Soldiers, heavily armed and wearing khaki uniforms, lined the patrol boat's rail. When Viktor stepped onto the afterdeck with the rifle, a sharp burst of machine gun fire rattled from the craft's bridge, a warning volley that knocked splinters from Beluga's mainmast and boom.
"Her auf damn!" an amplified voice barked from the Iranian craft. "Drop the weapon!"
Reluctantly, Viktor let the rifle clatter to the afterdeck. Iranian soldiers were already vaulting the rail, boarding the Beluga both aft and forward in a rush of shouting, gun-waving men.
Jean screamed as a soldier grabbed her shoulder and shoved her roughly toward the well deck aft. "Get your hands off me!"
She was answered with a stinging slap across her back. "Akab behraveed!"
She didn't understand, but the meaning was clear. She allowed herself to be dragged along. The yacht's entire crew was herded aft. Resistance, even verbal protest, was met with savage blows from fists or rifle butts. Helga struggled in the grip of two soldiers, one of whom was clutching at her naked breasts, and Karl lurched toward his wife and her attackers, fists clenched. "Bastard! Nicht doch!"
A single gunshot barked, propelling Karl forward. Blood splattered the white paint of Beluga's deckhouse as he crumpled to the deck. "Karl! Nein!" Helga tried to reach her husband, but her captors forced her into line with the others. Karl scrabbled weakly on the deck for a few more moments, clutching the wound in his chest, then lay still.
Jean and the other civilians all were in shock, uncomprehending, automatons shoved this way and that by the soldiers. Several of the boarders gathered around the women, leering at them and making jokes among themselves. Viktor tried to fight back when someone shoved him, and was clubbed to the deck with a blow from a rifle butt.
The man who'd shot Karl was tall and muscular, sporting a thick black mustache that hid his mouth. He gestured at all of them with the automatic handgun in his fist. "Kneel! All of you!" he snapped in English. "Here, in row! Hands on heads!"
Terrified, the prisoners obeyed as the soldiers prodded them into line on the deck. Jean found herself kneeling between a weeping, desperate Helga and one of Beluga's crewmen as the black-mustached man, obviously the Iranians' leader, strode down the line, inspecting each of them in turn. With him, startlingly, was a Japanese man wearing olive-drab shorts and a short-sleeved floral-print shirt, and carrying an assault rifle as though he knew how to use it. A Japanese ... one of the plutonium freighter's crew? What in God's name was going on here?
The Iranian commander stopped in front of Gertrude. "American?" he asked.
"Nein," she said. "kh bin ein Deutscher." She stopped, licked her lips, then tried again in English. "I am ... German. My passport is in-"
The dark man cut her off with a sharp gesture, then continued down the line. He stopped again at Helga, who was still crying uncontrollably, but said nothing. Instead, he looked her up and down, then turned and stared at Jean. She began trembling violently as she felt his eyes on her, and her legs grew so weak she could hardly hold her position. When he smiled at her, there was no humor in his eyes. "You," he said, moving in front of her. "You are certainly American."
How does he know? she wondered. Jerkily, she nodded.
Reaching out, he lightly brushed her bare, lotion-slick left breast with the backs of his fingers. She jerked back from the repulsive touch and nearly fell. Several of the watching soldiers chuckled unpleasantly.
"You Western woman really should learn modesty," the commander said thoughtfully. His English was excellent, though it carried a heavy accent. "By exposing your bodies in this shameful manner, you disgrace yourselves and your male relatives. You also present a considerable temptation for my men, who tend to regard such displays of female flesh as an indication of your moral character. Or lack of it."
The Japanese civilian whispered something to the commander, who nodded. Turning suddenly, the Iranian barked an order in Farsi. The soldiers advanced then, laughing, grabbing the women from the line, herding them forward toward the yacht's cabins. Rough hands groped and fondled Jean as she was propelled down the steps, grabbing at her breasts, buttocks, and thighs, tugging at the knots in the strings of her bikini bottom, then ripping the scrap of cloth away entirely. Gertrude screamed as a laughing Iranian soldier pranced about the galley, waving her briefs as trophy. Helga's bikini bottom had no ties, and they pinned her to the deck while one of them peeled the bottom off her thrashing legs.
Oh, Christ, they're going to rape us! she thought, but then the three naked women were shoved into a cabin and the door was slammed and locked behind them. The soldiers had already been here, rifling dresser drawers and smashing bottles of whiskey and gin discovered in the room's tiny bar.
Outside, she heard them shouting in Farsi and laughing as they went through the Beluga, smashing open every locked door in a joyful quest for loot. The Iranian officer was haranguing the male members of the crew, but she couldn't catch the words. Oh, God, what was he saying? What was he going to do to Paul?
Gertrude lay on the deck, trembling, trying to cover herself with her arms as she sank into shock. Helga, after a long moment, began stumbling about the cramped room, no longer crying but with a glazed expression fixed on her face as she began picking up torn and discarded articles of clothing and bits of broken glass. The room, Jean realized, had been the one occupied by Helga and her husband. "Karl," she mumbled half-aloud, "Karl doesn't like the mess. Poor Karl ..."
Numb with terror, battling the shock that threatened to engulf her, Jean Brandeis sat on the bunk, her eyes fixed on the locked door. She had no illusions that any of them would be released, not after an incident that was nothing less than piracy on the high seas. There would be no phone call to the American embassy, no news report to the West save, possibly, a curt announcement to the effect that Beluga and her crew had been lost at sea.
She wondered how much longer they would be permitted to live, and what humiliation they would be forced to endure in whatever time was left.
1635 hours (Zulu +3) Motor yacht Beluga Indian Ocean, 380 miles southeast of Socotra
Tetsuo Kurebayashi listened impassively as Pasdaran Colonel Ruholia Aghasi continued shouting at the men kneeling before him on the deck. Kurebayashi spoke English--that language was how he communicated with the Iranians who spoke no Nihongo--but the colonel's words were too rapid for him to follow more than a word or two, and Aghasi kept alternating between English and German, of which Kurebayashi spoke not a word.
Unlike Sayyed Hamid, however, that fat pig of a Pasdaran colonel in charge of the Iranians aboard the Yuduki Maru, Aghasi was clearly a man of keen intelligence, who knew what he was doing and how best to achieve results. Though he couldn't understand the speech, he knew what Aghasi was saying, because Kurebayashi had come up with the idea and convinced the Iranian leader to try it just hours ago. Aghasi was the commander of a contingent of troops just arrived with the Iranian naval squadron; Kurebayashi had approached him, rather than the unimaginative Hamid, with his idea of seizing the Greenpeace schooner that had been dogging Yuduki Maru's wake for the past three weeks.
The speech was having the desired effect. Aghasi, the Ohtori leader noted, was playing the game well, waving the confiscated scraps of the women's bathing suits in front of the male prisoners with evident relish, gesturing frequently toward the cabin where the women had been taken, and at those of his men who were lounging about the well deck now with weapons very much in evidence. Through threats and bullying, the colonel had already gotten two of the prisoners to admit that two of the women were their wives; the dead man, apparently, had been husband to the third. A pity that he had been the one chosen by Heaven to serve as an example to the others ... Still, those two would be enough.
Kurebayashi was a longtime student of American tactics. The Yankees had already tried a covert operation, slipping a small squad of commandos aboard the Yuduki Maru in an attempt to surprise her captors. That attempt had failed ... though eighteen of the forty Iranian
troops aboard had been killed or seriously wounded, and poor Shigeru Ota, one of Kurebayashi's Ohtori, had vanished in the fight. Their next move, he was certain, would be either another attempt to negotiate or an overwhelming show of force. Iranian sources had already reported the gathering of a sizable American naval task force south of the Arabian peninsula, between the Yuduki Maru and her destination; his guess was that they would try a frontal assault next, possibly behind the screen of a professional negotiator.
The Iranians, with their entire pathetic little navy, could not possibly hope to match the Americans ship for ship and gun for gun. The little Beluga and her activist passengers were the best weapon they could have to meet the Yankees' challenge, to force them to back down. All that was needed was some cooperation from the prisoners.
That part would be easy. Kurebayashi had studied in America, two years at UCLA. He knew Western men, and he knew something of their illogical ways of thinking, especially about women and sex. Kohler and Brandeis, he was sure, would do anything, anything to keep their wives from being gang-raped and tortured one by one before their eyes. Since it was Kohler's help they needed most, they would start with the dead German's wife, then move on to the American, saving Kohler's wife for last. The only real problem was that the process would take time, and Kurebayashi very much doubted that they had more than a few hours before the Americans struck.
But then, it was possible that the threat alone would be enough. He studied the prisoners through narrowed eyes. Yes ... Aghasi's little speech was definitely having the desired effect. The American, Brandeis, was pale and sweating, on the verge of passing out right there on the deck. Kohler's eyes were squeezed shut, and he was moaning something to himself over and over in German. These men were already broken, Kurebayashi thought, clay to be molded in any way their captors saw fit.
Aghasi barked a question at the American. Slowly, a little jerkily, the man nodded, his hands still clasped on top of his head. Excellent. They had one ally, even if he was an unwilling one. Then Kohler agreed too, nodding his head enthusiastically as tears rolled down his cheeks.
Success ...
Thursday, 26 May
1945 hours (Zulu +3) Indian Ocean, seventy miles east of Socotra
It was evening, but the sun was still well above the western horizon when the first flight of four Marine SuperCobra gunships clattered in toward the Yuduki Maru. They came in low, skimming the waves, approaching out of the west so that the enemy's gunners--and their heat-seeking anti-air weapons, if they had any--would be blinded by the sun. Half a mile behind the gunships, three big CH-53 Super Stallions of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing came in at higher altitude, each carrying a full load of fifty-five Marine combat troops.
Captain Ron Dilmore was strapped into the rear seat of Pickax One-three, one of the SuperCobras sliding into attack position west of the Iranian squadron. His gunner/copilot, in the front seat, was a skinny, blond kid from Kansas, Lieutenant Charles Mobely.
"So what's it gonna be," Mobely was saying over the ICS, the Cobra's intercom system. "Peace or war?"
"Aw, the Iranies are chicken-shit, Mobe," Dilmore replied. "They'll take one look at us and-"
"Pickax One, Pickax One" sounded over Dilmore's helmet phones. "This is Rolling Prairie. Deploy in attack formation, but hold your fire. Repeat, deploy for attack but do not fire."
Rolling Prairie was the call sign for II MEF's Tactical Command Team, buried away in'the combat center aboard the Nassau.
"There they are," Mobely said. "I got the freighter and two ... no, three warships. Looks like a destroyer has the freighter in tow."
"I see it, Mobe. Pick your targets. I'm gonna buzz the Maru."
The SuperCobra held its approach, now less than fifty feet above the water, its rotor blast raising a wind-lashed fog of spray in its wake. Ahead, the Japanese freighter Yuduki Maru was wallowing forward in moderate seas, a long length of heavy towing cable stretched from the fantail of the destroyer to the freighter's bow chocks. Red-white-and-green flags flew from the mastheads of both vessels.
"Hey, Skipper!" Mobely called. "The Maru's flying an Iranie flag!"
"I see it, Mobe." He put the SuperCobra into a gentle turn to port, circling the two vessels at a distance. So far there'd been no fire from either ship, though he could see armed men gathered on their decks. According to Prairie Fire's mission briefing, a team of Navy SEALs had managed to get on board the freighter and damage one of its screws, but had been forced to back off. How many Iranian soldiers were aboard? It looked like hundreds, though he didn't have time for an accurate count. Enough, certainly, to fight off a SEAL squad, and enough to make an airborne descent from helos, if not impossible, at least a very bloody business indeed.
"You getting all this, Mobe?"
"We're rolling, Skipper." The gunner/copilot was using a sophisticated camera mounted in the Cobra's chin turret to record the scene.
Damn. If the Iranians had raised their own flag over the Yuduki Maru, this could get real sticky, real fast. With that Iranian flag flying from her truck, the Japanese freighter was now, technically at least, Iranian property, and the American rescue mission could be construed as an invasion. Wryly wondering what the brass hats were going to make of this one, he opened a channel to Rolling Prairie and called in his report.
The other gunships began circling as well, while the troop-carrying Sea Stallions remained at a safe distance. After informing Nassau about the flags and tow cable, Dilmore was told to keep orbiting the freighter but to take no threatening action.
No threatening action? Add the SuperCobra's M197, a three-barreled, high-speed rotary cannon protruding from beneath its chin, to the rocket and minigun pods and TOW missiles slung from hardpoints to port and starboard, and you had one definitely threatening aircraft, even when it was squatting motionless on a flight deck. Circling its intended prey like some bristling, monster dragonfly, it was bound to make the people on those ships nervous.
The original plan, code-named Prairie Fire, called for the Marine helicopters to rush straight in, suppress any hostile fire from the freighter, and off-load the troops directly onto Yuduki Maru's forward deck. It was thought that the sudden, demoralizing appearance of the gunships, coupled with the casualties the Iranian forces had already suffered during the SEAL raid earlier in the week, would be enough to force their surrender.
The raid had been almost ready to go the day before when word had been received from the Pentagon that the Iranian warships Damavand, Sahand, and Alborz had joined the plutonium ship and were now providing close escort, together with a number of small patrol craft. Damavand, a World War II-era British destroyer transferred to Iran in the 1970s, now had the Yuduki Maru under tow.
Delayed for twenty-four hours while options were reviewed and orders rewritten, Prairie Fire had finally been launched despite the new intelligence, but their mission profile now called for them to approach cautiously, to report everything they saw, to hold fire until specifically ordered otherwise. What had begun as a terrorist incident on the high seas could rapidly escalate into a major military confrontation between Iran and the United States.
"Hey, Skipper?" Mobely called over the ICS. "We've got something screwy coming in on channel four."
"Let's hear it." He flipped the channel select knob on his console.
"... vessel Beluga! D-do not attack!" The voice was ragged with excitement, or more likely, Dilmore thought, with fear. "American forces, please, do not attack. This is Rudi Kohler, of the Greenpeace vessel Beluga. Soldiers and sailors of Revolutionary Iran, acting in the interest of world peace, have boarded the freighter Yuduki Maru, which was damaged several days ago in a terrorist incident, and have taken her in tow. This is a salvage and rescue operation as described under the international laws of the sea. The ... the commander of the Iranian forces has asked me, as a representative of the organization Greenpeace International, to act as a neutral observer in this matter, to report what I see and hear to the world. American force
s, please do not attack."
"Shit," Lieutenant Dilmore said, switching off. "A salvage operation! Who do they think they're kidding?"
"Pickax One, Pickax One, this is Rolling Prairie" sounded over Dilmore's helmet phones. "Hold fire, repeat, hold fire. This one's going up the chain. Confirm, over."
"Rolling Prairie, Pickax One," Dilmore replied. "Hold fire, roger." He dropped the helo into a shallow bank to starboard.
"What do you think, Skipper?" Mobely asked. "Was that message for real?"
"Hell, it sounded like he was reading from a prepared statement. I think the poor bastard had a gun to his head."
"Yeah. Who's this Kohler guy anyway?"
"I don't-"
"Ninety-nine aircraft, ninety-nine aircraft" sounded over the radio, interrupting.
"Uh-oh," Mobely said. The call sign "ninety-nine aircraft" was military shorthand for all aircraft aloft, and a general order to all of them probably meant an abort. "That was a little too fast for my liking."
"Quiet," Dilmore said. "I want to hear."
"Ninety-nine aircraft, scrub Prairie Fire. Repeat, scrub Prairie Fire and RTB."
RTB--Return to Base. The brass was calling off the attack before a single shot had been fired.
"Aw, shit!" Mobely said. "They're letting the bastards get away with fucking murder!"
"Maybe they know something about it we don't," Dilmore said. "Cominright to three-five-oh. Oops. What's that?"
"What's what?"
"Sailboat trailing the Iranians, six, maybe eight miles back."
"Hell, that's probably the Greenpeacers."
"Rog. Let's have a closer look, okay?"
"Fine. You explain digressing from the flight plan to the CO when we get back."
"No problems. Hang onto your lunch."
The Marine SuperCobra dropped until its skids were practically skimming the waves, angling south toward the two-masted schooner motoring northward with its sails furled. Several men in civilian clothes stood on the aft deck, one of them at the wheel. As the helicopter circled at a distance, the men waved.
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