It was wise counsel, to be sure, but Marcus knew from far too much personal experience how hard it was to stay focused and keep your emotions in check when you’d lost friends as close as these. Indeed, though Sanchez kept talking, Marcus had no idea what he was saying. It was everything he could do not to think about where Vinetti was at that moment. Then he thought of Claire, Nick’s wife. Who would tell her the news? How could she possibly bear it? Her world was about to implode around her.
Marcus fought to maintain control. But his eyes were growing moist and his bottom lip was quivering. He didn’t dare look around the room. Nor could he maintain eye contact with Sanchez. Instead, he stared at the notepad on the table in front of him and the pen in his hand and tried to tune back into the conversation under way.
“So, Cap, why don’t we just wait a week or so and see which container ships proceed all the way to Iran?” one of the SEALs asked. “They can’t possibly afford to send them all that far for nothing, right?”
“Probably not,” Sanchez replied. “But the thinking back at Naval Intel, Langley, and DIA is that in the end none of the North Korean ships will actually go as far as Iran. Rather, the operating assumption is that in the middle of the night, the DPRK will likely transfer the warheads to ships not owned by North Korea or perhaps offload them at a commercial port someplace, drive them to an airport, and fly them to Iran.”
He explained that the North Koreans had developed a tremendous amount of experience in evading international sanctions by transferring foodstuffs and weapons and oil, among other commodities, from ship to ship in the dark of night while thinking that no one was watching.
“Sometimes we catch them,” he said. “Our satellites and drones have caught a good number of such transfers over the years. We know they do it. We know how they do it. But they do so much of it that it’s impossible to catch it all, much less stop it all. That’s why we need to pray the intel guys can pick the needle out of the haystack, give us a target, and let us do our thing—before it’s too late.”
74
“Sir, I’d like your permission to call Oleg Kraskin,” Marcus said after the briefing.
“Not right now, Ryker,” Sanchez replied. “We’re operating under combat conditions at the moment—only essential communications are being permitted.”
“But, sir, he may have sources that could help us identify the right ship or ships.”
“Believe me, officers from naval intel are working with him to glean anything they can. He’s provided nothing actionable thus far.”
That said, there was something they needed just now, Sanchez noted—a detailed after-action report on how Berenger and the other two SEALs had died in the apartment in Tanch’oˇn, along with a minute-by-minute account of everything that had happened during the mission from start to finish. “You were there,” the SEAL captain said. “You saw everything. I need you to write the report while we plan the next mission.”
Marcus assented, of course. But what he really wanted was to talk to Oleg and see if the Russian had any scrap of new information they could use. For the moment, however, it was not to be.
Then Sanchez made another request. He needed Marcus to make a positive ID on Vinetti’s body, since no one else on the ship actually knew the man well, aside from Hwang, who was currently undergoing surgery on his injured left arm. Marcus tensed. It was the last thing he wanted to do. But he kept his mouth shut and nodded.
“Will that be all, Captain?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Sanchez. “Dismissed.”
The walk to the refrigeration unit near the back of the submarine where they were keeping the bodies felt interminable. With every step, Marcus grew more and more angry with the men who’d done this to his friends and more determined to exact some measure of justice. By the time he reached the makeshift morgue, he was ready to explode.
An officer asked to see his ID and had him sign the logbook. Then she took him into the refrigerated vault, found and unlocked the right chamber, unzipped the body bag, and took several steps back.
Marcus stared at Vinetti’s pale, stiff body. It was really him. He was really gone.
Marcus finally nodded. “It’s him,” he said through gritted teeth, then turned and walked out.
He knew he was not going to get a shot at anyone in the DPRK actually responsible for this. But there would be North Koreans on the ship. And there was Alireza al-Zanjani, too. To Marcus, this was the man truly responsible for Vinetti’s death and those of the three SEALs. He stood in the hallway, his hands trembling. He was determined to learn everything he could about al-Zanjani and hunt him down, however long it took.
Did this square with his Christian faith? He wasn’t sure. And truth be told, at the moment, he didn’t care.
It was almost 11 p.m. when Marcus was permitted to enter the operating theater.
Given how little space there was on the sub, the theater was also being used as a recovery room. Marcus found Pete Hwang lying in a bed against the far wall. His head was propped up on pillows. He was covered in thick blankets. He had an IV drip in his left arm, and he was hooked up to a range of monitors that displayed his vital signs.
“Hey, guess who,” Marcus whispered.
Hwang slowly opened his eyes. He was too groggy from the general anesthesia to talk, but when Marcus took his good hand, Hwang squeezed his fingers to acknowledge his presence. Hwang’s other hand was wrapped in heavy gauze. The surgeon told Marcus everything had gone well. The damage to Hwang’s muscles and nerve endings had been extensive, and it was a miracle they’d been able to save his hand. But he expected Hwang to make a full recovery and to regain most if not full use of the hand and arm, though tennis and squash were out for the foreseeable future.
Marcus wondered if his friend remembered much of the operation or even that Vinetti hadn’t made it. He hoped not, and he certainly wasn’t going to say anything. There were more encouraging matters to discuss.
“We think we’ve got ’em,” Marcus whispered with no small amount of excitement as he crouched next to Hwang while the man fought a losing battle to keep his eyes open. “It’s been crazy—you should come up to the CIC and look at the sonar and radar displays. There are literally hundreds of dots—each representing a ship. It’s unreal. But about an hour ago, the Japanese navy located two mysterious ships lurking a few kilometers west of the island of Tsushima.”
Hwang’s eyes were closed, but Marcus kept going.
“Both ships have turned off their satellite transponders—they’re not broadcasting their speed, their heading, their location, nothing,” he said. “One of the ships is North Korean. The other is registered to a multinational corporation based out of Indonesia—Jakarta, I think. Anyway, Sanchez just briefed us. The theory is that the DPRK is going to transfer the warheads from one ship to the other. We’ve been tasked with seizing both ships. We move out in twenty minutes. I just wanted to . . .”
Marcus’s voice trailed off as his eyes welled with tears. He didn’t know if Hwang could even hear him anyway, and he knew if he said much more, he might lose it. So he nodded his thanks to the surgeon and stepped out as quickly as he’d entered.
Just before midnight, Sanchez and his team surfaced in the choppy waters.
The winds were picking up, and a heavy band of clouds blocked the moon, providing an extra measure of cover. Using the SDVs, the SEALs and Marcus had crept up on the two ships from the east. They’d removed their scuba gear and left it all in the SDVs. Now, weapons in hand, they surveyed the scene.
Switching on his night vision goggles, Marcus could see the Mi Yang 12 to his left, a rusty, aging, 330-foot North Korean container ship badly in need of retirement or at least a serious paint job. To his right was the Bandur Lampung II, a rather sleek and far more modern Indonesian vessel with a state-of-the-art navigation and communications system. The lights of both ships were on. Their engines were idling. But they were not moving. Nor did they give any appearance of getting under way anytime
soon.
Sanchez signaled his Blue Team to follow him as he resubmerged and swam to the starboard side of the Bandur Lampung. Callaghan and his Red Team advanced to the port side. This time, upon the new commander’s orders, Marcus was at Sanchez’s side.
At the same moment, another forty SEALs arrived from the west, having deployed their SDVs from the USS Ohio, another nuclear-powered American submarine that had arrived in the west Pacific with Carrier Strike Group One, headed up by USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Tasked with seizing control of the Mi Yang, these additional SEALs split into two squads, twenty men moving to each side of the North Korean ship.
At 11:57 p.m., with everyone in place, Sanchez signaled for Mk1 limpet mines to be attached to the propeller and for his men to scale the sides of the Bandur Lampung.
This was it, thought Marcus. He just hoped al-Zanjani was on this ship. And that he got to him first.
75
Precisely three minutes later, they had all reached the main deck.
Just then, the mines detonated. Both ships went dark. Callaghan and Red Team sprinted for the aft stairwells, bounding up the steps two at a time to secure the bridge and prevent anyone from making a distress call. Sanchez, Marcus, and Blue Team, meanwhile, raced down to secure the engine room and the various holds of the ship most likely to be housing the warheads.
Marcus gripped his MP7A1 submachine gun as he moved down the corridor on the ship’s port side. The entire team had removed their suppressors. There was no need for stealth, and the chaos created by ear-shattering gunfire could prove useful.
Yet something wasn’t right. As they burst into room after room, they weren’t finding a single crew member, much less members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. In less than ten minutes, Blue Team had established full control of the ship’s bowels. Yet the only person they’d found was an overweight Indonesian mechanic in his midfifties who had fallen asleep on a bench in the machine shop. They found no guards. No weapons. And after a thorough search with Geiger counters and other devices, they’d found no evidence of radioactivity whatsoever.
Sanchez radioed to the bridge. The skeleton crew on night duty had practically wet their pants when the SEALs burst into the control room. So had many of the Indonesian crew whom the SEALs had found asleep in their bunks. As bewildered as his colleagues, Marcus watched as Sanchez then radioed the SEAL team leader on the North Korean vessel. To his astonishment, the report was the same. No warheads. Minimal weapons. No DPRK or IRGC personnel. The story the Mi Yang’s captain told quickly checked out: after experiencing severe electrical problems from fifty-year-old equipment, he had cut his engines and radioed the nearest ship for assistance. The Bandur Lampung was closest and readily complied. There was no evidence of sanctions violations, just a group of Good Samaritans trying to be helpful.
Then again, Marcus wondered if there might be another explanation. Could the entire episode have been one elaborate setup designed to consume precious time and manpower while the warheads moved ever closer to their final destination? On the other hand, did it really matter? Either way, they were no closer to finding and seizing the warheads, and the Iranians still had the initiative.
With every hour that ticked by, Oleg Kraskin was growing desperate.
They already had lost an entire day. Now the sun was rising over the Pacific, and they were still no closer to thwarting Pyongyang and Tehran.
Oleg climbed out of bed and stumbled to the restroom of the officer’s quarters to which he’d been assigned. Switching on the light, he hardly recognized the face staring back at him in the mirror. The dark circles under his eyes showed clearly that he had slept no more than a few hours a night over the past several days. He was barely eating and thus losing weight, something his already-rail-thin frame could hardly afford. The Navy doctors attending to him were giving him sleeping pills and vitamin supplements and urging him to stop skipping meals, but they were worried about him, and for good reason.
The deaths of the four Americans in Tanch’oˇn—on a mission that for all intents and purposes he had urged and set into motion—weighed on him, and none more so than the loss of Nick Vinetti. It wasn’t that Oleg really knew Vinetti or had spent any significant time with him. Yet Marcus had spoken often and well of his Italian friend and fellow Marine from Asbury Park, New Jersey. The two had known each other since boot camp, and even a blind man could see how close the two men were.
But it was not just Marcus’s burdens that consumed Oleg’s thoughts. He grieved for the deaths of his friend General Yoon and his bride and her mother. Oleg had been so excited about the prospect of bringing them out of the hermit kingdom to finally be safe and free. Of course he had known the risks. Yet Oleg had to admit to himself that he’d never seriously considered the possibility that the general and his family would be found out. Now they were gone and the guilt Oleg felt was unbearable.
Then there was his own family. He did not regret for one moment killing Luganov or that pig Nimkov. They deserved what they had gotten and worse. Yet Oleg missed Marina and Vasily terribly. For all the strains that had pulled them apart, Oleg still deeply loved his wife. They had only been children, university students, when she had bewitched him, heart and soul. How could he not miss the warmth of her touch or the feeling of her breath on his cheek or the sight of her smile and sound of her laugh?
He turned on the faucet and splashed warm water on his face. He forced himself to brush his teeth and run a comb through his hair. He threw on the same wrinkled, unlaundered clothes he had worn since he’d arrived at the American naval base just outside of Tokyo. He realized he needed to cinch his belt a notch tighter. Then he picked up the phone beside the bed and dialed the operator.
“I’m ready,” he said in English.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on his door. Two MPs had arrived to escort him back to the intelligence division. Oleg had proven of little use to his new country so far. He could see no way that today would prove different. But he told himself he had to try.
76
USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, SOMEWHERE IN THE EAST CHINA SEA—11 OCTOBER
It had taken extensive consultations with the commander of the Pacific Fleet.
Sanchez had even had to talk to the chief of Naval Operations.
But in the end, the new SEAL Team Six commander had convinced his superiors he needed far more tactical flexibility than a submarine could provide and far more men than he currently had with him. A day later, Sanchez and his men had been airlifted to the middle of the East China Sea, where they linked up with Carrier Strike Group One and more than two hundred additional SEAL operators.
The lead ship in the armada was the USS Abraham Lincoln, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier based out of the Naval Air Station on Coronado Island near San Diego. Joining her were the USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided missile cruiser, and the USS Stockdale, the USS Gridley, and the USS Higgins—three Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyers. Tagging behind them were a logistics ship, a supply ship, and two additional guided missile destroyers from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force—the JS Ashigara and the JS Samidare. Two Los Angeles–class attack submarines, the USS Tucson and the USS Santa Fe, flanked the convoy.
As the sun rose on Saturday morning, Marcus stood on the deck of a supercarrier, sipping black coffee and wrestling with his soul. He’d already scarfed down two plates of eggs, sausages, and hash browns. He’d worked out and showered. Then he’d spent some time reading through the eleventh chapter of Proverbs, it being the eleventh day of the month.
Verse 2 rankled him.
When pride comes, then comes dishonor,
But with the humble is wisdom.
Verse 19 was even worse.
He who is steadfast in righteousness will attain to life,
And he who pursues evil will bring about his own death.
And then there was verse 23.
The desire of the righteous is only good,
&nb
sp; But the expectation of the wicked is wrath.
This wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He was in pain. He was seething and consumed with exacting retribution for what had happened to his friends. He’d been telling himself for the past several days that he had every right to be feeling and acting like he was. But he knew better. It wasn’t justice he was after. It was pure revenge. It was a desire for evil, not for righteousness. He was consumed with bloodlust. And his conscience was killing him. He hadn’t slept well. He’d retreated from the team when not required to be in briefings. When Sanchez had required him to meet with the chief medical officer on board to see if he was suffering from PTSD, he’d given clipped, nonresponsive answers and denied anything was wrong. But he was lying to himself and hardly fooling anyone else.
So, standing alone in the whipping winds, leaning against a railing at the stern of the ship, Marcus finally gave up the fight.
“Forgive me, Father,” he said. “And help me. I want to do your will, not my own.”
That was it. His prayer was as simple as it was direct. Yet almost instantly he could feel the bitterness beginning to drain away.
Once again Marcus requested a meeting with the Lincoln’s captain.
He had first made the request the moment he had stepped off a Seahawk helicopter onto the deck of the massive carrier at 6:19 Friday morning. Given the velocity and complexity of the operations the strike group was engaged in, an entire day and a half had passed. It was now 4:41 on Saturday afternoon, and Marcus was finally being escorted by the XO to the Combat Information Center and told he had two minutes with the captain and no more.
The Persian Gamble Page 29