The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 26: Rahman’s End Run

Captain Bashir of the Iranian midget sub Abd-el Rahman paced the cramped deck of the submerged boat. The boat was named after the jihadi general whose rampage through the Iberian Peninsula and southern France left so many dead Christians, that in his words, “Only Allah knows how many are slain!”

Bashir and his crew took pride in that. They had the quote painted on the bulkhead of the bridge.

They ignored the fact that Rahman was himself slain and his onslaught crushed by Frederic “The Hammer” Martel at Poitiers. Martel saved Europe, but the Islamists still celebrated the death and destruction Rahman spread.

The captain was nervous, muttering to himself, “Park the boat blind in the hull of a freighter? These clerics and their loyal lapdogs have no idea of the reality of these things!”

“I’m sure the guidance comes from Allah himself,” his navigator warned him. The younger man’s glance was hard; disapproving of the captain’s lack of faith.

As a German naval captain might diplomatically reply to a junior Gestapo officer, or a Russian captain to his political officer, Bashir smiled thinly and said, “You misconstrue my comment. I speak only of my own shortcomings in guiding the boat blindly to a difficult berth. Allah’s plans may be perfect, but I am not.”

That appeared to placate the navigator for now, but Bashir chastised himself for speaking his doubts out loud. In today’s Iran, especially in the military, that could be dangerous, very dangerous. He knew of many friends who had disappeared for speaking common sense; they disappeared along with their entire families.

The image of dozens, hundreds of bodies swinging slowly from the gallows in the Tehran breeze came unbidden to his mind.

Purging his thoughts of such depressing memories, the captain went back to the periscope and watched the approaching convoy. The Iranian ships were being shadowed by the Americans; that’s what concerned him. If American ships were out there then their submarines couldn’t be far.

“It’s time to take her down to thirty meters — quietly!” he told the first officer.

“Ready sir,” he replied.

The captain looked sternly at the navigator. “Are we in position; exactly in position?” he demanded.

The navigator nodded, and said, “We are in position!”

The captain sighed, and struck back at the navigator, saying sharply, “We’d better be! Allah will not endure mistakes; not now! Take her down!”

Bashir stowed the periscope as the first officer ordered the tanks flooded and the hydroplanes set down. His orders were repeated much too loudly. It made Bashir wince, the Americans, if they were out there, had to be able to hear them; but it couldn’t be helped — shouting was the only way the seamen could hear the orders over the sound of water rushing through the slots in the hull and into the dive tanks.

Three thousand yards from the Rahman, the sonar operator from the Los Angeles class attack sub Key West, Seaman First Class Jonah Jameson winced at the same moment Captain Bashir did.

“Holy Moses they’re loud,” he said. “No doubt about it captain it’s a midget sub. He’s roughly three klicks at heading three-two-seven, right in front of the convoy, and he’s heading down from periscope depth. I can hear the periscope being stowed.”

“What’s his heading?” asked Captain Mars, a short, black haired graduate of Annapolis originally from Wyoming. He walked over to the sonar station and looked at the various sound patterns on Jameson’s displays.

“He’s going straight down captain, there’s nothing from his propellers.”

“Keep me posted on the midget sub,” he said. Then he pointed to a louder sound signature, that of the Iranian freighter. “Our job is to keep track of this guy, but why would a midget sub sit in his path, basically waiting for the convoy to pass overhead?” He paced the deck silently, thinking. After one circuit of the bridge he returned to the sonar station and picked up his thread of thought.

“Those midget subs can’t keep up with the convoy. He’s not shadowing them; still, he’s up to something. Let me know if you hear anything, anything at all Jameson.”

“Aye, aye sir!”

Jameson kept listening. The midget sub wasn’t very stealthy on a good day. The boat was old, rickety and poorly serviced. Everything on it made noise including the crew. They were easy to track. This one, however, was noisier than any he’d ever heard. The sound was strange; something was causing a great disturbance in the water while the midget moved. What it could be he had no idea.

The Key West hung in the water at fifty meters; the midget was at about thirty. He guessed that by the way the sounds propagated through the water.

The freighter chugged along. It was another real noisemaker. Jameson and his sonar buddies had never heard anything quite like it. Then again, it wasn’t made for the open sea. It was a glorified barge set up to carry rocks. Consequently the doors of the hull, battered and bent as they inevitably were, caused disturbances in the water; that meant noise, and a lot of it.

It also made the ship easy to single out. Jameson backed off the volume on the known ships and highlighted the freighter. That way he could identify any small change, any nuance in the freighter’s sound signature. He was defining the signature, breaking it down into its component parts when suddenly it changed.

Something, it sounded like a generator of some kind, started up. There was a low whooshing sound accompanying it. It ran for several moments and then the engine wound down.

“Captain! Captain, we’ve got something,” he reported. When Captain Mars reached his station, Jameson explained what he heard.

“Could be an emergency generator starting up after an engine failure,” the captain said.

“The generator went on line before the engine quit,” Jameson told him. He shook his head and replayed the sound of the engine shutting off. “There’s the power coming to idle and there’s the sound of the fuel valve closing — this was a normal shut down — there was nothing wrong.”

He showed the captain the sonic signature of the freighter over the last ten minutes, pointing out, “There’s no variation, nothing, even when I blow it up. It wasn’t a fried bearing, thrown rod, or broken crankshaft; it was a normal shutdown.”

“They’re up to something,” the captain said suspiciously. “The bastards have three tons of enriched Uranium on board — of course they’re up to something — but what?”

“There’s that midget sub,” Jameson said.

“Where is he in relation to the freighter now?”

“One klick at the freighter’s eleven O’clock.”

“If there’s something going on between them then they’re going to have to make contact somehow.”

A sharp, metallic clang rang through the seawater, bouncing off their hull.

Once again Seaman First Class Jonah Jameson could only shake his head in amazement, taking his headphones off as he did so. “They’re not subtle, that’s for sure. There’s the signal captain; plain as day!”

Captain Mars frowned, counting the sharp, metallic sound of hammer blows on a steel hull. The crew heard it and they counted along. Nine clangs followed by a pause. After three more clangs everyone — everyone — knew what was coming. When they were done the captain sighed and looked over his crew.

His expression was dead serious, and he said, “Nine-Eleven; they’re using Nine-Eleven as their signal. Well gentleman, I think you know that the only way to respond to this is going to be with a torpedo up their ass! The only question is when and where!”

The sound of the freighter engines chugging to a stop was noted on the Rahman. Then came nine heavy clangs followed by another eleven clangs: the sound of a hammer on the hull. Bashir groaned inwardly. Who couldn’t hear that even without hydrophones? The sailors resting in their bunks below the waterline could hear the signal kilometers away; but no, the fanatics in charge of the mission knew no tactics, no strategy, only their holy war! Holy idiots, all of them!

“Are we going to answer captain?” the navigator demanded.

The captain closed his eyes, knowing he had no choice. “You do it,” he said finitely.

The navigator took out a heavy hammer and rapped on a pipe — hard. The first officer, who was also the engineer, sprang across the narrow deck and grabbed the navigator’s arm.

“Idiot, what do you want to do; crack the pipe and sink us?”

“They must hear the signal!”

“You imbecile everyone in the Straits of Hormuz will hear us! Rap more softly, they will hear it, I assure you!”

The navigator complied, but the first officer went to Bashir and complained, “He’s served on boats for a year and knows nothing of our job — nothing!”

The captain held a finger to his lips and whispered, “His father is a very influential Imam in Hayayi’s inner circle; be careful what you say!”

The first officer swallowed hard, sweating, and said loud enough for everyone one the bridge to hear, “I was only concerned over our sacred mission. The Prophet, Allah bless him, demands all of our skill for his glory and success!”

“Yes, yes he does,” the captain smiled mirthlessly. He went to the sonar operator. Bending over the man, Bashir wrinkled his nose at the pungent mix of sweat and perfume — common for the boat — extreme for this man.

“Report, do you have a bearing?”

“Yes sir, we should proceed at zero-three-nine degrees!”

“Helm, ahead one quarter zero-three-nine degrees; maintain depth twenty meters!”

The midget moved forward rising slowly, heavily, noisily. Never quiet, the midget sub was burdened more than usual. Cargo lashed to her foredeck marred the sleek torpedo shape and created turbulence in the water; that meant noise.

There was nothing the captain could do. Therefore he paid attention to his approach, growing more nervous by the minute. Every minute the freighter repeated the code. Bashir hoped rather than knew it wasn’t being listened to by unfriendly ears. If the Americans could hear it — he shuddered at the thought — then he and his crew would be marked for a deep and watery grave, he had no illusions as to that whatsoever.

The sonar operator honed in his heading until they were almost upon the freighter and he could hear water slapping against the sides of the stationary ship.

“We’re close!”

“All stop!” Bashir ordered. “Periscope depth!”

Air hissed into the dive tanks, displacing the water and making the boat more buoyant. When they came to a stop at three meters, just short of the conning tower breaking the surface in the trough of a wave, Captain Bashir raised the periscope. The freighter wasn’t in front of them!

“Damn!” he breathed, looking around wildly. He sighed with relief. There it was at eleven O’clock. It wasn’t bad, but it made the approach more difficult. In order for Bashir to surface within the hold of the ship he had to be aligned nearly perfectly.

Adjusting the course to line the midget sub up was hard enough, but the freighter was now drifting. Having their engines shut off was part of the illusion, but Bashir had tried to tell the Imams and the army commander in charge of the mission, a Colonel Nikahd, that the current would turn even a heavy freighter with its engines shut down. They ignored him.

Therefore Bashir had to trust to luck and a quick approach to make this happen. He approached the freighter from the front, passed by the port side and then made his final approach from the rear. As the stern of the freighter loomed over him he ordered the midget sub to dive.

Staying at his periscope, Captain Bashir picked up a light that had been lowered in the front of the freighter’s open hold. The light glimmered in the darkness of the night waters, making the approach possible, allowing him to line up the sub with the ship. It was a waterproof version of what airline pilots used to park their aircraft, unable as they were to see the stopping points beneath the nose of the aircraft.

When the light flashed red, he ordered, “All stop! Blow tanks; periscope depth!”

Air hissed into the tanks and the boat began to rise. Bashir scanned all around, trying to ascertain his boat’s position relative to the freighter. It was impossible to tell. The one light told him how far he was from the front of the hold. Beyond that his periscope was met with inky blackness.

All at once his vision cleared; the periscope popped up above the surface of the water. His first view was of the far side of the hold. He could see men on the catwalk on the side of the hold, pointing at the periscope. The midget sub continued to rise.

“Hold periscope depth!” he ordered, but the sub struck the side of the hold, rolling hard to the left. Bashir clung to the periscope as his feet stumbled on the rolling deck. Several of his men lost their footing and crashed to the steel floor. A resounding clang sounded throughout the boat.

The midget sub popped up from under the freighter, swerving to port and rocking like an angry bronco. There were shouts and curses. The horrible sound of water jetting from a burst pipe — a submariner’s nightmare — cut the fetid atmosphere.

“Stabilize our depth at five meters!” he ordered.

The engineer ordered the tanks balanced while he and another man packed a clamp over the burst pipe and shut off the valves. The leak slowed but it did not stop. The mate reported, “We’ve got a breech in the seam of the pressure hull! Diving is out of the question now!”

“You mean we can’t get out of the hold?” Bashir asked.

“I don’t know until I examine the damage topside. Maybe we can brace it and get ten meters out of her, but nothing more,” he replied.

“Well planned or not, we’re here. Wait for the frogmen to straighten us out.” They waited, working all the time on the leak. Water soaked the deck plates and stations on the port side of the bridge, gurgling into the bilge.

A slap sounded on the conning tower. “Bring us up to one meter — slow!”

“Conning tower free!” the first officer reported.

“Come on; let’s check the damage.” Bashir opened the upper hatch. A fog of smoke and salt spray made his eyes water. He coughed, hacking and wheezing as he clambered out into the conning tower. Rushing to the side, he looked over the bulwark at the damage. It was hard to see without the boat fully surfaced, but there was an ugly dent along the port side. It was nearly ten feet long; Air bubbled out of the crease every time the boat heeled over or submerged the foredeck.

A strident voice assailed Bashir. He heard nothing but the tone of the comment, so he retorted, reminding the commentator, the captain of the freighter as it turned out, that this was not a normal maneuver, that he should try it if he didn’t like it.

Frogmen and deckhands secured the midget sub in the hold of the freighter. Then began the arduous process of swapping the cargo containers. Each weighed two tons, so Captain Bashir had the engineer slowly flood the dive tanks so that the deck was awash. Inflatable collars allowed the deckhands to float the containers just enough to move them around.

As the business of swapping the containers continued a gangway was lowered to the conning tower and Bashir was taken aboard the freighter. The captain met him with a sober but apologetic manner.

“That can’t have been easy; forgive my outburst, the import of our mission must be my excuse,” he said.

Bashir nodded, “That is the only reason I would ever try anything so risky.”

“How extensive is your damage?”

“There is a breech that will prevent our diving deep; however, we are simply transporting the cargo and not going into battle. I don’t foresee anything that would prevent our rendezvous with the—” he stopped when the captain of the freighter put up his hand.

“I have no need to know anything further,” he interrupted. “You had better get the cargo on the way before the Americans decide to come and aide us. They have an overdeveloped sense of rescuing people!”

Captain Bashir nodded and left for his command. A half hour later the midget sub disappeared in the black waters. Shortly thereafter a destroyer passed the Atlas a line and it was secured. At Captain Mustafa’s order the destroyer towed the Atlas toward Abu Dhabi.