Both submarines would clear DG at first light the following morning, and make their way north to the Gulf, submerged and fast, stopping off for a test-firing of one missile each 600 miles out. They would clear the Strait of Hormuz, and enter the Gulf of Iran on June 1. Moving slower up the Gulf, they were scheduled to arrive in the small hours of June 2. Launch time was dusk—021910JUN06.
Both Cheyenne and Columbia would turn south immediately after the missiles were away and head back to the open waters of the Arabian Sea, which they should reach by midday on Saturday, June 3. By which time the Iraqis should have a great deal more on their minds than the whereabouts of a couple of SSNs, should they make such a connection.
It took only a few minutes to brief Scott Dunsmore. Arnold Morgan was happy. First thing in the morning he and the CJC would go straight to the White House to obtain formal clearance on the plan from the President. Both men assumed this would be instantly forthcoming, since the entire operation was being mounted at the behest of the Chief Executive.
They arrived at 0900. They walked immediately into the West Wing, where a Secret Service agent escorted them to the Oval Office. The President was waiting, and coffee was served as soon as they arrived.
“’Morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Are you going to frighten me to death?”
“Absolutely not, sir,” replied Admiral Morgan. “But we are about to frighten the President of Iraq to death.”
“Could I ask you to inform me of only what I need to know?”
“Certainly.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs took over, formally. “In retribution for Iraq’s attack on the Thomas Jefferson, and subsequently for their unwarranted attacks on three civilian airliners, which ended the lives of several United States citizens, including six members of Congress and the Vice President, we intend to strike against that country on Friday evening, June 2. The operation is Black. It will be conducted by the United States Navy and will involve a missile strike against two Iraqi structures. We envision minimal loss of life, but massive economic damage to that country. We estimate it will take up to ten years for them to make a full recovery.”
“Christ, Scott. Are you guys taking out the two big dams?”
“Yessir. How did you guess?”
“Well, a couple of years ago it was the suggestion of our friend Admiral MacLean.”
“It was a good suggestion, too. Like most of his.”
“Yes. In light of the short time frame you must be using missiles?”
“Yessir. Two sets of cruises. Fired top secret by a submarine. Preprogrammed underwater missile approach from the reservoir side of both dams.”
“One of them’s the Samarra Barrage on the Tigris, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, sir. The other’s about five times bigger; it’s called the Darband-I-Khan.”
“Ah, yes. I remember now. Well, I don’t know if we’ll be accused of international banditry, but I assume our policy is to say absolutely nothing.”
“Correct, sir,” replied Admiral Morgan. “We’ll just let those bastards understand who they can fuck with and who they can’t. But we cannot allow the flag of this nation to be fired upon by anyone. Not without massive retribution from us.”
“My sentiments entirely. These rogue regimes are gonna learn it the hard way. They either play by the very fair rules laid down by us, or we’ll make them wish they had. By the way, might I judge from the expeditious manner this has been set up that we received help from an…er…unusual source.”
“You may, sir.”
“Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll look forward to the evening news a week Friday.”
021840JUN06. USS Columbia. 28.55N, 49.48E.
Periscope depth. Course 315. Speed 5.
Commander Mike Krause, conscious of the critical nature of his mission, and of the proximity of the sea bottom to his keel, had checked on the underwater telephone. Commander Tom Jackson’s Cheyenne ran quietly 500 yards on his starboard beam, same course, speed, and depth. Both SSNs were on top line to fire. Tubes ready. A hundred checks have been made, the missile men had completed all the prefiring routines and settings. There must be no mistakes, barring missile malfunction or enemy action. The preprogramming was immaculate. The big self-guided Tomahawks were ready to do their catastrophic job.
At 1845 precisely, Commander Krause ordered, “Stand by tubes one to six.”
Then, “TUBE ONE, LAUNCH.” And the first of the specially modified SLCM Tomahawks blew out of the submarine, slid up to the surface, and roared into the black night sky, adjusting course at its cruise altitude of 50 feet above the water, heading north, a fiery tail crackling out behind for the first few seconds of its flight. And then it hit flying speed, and the gas turbines cut in, leaving no telltale trail in the sky. Nothing could stop it. At least nothing in the maritime armories of the Gulf nations.
Within four minutes, the remaining five missiles had screamed onward and upward, all under the control of the launch sequencer. All fired at exact, but different, intervals, each one designed for the specific route of each Tomahawk. No matter what the route variations, the big cruise missiles would arrive on their target, from their separate flight paths, precisely thirty seconds apart.
Next the Tomahawks, in a murderous salvo of destruction, fanned out and hurtled above the dark waters of the Gulf. Though Mike Krause could not tell, they were surprisingly quiet as well as fast. Once they were over land they could scarcely be heard at all before they were already past. Too late. Much too late for the Dar-band-I-Khan dam.
At 1850 Commander Krause heard that Cheyenne had also completed her firing sequence. Commander Jackson had drawn a long-range bead on the Samarra Barrage. Missiles away, the Americans were to get out of the Gulf of Iran. Mike Krause ordered Columbia sharply around to the southeast, coordinating his turn with the other SSN. And the two Black Ops submarines headed off together 500 yards apart.
By dawn, both boats would be creeping softly through the Strait of Hormuz, deep, fast, and in the center of the channel, the safety separation, 100 feet in depth. Soon the Gulf of Oman would shelf away to the unfathomable sandy depths of the Arabian Sea. The Americans would angle to the right there, running south, down the coast of Oman, passing almost directly over the shattered tomb of HMS Unseen.
022015JUNE06. 35.07N, 45.42E.
The guard room, western
end of the great wall of the Darband-I-Khan dam.
Corporal Tariq Nayif, at the age of twenty-one, was the duty soldier charged with walking out along the wall to the halfway point and back every half hour during his four-hour watch. The eastern half of the wall was patrolled from the guard room on the other side.
Tariq’s immediate superior, Staff Sergeant Ali Hasan, a veteran Iraqi combat soldier in charge of the western guardhouse, was resting until midnight. The officer on duty, Second Lieutenant Rashid Ghazi, was reading, which left Tariq out on the wall on his own. Armed with his standard-issue Russian Kalashnikov, but nonetheless alone. To his right there was low wall, and a yawning 500-foot drop to the River Diyala, to his left the still dark waters of the reservoir. The wall was well lit all the way across, and swept by a personnel surveillance radar and infrared detectors at all times. There was a television picture showing their end of the wall in Tariq’s guardhouse.
Like every night, it was cool, silent, and peaceful up there in the mountains. Tariq wore a greatcoat, hat, and gloves, as he walked slowly toward the east, his steel-tipped boots making an unusually loud noise above the gusting wind that blew directly into his face. Tariq was not a Kurd, and it was beyond his understanding why anyone should want to live up here in the cold, barren peaks of northeastern Iraq.
There were other things beyond his understanding on this night, principally the fact that less than 150 yards away, already 70 feet below the surface, a big American-built cruise missile, with a thumping 500kg warhead, was quietly making its final approach to the front of the wall, to a detonation point down at the base of the dam. It was still
making 10 knots through the water, and would explode with shuddering impact, 100 feet below where Tariq stood.
It hit at 2018, detonating with a massive underwater explosion, which strangely made little sound in the air. And hardly a ripple disturbed the calm water immediately beside the dam. But the force of the underwater blast shook the giant structure to its foundations, as cracks like lightning bolts ripped 40 feet into the concrete. But it held firm, and as the waters subsided there was complete silence again, save for the pounding feet of Tariq Rashid, running back to the safety of the western guardhouse to report what little he had seen or heard.
By then Staff Sergeant Ali Hasan was on his feet outside the building yelling, demanding to know what the hell was going on. Tariq could not help much there, and as he struggled to explain the dull, muted thunder, his words were cut short by a second stunning impact on the wall, well below the surface. Both men felt the reverberations of the thud on the soles of their boots. And then, again, there was silence. No attacking fighter-bombers screamed through the sky. There had been no sense of a rocket attack, or any attack. The area was undisturbed, and the lapping of the wavelets on the shore was lost against the low gusting of the wind.
Then the third SLCM nosed into the dam wall, right into the gaping hole on the north side, before it blew. And again the force of the exploding warhead lasered those lightning-bolt cracks deep into the structure, right through this time. The two Iraqi soldiers, backing away from the obvious tremor along the great wall, could not see, but one giant jagged crack ran 100 feet diagonally down the south-facing wall…the one that now held back 3 cubic miles of water.
Staff Sergeant Hasan, joined now by Second Lieutenant Rashid Ghazi, was just saying that there seemed to be no military explanation, that there must be some kind of an earthquake, when Mike Krause’s fourth cruise missile blasted into the underwater cavern on the north side of the dam. It blew, with spectacular impact, a gigantic breach in the dam, 150 yards across. Millions of tons of concrete finally gave way to billions of tons of water. The 100-foot-high wave surged through the gap with unimaginable force, then began to crash down in slow motion, 500 feet, to the quietly flowing river below. And, of course, it kept coming, one of the biggest reservoirs in the world, followed by an entire lake, the waters rushing in behind, from a deep mountain lake bed more than 6 miles long.
On both sides, the great wall held firm for a span of around 50 yards. It was the middle that was missing, and the 3 Iraqi soldiers stared toward the east, in terror at the clear wrath of Allah. And they turned to the direction of Mecca, knelt before their God, and prayed for guidance.
Below them, the friendly River Diyala had become a raging, cascading torrent, 40 feet higher than normal, roaring down its course, southeast, toward the Tigris 100 miles away. Toward the fertile southern farmlands south of the city of Baghdad. Toward the factories down in the industrial delta of Iraq.
1857 (EDT). June 2. The CIA safe house in the
Woodley district of Virginia, south of Washington.
Lieutenant Commander Baldridge, Admiral Morgan, and Commander Adnam were sharing a pot of coffee and preparing to watch the seven o’clock evening news. The only news they had was that the missiles had been launched and the submarines were on their way home.
And an aura of gloom began to descend as the summary of the content was given, and no mention was made of the havoc they expected to have broken out in the Middle East.
“I know these media bastards are parochial in outlook,” growled the admiral, “but this is ridiculous.”
As 1915 came and went, still no mention. At 1920 Arnold Morgan was about to call the station, but restrained himself.
At 1922, there was an interruption. “We’re just breaking away from that story for a moment because of a breaking news event…” said the commentator with heavy emphasis. “There are reports of some kind of a natural disaster in Iraq…Baghdad is reported to be under 4 feet of water at the northern end of the city…we have conflicting reports right now…but one of them suggests the great dam on the Tigris, the Samarra Barrage has breached…however, we have another report suggesting it is the northern dam in the Kurdish mountains, the Darband-I-Khan, that has burst…right now we have no further information. Communications seem to have been heavily disrupted…but we will keep you informed of what appears to be a huge disaster in Iraq…now back to the gay rights march in LA.”
Arnold Morgan walked across and shook the hand of Bill Baldridge, and that of Ben Adnam.
But the Iraqi seemed very preoccupied. In fact he was wondering how the floodwater was rising in a little stone house off Al-Jamouri Street
, the one in the dark, narrow alleyway next to the hotel.
He hadn’t seen it for two years, since May 26, 2004, the night the Iraqi President’s men had come to murder him. Since then the full moon had risen above the desert twenty-six times. It had been two years, and one week. He had just missed the anniversary, which was a pity because he liked anniversaries. But Eilat smiled. Perfect, he thought. Almost.
EPILOGUE
COMMANDER BENJAMIN ADNAM WAS GIVEN A UNITED States passport on September 18, 2006. It bore the name Benjamin Arnold, and detailed his birthplace as Helensburgh, Scotland.
For the mission against the Iraqi dams he was paid the agreed upon $250,000. With this he made a down payment on a medium-sized white Colonial-styled house quite near the Dunsmores in Virginia, on the west side of the Potomac. He purchased an unobtrusive dark green Ford Taurus and began work in the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia.
A new position was created for him—Special Advisor to the associate director of Central Intelligence. This was Frank Reidel, Langley’s link between the Agency and the military. Commander Adnam moved into an office adjacent to that of Reidel, a short walk from the CIA’s Middle Eastern desk, to which the former terrorist was seconded on a permanent basis. The normal strict vetting procedures for employees of the CIA were dispensed with, on special orders from the White House.
Adnam had requested that he be permitted to use the rank he had earned in the Israeli Navy. Admiral Morgan ensured this was granted, and he was thenceforth referred to in the Agency as Commander Arnold.
On the first Thursday of each month he attended a private briefing on Middle Eastern Developments, inside the White House with the President’s national security advisor.
His salary was $150,000 a year, but Morgan negotiated him out of an annual lump sum in excess of $1 million that the Iraqi had demanded. It was agreed that at the conclusion of ten years service he would receive a bonus of $2 million. In return for this, Morgan insisted that all the incriminating documents be returned from the Swiss bank. And he sent special agents to Geneva to pick them up.
As Arnold Morgan had guessed, Benjamin Adnam’s insights into the mind-sets of the Middle East were extremely valuable. Within a matter of weeks, it was plain that he would make a major contribution in helping the Americans to ease the political crosscurrents, to calm the warring factions among the sheikhs and dictators, in the turbulent, oil-rich crucible of the Middle East.
For himself, Ben found a peace he had never known. Away from the frontiers of hands-on terrorism, separated from the high-risk work of intelligence field agent, he settled into his smooth, suburban American life with considerable ease. For the first few months, he made few attempts at befriending colleagues, but concentrated on living quietly at home, reading and watching the news and international current affairs on television. For the first time, for as long as he could remember, he was off the front line, and no one was hunting for him. At least in America they weren’t.
For the moment, Ben Adnam was content to keep the lowest possible profile, and to thank his God he was out of the lethal world of international terrorism.
On one Autumn morning he was jolted into the reality of that judgment. Reading the New York Times, he caught sight of a story that detailed a long police chase and a minor gun battle in the Kil
burn area of northwest London. It involved the IRA and the capture of a suspected cache of explosives and guns. The shoot-out had lasted only ten minutes, and only one man was hit, quite badly. His name was Paul O’Rourke, aged twenty, from County Waterford. They charged him under the Act of Terrorism, while he lay in hospital with a collapsed right lung.
Ben shook his head. “To be prepared to die for a cause”…and he pondered the years ahead, and how he would deal with civilian life, should the Americans permit him that permanent luxury. He had, of course, one further score to settle. That of Iran, and their brutal, if ill-planned attempt on his life. Not to mention the $1.5 million they still owed him.
One day the Iranians would pay for that. And, confident now of the goodwill of his new masters, Ben picked up the telephone and requested a private talk first thing in the morning with Admiral Morgan. Perhaps now is the time, he thought. The time to come clean with the national security advisor, perhaps to consolidate his position even further.
H.M.S. Unseen (1999) Page 48