The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 28: Swimming with the Fishes

As midnight struck over the Straits of Hormuz the hardly to be heard hum of a V-22 Osprey approached Bandar Abbas with very reluctant Jeremiah Slade on board.

Feeling far too old to be doing something like this, Slade sat in his wetsuit at the aft end of the Osprey. Slung over his shoulder was a KRISS Super Vector .45 caliber assault rifle and other gear.

Leaning against his right leg was a torpedo shaped underwater sled complete with radar, infra-red cameras and lights as well as munitions. The sled was invaluable when they had miles to cover underwater, but as Killer jokingly told Slade, “It can’t outrun a hungry shark. Sorry buddy.”

“Get ready to drop!” the loadmaster shouted.

The hydraulic squeal of the cargo doors was clearly audible over the muffled engines. Then the airstream drowned them out. The air became cool and damp with a salt tang over the smell of jet fuel, oil and the sickeningly sweet smell of hydraulic fluid.

The loadmaster motioned them up, three men on each side of him. Slade stood up and shuffled to the back door, looking down at the black water. The breakwater of the port was ahead of the aircraft; the dimly illuminated cargo bay faced out to sea.

Standing at the edge of the cargo bay Slade glanced at Killer to his right. He wasn’t afraid of the ten meter jump, but Slade had a very visceral concern over entering a world where he was no longer the top of the food chain, especially at night.

Killer knew this, and shouted, “Time your jump to land between those two big ones! Mind the teeth!”

Slade had no time to retort. The loadmaster slapped him on the shoulder as the small green light illuminated.

“Go!”

Training took over. Slade could not have stopped his jump even if he wanted to. His body was so thoroughly trained to respond to that situation, to that command, that his muscle memory took over. He was a passenger in his own body. Before he knew it the cold, dark water closed around him, filled as it was with hidden, hungry things.

Fighting that momentary urge to panic, Slade exhaled — training again — that cleared the regulator and allowed him to slowly fill his lungs with Oxygen. He hung there, suspended in the darkness for what seemed like five minutes; it was actually as many seconds. That allowed his inner ear to re-establish its equilibrium; it took the extra time because in the dark, zero-gravity environment of the night ocean his sensory inputs aside from the cold of the water were nil.

The sound of the bubbles faded. Slade reached for his helmet and turned on his infra-red lights. There was a small LCD screen above each eye in his mask; the screens were connected to two diode sized cameras on either side of his mask. Looking around he caught sight of the five other divers of the Delta Force team. They were readying their sleds.

“All right boys time to mount up!” Killer said.

Pulling his sled up and levelling it, Jeremiah aimed it as he would a big machine gun. Hitting one button with his thumb powered the sled up. Hitting two more turned on the sled’s more powerful infra-red lights and activated the main screen.

The screen was a multi-purpose display. It automatically displayed what the camera saw; however, the screen also showed the essential mission data required for any military operation: the Zulu time, a chronometer, the compass heading, depth, temperature, and in the lower left corner of the display a navigation display fed by a combination gyro and GPS navigation computer. At the bottom of that display were the latitude and longitude of the sled.

The navigation display showed the outlines of the harbor and the position of the target ship superimposed over the picture of the other divers. The rocks of the breakwater were to his right. They sheltered the old naval harbor of Shahid Bahonor from the sea. That’s where the target ship, the Champion Galaxus, lay in berth — a civilian ship at the navy yard — the first clue that something was very, very wrong. If the cargo for Soekarno was really just sand and nothing more why wasn’t the ship berthed at the more modern civilian port Shahid Rajaee a few miles west?

Slade fell behind Killer, keeping out of his wake but maintaining a few meters behind. He could see nothing but what his sled screen and his helmet camera showed. They ran at eight meters, and at that depth no one, even someone watching for them, would have noted the soft green glow from the sled’s tactical displays.

Their only sensory signature was the soft hum of the sled’s motors and propellers, but even these were drowned out by the distant yet unmuffled growls of the tugs and ships in the harbor.

Like ghosts they made their way along the breakwater before turning right into the outer harbor. It was nearly a kilometer to the berth where they expected to find the target ship, Soekarno’s Champion Galaxus. To get there, the sleds had to navigate the outer harbor and whatever traffic it had. That forced them to descend to fifteen meters, ensuring they passed beneath any transiting ships.

The water here was cold and necessarily dark. The sounds of the harbor were many and varied. Engines chugged, propellers whirred, somewhere in the harbor a man was hammering on a steel plate; the resulting blows turned the hull into a huge bell, making the whole harbor ring. Slade got a new appreciation for just how difficult submariners had it when forced to run silent. At one point they passed beneath an anchored ship and Slade swore he could hear singing, very bad singing.

The water changed as they approached the inner harbor. Slicks and globules of oil choked the water. The bottom rose up, strewn with garbage and debris: chains, boots, rags, barrels, anything and everything you might find in a harbor and all slick with sludge and oil. Motoring just over the bottom Slade stuck out a hand. He dragged it across the surface, curious, and came up with a sticky black goo. The harbor waters of Bandar Abbas were disgusting.

“There it is,” Killer said through his helmet. The keel of a freighter appeared on the screen behind Killer’s sled. The Delta Force steered toward the rear of the ship. Their first goal was the rudder.

Reaching it, Killer searched the large piece of steel for the registration number. It was the quickest way to confirm the identity of the ship. Checking the number against his database confirmed that they’d found the Champion Galaxus.

Moving along the hull to a point amidships, the Deltas ditched the sleds on the bottom, mooring them with a simple cable and stake shoved into the goo of the seabed.

Swimming up to just under the surface, Slade and four of the Deltas hung there in the darkness while Killer found the ladder. When he did, he came back and led them to it.

“Secure fins!”

Slade took his fins off and secured them to his vest. Then he swung he KRISS around front and unplugging the barrel. He checked that the silencer was secure and then prepared to follow Killer up the ladder. Killer went first while Slade covered him from below, turning on the reticulated sight, a dim red circle with a glowing dot in the center.

As Killer climbed the welded rebar rungs, Slade scanned the ship’s rail, looking for anyone to pop their head over the side.

Pausing at the top, Killer waited before slipping over the side. “All clear, come on up!”

Slade slung the KRISS on his back again, swiftly climbing the ladder. The ladder was not meant for ease of climbing. The rungs were rather too close to the hull, making it easy to rap your knuckles on the steel side. It was sixty feet up the side for Slade, a much longer climb than it would have been ten years ago. He got to the top. The climb warmed him up. Now, peering over the side, he saw Killer crouched in the shadows of a hatch.

The top deck was well illuminated. The dockyard lights shone with a harsh white light. However, this also created sharp shadows of stygian night. Slade rolled over the steel bulwark and into the shadow of the massive hatch next to Killer.

The deck was a busy place. There were four big hatches on the freighter. Only one was open. It was between Slade and the bridge. A crane lowered a railroad car sized container into the hold. Several men were on the deck watching, and beyond them on the elevated bridge Slade saw the captain overseeing the operation. He was a large man, probably six-five or so. It could only be Eva’s husband Christian Fletcher.

Jake was about to call up the next Delta Force when there was a commotion on deck. The crane operator was either inexperienced or lazy. He started the container down before having it over the hatch and as a result the container started to swing.

The captain was furious, yelling orders in English. The Iranians on deck yelled back in Farsi and the crane operator stopped the descent of the container suddenly. It jerked around, spinning now, threatening to foul the chain. The captain yelled to the man closest to them, who turned out to be the first mate, directing him to go relieve the crane operator.

The mate ran toward Slade and Killer. They ducked into the shadow around the corner, out of sight. Whether by sight, sound or feel the mate sensed something wrong. They could hear him stop and walk back toward them.

“Johnny!” yelled the captain. “What the Hell are you waiting for?”

The mate stopped and looked quickly around the corner. There was nothing to see except black wetsuits and black equipment enveloped by black night. Slade saw the man’s expression, he wasn’t ten feet away, but they were invisible.

“Nothing,” he yelled back. “I’ll be there in a minute!”

Both Slade and Killer breathed a sigh of relief. When the first mate was gone all attention on deck shifted to the hung up container. In less than a minute the other four Deltas were topside.

Leaving the two teams below to secure the deck if need be, Killer and Slade made their way aft to the bridge. With all the attention paid to the wayward container and the sensitive swap of crane operators — the Iranians weren’t happy and they voiced it — it was another fifteen minutes before loading could resume. By then Slade and Killer were secreted in the darkness on the roof of the bridge.

Slade leaned over the edge of the steel roof and put a small microphone in the corner of the bridge’s port window. Dialing in the frequency of the bug gave them a hollow sounding but clear transmission. The captain was on the phone with someone and he wasn’t happy.

“The Iranians are the ones who fouled things up. I’m fixing what they’ve screwed up; I told them I wanted to use my man but now they’ve got their panties in a wad!”

He waited, while the person on the other end of the line commented. Whatever was said, it didn’t placate him.

“Well I don’t like that one bit,” he said hotly. “These military guys are all fanatics and they’re incompetent to boot. Don’t worry. I’ll get things back on schedule, just tell them to let me do my job! The sooner we’re out of here the better I’ll like it.”

There was another pause while he listened impatiently.

“I won’t breathe easy until we are,” he admitted. “Really, all this for a shitload of sand, are you kidding? I think Soekarno’s cracked — no offense intended. I mean, I like the wages I make under him, but what I don’t like is putting my ship and crew in danger — I don’t care how important this is to him — screw his legacy!”

There was a longer than usual pause. When he spoke again, the captain’s voice while still incredulous was more controlled.

“Don’t listen to me. I’m just torqued because I have to deal with these Iranians — they’re like the Nazis for crying out loud — just as arrogant but nowhere half as competent! That and I was just sitting down to watch the replay of the Vikes-Titans game. Now dear, I know it’s preseason!”

That reminded Slade of his evening plans. “Damn it, I was looking forward to watching that on the Enterprise as well; it’ll be over by the time we get back!”

“You two would get along just fine!” Killer whispered incredulously.

The captain continued more gently than he would in any conversation with another man. “Hey honey, don’t worry about it; I may not understand it, but if it’s important to you it’s important to me. I’ll make sure the old man gets his special Iranian sand.” The captain laughed. “I’m just wondering, why Iranian sand? He wasn’t born in Iran; he’s Indonesian. What is it about sand from Iran? Well, Okay, I suppose he’s rich enough to be eccentric. Hey honey, I got to go. We’ve got to get these containers loaded.”

He said good bye to the woman they guessed to be his wife, and he immediately returned to his walkie talkie, coordinating with his first mate, who had commandeered the crane much to the displeasure of the Iranian dockworkers.

“You tell them I’ll come down there personally and knock some heads if I have to; let’s just get this done and leave!”

After another hour of complaining he sighed, “It looks like they’re done; okay boys button her up! We need to be ready to go tonight!”

The next two hours were all about getting the big ship going. As they attended that, Slade and Killer quitted the bridge and made their way below to the cargo holds. As everything had already been checked it was relatively easy to get into the hold and then very simple to check the three containers.

Climbing on top of the first container, Slade took out his Geiger counter, holding it in various places around the container — there was no reading. He went to the access hatch and looked again; yet again there was nothing. He scowled, telling Killer, “There should at least be some residual radiation no matter how well they hid it.”

Carefully Slade opened the hatch a crack. He snaked a small hollow tube in and turned on the spectrum analyzer. It drew in the air from the inside of the container. Once again there was nothing. Frustrated, Slade threw caution to the wind and opened the door, shining his flashlight inside.

He stared at the contents in amazement.

“What is it; what’s inside?” Killer demanded.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Slade told him.

Before Slade could answer a heavy rumbling coursed through the ship. “Whoa! They’re starting the engines!” Killer said. “If we don’t want a one way ride to Jakarta we better get going!”