizon, and to the east he could see the first stars and planets becoming visible. One of them was Venus, he knew. Two and a half millenia earlier his ancestors had used the very same stars to navigate their tiny wooden sailing ships across the Aegean to a rendezvous with destiny. Now he was doing the same.

He had not seen such vast emptiness in his twenty-four years in the IRGC Navy. Of course, his open-ocean experience was quite limited. Until taking command of
Lion of Aladagh,
his time had been spent aboard vessels no larger than the Thondar-class missile boats, with maximum range of only 800 kilometers. This was much different. Instead of venturing out into the Arabian Sea and back to Bandar Abbas, he was sailing halfway around the world.

Fortunately, he could fall back on the experience of one previous voyage on this ship, to Bangladesh and back, but even alone on the Indian Ocean, he had never felt as tiny as he felt now. He looked to the east. Still more than fifteen hundred kilometers away was the coast of the Great Satan’s homeland. By this time three days from now, if it was Allah’s will, they would have reversed course for the long return voyage home, to the brave new world that would have been created to a significant degree by his ship.

As the days went by, especially since they departed Japanese waters, Nariman had been thinking about that more and more. He would not give the command to launch the missile; that would fall to another officer on board. But he, Nariman, had the responsibility to sail the ship to the launch point. So, what would happen would be at least partly on his hands.

The lives that would be lost, by the thousands, perhaps the millions, they would be his responsibility too. He had not been told the name of the target, but since the missile had a nuclear warhead, it would obviously be a city. San Francisco, or perhaps Los Angeles, cities full of infidels and crawling with depravity, but even so, the thought did not allow him to sleep well at night. Thus he had taken to spending more and more time in the night walking about his ship, joining the night watch on the bridge, talking with his sailors. They did not speak of the result of the mission, of course, and in truth many of the sailors, those who were not officers, were not supposed to know exactly what was going to happen. But Nariman had no illusions. Scuttlebutt had been part of every voyage of every ship since ancient times. His ancestors who had sailed the ships of Xerxes across the Aegean knew what they were going to do when they got there.

The Quds Force men, though, they certainly knew, as did the engineers who were in charge of the missile and its lethal payload. They all kept themselves largely apart from Nariman’s sailors, as much as it was possible to do on such a small ship, but word got around. The difference, he noted, was that the commandos who formed the security detachment were looking forward to the event, and boasted about how they were going to usher in a new era, that of the Twelfth Imam. Such talk unsettled Nariman the more he heard it. It was a good thing, he thought now, that early in the voyage he had met secretly with his senior officers. In the event of a certain order from Tehran, he told them, they might need to deal with those commandos, and so they had come up with a plan.

Two miles away and one hundred feet below the surface, three uniformed men huddled over a plotting table and examined a series of photographs. Around them other men went about their duties with quiet efficiency, but there was none of the idle chatter that had occasionally been in evidence just a few days before. Even the sounds of the submarine itself seemed different somehow, more focused, as if the vessel knew that she was no longer on a training mission.

“What do you think, XO?” the oldest of the three men asked. Silver eagles were pinned to the collar points of his blue uniform. Gray flecked his dark hair, but his ice blue eyes showed no sign of age. He had already made up his mind, but he wanted confirmation.

“It’s definitely our bogey, Skipper,” the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Wallace Hemple, said. He indicated the first photo, printed out only minutes before. The high-resolution camera in the boat’s photonic mast had taken a series of shots just before the captain had ordered it down, and the computer had touched them up nicely, providing a view as clear as if the two vessels had been only a hundred yards apart at high noon. “The configuration of the ship matches the imagery we received with the mission package,” Hemple said, pointing to the two photos that had been downloaded several hours earlier. “And our new shot clearly shows the flag on the mast here, and the name on the bow.”

“They’ve got balls, I’ll say that for them,” said the third man, wearing blue and gray digital cammies. “Flying their own flag, way out here, heading in our direction.” The Iranian tricolor was clearly visible. Lieutenant Steve Schaal, commander of the SEAL detachment, squinted at the picture. “Damn, these optics are good, Captain. If we enlarged this I’ll bet I could read the script on the red and green bands.”

Captain Dennis Carpenter allowed himself a tight grin. “It’s not Farsi, Lieutenant. It’s in Kufic, a form of calligraphy. It says ‘God is great’ a total of twenty-two times.”

“You’ve done your research,” Schaal said.

“’Know thy enemy’. Technically they’re not our enemy right now, but that might change pretty soon.” He straightened up, reaching for the coffee mug that had been resting on the table. Printed in blue on the white mug was USS NORTH DAKOTA SSN-784. He took a healthy swig, and it was hot and good, but what he really needed was some sleep; he’d managed to sneak a few hours shortly after the first alert message came in, but nothing since he’d received the mission orders at 0400. Things had moved swiftly after that. Literally; they’d been at flank speed for several hours on a course to intercept the bogey, slowing only long enough to take the SEALs on board after they’d parachuted into the drink from their aircraft. Carpenter wasn’t too fond of stressing his engines like that, but the boat had performed beautifully. Now they were slowed to a more comfortable twenty-five knots, matching the target.

But now the waiting was over. What happened next would be largely up to the Iranians.

“How much time do we have, Wally?” Carpenter asked.

“At his present speed, the bogey will be within maximum range of their best missile in about four or five hours, Skipper.”

Carpenter checked his watch. “Full dark in about two hours. We’ll start moving into position then. Lieutenant, you’d best prepare your men.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Schaal said, and headed aft. The maneuver would be dicey, but one they’d practiced before. In fact, they’d been scheduled for exercises in the Philippines with another SEAL team and Filipino marines in a few days, exercises that would likely have included this very type of evolution. Now they would do it for real. Carpenter would move
North Dakota
directly astern of the target and the SEALs would exit the boat underwater, deploying their Combat Rubber Raiding Craft from the boat’s Dry Dock Shelter. There were several ways to board a ship on the high seas and this was not the easiest, but there were no suitable assets available from which to stage a heliborne assault. It would be easier to deploy the men and their small craft from the surface, but Carpenter was not about to expose his boat to Iranian small arms fire or RPGs if he could help it.

“XO, make sure Sonar is paying close attention to the bogey. If he hears any signs of machinery beyond what he hears now, that’ll be the bogey getting the launcher ready. We won’t have time to get the SEALs aboard. We’ll have to take him out ourselves.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll get the forward torpedo room busy.”

“Have them prepare a full spread, Wally. I don’t want to miss this bastard if I have to shoot.”

Nariman checked in with his bridge officer, the navigator and the helmsman. The ship was relatively new and largely automated, so a large bridge crew was not necessary. All was well. The officer of the watch, a young lieutenant who had sailed with Nariman on his previous command, nodded respectfully to the captain.

Major Nafisi appeared on the bridge, which was part of his evening ritual as well. After their supper and evening prayers, the commander of the Quds Force detachment had taken to spending an hour or so up here with the captain. Nariman did not consider him a friend, but when they were not talking politics Nafisi was a fairly agreeable companion on these nocturnal visits. They went out onto the bridge wing.

“It is a fine evening, Captain, is it not?”

“Yes, it is, Major. The weather has been cooperative so far.”

“Undoubtedly it is the will of Allah, blessings be upon him.” Nafisi leaned out on the railing, showing no signs of the seasickness that had bedeviled him and his men for the first week after they had departed Bandar Abbas. “Two days, Captain, to our rendezvous with history?”

“Somewhat less,” Nariman said. He checked his watch and did the calculation in his head. “Forty hours, weather permitting.” At present speed, they would be at the launch point in less than half that time. Then Nariman would order the ship to reduce speed and sail a meandering course that would eventually take them back to where they needed to be. In the captain’s mind, those last several hours would be the most dangerous of the voyage. It was a big ocean, with a lot of room for a ship to loiter, but ships that changed course for no apparent reason tended to draw attention, if anybody was watching. And Nariman found it hard to believe the Americans would not be watching.

The major turned his attention back to the captain. “Any further suspicious radar contacts?”

“Possibly one about an hour ago, but it may very well have been nothing.”

“That would be three in the past twenty-four hours, would it not?”

The captain was instantly wary. “That is correct, Major.”

“Interesting, don’t you think?”

“The sea is a strange place, Major, especially all the way out here. It is not like our home waters. There have been mysterious things throughout history that have supposedly been seen by sailors. I would say it might very well have been a whale, if anything.”

The major grunted and looked back out the forward windscreen, to the east. “Any further radio transmissions from home?”

“Just the standard response at 1800 hours to our check-in. No change in orders.”

The QF major nodded. “That is good. We are much too close now to turn back.” He breathed in deeply, then smiled. “Think of the glory that will be ours when we return home, Captain. We, and our comrades on
Star of Persia,
will be the harbingers of a new age.”

Nariman said nothing. He had known since the day they boarded that Nafisi was a true believer. Nariman, on the other hand, considered himself to be a pragmatist. One had to be careful about expressing such views, though, and the captain was a careful man. He did not tell the major, for example, that he was becoming more certain that theirs was a suicide mission. The Americans could not possibly be so dense as to allow Iranian ships to sail so close to their shores and launch nuclear missiles, could they?

“Are you all right, Captain? You seem…tense.”

Nariman forced himself to relax. “I am fine,” he said, but he had to change the subject. “I assume, Major, that all is in readiness, with regard to the weapon?”

“Indeed it is, Captain. The launch team will be conducting their pre-launch tests in the morning. We will be ready by this time tomorrow.”

“We will need another twenty hours or so beyond that to reach the designated coordinates.”

“It is better to be ready well in advance, don’t you agree?”

“Of course. I’m sure we will be. The launch team members are highly competent.”

Nafisi gazed to the eastern horizon, now barely visible as the night grew. “Imagine, Captain, the Great Satan is out there, almost within our reach.”

“Yes, he is,” Nariman agreed, but he did not add they were now within the Great Satan’s reach as well.

Lt. Schaal made his way through the narrow corridors of the submarine to the captain’s quarters. He had a lot to do and not a lot of time in which to do it, but if the skipper wanted to talk to him, that took priority. And like the great majority of sub drivers he’d met, Carpenter was a straight shooter and commanded respect. They’d worked together once before, but that was just a training exercise. This was the real thing, about as real as it could get. He knocked on the door.

“Come in.” The SEAL slid inside and shut the door behind him. Carpenter was sitting at his small desk, looking at the trio of photos on the bulkhead. Schaal took them in quickly. On the left was a pretty young woman in a cap and gown, on the right a young man wearing a Naval Academy basketball uniform, and in the middle an attractive, fortyish woman standing on a beach. His family, no doubt. Schaal thought about the picture of his own wife and baby boy that was tucked away in his gear back aft. Before every mission he looked at that picture, trying not to think that he might not ever see them again. He imagined the captain was thinking the same thing.

“You asked to see me, sir?”

The captain turned in his chair to face the visitor. “Yes. How’s it going with the mission prep?”

“We’ll be ready when you give the order, Captain.”

Carpenter tapped the file on the desk. “To say I’m concerned about this would be an understatement, Steve. COMSUBRON feels pretty sure there’s a nuclear weapon on board that ship. I know you and your men are qualified to do a lot of things, but I wonder if securing a nuclear weapon is one of them. This whole mission was put together pretty quickly and I know your team was the closest, so here you are. I want an honest assessment from you: if there’s a nuke on board that tub, can your people handle it?”