To the Death am-10

by Patrick Robinson

  Right now Captain Abad did not wish to be detected, and he ordered the Kilo to two hundred feet, hammering his battery at ten knots and counting on the enormous area of the ocean to keep him out of harm’s way. They ran all through the night, forced to snorkel every hour. By late afternoon, they were less than two hundred miles off the Irish coast.

  As soon as night fell, they contacted the satellite and reported their course and position. There were no signals from home base, so once more Ravi dared to hope that Shakira was safe. Mohammed Abad expected them to run into their insert area sometime after 0400 on Monday, July 16.

  General Rashood and the captain dined together for the last time on this journey shortly after 2100. The cooks prepared them Iranian kebab-e makhsus, the special kebab made of sliced tenderloin and served on a bed of polo rice, with nun bread. They drank fruit juice only, and Ravi retired once more to bed for a final rest before the insert.

  And while he slept, the water began to grow more shallow as they headed for the hundred-meter line off the southwest Irish coast. The Kilo now ran 150 feet below the surface, and with every mile, the depth gauge recorded the upward slope of the seabed. They came inside the hundred-meter line at 0230, and almost immediately the water was a hundred feet more shallow.

  Up ahead, two miles to starboard, was the great jutting crag of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse, guarding Long Island Bay, flashing its warning light every five seconds. Once more Captain Abad came to periscope depth, this time to take a look at one of the world’s most famous maritime fixtures, a slashing white light across the water, a light that had been cautioning sailors for centuries.

  The Kilo transmitted nothing except passive sonar, and on this clear moonlit night they again went to one hundred feet with the fifty-meter line only three miles ahead. Thereafter, the sea was only 120 feet deep, and the submarine would need to be very careful as she moved in toward Crookhaven. They needed at least ninety feet to stay out of sight, and this was a rocky seabed. Captain Abad would not dream of going too close to the bottom, and he intended to enter the outer roads into Crookhaven at periscope depth, and on tiptoes, slowly making his way forward.

  The harbor at Crookhaven in mid-July is apt to be busy with moored yachts, and anyway the Iranian would not dream of making his entrance on the surface. The navigation planners in Gaza had specified that the submarine remain at PD one mile off Streek Head at the eastern end of the harbor, in approximately 120 feet of water. From there, General Rashood would make his own way inshore.

  As they made their approach, the ship suddenly became full of activity. They were just a few feet below the surface now, and a small rubber Zodiac with a wooden deck was being prepared. A makeshift davit, which is a kind of small maritime crane, was being assembled. General Rashood had changed into street clothes: a pair of dark gray slacks, a black T-shirt, loafers, and his brown suede jacket.

  His leather bag contained all of his documents, credit cards, and cash, thousands of euros and British pounds, a warm Shetland sweater, and driving gloves. His combat knife was tucked into his thick leather belt at the small of his back. The general carried no other weapons.

  At twenty minutes after 4 A.M., Captain Abad ordered the Kilo to the surface, and the Iranian submarine came shouldering her way out of the ocean with a rush of dark water, phosphorescence, and spray. Eight crew members immediately climbed out onto the casing and assembled the davit. They hauled the Zodiac up and out into the air, where two crew members completed the inflation process.

  By the time this was completed, a black Yamaha engine, fifty horsepower, was hauled out from the hatch and two ship’s engineers bolted it onto the Zodiac’s transom. Fuel and electric wires were connected, and crew members lowered it over the side into the calm summer sea. Next, they rolled out a net that ran down the casing into the water alongside the Zodiac.

  Then General Rashood came onto the deck with the captain, and the two men shook hands. “Allah go with you,” said Mohammed Abad.

  “Thank you, Captain,” said Ravi. And with that, he gripped the net and expertly climbed down into the Zodiac, tossing his bag in before jumping aboard himself. The engine was ticking over, and the crewman who had launched the boat now handed over the helm to Ravi and climbed back up the net.

  The Hamas general was alone now, and he looked up ahead; the shape of the narrow land on the south side of the harbor made a dark line beyond the moonlit water. He looked along to the right, to the light on Streek Head, then quietly opened the throttle and began to run west, forward to the coast of County Cork.

  And even as he pushed out through the first yards of his journey, the submarine moved gently forward and then slipped beneath the surface, heading back south. Ravi had no idea where she was going.

  The night was cool now, and Ravi wished he had worn his sweater rather than stuffing it into his bag. The Zodiac ran easily through these inshore wavelets, but he did not want to wind her up and charge into the harbor at full speed, mostly for fear of awakening one of the yachtsmen and then being noticed.

  Instead, he just chugged along, heading in toward Streek Head, making about six knots instead of the twenty this light, fast craft would undoubtedly achieve with the throttle open. For the first time in many days, he had no interest in the depth of the water. The Zodiac drew only about a foot and a half, and, as harbors go, Crookhaven has considerable depth. In the eighteenth century, mail boats from the United States, even clipper ships, had pulled in here. There were even dark mutterings during World War II that German U-boats had anchored here and been refueled, such was the widespread hatred of the English in this part of the world.

  No one has ever admitted such a thing, but the rumors have persisted, and many people have stark memories of outbursts by mostly elderly Cork men, banging their fists on the table at the opening notes of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”—“I’ll not have it sung in this house. That’s an English marching song.”

  It all dates back to the first quarter of the twentieth century and the English occupying army, the detested Black and Tans. Just thirty miles from Crookhaven, east along the coast, stands the village of Clonakilty, birthplace of the Big Fella, Michael Collins, commander in chief of the Army of the Irish Free State — the guerrilla warfare patriots who finally drove the English out forever.

  Collins and General Rashood had much in common. Both men taught their eager but reckless troops to fight in a more orderly fashion, against an overwhelming force. Both men carried within them a burning hatred of the opposition, and both men took part in spectacular strikes against their enemy. The heartbreaking heroism of Michael Collins and his Cork-men in the Easter Rising in Dublin, 1916, facing English artillery with only pistols, is the very fabric of Irish legend, right up there with Brian Boru at Cashel.

  There is still an annual memorial service down here in Cork on the anniversary of his death. There are books, there are films, there are songs.

  Some they came from London,

  And some came from New York,

  But the boys that beat the Black and Tans

  Were the boys from the County Cork.

  Even now, it is still commonplace along this stretch of coastline to meet a perfectly normal young Irishman who, in the context of the Easter Rising, will say, “Ah, yes. The boys fought very bravely that day.” As if it had been yesterday. Always as if it had been yesterday.

  That rugged coastline of West Cork, home to the boys who beat the Black and Tans, was a fitting place for the archterrorist leader to land that night — in the dark, after a long journey, with murder in his heart, the murder of an enemy to his people. The Big Fella would have been very proud of Ravi Rashood.

  He rounded Streek Head at 0520. The flashing-light warning of a jagged rock on the right-hand side coming in was still effective. It was not yet daylight. But dawn was breaking in the eastern sky, behind Ravi.

  Crookhaven Harbor is a mile long, and up ahead the Hamas general could see more big moored yachts than he would have ideall
y liked. There must have been twelve, at least, but none carried lights, and there was no sound from the sleeping crews. There was the occasional soft clatter-clatter-clatter of a loosely cleated halyard, but the yachts sat quietly on their lines in the light wind.

  Ravi throttled back, cutting his speed to dead slow, chugging along with the Yamaha engine just idling behind him. So far as he could tell, there was no one on deck, no one looking, and no one on shore. Ireland is not famous for its early risers at the best of times, and Crookhaven Harbor would never have been confused with any seaport in the USA where, it always seems, everyone is up and shouting the moment dawn breaks, loading, unloading, weighing, casting off, revving up, selling, buying, drinking coffee, laughing, lying, doing deals.

  Sleepy West Cork was the perfect spot for a mass murderer to slink into Europe’s most westerly outpost. Ravi chugged on, sliding between the yachts, aiming for a little beach at the edge of the village. He knew there would be little shelving of the seabed in this deep harbor. So he just ran directly inshore, cut the engine, and planted the rubber bow of the Zodiac straight onto the sand.

  He grabbed the painter, jumped forward onto dry land, and hauled the boat after him. Swiftly, he dropped his bag onto the sand, took off his shoes, socks, pants, T-shirt, and jacket, and stepped into the water in his boxer shorts. It was freezing, and he leaned over the gunwales to restart the motor. He dragged the boat around so that it faced back down the harbor, and then he leaned over some more and grabbed a tiny clock that had been lying on the deck, with several electric wires holding it in place.

  Ravi turned the dial to the sixty-second mark, pressed a small button on the side of the clock, and then marginally opened the throttle of the Yamaha. Then he let it go, and the unmanned Zodiac chugged out into deep water, heading east, at around eight knots, down toward Streek Head. Ravi turned away and pulled on his T-shirt. He was only wet to his thighs, and he put on his pants and his socks and shoes.

  But before he had time to pull on his jacket, there was a short dull thump in the water, the thud of explosives. And immediately the Zodiac began to sink, the bottom of its hull blown out with an expertly set hunk of TNT. Ravi had attended to this personally, inside the submarine. The hole in the Zodiac’s bottom was perfect, four feet across. It took precisely fifteen more seconds to vanish completely, below the fifty-foot-deep outer harbor waters.

  It was not yet six o’clock. And Ravi scanned the land around him. There was no sign of life. He looked out to the moored yachts and there was neither sight nor sound of anyone. Excellent, he thought, I’ve landed in Ireland, and not one person knows I’m here. But he was wrong. Someone did.

  Up on the foredeck of the 54-foot American-built sloop Yonder was Bill Stannard, the skipper and helmsman. He had elected to sleep on deck after a four-hour alcoholic binge at the Crookhaven Inn, right next to the sailing club. Right now, in the early hours of the morning, he was very cold, and he was nursing the opening symptoms of a monumental hangover.

  Bill, at thirty-eight, had sailed Yonder across the Atlantic from Rock-port, Maine, with only two crew members. He was meeting the owner, a member of Boston’s Cabot family, right here in Crookhaven two days from now. The previous evening’s blowout at the inn was his last throw. He would not have another drink for a month, while the owner and guests were aboard. But this did not, of course, diminish his own plight right here on the foredeck, with a head that felt as if it had been hit by a guided missile.

  The very slight chug-chug of Ravi’s motor had awakened him. It was not so much the noise, but a change in the vibrations in the air. Bill was a former U.S. Navy submariner, a petty officer, stationed at New London, Connecticut. And like all submariners, listening was second nature to him: listening for the slightest change in the regular beat of the submarine’s engines, for any alteration in the air pressure, for the merest vibration on the shaft, the distant rattle of a carelessly stowed toolbox.

  Ravi’s engine altered the air around the sleeping Bill Stannard, and in a flash his eyes opened and his senses came alert. It took a few more seconds for him to work out where he was, and indeed whether he was still genuinely alive. But he raised his throbbing head and looked out over the port bow, where he saw a slow-moving Zodiac making its way across the harbor.

  At the helm was a heavyset man wearing a suede jacket, which was unusual in a seagoing community. Suede jackets belonged in London’s Knightsbridge, Dublin’s Grafton Street, or New York. Out here, seamen wore seamen’s clothes, foul-weather jackets, not suede.

  Bill was puzzled, but he was also feeling so acutely godawful that he closed his eyes again. And he debated whether he was sufficiently strong to raise himself up, go below for a cup of coffee, and then get into his bunk. He decided not, which was why the Hamas terrorist had seen no movement on the decks of any of the moored yachts in Crookhaven Harbor.

  Ravi walked up to the village, holding his leather bag. He passed O’Sullivan’s Bar and began to walk toward the road which he knew led to the main coast road, back to Goleen, Schull, Ballydehob at the head of Roaring Water Bay, and, finally, Skibbereen.

  That was his direction, and the Hamas planners had made it clear that he should walk to Skibbereen, fourteen miles from Crookhaven, because there he could pick up a bus without attracting too much attention and without wasting much time waiting. They had pinpointed a bus from Schull to Skibbereen, but it ran only twice daily. Service from Skibbereen to the east was far more frequent.

  Ravi would walk the fourteen miles at approximately four miles an hour, which was three and half hours. His schedule was to get on the bus and make for Waterford, using bus and train all the way, but not staying on any of them for long periods. He had accepted the fourteen-mile walk, but staring at the long uphill road to the top of the cliffs where a few days ago Shakira had stood was a fairly daunting sight, even for a man as fit and hard-trained as General Rashood had always been.

  He set off resolutely, striding alone up the hill. In the half-light of the Irish dawn, he had seen no one, and now in broad daylight he still could see no one. Bill Stannard, far below on the foredeck, had not moved. And nothing stirred as Ravi reached the top of the hill, checked the signpost to Goleen, and set off along the high road, occasionally glancing out to his right, to the spectacular view out to the Fastnet lighthouse, Cape Clear, and Carbery’s Hundred Isles.

  Somewhere out there, the Iranian Kilo was moving away from the dropoff point. Ravi found himself thinking wistfully of those pleasant breakfast meetings with the captain and the navigation officer, the warm secure feeling, the hot coffee and pastries. Now he did not even have a bottle of water, and he needed to avoid all shops and stores. In rural areas like this, a stranger stands out, is remembered, and should accept human contact only with the greatest reluctance.

  The ruggedness of the country was a surprise to him as he left Crookhaven behind. The hills rolled out before him, and the bends in the road came quickly, like a green-lined version of the Yellow Brick Road. Ravi did not think he was in Kansas any more, nor in Damascus, nor Tehran.

  This Irish cliff top was like nowhere he had ever been. It could have been two centuries ago, for there was no sign of anything modern. So he just strode along, on his regular 4-mph pace, the same speed Napoleon’s army made on flat ground, under full packs, on the march to Moscow.

  In West Cork, there is a code about transportation. With no trains, hardly any buses, and, for a hundred years, a shortage of cars among the residents, it was customary to stop for anyone on the road and offer a ride to the nearest village.

  City folk were always amused at the way local farmers tipped their hats and smiled, offering an unspoken Top o’ the mornin’ to you, as cars went by. None of this had yet happened to Ravi, until around 0630 when an old Ford truck, driven by Jerry O’Connell and laden with four large milk urns, came rattling around the corner and almost hit Ravi amidships. Jerry hit the brakes, skidded briefly, the milk urns clanged together, and no harm was done.


  Jerry was an Irish farmer, fiftyish in years, and the ninth generation of his family to run a dairy farm down here on the Mizen Peninsula. Most of it was not perfect grazing land, but there were pockets of good grass, nurtured by a lot of rain and summer sunshine, with no frost or harsh weather. The warm air above the Gulf Stream washed around here, and men like Jerry knew precisely where cattle would thrive.

  They were all from Catholic families, large Catholic families, with upwards of four or five children. Jerry himself was one of seven, and his younger wife, Katy, daughter of the harbormaster, had borne him five children of his own.

  For basic survival money, Jerry made this three-mile journey with his fresh milk every day of his life to the dropoff point in Goleen, where the central milk trader picked it up, decanted it into the milk tanker, and drove it to the bottling plant. There would be four big empty milk urns, from yesterday’s trip, awaiting him when he arrived in Goleen. There was no hanging around.

  The near-miss with General Rashood shook Jerry to his foundations. He stopped the engine and jumped out to face the startled Ravi. “Mother of God, sir,” he said. “I’ve nearly run you over, and sure that would have been a terrible thing to do. Can I offer you a ride somewhere? Because you’ll not see a bus along here for nearly three hours. And that would be one hell of a lot of walking.”

  Ravi smiled. “Think nothing about it,” he said, in the easy tones of a former British Army officer. “I was probably walking in the middle of the road anyway.”

  “Well, that would not have excused me for mowing you down, sir. Not at all. I’m trying to make reparations.”

  Ravi stared at the cheerful farmer. And Jerry stared back at the well-dressed stranger. He offered his hand, and said, “Jerry O’Connell. ”

  Ravi accepted it, and offered, “Rupert Shefford. and thank you for the offer of a ride. Gladly accepted.”

  “Which way are you headed?” asked Jerry.