Ohio Class

10

It was starting to rain, a thin, warm, tropical mist that floated on the air more than fell, and turned the glare of high-intensity floodlights into soft blurs of white. Marine guards, in camo utilities and carrying M-16s, stood stoically in the drizzle, watching the night.

Lieutenant Christopher Wolfe stood on the concrete dock near the pier, watching the line of powerfully muscled, hard young men filing past him and onto the pier. The SEALs, as ever, bore an aura of quiet and deadly competence. They were very, very good at what they did, and that expertise carried over into their silent manner.

Outwardly, they ignored Wolfe as they passed him. A number had formed up a working party and were shifting ammunition containers and other equipment from a pile on the pier up onto the Ohio's afterdeck, helped by dungaree-clad sailors off the sub. Others, each with a heavy sea bag over his shoulder, were filing onto the pier and up a specially rigged brow leading to the forward deck, then taking a sharp right to the weapons loading hatch just ahead of Ohio's sail.

He felt their notice of him, and their curiosity, even if they didn't voice it.

Weapons, Lieutenant Christopher Wolfe thought, and his mouth pulled back in a wry but humorless grin. That's what we are. They might as well load us through the weapons hatch.

"Lieutenant Wolfe?"

He turned to face two men. The speaker was a lean, hard individual who might have been as old as thirty-five, with sandy hair matted against his forehead by the rain. Like the others, he was wearing a dark blue Navy work jacket, with no indication of rank.

"Yes?"

"I'm Commander Drake, Detachment Delta." He indicated the man next to him, dark-skinned, dark-eyed. "This is my exec, Lieutenant Mayhew. You're the Detachment Echo guy… from Black Stallion?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you want to go back there?" Mayhew asked with a sudden grin.

"I don't want to, no," Wolfe said. "But I guess someone decided you boys needed a friendly native guide."

"It would help to have someone who'd seen the ground before," Drake said. "And maybe someone who can tell us what to avoid this time around."

Wolfe nodded, tired. "I can tell you where we went wrong before, Commander. You'll have to make your own mistakes for yourself. New ones, all your own."

He'd intended the words as a joke, but he caught the flash of irritation in Drake's eye. The man seemed a humorless sort, not the kind of officer who would allow himself to become familiar with those under his command.

"We will not be making any mistakes this time around, Lieutenant," Drake said.

"I'm very glad to hear that, sir."

He lifted his wrist, peering at his diving watch. "It's late… but I'd like to go over your debriefing, if you don't mind."

How many times had he been through it already? The grilling? The memories? "Very well, sir."

"Let's get on board, and get the hell out of this rain."

His first job, though, was to check in with Ohio's OOD, who assigned an enlisted man to take him to the compartment set aside as bunking quarters for the SEALs.

Ohio-class boats might be roomy compared to an SSN, but space was still precious. Sixty-six SEALs could not simply insert themselves into a boat already occupied by over 140 enlisted men and officers without crowding. Sleeping space for the SEALs consisted of racks stacked five high, with room to lie down but not to sit up — with about eighteen inches of headroom between one rack and the next rack above.

Ohio's enlisted crewmen had the same facilities.

Submariners might be used to such cramped sleeping arrangements, Wolfe thought, but living in a sardine can took some getting used to. SEALs learned to sleep in the mud — or go forty-eight hours at a stretch with no sleep at all — but when they had a rack, they expected it to be a real bed, not a coffin with a mattress in it. Nor did the officers usually barrack with enlisted men; Commander

Drake and Captain Martin were sharing a cabin, Wolfe understood, but the lieutenants were racking out with the enlisted SEALs.

Rank might have its privileges on a submarine, but not when those privileges took up space.

"I assure you, General, that your country has nothing to fear in this matter." Admiral Mehdi Baba-Janzadeh, Iran's Minister of Defense, folded his hands on the desk. "We have a clear division of our mutual areas of interest, your people and mine. Your nation's help, both in terms of military assistance and in the more, ah, technical matters at Arak and Natanz, will assure our hegemony over the Persian Gulf, and your security at home, for many years to come."

General Igor Sergeyev studied the man across the desk for a long moment before replying. Outside, the sun beat down hard on the gray streets of Tehran, and he could hear the rumble and clatter of traffic on Mozhdeh Street. "We recognize that, Admiral," he said slowly, in his somewhat halting Farsi. "But my superiors at home are… concerned. A major war in the Gulf could easily grow to something larger. Things could get out of hand."

"General, I promise you that there is no need for concern. We do not intend to actually fight the Americans. Not in an all-out, protracted war."

"Neither," Sergeyev said with a bland lack of expression, "did the Taliban."

"Ah. Point taken. But I assure you that it will not come to that."

"How can you be so certain? The Americans have been… insatiable since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—"

"I am sure," Baba-Janzadeh said, interrupting, "that the Americans lack the will to fight, in particular when they are confronted with high casualties. Look at the record! Their leaders are terrified of an engagement that will, in their words, become another Vietnam. They take every opportunity to avoid direct combat, preferring to use stand-off weapons or intermediaries simply in order to preserve American lives. In Afghanistan, they relied for the most part on anti-Taliban rebels, on locals, and upon the use of massive air power when the Taliban had almost nothing in the way of antiair defenses."

"Iraq had a sizable army, and formidable defenses."

Baba-Janzadeh shrugged. "That, General, is a matter of opinion. Their army had been largely destroyed during their first war with the Americans, and had not been substantially rebuilt."

"And the American invasion of Iraq was not carried out by surrogates."

"No… though you will notice that their propaganda machine stressed that it was an allied coalition that was attacking Iraq, not solely the Americans. We also know that they originally planned to carry out much of the campaign using Kurdish surrogates in the North. That idea was rendered ineffective when the Turks refused to allow American operations from their soil.

"And the outcome of that invasion only proves my point. American forces suffered relatively few casualties in the actual invasion. Subsequent combat losses were incurred over the next several years, in guerrilla warfare against Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda fighters. Meanwhile the western press — especially the American press — agonized over mounting casualties and castigated the Bush administration for the 'Iraq quagmire,' as they liked to call it.

"The nation of Iran, my dear general, is far better able to defend itself, far more capable and deadly than the Iraqi military ever was. Faced with the certainty of high casualties if they invade our country, the Americans will back down."

Sergeyev raised an eyebrow, but refrained from the obvious rejoinder. In eight years of insanely bitter warfare, Iran had been unable to overcome Iraq. The two had, in essence, fought one another to a bloody and mutually exhausted standstill between 1980 and 1988. If Iran had recovered in some measure in the two decades since, it hadn't been to the point where they could last for long against an all-out invasion by the United States.

In any case, Baba-Janzadeh was right about the will and the determination of the American public, or, rather, of the American government. They remained mesmerized by the specter of their long struggle in Vietnam, by the fear of finding themselves again mired in a war they could neither win nor from which they could extricate themselves.

"It is not my place, Admiral," Sergeyev said after a moment, "to criticize your government, or even to offer military advice. My government only wishes certain… assurances that the balance of power in this region not be upset by Iranian adventurism."

"Adventurism? We seek to claim our rightful place as leaders of Islam! Of Shi'a Islam! To achieve this, we challenge the American Satan, which has invaded our neighbors and which now threatens us! It is they who threaten the balance of power in the region, my dear Sergeyev, not us!"

Sergeyev made a placating gesture. "Please, Admiral, I meant no offense," he said. "And I assure you that it is not Moscow's wish to intervene in your internal or regional affairs. Certainly not! But… do you see our concern? If you provoke an American attack, and if you are conquered, the United States will be the only power in the region! Iraq's government follows America's dictates. They must, because the Americans put them in power, and keep them there! The Saudi princes remain committed only to themselves, but have been increasingly pressured by Washington lately. Again, support from the United States is all that keeps them in power. The same with the Emirates and lesser Gulf states. Even Syria has become… tractable of late. With Iraq's conquest, they feared they would be next.

"Iran remains the only truly independent power in the region. If you fall, Russia will find itself with an American hegemony in the Gulf."

Baba-Janzadeh gave a grim smile. "I thought you and the Americans were such great friends now. Your old enemies, become allies."

He shrugged. "Alliances come and go. The Commonwealth of Independent States still has strategic interests in the Gulf region, best served by a strong and independent Iran. It wouldn't do to let the Americans win the upper hand here."

"No… what you fear, General, is that the Shi'ite populations within your own borders will one day rise up and destroy you. You know that so long as you have us as an active trading partner, so long as we are willing to pay you hard currency for weapons, we have a certain amount of influence over those Islamic populations. Is that not true?"

"I… cannot address that issue, Admiral."

"Indeed. Your bosses in Moscow, no doubt, ordered you not to discuss religious matters with me. It is of no importance. I simply want you to know that we know the true picture. You fear having an American hegemony in the region, because without our guidance, your Shi'a population will become restive. You hope that their focus will be on the Americans — on driving the Americans out of our lands once and for all — but are afraid that without our leadership, they will act independently and chaotically.

"And to that, General, all I can say is that your best hope is that we win in our confrontation with the Americans. Continue to supply us with arms and military equipment, with supplies, and with technology… especially with the technology for the new uranium enrichment plants. Tell your superiors that the Americans will back down, because they know they cannot beat us without suffering intolerable casualties. If we win, we will be grateful to those of our allies who helped us, and you will have a powerful friend here on the shores of the Gulf." He smiled, a dangerous showing of teeth with no humor behind it. "Can I make this any clearer?"

"No, Admiral. I understand you perfectly."

"Good."

"Just so long as you understand, Admiral, that a miscalculation could have devastating consequences for you. As you say, in you we have a useful and active trading partner. We have no wish to lose you as such."

The audience, unsatisfactory as it was, ended moments later. General Sergeyev thanked his host for his time and, following the Pasdaran officer who was both his guide and guard in the building, made his way out of the warren of offices and passageways that was Tehran's Ministry of Defense.

His destination now was the Russian embassy. He had much to discuss with his superiors in Moscow — a cable, first, but then, he thought, a flight back home. He needed to speak with the Defense minister, his Defense minister, and with others, in person.

Did the Iranians know the deadliness of the game they were playing?

He'd seen the outlines of their plan, and he had to admit that it had been carefully and meticulously worked out. Baba-Janzadeh hadn't told him everything, of course, but he'd also seen details from secret documents acquired by the SVR, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki — Russia's foreign intelligence service, operating out of the local Russian embassy. According to the military operation the Iranians were calling "Azar Bahadur," they intended to use a virtual armada of small craft of various types armed with antiship missiles, as well as their fleet of submarines, all backed up by missile batteries along the Hormuz coast. Their goal was nothing less than the destruction of the American Fifth Fleet, currently headquartered across the Gulf from the Iranian west coast, while at the same time closing the Straits of Hormuz to all shipping.

Sergeyev was forced to admit that if the Iranians pulled off even a partial success — if they could sink three or four capital ships, and especially if they could sink an American aircraft carrier — the Americans might well decide they had no stomach for further losses and withdraw. Further, world opinion would swiftly gravitate to support for Iran, if they controlled the keys to the world's oil supply, and not the Americans.

But Sergeyev had been an officer in the Red Army before the collapse of the Communist state. As a young lieutenant, he'd served in the GRU, the Soviet Army's bureau of intelligence. He'd been stationed in America— in New York City and in Washington — for a total of three years, and he felt that he knew them as well as any Russian could. During those years he'd dealt with the Americans as enemies — as enemies in all but fact, at any rate — on an almost daily basis, getting to know them, how they thought, how they reacted to threats.

He believed that their chief weakness as a foe lay in their government, which surrendered focus, order, and will in order to entertain their curious interpretation of what a "democracy" truly was.

Oddly, paradoxically, their military's greatest strength, in his opinion, lay in that same interpretation of democracy, which gave it tremendous flexibility. American field commanders, ship captains, even regimental commanders exercised far greater freedom in interpreting and carrying out their orders than their Russian counterparts had ever known. Had things ever come to an actual war between the United States and the old Soviet Union, Sergeyev feared the Americans would have won. By the time a developing situation on the battlefield could be identified, the proper request for orders routed up the chain of command, and a reply be routed back down and received, an American field commander would have recognized the problem and taken action.

In many ways, Iran's military enjoyed the same shackles as had the Red Army. Instead of political control, the mullahs exerted religious control, but the result was much the same. A Russian colonel who made a fatal strategic mistake would have found himself replaced; a Pasdaran colonel who blundered might well find himself dead.

The effect, in terms of squelching any real initiative among field officers, was very much the same.

The imbalance in forces didn't concern Sergeyev much. America's conflict in Vietnam had demonstrated to the world that a nation did not need to match the Americans tank for tank, ship for ship, man for man in order to win. What was necessary was will. Mehdi Baba-Janzadeh was absolutely right. Faced with high casualty rates and falling numbers in the polls, the American Congress lacked will.

But the American people… ah, that was another thing entirely. America's citizens were much like ordinary Russians — strong, proud, resilient, determined, and willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

Would the loss of a nuclear aircraft carrier or a few thousand of their Marines convince Washington to withdraw from the Gulf? Or would the American people roll up their sleeves and settle in for a long and brutal war, determined to carry it through to the end? Sergeyev honestly didn't know the answer to that, so finely balanced was it on the sword's edge of history. During the Great Patriotic War, the Americans had fought through to final and decisive victory both in Europe and in the Pacific. In Vietnam, the American public had been weakened and divided by dissent; their military had won the victories, but their politicians had lost the war.

Baba-Janzadeh's problem was that he assumed that the majority of the American public, because they were not devotees of Islam, were weak and dissolute, lacking in will and determination. During the Cold War, Moscow had underestimated them in a similar way because they were capitalists rather than Communists. Sergeyev's deployment in the United States with the GRU had convinced him that ordinary Americans should never be underestimated.

Even so, he did believe the Iranian plan had a fair chance of success. Back home in Moscow his superiors were still bickering over whether to warn the Americans of their peril. Their decision, he knew, depended in large part on his assessment of the situation in Tehran. If the Iranians had no chance of success, it was in Moscow's best interests to throw in their lot with the Americans. However, a successful American invasion of Iran would bring certain documents to light — most especially those regarding Moscow's covert assistance with Iran's military nuclear program — that were best left in darkness. By distancing themselves from Iran, by actively providing accurate intelligence to Washington, Moscow might be able to take advantage of the situation, and even provide military assistance that would create and guarantee a Russian presence in the Gulf. And those embarrassing papers would remain out of sight.

But if Tehran had even a fair chance of winning, Russia would benefit to a far greater degree by covertly remaining friends with the current regime. Control of Russia's native Islamic population was part of it, yes, as was the cash flow generated by Iran's purchase of military and nuclear technology.

Of far greater importance, however, was the possibility of a major strategic shift. As the United States pulled out of the Gulf, they would leave behind a power vacuum only partially replaced by the tiny Iranian navy. Russia could capitalize on that, could step in with sales of Russian aircraft, tanks, ships, and submarines that would make all previous sales pale in comparison. Russian influence would grow in the region as well.

It was a long-established if unspoken fact of global realpolitik that he who controlled the waters of the Persian Gulf could dictate to the rest of the world. The United States was very close to achieving that enviable position.

But soon, with luck, Moscow could replace the Americans as lords of the oil-rich Middle East.

It was definitely a goal worth the tremendous risk, and Sergeyev intended to present his view on the matter to his superiors in the most forcible manner possible.

Admiral Mehdi Baba-Janzadeh remained motionless behind his desk for a long time after Sergeyev's departure. The fool. The poor, deluded, godless fool. He had no idea what was in store for his country once Iran emerged triumphant in the coming struggle.

Risk? Of course there was risk! What great endeavor, what heroic effort, lacked all risk, all danger? And what great victory for the cause of Allah, the merciful, the munificent, was won without sacrifice, even martyrdom? The West — and Baba-Janzadeh included Russia within that category — simply did not, simply could not, understand.

And the planners of Operation Azar Bahadur — the Farsi meant "Bold Fire" — had honed the plan to the diamond-keen edge of a scimitar. Even if the Americans won, they would lose.

During the War of the Cities, the eight-year struggle with Iraq, Iran had been forced to accept devastating, inconceivable losses in order to prevail over Saddam Hussein's invasion. Women and children had been recruited to walk ahead of advancing troops in order to clear the approach of land mines, and assaulting Pasdaran units had been forced to scramble over the thickly stacked walls of their own dead to reach the enemy. Iranians knew what sacrifice truly was.

Before the first American war with Iraq, Saddam Hussein had boasted that the coming conflict would be the "Mother of All Battles," and confidently predicted hundreds of thousands of American dead. And indeed, that might have been the outcome had Saddam been a better general. He'd failed, however, by relying on the mass-army tactics he'd employed with less than complete success against Iran, by completely underestimating the superiority of American technology, and by waiting for the Americans to come to him, rather than striking the first blow.

Oh, he'd launched an attack — the abortive attempt at al Khafji that had been handily beaten back at the Saudi border — but that had been more of a probing attack, a tentative feeling-out of American and Saudi defenses.

Baba-Janzadeh had studied the first Iraqi war exhaustively, and he'd made his senior field commanders study its lessons as well. Except for that limited exploration-in-force at al Khafji, Saddam had waited for the Americans to come to him, waited behind his earth berms and fields of land mines and dug-in tanks and static fortifications, assuming that the Americans, when they came, would come that way. Their flanking attack around the western Iraqi defenses and their near-complete encirclement of the Revolutionary Guard had caught Saddam and his generals totally and fatally by surprise.

Iran's military council had no intention of making the same mistakes as had the unlamented Saddam Hussein. Preparations were all but complete, and the first stages were already in motion. At the moment, according to Iranian Intelligence, there were some thirty-four American warships based at Dhahran — the vessels of their Fifth Fleet. At any given time, perhaps a third of these were on patrol — escorting international shipping in and out of the Gulf, suppressing piracy, and operating in support of the Iraqi government.

Against that flotilla — impressive in firepower as it might be — was a true armada, numbering in the hundreds… most of them small craft, light patrol boats, even fishing boats, but all equipped with deadly anti-ship missiles, including the deadly new C-802 missiles acquired from the Chinese.

Iran also now possessed six diesel-electric submarines, three Kilo-class subs purchased from the Russians over the past two decades, and three of the newer Ghadir-class boats, designed and built entirely in Iran.

And finally there were the new Iranian missile forces. The new Faateh A-110 medium-range surface-to-surface missile and the highly accurate updated Shahab-3 together would enable Iran to utterly dominate the entire Gulf. The better-than-1,300-kilometer range of the Shahab-3, in fact, would let Iran strike Israel. Indeed, at recent military parades through Tehran, six of the big solid-fuel rockets had been on prominent display, each with a banner declaring, "We will wipe Israel from the map."

The attacks would be coordinated, with the first strike coming from small craft sneaking in close, and follow-on strikes by surface-to-surface missiles fired from Iranian territory. At the same time, Iranian commandos — the Qods Special Forces — and the Iranian-based arm of al-Qaeda, together would launch simultaneous attacks of sabotage and suicide bombings.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet would find itself under sudden and ferocious attack from all quarters, many of the ships destroyed as they rested in port. Still other attacks would be aimed at the American military base at Dhahar, killing the sailors, soldiers, and Marines of the fleet before they knew what had happened. Missiles and submarines would be used to simultaneously close the Straits of Hormuz; the surviving American warships would be unable to escape, and reinforcements would not be able to enter.

America would be presented with a disaster as potent as the one they'd suffered at Pearl Harbor: their fleet crippled at best, with thousands of casualties at the very least. And this time, Washington would not have the will or the determination they'd found in the aftermath of the Japanese attack.

But the plan's real strength lay in what it would do to rally Islamic support throughout the world. Even if the initial strike were less than completely successful, even if the American fleet escaped the trap at the straits, the mere fact that Iran had struck such a blow would be hailed as an astonishing victory throughout the Islamic world. There would be risings, such risings, risings that would sweep secular governments from power from Ankara and Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, and that might well topple the governments of non-Islamic states as well. Indonesia, the Philippines, the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Russia herself would be engulfed in the flames of religious jihad.

That fool Sergeyev didn't have an inkling of what was to come. He thought to use Iran for his nation's interests; in fact, Iran would use him.

Iran would use his nation's greed and manipulative instincts to advance the cause of Allah and His Prophet.

And, truly, the world would never again be the same.