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Command of any submarine was an intensely stressful, yet rewarding job. Commanding one of America’s newest fast attack submarines was in a league all by itself. The United States Navy had entrusted Halberg with the two-billion-dollar technological marvel and given him 134 submariners to lead. The cruise had been fairly routine up until two days prior when they’d received a flash message from Submarine Task Force Commander or CTF 54. Their orders were to leave the Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group, which was on patrol in the Persian Gulf, and proceed to the Gulf of Oman, where Halberg and his crew were to locate and track one of Iran’s three Kilo-class subs that had left port in a hurry.
Shortly after midnight they’d followed a Liberian supertanker filled with crude through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the deeper waters of the Gulf of Oman. At 377 feet the U.S.S. Virginia was seventeen feet longer than the depth of the main shipping channel. There wasn’t a sub in the world, other than her sister ships, that could come even close to her capabilities, but she had her limits. Halberg and his entire crew had breathed a collective sigh of relief when they reached the deeper water of the Gulf of Oman. The Virginia’s strength lay in her stealth, firepower, and speed. To use those, however, she needed room to maneuver. If the Persian Gulf was a six-lane divided highway on a dry sunny day, the Strait of Hormuz was a narrow dark alley on a dark rainy night. Twenty-seven miles at the narrowest point, it was dotted with islands and packed with shipping traffic. Most of its supertankers were nearly 1,000 feet long. The currents were quick and once outside the main shipping channel there were countless uncharted wrecks.
Based on the information provided by CTF 54, Halberg and his executive officer, Dennis Strilzuk, agreed on the most likely location of the Kilo. They set up a patrol grid and then Halberg turned over the command duty officer watch to the exec so he could grab a few hours of sleep. Four hours later he woke up refreshed and returned to the bridge. Traveling at five knots on an easterly heading, the lightweight wide-aperture array picked up the Kilo running at the same speed in the opposite direction, parallel to the Iranian coast.
It was a predictable maneuver that they had seen the Iranians use dozens of times. They would run their subs out of their base in Bandar Abbas in broad daylight for all the world to see and then transit through the strait on the surface. Once clear of the shipping channel they’d dive and then put the pedal to the metal. Usually, just north of Muscat, Oman, they would decrease speed to five knots and begin a series of lazy figure eights to make sure no American subs were trailing them. Then they would slowly work their way north and skirt the Iranian coastline just inside territorial waters, looking for an American warship they could fall in behind and tail back through the strait.
When Halberg arrived in control, Strilzuk explained what was going on.
“About thirty minutes ago, he broke for international water and started running the race track right here on the shelf.” Strilzuk pointed to a location on the chart that showed where the Gulf of Oman stepped its way up from a depth of 1,000 meters to 100 meters. The
location was right on the doorstep of the Strait of Hormuz.
Halberg sipped his coffee. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. Why go to all that effort to disappear and then start beating your chest?”
“Unless you want to be found,” Halberg mused.
“That’s what I was thinking.” Strilzuk handed the skipper a printed message from CTF 54. “This came in about an hour ago.”
Halberg scanned the message without the aid of glasses. With his oldest child already in college, he was very proud of the fact that he didn’t need reading specs. According to the message the Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas was a beehive of activity. Her two remaining Kilo subs, the Tareq and Noor, had rushed out of port in the middle of the night along with four of their minisubs.
Strilzuk pointed to the nearest color monitor and said, “These satellite photos were taken at zero four hundred. Every frigate in the harbor is glowing. They’re getting ready to put their entire navy to sea.”
Halberg looked down at the plotting table. The old paper charts had been replaced by a flat computer screen that provided real-time tactical information. With the aid of a complex navigation system, the display showed the exact location of the Virginia, the Iranian Kilo they were shadowing, and virtually every other ship in the Gulf of Oman. Halberg pressed a button and the screen changed magnification to show the tactical situation in the Persian Gulf. Two of the six Iranian subs were already missing. The other four were all headed northwest toward the Eisenhower strike group. Halberg assumed the missing subs were also headed in that direction. He’d been patrolling these waters on and off for nearly twenty years, and this was as aggressive as he’d ever seen the Iranians.
Halberg changed the plotting screen back to his immediate area of responsibility. He looked at the location of the Iranian Kilo that they had identified as the Yunes, the most modern of their subs. She appeared to be guarding the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.
“Why don’t you grab some sleep,” Halberg said to Strilzuk. “I’ll start the next watch early.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” Halberg settled into his chair in the Command and Control Center and asked for a cup of coffee. As he studied the battlefield layout on the array of screens in the CACC, he got the feeling that this was not going to be another boring day at sea.
34
MOSUL, IRAQ
Rapp was wearing a loose-fitting pair of pleated black dress pants and a gray dress shirt that was untucked. He stood behind Stilwell looking down at one of the flat-panel monitors. The screen was split in two. The left half showed Kennedy. The right half showed Ashani. Their conversation was relayed via a pair of desktop speakers with reasonable clarity. As Kennedy had predicted, the dialogue was progressing without conflict. This should have reassured Rapp, but it didn’t.
Something didn’t seem right. He ran a hand through his thick, black hair and then scratched his beard. His eyes moved to a second monitor showing four separate shots of the street. The policemen at the north barricade looked tense and a bit jumpy. It was decided that they would not be told any specifics about the meeting. Especially that the director of the CIA was one of the two principles. The Iranian demand that no U.S. military personnel be involved with the security complicated things a bit.
The local police were the next best choice for crowd control. At least that’s what Ridley thought. Rapp was having second thoughts. The police seemed to be more concerned with what was going on inside the security perimeter than what was going on outside. Their job was to screen pedestrians and make sure no vehicles gained access to the block.
Fortunately, pedestrian traffic was sparse. The natives knew to stay away from the police checkpoints for the simple fact that they provided ripe targets for the fundamentalist suicide bombers. As Rapp was trying to get a read on the situation, two more police vehicles pulled up. They were pickup trucks, each with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted to the roof of the cab. Two .50-caliber heavy machine guns was a lot of firepower. The gunners were wearing flak jackets and black hoods, but beyond that they were standing fully exposed in the back of the pickups. It was the perfect job for a young recruit who would think himself invincible behind the heavy gun. In reality, though, they were ripe targets. In a gunfight they wouldn’t last long, standing and exposed like that. Any decent marksman could pick them off. Rapp noticed that the men handling the big guns also appeared more concerned about what was happening inside the security cordon than what was going on outside.
Rapp shifted his gaze to a picture of the men who were providing transport for Minister Ashani. They were parked directly across the street from the café and their American counterparts. As they were dressed in street clothes and wearing black hoods to conceal their faces, Rapp guessed they were either Quds Force or members of a local Shia militia. They were all holding AK-74s. He understood why the militants had to conceal their faces, but the fact that the police did as well spoke volumes about the lawlessness of the city.
Rapp tapped Stilwell on the shoulder and said, “Am I just imagining it, or does it look like the police and these guys in the hoods are itching to get in a gunfight with each other?”
“Nope,” Stilwell kept his eyes on screen, “you’re not imagining anything. It’s the same old story. Most of the cops are Sunni, and these guys in the hoods are Shia. They’re like Yankees and Red Sox fans, except they’ve hated each other for a lot longer.”
“Yankees and Red Sox fans don’t kill each other.”
“They might…if they had to live in the same city.”
Rapp didn’t like any of this. The last thing they needed was Kennedy getting caught in the crossfire between the Hatfields and the McCoys. “Can we trust these militia guys?”
