Ohio Class

2

It might work. It offered a chance, at least.

"What about using the UAVs?" Garrett asked.

"They're empty, Captain," Myers said. "Or haven't you been listening?"

"No… I mean what about using the UAVs themselves as weapons? Fly them into enemy positions… or send them in low enough to scare the enemy and make him duck. All the SEALs need is a few minutes to break contact, and then the cavalry will arrive."

For a second a startled silence gripped the basement communications center. "Well? How about it?" Forsythe asked.

There was a flurry of activity, and calls to the patrol boats off shore. The three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being controlled by technicians on board the Sirocco, though the audience watching from the bowels of the Pentagon could control camera angles, within limits, as well as image magnification through a remote satellite hookup.

"Okay!" a technician said, pointing. "They're going to try it with UAV-3!"

On the screen, the green-hued landscape tilted suddenly as the operator on board Sirocco put the Fire Scout UAV into a steep left bank. A targeting reticule floated across the screen, centering on a small cluster of figures behind the Iranian lines. The cluster grew larger on the screen… and larger… until Garrett could see the mustached faces of several Iranian soldiers and the glowing hot tube of an 81mm mortar in front of them.

At the last moment possible those faces turned suddenly toward the Predator's camera, eyes widening, mouths gaping… and then the soldiers were scattering in every direction.

An RQ-8B Fire Scout looked exactly like a small, smooth-skinned, torpedo-nosed helicopter with no cockpit. The aircraft had a takeoff weight of a ton and a half, and its four-blade rotors spanned just twenty-seven and a half feet. Garrett could only imagine the feelings of a soldier suddenly confronted by that apparition stooping on his position out of the night sky.

The mortar position blurred as the Fire Scout streaked past at 125 knots. "Yee-ha!" a voice cried over the speaker system. "Video games rock!"

"Who said that?" a Marine general, Thomas Schaler, demanded.

"Someone on the Sirocco, sir," the technician reported. "I think they're having fun out there."

Garrett suppressed a grin. For years, now, there'd been speculation within the military as to whether a generation of kids raised on joysticks and video games would amount to anything. Evidently, the answer was yes.

A secondary monitor showed another group of Iranian troops diving for cover — the machine gun nest that had been pinning the SEALs in place.

"Echo, Echo, this is Backstop," Admiral Forsythe called, using a telephone handset patched into the sat-com link. "We're keeping the bad guys occupied for a moment. Now's your chance to break contact!"

"Copy that, Backstop. Thanks."

UAV-2 continued to relay the overall tactical view from an altitude of several hundred feet. Garrett could see the SEALs rising from cover now and beginning to hurry on down the slope toward the beach. It was less an orderly withdrawal than a headlong plunge, but there was no time for finesse. Those Iranian BMPs would be along in minutes.

For several gut-twisting minutes UAV-1 and UAV-3 buzzed the Iranian lines. UAV-2 revealed the confusion in their ranks, as tracer streams crisscrossed through the air, trying to knock down the wildly swooping teleoperated aircraft.

"Shortstop, Shortstop, this is Night Rider," a new voice called. "We have a delivery for you. Where do you want it? "

The watching officers and technicians broke into a chorused cheer. Night Rider was the call sign for Sierra Foxtrot Four-one, a pair of Air Force F-117 stealth fighters flying out of an American air base in southern Iraq.

Help for the beleaguered SEALs had arrived at last.

"We have seven light armored vehicles on the coast road," the combat controller on board the Sirocco was heard to reply. "Wait one and we'll illuminate the lead target."

Besides unguided rockets and its regular sensor suite of cameras and radar, the Fire Scout also mounted a laser target designation system, allowing a remote operator to laser a target for incoming smart munitions. Garrett saw the square targeting cursor drift across the screen as the aircraft swung toward the west. He could make out the road now, and the darker, colder surge of the waters of the Gulf. And there, traveling in close-spaced line-ahead, the white-hot engine signatures of several vehicles. The UAV operator on board the distant Sirocco selected the lead vehicle, the cursor positioned itself over the target, and the words target lock and laser active appeared alongside.

"Night Rider. I have the target. Weapon release… "

Long seconds dragged past. The people in the communications center held their collective breath.

Then the lead vehicle, an armored BMP-2, exploded in a silent flare of white light, and the men and women in the room cheered again. On the screen, the Fire Scout was already selecting a second target. The rest of the Iranian convoy, however, had pulled to a halt behind the burning armored vehicle, and now appeared to be trying to turn around.

At the very least, the SEALs had just won a desperately needed respite.

Lieutenant Wolfe raised his head above the boulder, checking right. Flames danced and flared in the night a few hundred yards up the road, and by the uncertain light he could see the other Iranian armored vehicles beating a hasty retreat.

At his signal, the ten SEALs emerged from the shadows at the base of the hill, crossed the gravel road, and jogged south across the narrow beach. Their remaining two CRRCs were waiting for them in the shadow of an outcropping of boulders.

The Combat Rubber Raiding Craft was the SEALs' legendary rubber duck — a Zodiac-style inflatable boat fifteen feet long and six feet wide, weighing in at 256 pounds. Each Cyclone-class patrol boat possessed ramps at the stern for hauling them onto the fantail. All they needed to do now was reach the Sirocco.

Together, the SEALs shoved and manhandled the two rubber ducks off the sand and into the surf, then crowded on board. In seconds the men at the sterns had fired up the fifty-five-horsepower outboards and put their helms over. In moments more they were motoring clear of the beach, headed for open water.

A CRRC had a total mission range of about sixty-five miles, but that kind of endurance wouldn't be necessary tonight. The two PBCs were only a couple of miles out, and closing. At a full throttle they would reach their rendezvous in another six minutes.

Wolfe allowed himself a last look back at the beach, where flames continued to leap from the stricken BMP. He could see the shadowy forms of soldiers reaching the beach now. They'd only just escaped.

But he wouldn't allow himself to relax… not yet.

"Sir!" a technician yelled, the word cutting through the sibilant and self-congratulatory cheers.

That, Garrett thought, sounds like more bad news….

It was. "Missiles! Missiles incoming!" A beat passed in shocked silence. "Sirocco reports two Exocets inbound! They're targeting the Cyclones!"

"Jesus Christ!" Admiral Forsythe snapped.

Abruptly, the atmosphere inside the Pentagon basement communications center chilled. Radar reports coming back from both the Firebolt and the Sirocco showed a pair of sea-skimming missiles hurtling toward the PCBs at 700 miles per hour. Evidently, these were the MM40 variant — fired from a ship or a coastal defense battery rather than an aircraft.

Exocets were antiship missiles, French-built but exported to dozens of nations, including Iran. Each was eighteen feet long, carried a seventy-five-pound high-explosive warhead, and had a range of just over forty miles.

"Sirocco is firing chaff," a technician reported. "Firebolt firing chaff. Missiles now fifteen seconds out… twelve seconds… "

Among their other weapons, the PCBs mounted M52 decoy systems that fired chaff canisters designed to fool the active homing radar of cruise missiles such as the Exocet.

One of the Fire Scouts, heading out to sea and climbing fast, revealed the scene. The two patrol boats, their propulsion plants glowing white on the infrared image, were turning sharply to starboard, away from the coast. A pair of bright white stars appeared from the upper right corner of the screen, streaking low across the water with the speed of a bullet. One, apparently, had been successfully decoyed by the chaff, swinging wide and flashing off the left-hand side of the monitor.

Chaff decoys could not promise a hundred percent protection, however. They merely lengthened the odds of a hit. The second Exocet ignored the decoy and slammed into the right-hand patrol boat, engulfing the craft in a searing flare of light.

"Oh, my God!" someone in the room said softly.

For a long time after that no one spoke.

Wolfe saw the flash on the southern horizon, heard the sharp bang of the missile's detonation long seconds later. Swinging their tillers over, the two CRRCs motored rapidly across the choppy water toward the pillar of flame shooting up into the night.

This had always been a possibility — a worst-case scenario discussed and rehashed during the training phase of this op. The Cyclones were not stealthy, and would be seen by hostile shore defenses. The only question was how long their discovery could be delayed by Navy Electronic Countermeasures, or ECM, and the elements of surprise and shock.

Minutes later the two CRRCs approached the scene of the disaster. Sirocco had been hit. She was dead in the water now, heeled far over to port and down by the stern. Flame and orange-shot clouds of greasy smoke continued to boil from her afterdeck, and from the sea itself as fuel oil on the surface caught fire. Wolfe could see several men in the water, swimming to get clear, while others still on deck wrestled a pair of lifeboats similar to the CRRCs into the oily sea.

Despite the possibility that the Iranians would loose another volley — or that ammunition stores on the burning craft might explode—Firebolt was laying alongside, upwind of the sinking vessel. Wolfe could see wounded men being handed across from the stricken boat's deck to the second patrol boat.

"There," he said, pointing. Two sailors were struggling in the oily water fifty yards away. "Get us over there."

EM1 Brown adjusted the tiller, and the CRRC swung onto its new heading, bumping a little with the swell. Moments later they pulled alongside the two life-jacketed sailors and hauled them up onto the CRRC's gunnel.

Sirocco continued settling into the sea, her list increasing until at last her superstructure hit the water and she lay fully on her port side. As Firebolt and the rubber boats pulled back, the stricken vessel continued to roll, exposing her keel above the oily swell.

Within another five minutes she was gone.

With the last of the swimmers rescued, the two SEAL CRRCs were quickly hauled onto Firebolt's fantail, and the remaining PBC got under way once more.

On board, Wolfe and the other SEALs sat anywhere there was a clear bit of deck. With double her normal complement on board, Firebolt was heavily laden, and there wasn't much free space.

Wolfe pulled back the Velcro strap hiding the luminous dial of his dive watch and frowned. Mission time was 2315 hours Zulu, but Iran's time zone was three and a half hours ahead of GMT, which meant it was 0245 local. Local sunrise at this latitude wouldn't be for another two hours, but the eastern sky was already showing a touch of predawn glow. With the Iranians aware of their presence, and the time to daylight fast running out, Wolfe was beginning to feel like a particularly large and vulnerable target.

Thunder rolled in the sky, and the SEALs looked up. A pair of aircraft howled low overhead. For a moment Wolfe's thoughts froze, trapped by the certainty that those must be Iranian F-4s.

But Iranian aircraft would be coming out of the north, not from the southeast. Unless these two had circled far around and out of their way, they must be U.S. strike fighters off the Kitty Hawk, arriving at last. And Night Rider was still out there, too, somewhere, flying CAP to keep the bad guys off the surviving PCB's tail.

The border threading through the Straits of Hormuz, separating Iranian waters from those controlled by Oman and the United Arab Emirates, lay perhaps ninety miles to the southeast, a three-hour run for the Firebolt. Technically, they already were in international waters, or would be in a very few minutes, but there were numerous islands in this area belonging to Iran, and many had a naval or coastal defense presence.

Threading that gauntlet was going to take a lot of skill on the part of Firebolt's skipper, and a very great deal of luck.

"It looks like they might make it," Captain Grimes, one of Forsythe's aides, observed.

"Unless the bastards pop a Silkworm at them, or another flight of Exocets," Forsythe said.

"The worst is still to come, Admiral," Grimes pointed out. "We've just lost a Navy ship inside Iranian territorial waters. The media firestorm when this gets out… "

"Jesus. Is there any way to put a lid on it?" one of the other civilians asked.

"You're kidding, Dan," Myers said. "Right?"

"What we have here is a genuwine international incident," General Schaler said. He chuckled. "Let the ass-covering being!"

"It's not funny, General," Myers said. "The President is going to want to know who screwed up on this one. He's going to be the one taking flak from the press, and he's the one the Iranians are going to be burning in effigy tomorrow morning in the streets of Tehran, along with the American flag. Believe me, some heads are going to roll after this — this disaster."

"I imagine they'll round up the usual suspects," Forsythe said. His voice was grim. "Sacrificial lambs, on the altar of public opinion?"

Schaler chuckled. "Just be glad, gentlemen, that this isn't England. Over there, they hold the government accountable for its screw-ups with a vote of no-confidence. In Washington it's stonewalling as usual. Say nothing, and it'll all blow over."

"Somehow, I don't think this one will blow over," Forsythe said. "It's Operation Eagle's Claw all over again."

Eagle's Claw had been the aborted 1980 rescue mission of American hostages held by the revolutionary government of Iran. The attempt to sneak in, grab the hostages, and get out again had ended at the refueling base tagged Desert One when a Navy helicopter had collided on takeoff with a grounded C-130 transport. They never got close to Tehran, and the Iranians had made the most of the propaganda victory handed to them. The next day the entire world had seen the films of triumphant Iranian soldiers among the burned-out hulks of helicopters left behind at Desert One.

There was no burned-out wreckage to show on the evening news this time around — not with Sirocco at the bottom of the Gulf — but the Iranian mullahs could be trusted to point out America's transgression to the world in lovingly histrionic detail, especially to an Islamic world that already felt threatened by American global policy.

"Eagle's Claw had the advantage of the sympathy vote," Myers said. "We were seen as trying to rescue our own people, as having a right to at least try. We know the Iranians hate us already. This time around we're going to get crucified by American voters as well."

"Possibly," Forsythe said, "there will be some confusion as to just where our ships were when they were attacked. After all, they were less than a mile inside the three-mile limit…. "

"Iran," Myers pointed out, "claims a twelve-mile limit.

The civilian, Dan, shrugged. "That's for the lawyers to argue," he said. "We will need to consider means for media damage control."

"Who the hell is that?" Garrett asked Berkowitz, whispering.

"Daniel Hardy," was the low-voiced reply. "Assistant

SecDef, Public Affairs."

Garrett blinked, startled. The Secretary of Defense was charged with acting as the principle advisor to the President on defense policy, as the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense. Having the SecDef's head of Public Affairs present brought a surreal touch to this gathering, something akin to having a public relations front man present at a lynching.

But then, if Garrett had learned anything since taking command of his new Pentagon desk, it was that Washington ran by its own rules and its own logic.

And that at times that logic appeared to be anything but.

Forsythe was looking at Garrett. He cleared his throat. "Ah… that was sharp thinking, Captain, using the UAVs to distract the Pasdaran gunners and mortar crew."

"Thank you, Admiral."

"Bought them the time they needed to get clear and get down to the beach. I gather this op was your brainchild to begin with?"

Garrett hesitated. Within Pentagon circles, it was never a good career move to pass the blame for failure back up the chain of command, and in any case, that was not Garrett's style. Still, the talk about heads rolling and sacrificial lambs made him less than eager to admit any connection with Black Stallion whatsoever.

"I wrote the original paper, yes, sir."

"The original plan called for a submarine insertion, sir," Berkowitz added. "Not those damned PCBs. Who the hell's idea was that?"

"Gentlemen!" General Schaler put in. "Now is not the time for recriminations!"

"Submarine insertion?" Myers said, raising an eyebrow. "In those confined waters? Surely that would be suicide."

"It's been done before, sir," Garrett said with a shrug. "And the Pittsburgh's transiting the straits now. A sub's certainly not as high-profile as a coastal patrol boat."

"Captain Garrett," Myers said, sounding thoughtful. "You were in on the Ohio conversion project, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir. Still am."

"I think I understand why you suggested using submarines for this op."

"The PBCs are still expensive toys looking for a mission," Berkowitz put in. "Remember, their primary mission remains coastal patrol duty. Not sneaking into enemy harbors."

"Captain Garrett," Myers said, "would an Ohio boat have better served the infil-exfil needs for this mission?"

"Absolutely, sir. This sort of sneak-and-peek was what the Ohio conversion was all about."

The Pentagon group continued to monitor the mission as, half a world away, the Firebolt continued to race for the safety of Omani waters. The two Stealth fighters engaged the battery that had fired the Exocet missiles, while F/A-18 Hornets of VFA-17 off the Kitty Hawk wheeled and circled above the straits. An hour after Det Echo had escaped the trap ashore, the USS Pittsburgh surfaced alongside the Firebolt and began taking off some of the SEALs. Medevac Sea Stallions were on the way to pick up the most seriously wounded.

The final butcher's bill was not nearly as bad as it might have been. Two SEALs had been killed and six wounded altogether, while three sailors off the Sirocco were dead, nine wounded, with two more missing and presumed dead.

"At least casualties were light," Hardy, the Public Affairs man, said brightly.

Garrett considered strangling the man. "Casualties were light" would be of little comfort to the families and friends of those Navy men who'd died tonight.

Disgusted, Garrett glanced at his watch. "Oh, Christ."

"What's the matter?" Berkowitz asked.

"It's almost 2000 hours, is what's the matter. Brenda is going to shoot me. No. First she's going to hang, draw, and quarter me. Then she's going to shoot me."

"Damn. You had a date?"

Garrett nodded. "Just dinner at her place." He reached for the cell phone in his pocket, then remembered that the electronic shielding in the Pentagon basement wouldn't let him get a signal.

"Sorry, Captain," Berkowitz said. "But I thought it important that you be here."

"Absolutely! I wouldn't have missed it. I just should have called the lady first."

Garrett thought fast. His usual workday was over at five or five-thirty—1730 hours in Navy parlance. Beltway construction and its effect on rush hour traffic being what they were, it would have taken him an hour and a half to get out to Silver Spring, on the Beltway north of Washington. Now, though, the traffic would have cleared a bit. If he hurried, he wouldn't be more than forty minutes late.

The assembled admirals, generals, civilians, and lesser-ranking officials were gathering up briefcases and calling it a night, so there might yet be time.

"There will be a postmission analysis," Myers told them all. "Concord Briefing Room, 0900 hours." He cocked an eye at Garrett. "I'd like you to be there as well, Captain Garrett. Captain Berkowitz? See that he has the necessary clearances."

"Aye aye, sir."

Garrett was pulling out of the Pentagon complex onto the 395 entrance ramp when the incongruity of the evening hit him. Minutes ago, satellite communications networks and high-speed computers had let him literally look over the shoulders of SEAL operators in coastal Iran. He'd watched an Exocet hit the Sirocco, watched the subsequent fight for survival in the warm waters of the Arabian Gulf.

And now he was worried about what he would tell his girlfriend when he met her for dinner.

It was, he thought, a hell of a way to fight a war.

And war it was. America's fight against terrorism had begun long before al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. So far as the public at large was concerned, however, that date was to the War on Terror the same as December 7, 1941, was to America's entry into World War II.

Whatever the starting date, however, it remained a war with few front lines against an enemy as insubstantially ghostlike as he was determined. Over the years, the United States had taken on a number of countries known to support the terrorists and their goals — Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq — but the terrorists themselves remained devilishly elusive.

For some time now Iran had been the nation most visibly in America's sights. Not that an invasion was being planned, necessarily, though there was considerable scuttlebutt to that effect. But reports coming out of Central Intelligence continued to stress possible Iranian support of terror groups like al-Qaeda, the virtual certainty that they were working on nuclear and biological weapons, and their destabilizing actions in an already notoriously unstable part of the world. With the governments of the nations to either side of her— Iraq and Afghanistan — taken down by U.S. invasions and replaced by fledgling democracies, the mullahs of Tehran were beginning to feel isolated… and threatened.

And they were reacting in a predictable way, with bluster and bombast and threats against their neighbors. That mysterious facility near Bandar-e Charak might well hold the key to Tehran's intentions. Operation Black Stallion had been intended to reveal that key.

Unfortunately, the attempt had almost certainly made things worse.

Much worse.

He thought about the terrorists.

America's single advantage over such an enemy remained her technology, from UAVs to satcom links that let senior leaders in Washington look in on what passed for the front lines in real-time.

Of course, Garrett reflected as he merged with the Beltway traffic heading north, that could also be America's single greatest disadvantage in this war. The bane of every commander in the field was micromanagement by the rear-echelon brass. It was said that on the night of the debacle at Desert One, Colonel Beckwith, the Delta Force commander, had suddenly developed "communications difficulties" so that he could conveniently ignore orders coming from the basement of the White House to press on with a mission already obviously doomed.

Orders from then-President Carter himself.

It felt strange being part of the rear-echelon command now instead of where he felt he really belonged— on the sharp point of the spear. He was a sub driver, damn it. He belonged out there: the eyes, ears, and — at times — the fist of American military policy.

Not here, as part of the American military policy's fat ass.

Come to think of it, Jimmy Carter had been a sub driver before he'd become President. Garrett wondered if Carter had had similar thoughts… especially during that night of flame and death in a remote desert refueling site deep inside of Iran.

Flame and death.

He thought about Kazuko.

Damn it. He'd not thought of her for some time, now, but the realities of the terror war always brought her memory back. She'd been his lover, his fiancee… and a flight attendant on board a passenger plane shot down by terrorists over the South China Sea.

Again he wished he were still a sub skipper. He felt so… helpless.

And useless.

But Garrett knew his sub-driving days were over. His experience in the boats had brought him here, to a job conning a damned desk, writing reports suggesting novel uses of submarines in the fast-paced and deadly war America was now fighting.

He hoped Brenda would understand when he showed up late.

He pulled his cell phone out of his uniform's jacket pocket to give her a call.