by Ted Bell
Stoke had arrived from Berlin two days earlier. He’d met up with Fitz McCoy and Charlie Rainwater at Muscat airport, along with their team of mercenaries just flown in from Martinique. The supplies that had been loaded for this particular run were all of the non-potable, nonedible variety. The stores now stacked in the hold were the exploding kind: satchel charges, limpet mines, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and nine-millimeter ammunition. The transfer of supplies from one boat to another was taking place in the dark and in secret.
At midnight, the trawler Cacique slipped up along Obaidallah’s port side and offloaded the weapons, ammunition, and other sundry equipment Brock and Ahmed had been accumulating in Muscat during the past week. The most prized item: Bruce, a minisubmarine developed by the U.S. Navy for the SEALs.
It resembled nothing so much as a huge squared-off torpedo with a wide shark’s smile painted on its nose. Now, the thirty-foot-long vessel remained on deck, covered with a heavy canvas tarp and lashed to the stern. This latest battery-powered vehicle was equipped with propulsion, navigation, communication, and auxiliary life support systems.
It was capable of delivering a squad of fully equipped combat swimmers and their cargo in fully flooded compartments to a mission site, loitering, and then retiring from the area while remaining completely submerged.
The Obaidallah, their new home at sea, had a brand-new captain and crew. The old team had been paid a month’s wages and sent home grinning like cats to their families. Ali al-Houri, captain of Cacique, had temporarily relieved the Obaidallah’s regular captain, a darkly handsome young man named Abu. He had agreed to stay on. He would serve as first mate for this run since he was well known to the French out on the island.
Ali was down in the engine room with his first mate working on the diesel now. There’d been some problem with the fuel pumps. Ali and Abu told Fitz they were pretty sure they could fix it. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. They had to go, and go tonight, one way or another.
Now, the sun was coming. And with it, the heat of day. Beneath the rolling purple ceiling of a low-hanging cloud bank, yellow light was leaking over the rim of the world. Hawke watched dawn’s arrival through the open porthole, blinking back tears of fatigue. Ah yes, Hawke said to himself. Here it comes. It’s morning again in Oman. Another crappy day just this side of paradise.
Hawke knew something his team did not.
Langley personnel on the ground in China had intercepted a red cell transmission out of Hong Kong. A communiqué from General Moon. The gist of it was, Kelly told Hawke, that the sultan was a dead man. If not already deceased, then soon. A courier had been dispatched from Hong Kong twelve hours ago with secret orders to murder Sultan Aji Abbas and his family.
Some bright boy in Beijing PRC headquarters had finally figured out that the sultan’s services were no longer required. It was the thing Hawke and Kelly had most feared during the run-up to this operation. Now it was happening.
Now that Sultan Abbas had publicly invited French troops into Oman, his continued existence was pointless. Even, as the Chinese had now figured out, dangerous. China had to assume the United States was looking for the sultan. If the United States succeeded and could actually locate him, the jig was up. The Americans would put him in front of a camera. He would proceed to denounce the French invasion and expose China’s role in the operation. The ensuing flap would demolish any chance of covert success.
As if the mission Hawke and his men faced wasn’t fraught with enough danger, the clock was now ticking. It was absolutely essential that they got to the sultan before the Chinese assassins did.
Below deck, five bearded and haggard men were seated around a battered wooden table in the dark, cramped space that passed for the main saloon. Even at this hour, with an ancient electric fan whirring away from its perch on a shelf, it was stifling below. Sweat stinks. So do Gauloise cigarettes. Two of the men were smoking heavily, all were drinking cold coffee out of tin cups, trying to stay awake. Maps, charts, diagrams, sat recon photos, and ashtrays littered the table.
All five were staring through bleary eyes at a crude handmade diagram Harry Brock had drawn of the underwater entrance and tunnels leading off from the powder magazine inside Fort Mahoud.
They’d been hard at it, formulating and rejecting and reformulating strategies, for a day and a half. A cherished hour here and there for sleep. It had been forty-eight very long hours since Hawke and Brock returned from the successful reconnaissance mission inside the fort. In that brief span of time, the world had changed.
The French navy was on the move. The Charles de Gaulle and Foch carrier battle groups had been repositioned to the Arabian Sea. Troopships were also en route, believed to be carrying an amphibious landing force of some forty thousand French infantry. It was rumored that, before the impending invasion of Oman, France’s much-vaunted Mirage and Dassault Rafale fighters would once more challenge the Anglo-American no-fly zone currently being enforced in the northern skies over the Strait of Hormuz.
If it happened, this would be the first such challenge since a Mirage F1 had gone down during an encounter with an unknown British pilot during the early days of the crisis. The American no-fly zone had stirred the media pot even before the French plane went down. Now the mainstream media in the United States were having a field day, showing hourly updates on this “Second Front.” Since no grisly murder trials or celebrity pedophiles were currently available, this unfolding drama in a place few in the world had ever even heard of would have to feed the beast with a billion eyes.
The downing of the Mirage over Oman had elicited a fierce hue and cry from the French press and diplomatic corps, demanding the as-yet-unnamed pilot be turned over to French authorities. That unnamed British pilot, now drinking cold coffee, didn’t even know a French lynch mob wanted his head. Had he known, he would have been too busy to care.
Alex Hawke was one of the five men seated around the table in Obaidallah’s smoky and stifling saloon. The ship’s radio, tuned to the BBC, was muttering in plummy tones on a shelf above the table. The news was uniformly bad. But no one was really listening anymore. There was too goddamn much to be done.
The gist of the thing, according to the BBC man now droning on, was this: China’s foreign minister, Nien Chang, had just announced the commencement of joint naval exercises with the French. The two fleets would be conducting operations just outside the territorial waters of Taiwan. Through diplomatic channels, Washington and London had expressed their stern disapproval of such provocative actions. All this at a time of heightened anxieties over peace in the region. Taiwan, threatened, was a key pressure point in U.S.-China relations.
If there was to be a nuclear confrontation between the two super-powers, it would start on that island republic. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, without an American response, would simply destroy U.S. credibility throughout the world. It was a classic Catch-22. Act, and you risked global war. Do nothing, and you risked total impotence.
The U.S. ambassador to China, the Honorable Barron Collier, had expressed the American concerns to the Chinese foreign minister in Beijing. So far, Ambassador Collier had received no reply.
“Turn that goddamn thing off,” Harry Brock said, and someone did.
To say that the hopes of many in Washington and London were now riding on the shoulders of the five men here assembled was no exaggeration. It was hoped that, even at this late hour, an appearance by the sultan of Oman denouncing the French invasion of his sovereign territory might prevent a disastrous incursion. It was not just tiny Oman and the sovereignty of the Gulf States that was at stake. It was the very shaky planet itself.
Once the French were in and seized control of the oilfields, ports, refineries, platforms, and pipelines, they would be extremely difficult to remove. And once China had had her first taste of pure Omani crude, private reserve, it would be damn near impossible to wean her off it. Wargamers in the Pentagon and at NSA were still shaking their heads over this one.
A French invasion of Oman? Coupled with a simultaneous Chinese threat to Taiwan? Even the most prescient inside the Pentagon had not seen this little scenario coming. The allies were scrambling. Already, the United States and Britain were rapidly moving air and naval assets up from the rear. In Hawaii, shore leaves had been canceled. The Pacific Fleet had been called out on an emergency basis.
On point in this new theater of war, the good ship Obaidallah. A battered old barge that had no business being on top of the water. By all rights, she should have gone to the bottom decades ago.
Seated to Hawke’s right in the saloon was Stokely Jones, recently arrived from a most successful mission in Germany. Even now, the documents he had obtained in Berlin were being examined at both Langley and NSA. CIA analysts were especially interested in the Chinese connection to the German megacorporation, Von Draxis Industries. Next to Jones, another American, Harry Brock.
To Hawke’s left, two more recent arrivals: FitzHugh McCoy, a strapping Irishman, and Charlie Rainwater, a full-blooded Comanche Indian. McCoy and Rainwater, known affectionately in the worldwide antiterrorist community as Thunder and Lightning, headed up a loosely organized group of mercenaries. All were ex-Legionnaires, Ghurkas, Rangers, and battle-hardened soldiers of fortune.
It was safe to say that Rainwater and McCoy, whose motley band of eight warriors were now sleeping in Cacique’s crew quarters, constituted the best freelance hostage rescue team in the world.
Harry Brock and FitzHugh McCoy had taken an instant dislike to each other, Hawke noticed. Brock must have seen Hawke salute the little man on the dock. Which told Harry that Fitz was probably a Medal of Honor winner, since they were automatically entitled to salutes from anyone of any rank. Brock chose not to salute. Odd. But then Brock’s behavior had been odd ever since they’d linked up in Oman. At night, running down his list of worries, Hawke kept thinking about Brick’s Manchurian Candidate comment just after Harry Brock’s rescue.
“What’s your story?” Brock had said when Fitz first stepped aboard.
Fitz smiled and walked right up to the much bigger man. “Quick on the turn, fast and hard into battle. What’s yours?”
Brock wisely didn’t respond. But Hawke decided to watch him even more closely from now on.
“All right then,” Fitz said, his thick brogue raw with fatigue and tobacco, “I know everybody’s bloody hot and tired. But the more we sweat now, the less we bleed later. Let’s take it from the top. One more time, boys. Then we all go get some bloody sleep. Stokely? You’re up.”
Stoke tilted his chair away from the table until it was perched on two back legs that threatened to give way any second. He looked at his old pal McCoy, old Five-By-Five, and smiled. Fitz grinned back. There was a bond between the two men that went back decades. It had been forged in the Delta swamplands.
“You want me to go through it all again, Five-By?”
“I do.”
Fitz had earned his stripes in the Mekong: He was roughly five feet tall and approximately five feet wide. His heart was slightly bigger than those dimensions: He’d earned himself his Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly taking out a heavily entrenched mortar nest and saving his platoon. He’d carried two wounded to safety under heavy VC fire. He’d been missing a good portion of his stomach at the time.
In that other lifetime, Stoke had been Fitz’s squad leader, SEAL Team 3. Also in that legendary squad, Charlie Rainwater, now wearing his trademark shoulder-length ponytail, buckskins, and a faded navy and gold SEAL T-shirt. Chief, as he was known, had been the squad’s UDT demolitions expert. Chief, and the man sitting next to him, a tough little nut called the Frogman, were the best in the business. They were going to need both men tonight.
Stokely Jones, having now seen Fort Mahoud up close and personal, was glad as hell Hawke had had the wisdom and foresight to fly all of Stoke’s old badass buddies from Martinique in for the party.
“Okay, here goes,” Stoke said. “Me and Alex in the submersible SDV. We splash in the cove off Point Arras at 0200 hours. Descend to fifteen feet and maintain that depth. We proceed north around the point and then southwest to the powder magazine entrance. Arriving at approximately 0215, we reverse direction and enter the magazine tunnel stern-first. We make our way, backing full slow inside the tunnel to Point R-2 on the diagram. We disembark and remove the five RIBS stowed aboard. We inflate the boats, securing them in a daisy-chain aft of the SDV. We secure the vehicle. We rig satchel charges with detonators and fuse igniters on both doors leading to the tunnel and use the right-hand door to enter the magazine itself. Time: 0230 hours.”
There was a smattering of ironic applause at this recitation and Stoke held his hand up for it to stop. They were all punchy as hell.
“Well done,” Fitz said. He then turned to Chief Charlie Rainwater, who was rolling condoms over fuse igniters and tying off both ends so as to make them waterproof, another old trick he’d learned in the Delta.
“How about you, Chief Rainwater? You got enough rubbers there for a division. You going fucking or fighting tonight?”
Rainwater’s teeth showed white in his dark face.
“Rule One,” Rainwater said. “Fight first, fuck later.”
McCoy smiled. “You know what to do?”
“‘Arrow,’ my squad, disembarks and gains entrance to the fort. We do it the easy way or the hard way. We dock at 0215 hours and offload the equipment. After rigging charges at the base of the two towers, we enter the fort. At 0230, we rendezvous with ‘Bow’ squad, Stoke and Hawke, in the powder magazine. Designated Point Q. We ascend the stairs leading to this level where Ahmed believes the hostages to be held. At that point, all hell breaks loose and Bow and Arrow kill all the tangos and save all the women and children.”
Fitz tried not to laugh and saw that it was impossible to continue. They all had to get some sleep. Even Rainwater, who habitually chewed some kind of plant root to stay awake, looked done in. The flight from Martinique to Oman in their old C-130 had not been relaxing. Their brains were weary from planning the operation. Sleep was imperative. They’d reconvene at noon for a final run-through. They were useless now. He had twelve hours left to get them ready.
Rainwater told Froggy to get some sleep. The Frogman sat there staring silently at him with eyes wide open. He was already asleep. That’s how exhausted they were.
Until it all went to hell, it was going pretty good. The cranky diesels worked, at least well enough to get Obaidallah out to her designated location, an anchorage one mile northwest of the target island. They doused the lights and the ship was plunged into darkness. Ali put his first mate, Abu, on the radio, informing the French supply officer on Masara that he was very sorry, sir, that they were late, but they were having engine trouble. They’d lost power and had heaved an anchor until they could determine the problem.
Abu informed the sleepy Frenchman that repairs were well under way and he expected Obaidallah to arrive at the dock sometime just after midnight. The Frenchman accepted this at face value. And why not? The supply ship broke down all the time. He promised to have two dockhands waiting for their arrival.
Point Arras loomed up Sphinx-like against the dark sky. Standing on the foredeck of the darkened vessel with Hawke and Stokely Jones, Captain Ali raised his glasses and watched the lights of the patrol boat disappear around Point Arras. The first mate had clocked two or three circumnavigations now, and reported that a round-trip was averaging one hour and twenty minutes. When the patrol boat was gone, Ali gave Hawke the thumbs-up.
“All right, Stoke, let’s go hunting,” Hawke said. He checked his watch. They were already three minutes behind the atomic clock in his head. The three men walked swiftly aft to where the SDV hung in its sling off the stern. As they passed the wheelhouse, Hawke could hear the murmurs of the men inside, suiting up, checking weapons in the dark. Many of them were donning loose-fitting white garments over their tigerstripes and camo war paint. And substituting turbans for the white kepis
the Legionnaires traditionally wore.
At the Masara dock, only a skeleton crew would be on duty at this hour. Maybe, if they were lucky, only a few sleepy Omanis who helped with the lines, pumped gas, and helped unload supplies. It was hoped the guards posted at the front gate wouldn’t look too closely at the men unloading supplies. And that the machine gunners looking down from the twin towers wouldn’t notice anything unusual when Obaidallah arrived at the dock.
Fitz believed that with Abu or Ahmed doing all the talking as they stepped ashore, and some good body language on the part of his disguised troops as they off-loaded equipment, he could get all of his men and materiel inside the front door without firing a shot. That was the plan anyway.
Hawke paused by one of the opened portholes. Fitz was in there now, moving among his men, encouraging them, issuing last-minute instructions, making sure his team was mentally and physically ready to peak. Something was bothering Fitz, Hawke had seen it in his eyes. There just hadn’t been enough time for adequate preparation. But was there ever?
They’d all been cooped up at sea aboard an old rust bucket for two days, with no place to run or stretch or hide. Because of the lack of quarters aboard, they’d been forced to “hot rack” or use the same bed in shifts. These men were jungle and desert warriors, not sea pirates like Stoke and Hawke. Fitz had asked Hawke for another day. Hawke had said no. And, to McCoy’s great chagrin, he didn’t say why.
He couldn’t. Kelly had ordered him not to reveal the truth, believing, correctly, in Hawke’s view, that it would be bad for morale to ask men to put their lives at risk for a hostage who might well be dead already.