Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2)

by André Le Gallo

  “I’ll take this side,” Steve said pointing to the right. Looking at Kella he said, “You take the other side. Check about fifty yards out.”

  Steve jogged to get closer to the road and then slowed his pace. It was still dark, but the dawn would be breaking soon, and it was already more difficult to stay concealed. Suddenly, he heard the distinct sound of a walky-talky or of police radio. He stopped and tried to locate the direction of the sound. Staying as low as he could, he walked carefully in the direction of the radio until he could make out what looked like a jeep. It was off the road, its lights off. Approaching from the back, he saw the outline of a man’s head on the driver’s side. Most visible was the glow of his cigarette. Not well trained, Steve thought. Not one of the IRGC’s elite units.

  Steve crouched and mentally ran through his mental index of options. Avoid this crossing spot? Chances were that helmet-head had friends up and down the rest of the coast road. In this location, Steve now knew the watcher’s location. Should he try to kill him? He rejected that option for now. He didn’t want to take the soldier’s life. Helmet-head was doing his job. Not well, but he was doing his duty. Taking him prisoner was out of the question. Could he be tied up and left hidden somewhere securely out of sight until after the exfiltration was complete?

  Steve moved closer. He was on the left side of the vehicle when the jeep radio crackled with a man’s voice in Farsi. Helmet-head responded. When he heard the man put down the mic, Steve stood up and stuck his Glock in the driver’s face, putting his other hand over the driver’s mouth. Steve glanced in the back seat to make sure that the driver was alone.

  Then he said, “Not a sound,” removing his hand from the man’s mouth to mime zipping his own lips. “Or you’re a dead man,” he added and made a cutting motion across his throat.

  Clearly stunned, the soldier nonetheless seemed to be weighing his chances. A semiautomatic weapon rested on the seat next to him, and he had a holstered pistol at his side. Steve, keeping the Glock pointed at his head, took a step back and pulled the driver out of the jeep. He then motioned for him to drop the belt holding the holster.

  The driver obeyed, his eyes wide. Steve then motioned for him to lie on the ground, face down. One eye on his prisoner, Steve searched the jeep and found oily rags under the seat and cord on the floor of the back seat together with fruits and kebabs in a paper bag, and enough paraphernalia to suggest that his prisoner used the back seat as his pantry, his clothes closet, his tool chest, and his garbage can. Steve tied him up, stuffed rags into his mouth, and applied a sort of electrician’s tape around his head and mouth. He then rolled him under the jeep and headed back to where Ali and Mike were waiting.

  He found Ali cleaning Mike’s burns and applying new ointment. He told them about his prisoner and their new method of travel. At that instant, Kella returned and said, “I didn’t see anyone or anything, except that there seems to be a path on the other side of the road heading down toward the beach.”

  Ali said to Steve, “You’re right that we could use the jeep. What about the bikes?” He ran his hand over his machine’s smooth and warm metal.

  “What about them?” Steve asked. “They’ve done us a great service, and now it’s time to ditch them. You can drive the jeep, wear the helmet, and if we’re seen, we’ll look like an Army vehicle. It’s still a bit dark. That’s still a help. It’ll be easier for Mike also.”

  Delaying a decision, Ali said, “Well, let’s go see your jeep and prisoner.” They mounted the bikes and headed toward the jeep.

  * **

  As the night receded, so did the wind and the waves. Duncan and his boat were well into Iranian waters and able to accelerate their approach to fifty knots. The coxswain was directing the RIB straight for the Nayband Park beach, a daylight shot of which he had on his computerized screen.

  Duncan still couldn’t see land but knew it was nearby. He received a message from his headquarters. “We’re starting to see some activity at Bandar Abbas and at Abu Musa. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were getting ready to put out a bunch of fast boats.”

  The P-3’s were loyally reporting the state of play on the Gulf as the sun prepared to make its appearance over Iran’s Zagros Mountains.

  * **

  Steve and Ali had cut the baby in half. Steve drove the jeep with Mike, Kella, and their prisoner; Ali followed on his beloved bike. They travelled on the paved road looking for a path down to the water that Ali said was closer to the pickup point than the one Kella had seen. Before they could made their turn toward the beach, a helicopter that was patrolling the road spotted them and came down to inspect. What they saw must have been puzzling: one of their jeeps with one of their drivers, followed by a motorcycle. It was still not light enough to identify anyone. The chopper turned inland and gained altitude before coming back at them with their spotlight on this time.

  Steve made a right on the beach-trail going as fast as he dared. He still had the night goggles which helped. He hoped that the spotlight was the chopper’s only weapon. Unfortunately, this time around, a soldier fired at them from the aircraft’s open cargo door.

  * **

  Duncan first spotted the Iranian chopper on his Combat Information screen, transmitted from a circling P-3 maritime surveillance aircraft. He told one of his crew to man their fifty caliber machine gun. When the chopper started firing, Duncan nodded to his machine gunner. Before the chopper could make its turn inland for another run at the fleeing Americans, the chopper had exploded in the air and was falling in a bright, smoking yellow flower.

  * **

  Steve stepped on the gas and heard Mike and Kella bounce around in the back. He knew that Kella was trying to keep Mike from being tossed, but he heard Mike scream. They reached the beach and saw Duncan’s boat waiting twenty feet offshore. Three SEALs were already overboard and running toward them. They carried Mike while Ali and Steve unloaded weapons, ammo, and other supplies from the saddle bags. Before leaving, Steve untied the prisoner’s hands but not his feet.

  Then Ali set up his bike on its stand, facing parallel to the beach.

  Once they were all in the boat, Ali said, “Wait.” He took his place behind the fifty caliber gun and said, “I need incendiary rounds.”

  The gunner said, “Every tenth round is incendiary.”

  Ali fired a long burst into his machine. The force of the two hundred ninety grain bullets made the five hundred sixty-four pound bike jump back and fall. The incendiary bullets exploded the gas tanks, and the bike burst into flames.

  Ali turned away. “Those bastards won’t get my bike.”

  66. Persian Gulf

  Wayne Duncan radioed headquarters, “We have our four passengers, one with severe burns on his left leg. Will need immediate treatment. We’re heading for rendezvous with chopper.”

  With calm seas, the objective was to put distance, at least twelve miles of distance, from the Iranian coast. The RIB was soon skimming over the water at fifty knots an hour.

  The answer to Duncan’s call came immediately. “You have several Iranian fast boats coming your way. We’re getting you some help. We have asked the Dulles to turn around.”

  Steaming at an average of thirty-five knots, the Dulles was a considerable distance from Lt. Duncan’s boat, but not yet through the Strait, when it received its new orders. Captain Brian Navarre directed the Officer of the Deck to make haste toward a point that intersected the SEAL boat’s extraction route. Then he went down to the Combat Information Center. There he met with his Tactical Action Officer and ordered him to activate the SPY-1/AEGIS, also known as the “the Shield of the Fleet,” the world’s most advanced naval surface ship combat system, designed to handle air, surface, and subsurface threats, able to perform search, tracking, and missile guidance functions simultaneously with a track capacity of well over one hundred targets at more than one hundred nautical miles.

  The TAO pointed out the numerous fast boats leaving Bandar Abbas and Abu Musa Island. More worris
ome was a pair of combat helicopters, also from Bandar Abbas, that were closing in on Duncan’s boat.

  Duncan received a warning that two Iranian helicopters were heading to intercept him before he could see them. His boat was fast, but he couldn’t possibly outrun aircraft. He stayed on course toward his rendezvous point. The fifty-caliber machine gun was his heaviest weapon, and he made sure that it was ready.

  Kella and Steve were part of the boat’s baggage. Steve put his hand on his pack frequently checking that the CDs were still there. Kella could see that he was fidgety, that he wanted to do something.

  “It’s almost over,” she said. “You’ll have that information in the right hands when we get on a real boat.”

  “Ship, ship,” he corrected her automatically and, watching the actions of the crew, he moved to stand near Duncan to look down at the computerized screen. He spotted a multitude of dots moving toward the center. “What are those?” he asked.

  “Fast boats. They have mostly light armament. However, some of these are IPS-16s Paykaaps, torpedo and missile boats. Everybody wants to come to the party.”

  * **

  Al Costantini had never flown a mission quite like this before. He had been flying for the Night Stalkers, Task Force 160, for eighteen months and had a well-deserved reputation as a skilled and fearless helicopter pilot earned through twenty missions. He had infiltrated, exfiltrated, and supplied spec ops teams into denied areas--where there were no defined lines of combat. But he couldn’t count the retrieval of CIA operatives from a fast moving SEAL boat as one of his experiences. This time, he was operating from one the Naval Task Force’s staging points, a barge off Manama

  He had been told: “Urgent, time-sensitive requirement, by order of the highest levels of the government.”

  Maybe to explain why another more experienced pilot had not been tapped on the shoulder for this mission. He wasn’t sure whether to be honored or whether he was considered an unfortunate substitute. He had little time to ponder the philosophy of the mission. Thirty feet above the water and answering to the call-sign of “Sea Bat,” he was skimming over the Gulf in his MH-47 Chinook, a dual rotor chopper with air-refueling capacity made for night missions, within a couple of hours after he and his crew received orders. The technical aspects of the challenge didn’t bother him. He was confident in his flying skills and in his crew. However, the more information he was fed about the interest of hostiles in his operation, the less he liked it.

  * **

  “Take evasive action!” Duncan shouted to his coxswain. “Torpedo on the way!

  “Get down, and hang on,” he shouted at Steve. Duncan himself was strapped into his command seat.

  At thirty feet, they could see the surface track of the torpedo. As it neared the SEAL boat, the coxswain steered smoothly but decisively to sharp starboard. The torpedo sped past the boat with a slim five foot margin.

  * **

  Targeting the torpedo boats that the Iranians had fielded, Navarre directed his TAO, “Fire for effect.”

  67. Tehran: Mousavi’s Office

  Mousavi, chessboard on his desk, had demanded to be in direct communications with the IRGC Navy commander in Bandar Abbas. He was monitoring the conflict closely. Learning that the torpedo boats had been destroyed, Mousavi shouted into the conference phone, “By the grace of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, eliminate the boat carrying the spy. Do what you have to do. Request air strikes if you have to. If you can’t conduct the battle from Bandar Abbas, I’ll ask your minister to get someone who can.”

  He then called Hashem Yazdi. “Hashem! The American Spy. What happened? He’s now on the waters of the Gulf, and our Navy is about to dispose of him once and for all. In the meantime, I want you to find out where the American Whore is, the Charge’s wife. She was wounded during the riots. Wherever she is, a hospital I assume, take her into our custody. She can stay at the hospital if necessary, but everyone must understand that we have jurisdiction.”

  He then called the president and asked for an urgent meeting.

  68. Persian Gulf

  As Al Costantini matched his speed exactly to the SEAL boat below, he eyed a group of fast boats coming at flank speed toward him from about two thousand yards away. He heard the loud staccato of a 50 caliber machine gun below him and spoke in his helmet microphone, “Lower the harness.”

  His crew dropped a double harness attached to a cable controlled by a hoist. When it reached the SEAL boat, two crewmen held it as Kella and Steve climbed into it. Once Steve and Kella were safely fastened, a SEAL motioned up to the Chinook and the winch slowly began to pull them up. When they were free of the boat, Costantini, keeping his attention on both the Iranian boats and on the CIA operatives dangling below, separated his aircraft as quickly as he could from its dangerous proximity to the water and to the SEAL boat.

  As the chopper gained in altitude and speed, the cable holding Steve and Kella swung back. By the time the winch reeled them in, they were about two hundred feet above the water and moving fast toward Manama. Mike and Ali watched closely, holding their breaths. They understood why Steve self-consciously had a hand on his backpack as he went up.

  When Steve and Kella were inside the chopper, Costantini reported to his Naval Task Force, “This is Sea Bat. I repeat; this is Sea Bat reporting that our two guests are on board. Heading for home. ETA 0650. Out.”

  * **

  In the boat below, both Mike and Ali beamed and shouted “Hoo-Ha! Hoo-Ha!” Ali jumped up but quickly had to hang on to something before getting bounced overboard. Duncan had informed them that he had orders to bring them to the Dulles where Mike would receive medical attention and from which they would be flown to Manama.

  No one had ever briefed them on Steve and Kella’s mission. However, they both understood that Steve was carrying CDs that contained information of interest to the highest levels of the government. Ali sat back down and high-fived Mike.

  69. Mousavi’s Office

  The reply from the president’s office was that the president was leaving town but would speak to Mousavi on the phone for a minute. That’s all they needed to decide to trigger the secret cyber weapon against the United States. The president’s prerequisites had been met.

  The U.S. Navy was again interfering in a body of water that by rights and history belonged to Persia. Further, Mousavi said he had captured the Satan Spy who could soon be publicly tried. The anniversary of the capture of the American Embassy in 1979 would be missed by a few days, but the exact date was not important. The trial would begin with a media blitz commemorating the event.

  70. The White House: Oval Office

  While waiting outside, Kella asked Steve, “Do you miss the excitement of being in the field yet?”

  Steve didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m very happy that no one is trying to kill me. Life is good. Maybe we could take a trip one of these days. Ever climb Mount McKinley in Alaska?”

  She smiled and replied, “Okay, champ. Let’s start with Mount Whitney in California, not far from Death Valley. If you graduate from my desert survival course, I’ll climb Mt. McKinley with you. And when we come back, we’ll do some serious planning on ‘The Vertical Dimension.’”

  When invited to the White House, Steve had said he would be happy to go, assuming Kella, his father Marshall, Ali and Mike went with him. However, Ali had been sent on another mission, and Mike was still at Brooke Army Medical Center in Austin being treated for his burns. Both Thérèse LaFont and Wally Deuel had been officially invited, but only Thérèse was present. Deuel was briefing the Gang of Eight, the Majority and Minority Leaders of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees, and the four leaders of the two Houses of Congress, on the recent success in Iran.

  The Oval Office was bigger than Steve had imagined. Maybe it was the rug. Was it beige? With darker spokes radiating from the great seal, like sun light? He and Kella sat on one of two parallel sofas perfectly color coordinated with the rug, and the president s
at on a blue and gold striped chair. Marshall shared the other sofa with Thérèse. Both sofas were perpendicular to the president’s desk, made from the British ship HMS Resolute. To the left and behind President Tremaine was a bust of Lincoln; on the other side, Gilbert Stuart’s painting of George Washington looked down on them.

  “First,” President Adam Tremaine said, “Wally Deuel wants me to persuade you, Steve, to join the CIA officially. He said he can’t go on giving you awards for each mission unless you join, which seems fair to me,” he grinned.

  Steve seemed embarrassed, and Marshall said, “Offers of employment don’t come any higher than this, Steve.”

  “That’s very flattering Mr. President,” Steve replied, “but first I think Kella and I are going to take a few days off.”

  Turning to Kella, Tremaine continued. “That offer goes for you too Kella. Together, you’re a fantastic team. Which reminds me...” He stood and walked to his desk to glance at a paper that he pulled out of the only file on his desk. Looking at Steve, he said, “My Chief of Staff wants to meet you. Who knows? He may offer you a job also. Wally is going to hate me. I’ll take you to his office later.” Smiling, he went back to his seat.

  Steve was feeling uncomfortable and hoped his face wasn’t turning red.

  “You know of course,” the president went on, “that the information that was on the CDs that you gave to the Navy at Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Manama was sent immediately to the National Security Agency. None too soon. They worked on it day and night. Two days later, Iran set off their cyber attack. Unfortunately, we weren’t completely ready.

  “However, your information and NSA’s emergency steps prevented a catastrophe. We closed the markets for a day, and took other defensive steps that saved this country months of hard, and costly, rebuilding work.