Ohio Class

1

Lieutenant Christopher Wolfe dropped behind the illusory shelter of a boulder outcropping, scanning the ridge crest above and behind them, his H&K MP5SD at his shoulder. Through his night vision goggles the sky appeared as a pale, luminous green backdrop, the hillside as a black and rugged silhouette. No sign yet of—

Movement! A figure, dark green against the sky, emerged from behind the ridge, wearing a short-billed service cap and carrying an AK-47. Wolfe shifted the aim on his H&K; his NVGs revealed the otherwise invisible spot of red light marking his aim point, which he planted squarely on the target's center of mass. He tapped the trigger, and his sound-suppressed weapon gave a stuttering hiss, sending a quick-spaced three rounds into the target just as it emerged fully from the cover of the hilltop.

The target flopped backward, the AK flying end over end through the night.

"Echo One-one," Wolfe said, identifying himself over the Motorola strapped to his combat harness. The needle mike secured just in front of his lips transmitted every word to the other members of his squad, and to his far larger audience elsewhere. "Contact! North ridge, bearing zero-zero-five. Tango down."

In Wolfe's specialized lexicon, tango could mean either terrorist or target. Usually, in his line of work, the two were synonymous; this time, though, he wasn't facing terrorists, but an enemy far more dangerous to him, his men, and his mission.

"Echo One-five," a voice said over the speaker in Wolfe's ear. One-five was Machinist's Mate First Class Danny French. "Multiple contacts, at two-eight-zero. Tango down! Correction, two tangos down!"

Tangos to the north, tangos to the west. The bastards were moving to cut the team off from the sea.

"Echo One! Fall back! Fall back!" Another target appeared on the north ridge, and Wolfe tapped him down. "On the double! Move!"

Chris Wolfe was a SEAL, a member of the elite naval commando unit deriving its acronymic name from the words Sea, Air, and Land, the elements within which the Teams routinely operated. From their first day of Basic Underwater Demolition School — BUD/S — SEALs were hammered with a particular piece of life-saving indoctrination: The water is your friend. When you're in trouble, get to the water.

SEAL Team Detachment Echo One was in very bad trouble now, but the sea was less than a mile away.

The question was whether they would be able to reach it in time.

"Thank you for coming down, Captain," the intelligence analyst said. "We appear to be watching the proverbial shit hit the fan. Thought you would want to see…. "

Captain Thomas Garrett sized up the speaker in a glance — a small and wiry individual with a bushy mustache just barely regulation in its exuberance. The three gold stripes above the cuff of each sleeve identified him as a naval commander, a rank not usually given access to the deliberations held within such deep and clandestine electronic fortresses as this. The bulky eagle and trident pin on the breast of his uniform, however — his "Budweiser" — marked him as a Navy SEAL. His name was Carl Berkowitz, and he was one of the Navy's premier spooks in the ONI — the Office of Naval Intelligence.

"I do indeed, Commander," Garrett replied. "Thank you."

A dozen men and women sat at as many work stations around the basement communications center, with a dozen more high-ranking officers — admirals and captains, generals and colonels, most of them — watching over their shoulders. Several civilians were present as well, some in suits, some in shirtsleeves. Most of the audience's attention was focused on a single large display screen on the wall, a green-lit monochrome image of several men running down a steep hillside, viewed from high overhead.

"So what's going on?" Garrett asked. He'd known the op was going down tonight, but no details.

Berkowitz pointed at the monitor. "We're aborting. Two hours, seventeen minutes into the op. Damn it."

"What happened?"

"Echo One ran into some unexpected opposition. We think it's Pasdaran. A Guards unit that moved into the area without our seeing it. Our people have been engaged in a fighting withdrawal back to the beach."

"Shit."

"Exactly."

Garrett watched the scene unfold on the screen. The detail, even with infrared imaging, was startling. He could see the individual members of the SEAL unit designated Echo One working their way rapidly down the hillside, two men moving from one position of cover to the next while two more held their ground and covered their retreat, then switching off in a deadly game of leapfrog. But another four weren't playing. Garrett could see two men, each hauling another in a fireman's carry across their shoulders.

Two casualties. It could have been worse, he thought. Then he added to himself, But it might get a hell of a lot worse, too.

Voices crackled from speakers overhead, voices ragged with exhaustion and edged with stress.

"Okay! We're set! Move! Move! Move!"

"Echo One-one, Echo One-seven! Shooters! Shooters on the north ridge, more shooters on the crest to the west! We're taking fire!"

"One-seven, One-one! Never mind the shooters! Just keep moving!"

One of the technicians made an adjustment, and the image zoomed in on one of the SEALs. Though grainy and taken from an awkward angle overhead, the image clearly showed a man in combat vest and balaclava, wearing a night vision headset and carrying an H&K MP5SD submachine gun, the heavy length of its integral sound suppressor unmistakable. The man was crouched behind a boulder, loosing short, precisely controlled bursts of fire at an off-screen enemy. Garrett could see empty cartridges, aglow with heat, spinning clear of the weapon's receiver three at a time. The picture drifted, zoomed in and out, then pulled back to show a broader view once more.

"Good detail," Garrett observed. "Satellite?"

"Hell no," Berkowitz replied with a shake of the head. "UAVs. Better than satellites. They stay put. We have three of 'em up, off the Sirocco."

"Ah." Yeah, he should have known. Spy satellites were good, but they couldn't resolve an individual expended 9mm cartridge, even by infrared. Garrett turned his attention to the words appearing on-screen along the bottom of the picture — date, time, GPS positioning data, altitude… right. That was a UAV feed, real-time data from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle orbiting eight hundred feet above the battle area — a Navy Fire Scout, to be exact. Since Afghanistan, UAVs of various types— all-but-invisible aerial recon platforms — had become more vital in the observation and control of the modern battlefield.

"Take cover!" A new, frenzied shouting erupted from the overhead speakers. "RPG! RPG!"

On the screen, a brilliant white point of light streaked in from the upper right, then detonated in a silent, blossoming flare. One of the SEALs carrying a wounded buddy fell, knocked forward by the blast, which sent the two tumbling down the slope. Two more SEALs rushed to their aid, as others turned their weapons toward this latest threat.

Garrett saw Berkowitz leaning forward, his lips moving in some unvoiced command… or prayer. Fellow SEALs, Garrett thought. Those are his brothers out there.

"Let's see number three," one of the other watchers, a lean and weathered-looking civilian, said in a dry voice with a touch of New England to it. The scene on the display screen switched to another aerial view, this one of a large number of armed troops advancing along the crest of a ridge. They were accompanied by several vehicles, trucks and Russian-built BMP-2 armored fighting vehicles, the heat from their engines showing white against the cooler green backdrop. Two of the figures on the ground carried the unmistakable sewer-pipe bulk of a loaded RPG-7.

"Damn it!" a Marine general growled from nearby. "Can't we take those things out?"

"Negative, sir," the technician replied. "All three platforms are dry."

Fire Scout UAVs could and often did mount a pair of detachable munitions pods, each carrying four 2.75-inch Hydra 70 rockets. This battle evidently had been going on for some time, now, and apparently all of the munitions had already been expended.

"How long until help gets there?" a heavyset man in an admiral's uniform demanded. He was Vincent Forsythe of Naval Special Warfare Command, the man ultimately in command of this operation.

"Sierra Foxtrot Four-one is en route, sir," a woman's voice replied. "ETA fifty-three minutes."

The exchange was cool and professional, but Garrett could hear, could feel, the tension growing. American combat personnel, Navy SEALs, were ashore on the southwestern coast of Iran just west of the Straits of Hormuz, near the port of Bandar-e Charak. Operation Black Stallion had been planned and under preparation for months now, rehearsed and rehearsed again until each move unfolded with the precise choreography of a ballet.

But something had gone wrong, terribly wrong, and the dancers were falling.

"Tell Echo Two to get their asses in gear," Admiral Forsythe said. "Echo One is getting cut to pieces."

A moment later they heard the curt reply from the speaker. "Echo Two. We're moving."

Black Stallion consisted of three elements. Two Cyclone-class coastal patrol craft, the Sirocco, PC-6, and the Firebolt, PC-10, lay just offshore, waiting to retrieve the SEALs. The eight men of Echo One had swum ashore from the Sirocco over three hours ago and made their way to the objective, but now were falling back to the beach. Echo Two was a second eight-man SEAL squad deployed off the Firebolt as a rear security element. They were redeploying now to reinforce the hard-pressed Echo One, but it would be minutes more before they could enter the fight.

And even when they did, how would it help? Sixteen men, three of them wounded, against what looked like a battalion-strength force — six or eight hundred men at least. SEALs were the world's premier special operations force, but they were not frontline troops to be thrown away in a pitched, stand-up battle. An old maxim of special ops declared that any covert mission ending in gunfire was a failure; the idea was to get in, do the deed, and get out undetected.

"What else do we have in the AO?" Garrett asked Berkowitz, whispering. "What backup?"

"Nothing at the beach but the PBCs," Berkowitz admitted. "The Kitty Hawk is outside the Straits of Hormuz… five hundred miles away. And the Pittsburgh is transiting the straits now. About forty miles."

Garrett's mouth twitched in a sudden grin. The Pittsburgh, SSN-720, had been his first command ten years ago. She was a Los Angeles-class attack boat, swift, silent, and deadly, currently assigned to the Kitty Hawk's battle group.

"Whose skippering the 'Burgh?"

"Jack Creighton, sir."

"Good. A good man."

One of the civilians, a young man with thick-framed glasses, appeared to notice Garrett for the first time. "What is he doing here?"

"This is Captain Garrett," Berkowitz said. "NAVLITWAR."

The man glanced at the gold dolphins on Garrett's breast, pinned just above the ranks of brightly colored ribbons — his "fruit salad."

"Sub driver?"

"Used to be, sir," Garrett replied evenly. "Now I drive a desk."

"Uh. Welcome to the club." The man returned his attention to the screen.

"Echo Two, Echo Two! We are engaging the enemy!"

"That's Paul Myers," Berkowitz told Garrett. "National Security Advisor."

Garrett was impressed. The National Security Council, or NSC, was the advisory body within the executive branch of government responsible for assessing all risks, objectives, and commitments related to the U.S. military. Its day-to-day activities were run by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs — better known as the National Security Advisor—this man, though he didn't appear old enough to have the ear of the President himself. If Paul Myers was here, watching Black Stallion unfold on these monitors in real-time, this was a very important operation indeed.

It also meant that some of the civilians in the room, at least, were security personnel — possibly Secret Service, possibly CIA. One or two, likely, were with Central Intelligence, which had a hand in staffing the NSC.

Garrett was beginning to realize just how hot Black Stallion actually was.

Wolfe raised himself to a half crouch, knocking down two more Pasdaran guardsmen with tight-grouped bursts from his H&K. "Echo Two, One-one!" he called. "Hold your position on the ridge and give us cover!"

"One-one, Two-one, copy," Chief Hadley replied. "Get your asses out of there."

At the moment, Wolf and EM1 Brown were providing cover for Jordan, Creston, and Dole as they carried Johnson, Applebee, and Miller to the beach. Two men against hundreds; they wouldn't be able to hold on much longer.

Especially, Wolfe thought as he dropped an empty 9mm magazine and snapped a fresh one home, with ammo running low. The team had gone in with a light load-out, just eight mags—240 rounds — per man. Reconnaissance operations weren't supposed to end in prolonged firefights. After this one, he had one loaded magazine left.

Gunfire cracked and rattled from the ridge to the west, echoing off the boulders and steep-sided gullies. All of the SEALs carried sound-suppressed weapons, so the racket was all from the hostiles — AK-47s, to judge from the distinctive flat crack they made when they fired. The bad guys were pressing hard. At least they hadn't launched any more rocket-propelled grenades at the retreating SEALs, though that respite, he was sure, would not last for much longer.

"Hey, Wheel," EM1 Brown called from a few feet to his left, using SEAL slang for the platoon CO. "I'm almost dry."

"Same here. Move upslope to the left. We'll try to join with Echo Two, give the others a chance to reach the beach."

"Roger that."

The mission was screwed, a cluster-fuck from minute one. Right now, Wolfe had just two tactical priorities to worry about — getting his unit as a whole out of this trap, and getting the three wounded men back to the boats. The situation was fast developing into a SEAL unit commander's worst nightmare. The Team could break contact with the enemy and E&E back to the beach rendezvous, could even split up, every man for himself, to better slip through the closing Pasdaran trap and get to the sea.

But the three wounded men were slowing them down. Jordan, Creston, and Dole could only move so fast carrying their injured teammates, and they couldn't defend themselves while they moved. Either what was left of Det Echo had to provide cover for them until they reached the beach, providing a rough defensive perimeter along the ridge to the west, or they had to leave the wounded behind and run for it.

And, damn it, SEALs never left their own behind.

Never!

"They're not going to leave the wounded behind," Garrett said quietly. "You know that, right?"

"I know," Berkowitz replied.

Of course he knew. Berkowitz was a SEAL himself.

"So how are we going to get them out of there?"

"We're open to suggestions, sir."

For most of his naval career Tom Garrett had been a sub driver. He'd skippered the Pittsburgh ten years ago. After that, he'd been captain of the SSN Seawolf, and later of the newly commissioned SSN Virginia, the two most recent and magically high-tech additions to America's submarine fleet.

Six months ago, when he'd rotated ashore after his deployment with the Virginia, his experience had dropped him here in the Pentagon, as advisory staff for the newly formed NAVLITWARCOM — Naval Littoral Warfare Command.

It was, he knew, a choice assignment, one offering him the fast track to flag rank. "Littoral Warfare" was the hot new catch phrase for the Navy. With the demise of the Soviet Union, there'd been much less emphasis on deep-water naval deployments. The wars of the foreseeable future would be fought against enemies who lacked anything like America's sophisticated and high-tech fleet, and they would be fought close inshore, along hostile coasts within the world's littoral regions.

Operation Black Stallion had been his idea, originally, though the plan that eventually emerged bore few similarities to his original proposal. Two months ago images from a high-orbiting spy satellite had revealed some major construction going on among the rugged coastal foothills of the Shib Kuh mountain range within Iran's Darya-ye region, at the mouth of a valley in a mountain called Kuh-e Gab. Analyses suggested that the Darya-ye complex might include a battery of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as well as structures that might be related to NBC warfare — manufacturing nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.

Ever since the intelligence debacle of Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction, and the resulting public and media fallout, Washington was playing it very cautious when it came to identifying WMDs elsewhere in the world. Garrett had advanced the idea of Black Stallion in a proposal forwarded to the Joint Chiefs — a SEAL four-man recon detachment inserted by submarine along the Darya-ye coast, slipping undetected close to the suspected weapons site five miles inland, and getting close-up photographs, radiation readings, and eyeball observations from inside the complex itself.

It was a reasonable idea, and one eminently suitable to the SEAL Teams and their mission capabilities. Based on his career experience, Garrett had suggested that the deployment be made off of the USS Texas, the second of the four Virginia-class submarines now in service.

That had been two months ago. Plans unfolded remarkably quickly after that, with concept approval and mission training beginning almost at once. Unfortunately, the dreaded "committee effect" had descended almost at once. A full, sixteen-man SEAL platoon would deploy, not a four-man recon team.

And, perhaps most important, it wouldn't be the Texas delivering them.

The SSN Virginia had been sold as the submarine that would command the world's littorals for the U.S. Navy, an ultraquiet and high-tech vessel that could creep undetected into enemy harbors, or covertly put commandos ashore anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, the Virginia and her sister boats were fouled in budgetary draw-downs, bureaucratic turf wars, and departmental politics, just as the Seawolf had been. The Virginias did what they did well, but they were also seen as the replacement for the Navy's aging fleet of Los Angeles-class attack boats. Thirty were planned; only four were in service so far, and the others now rested uncertainly beneath the budgetary ax. There simply weren't enough either in the water or planned to do everything expected of them, from battle group deployments to coastal reconnaissance missions, from special ops to escort duty, from showing the flag in foreign ports to electronic signals intelligence to ASW patrols to fulfilling the swiftly growing demands of Homeland Security.

Someone higher up the mission planning totem pole had decided that the SEALs should deploy from a pair of Cyclones instead.

PC-6, the USS Sirocco, and PC-10, the USS Firebolt, were two of thirteen coastal patrol craft designed originally to operate as deployment platforms for the U.S. Navy SEALs. Measuring 170 feet in length, with a beam of twenty-five feet and a displacement of 328.5 tons, the Cyclone-class PCs were the first genuine oceangoing ships in the Navy's Special Warfare community. Although their primary mission was coastal patrol work, SEAL support remained an important, dedicated assignment.

They'd also been controversial from the very first, from the moment in 1990 the contract had been awarded to the Bollinger Machine Shop and Shipyard. Big enough to venture into blue water and endure up to sea state five, their range was still limited — about three thousand nautical miles. That meant they had to be based in their operational region, along with full maintenance, repair, and supply facilities, and support personnel. They carried a crew of four officers and twenty-four enlisted men— conventional black-shoe sailors, not SPECWAR personnel, and that decision had caused an interdepartmental firestorm all by itself.

Worse, they only had space aboard for nine SPEC-WAR operators — a single SEAL squad and one or two tech specialists, plus their equipment. True, few SEAL ops required or were best served by large contingents, but the small payload limited the craft's mission scope.

And, worst of all, the PBCs weren't really covert. Too small to carry a sizable SEAL force, they were too large to sneak in under an enemy's radar for the sort of sneak-and-peak op at which the Teams traditionally excelled.

The Special Boat Squadrons operating the PBCs— Patrol Boat, Coastal — had been repeatedly encouraged from further up the chain of command to find a mission for the expensive craft. PC-6 and PC-10 were currently stationed in Oman, escorting tankers and patrolling the sensitive Straits of Hormuz.

It had seemed logical — to someone, at any rate — to use them to deploy Det Echo. ECM aircraft off the Kitty Hawk could jam local Iranian radar, and strike fighters from the Carrier Battle Group and out of U.S. bases in Iraq could fly combat support, if that proved necessary.

What no one had anticipated was that the enemy would have such a heavy presence in the AO… or that he would react this quickly and this decisively.

And Garrett was feeling a strong sense of responsibility for those boys out there.

"One-one, this is One-four!" TM2 Dole called over the Motorola. "We're on the beach! Our guys are in RIB-2 and we're moving out!"

"Copy that, One-four." Wolfe laser-targeted another Pasdaran trooper and fired, a single shot only. He'd switched to single-shot from burst fire when he'd reached his last magazine. He saw the soldier pitch backward and collapse. "Okay, Echoes," he called. "Time to get the hell out of Dodge!"

An instant later, however, a savage explosion rocked the hillside, throwing Wolfe against the ground.

"Mortar fire!" Echo Two's Chief Hadley yelled. "Incoming!"

And then the machine gun opened up.

Just fucking great! Wolfe thought as another blast from a mortar round hammered at his senses, showering him with gravel and sand, and an Iranian machine gun sent a stream of bright green tracers snapping overhead.

The ten Det Echo SEALs remaining ashore were trapped, pinned down by heavy fire and very nearly surrounded.

"Backstop, Backstop!" Wolfe called, using the call sign for the mission's Pentagon controllers. "Echo is pinned down and cannot move! Request air support fucking now!"

"Backstop, Backstop! Echo is pinned down and cannot move! Request air support fucking now!"

"Where the hell is Sierra Foxtrot Four-one?" Forsythe demanded.

"ETA four minutes," a technician replied.

"Too long! Our people are out of time! What about fire support from the Cyclones?"

The two PBCs each mounted a pair of Mk 38 Bush-masters, 25mm chain guns capable of firing a blistering two hundred rounds per minute.

" Sirocco reports they are still out of effective range, sir." Bushmasters had a range of 2,500 yards — about two and a third miles. Though they were now en route to the rendezvous point, they were still a good two miles offshore.

"Damn it to hell!"

Garrett watched the green-monochrome image for a moment. The last of the SEALs on shore were scattered in a ragged defensive perimeter across the southern slope of the ridge, perhaps half a mile from the beach. The view was partially obscured by drifting clouds of smoke, but he could see the sharp pulse and flash of exploding mortar rounds, the drifting streams of tracer fire, and the flicker of muzzle flashes from enemy positions. The

Iranian troops must have suffered heavy casualties already, but they'd pushed up close and pressed hard; they were on three sides of Det Echo now, and reinforcements — in the form of a convoy of BMPs racing down the coast road from the west — would be there in moments.

SEAL Detachment Echo was doomed.

Unless…