Authors: J. Manuel
Jacob, Tim, Doug, Tanner, and Odin boarded the twin-Yahama engine, Zodiac at 0000 hours as the
Jonah
steamed up to the watershed of the Shatt Al-Arab. The
Jonah’s
specially-designed, low draft hull capably plowed the brown waters of the Persian Gulf and the shallow littorals of the Shatt Al-Arab water basin. There were many shallow ports that required clandestine waterborne operations that the U.S. government surveilled around the globe. The
Jonah
had a long, distinguished, and covert history of operating as a naval command post for the likes of the CIA, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, to name a few. Rumor had it that it had transported several high-value detainees throughout the heyday of its operational life, at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the 2000s. The
Jonah,
and a small fleet of her sister ships, now flew flags of opportunity. It was currently and officially registered in Panama as a maritime exploration and science vessel. Its true owner was buried at the center of a maze of untraceable, dummy corporations that were registered in Cyprus and the Virgin Islands.
Jacob and his team emerged from the shipping container where the Zodiac was stowed and rolled out underneath the
Jonah’s
starboard hoisting crane. Tim grabbed the bow hook and secured it to the Zodiac while Doug secured the aft hook. The Zodiac was quickly and silently lifted above the deck by the powerful crane, momentarily bobbing back and forth with the roll and pitch of the waves. The crane extended the stealthy craft over the
Jonah’s
side as Jacob throttled up the two outboards. The
Jonah
was traveling at 20 knots and would not slow down while they disembarked. She was too important an asset to risk stopping, or even slowing down, in the shallow waters. The Shatt Al-Arab was only two miles wide at its mouth which left the
Jonah
especially vulnerable to attack by the fast-moving speedboats that were the favored mode of transportation for pirates and terrorists looking to raid or ram a careless ship.
The maneuver was typically a dangerous one, but this morning it bordered on the insane. The waters of the Shatt were quite turbulent, and the shamal winds that had left their sand at the water’s edge continued on toward the Gulf. The Zodiac collided and ricocheted into the side of the
Jonah
multiple times as it made its descent into the turbulent, brackish waters. To complicate matters, all of the deck lights had been turned off, and the crew of the
Jonah
and Jacob’s team, were operating in the dark. Jacob’s team had the blessing and the curse of operating with night vision goggles that gave them some visibility on this moonless night, but also robbed them of their depth perception.
The Zodiac crashed hard into the waves, and Tim and Doug struggled frantically to free them from the mothership that had now spooled her water-jet thrusters into full power, and was steaming up to her top speed of 32 knots. They had precisely thirty seconds to unhook from the
Jonah
before its helmsman swung its two aft thrusters 90 degrees and forced the 330 foot, limber ship into a hard, left-banking maneuver to head back to the relative safety of the deeper Gulf waters. After a few tense moments, Doug and Tim gained their sea-legs, and unhooked the Zodiac from the heaving ship. Jacob throttled the twin Yamahas to the redline just as they crashed into an oncoming wave that threatened to pull Tim from the bow. The swift craft sliced through the wave into the dark and up the river toward Umm Qasr, Khor Al Zubair, and Basrah. They were to slip into Basrah before daybreak.
- - - - - - -
Jacob had visited these waters before. The chill of the memories pulled his skin into goosebumps as he recalled the opening moments of the Iraq War. Although the shooting war had officially begun in March of 2003, with the dazzling ‘shock and awe’ campaign, Jacob and his team of Force Reconnaissance Marines had entered the waters of the Shatt Al-Arab in January of that year. Jacob’s Recon Battalion had been tasked with infiltrating Iraqi waters from the Shatt, upstream to the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. Small four- man teams of Recon Marines were strategically placed along both rivers in order to provide intelligence and reconnaissance of enemy movements and fortifications in preparation for the invading Marine Expeditionary Forces. More importantly however, the Recon teams were to report on the security of Iraqi oil fields and petroleum infrastructure. These were deemed high-value assets of national security interest—since this is where the war funding was supposed to come from.
Now more than a dozen years later, Jacob was again navigating the familiar waters in the predawn hours, in a Zodiac similar to the ones he had used so long ago. The salty air howled about his face, and the crashing waves split against the bow of the swift ribbed-boat, spitting foamy spray onto the slick, rubber-walled craft. The water was especially turbulent as they neared the mouth of the river where it drained out into the Gulf. The Shatt had a strong, fast-moving current that was not only of concern for commercial and naval craft, but spelled certain death for any person who had the misfortune of falling in. As heavily as they were weighted down by their Kevlar body-armor, weapons, and equipment, anyone of Jacob’s team would most likely drown, no matter how proficient a swimmer he might be.
The Zodiac sped quietly and swiftly up the river, finally offering its passengers a reprieve from the constant pounding as they broke through the tidal plain at the river’s mouth. It was equipped with ultra-modern water jets that provided incredible speed but also near-perfectly silent operation. Jacob maneuvered the stealthy, black craft deftly through the shallow waters while keeping his eyes on the bottom-scanning sonar’s display. Tim lay on the bow relaying the distance and position of obstacles, of which there were many, into Jacob’s earpiece.
The waters of the Shatt were not only shallow and swift, but they were horrendously polluted with toxic chemicals from irrigation runoff, petrochemicals, fertilizers, the decaying husks of shipwrecks, and whatever else had been dumped into them. Poor fishermen, farmers, goat herders, and their families had inhabited this lower region of Iraq for millennia. The region had once been among the most fertile land in the history of humanity. It had long held the largest date palm growths in the world totaling some eighteen million date palm trees. However, the rule of Saddam Hussein, and the subsequent wars in the region beginning in 1980 between Iraq and Iran and concluding with the Second Iraq War, had destroyed most of its fertility. Only an estimated three million date palms survived and most of those bore no fruit. It was the poor who paid the price of war, a perpetual truth, and the current generation of poor fishermen, farmers, and goat herders were left to eke out a subsistence existence in the waters of the Shatt—
so too their children and children’s children.
Most lived in mud huts cut just above the incredibly high-tide stage of the river. The luckier ones were able to live in relative luxury in makeshift structures formed from salvaged, metal scraps that washed up along the filthy, muddy river banks. Though the waters were treacherous, they did not dissuade opportunists who understood that war and destruction created avenues for profiteering.
As the Zodiac advanced silently upriver, Jacob could see the eerie, faint glow of the oil fields out in the distance. The smell of petroleum hung low above the water and mixed with the pungent smell of decay emanating from the muddy banks now only a few hundred meters away.
“Everyone, keep your heads on a swivel. The river begins to really narrow down from here on out. Tim, keep an eye out for obstacles in the water. Make sure that you have your weapons loaded in condition-one and ready to rock.” Jacob relayed the instructions as the team quickly checked their weapons to ensure that there were rounds in the chambers and were ready to fire at a moment’s notice. He throttled back the engines and toggled a switch which activated the Zodiac’s lithium ion, battery pack, and its electric drive-shaft. The Zodiac lowered itself into the water as it slowed to a ten knot cruising speed propelled by a stealthy impeller system that was located within the ribbed hull. At full-throttle the electric system gave the Zodiac a top speed of twenty knots and five nautical miles of range, but at ultra-efficient cruising speed, the electric system provided a range of twenty-five nautical miles. The beauty of this particular system was that it was a hybrid design that could be replenished by the gasoline-electric generator which siphoned its power from the twin-engine motors. The result was an ultra-fast, high-speed, low-drag, highly-maneuverable, waterborne hybrid able to carry a crew of five heavily-armed men armed with two Miniguns and a hard-hitting .50 caliber machine gun.
The river began to narrow as they passed the Umm Qasr loading docks off of the port bow. Jacob steered the boat toward the starboard bank of the river in order to avoid the illumination of the Umm Qasr port facilities. His maneuvering forced the boat into the shallows of the silty banks, and though the Zodiac could draft in as little as thirty inches of water, Jacob took care not to test that envelope. He cut the electric output to just a few watts, slowing the quiet craft down to four knots, which barely kept it moving forward against the downstream current of the river. The team was alert, keeping their weapons at the ready as they closed within ten feet of the bank. The dim fires of several huts softly lit the sable vessel and its passengers as they drifted, unnoticed by the huts’ inhabitants.
The sleek craft swam slowly against the current, skimming just above the reeds that surfaced slightly above the water’s break. It sank into the murky mire of the river bottom on several occasions requiring the team members to free it with oars. When they finally cleared the lights of Umm Qasr, Jacob steered the Zodiac into the relative safety of the river’s center and powered up the electric impeller. The boatman and his crew disappeared speedily into the dark. His dilated pupils reflected the greenish hue of his NVGs as he stood at the helm of his skiff, ferrying his men like Charon upon the river Styx.
They passed Khor Al Zubair at 0200 hours, making good progress toward Basrah and their 0400 ETA. Jacob and his team avoided detection thus far and relief began to set in as the lights of Basrah appeared in the distance. Jacob checked the Zodiac’s GPS. They were within five miles of the city of 1.5 million inhabitants, Iraq’s second-largest, behind Baghdad. He toggled his communications control and switched to the secondary frequency. His earbuds squelched faintly for a moment and then he spoke.
“This is Delta Hotel, radio-check over.” He spoke the NATO phonetic alphabet for his call-sign Duckhunt. The earbud hissed with static. No answer. “This is Delta Hotel, radio-check over.”
“Roger Delta Hotel, this is Juliet Bravo. I read you Lima Charlie over,” John’s voice was unmistakable and comforting. “We have you on our thermals. You are clear to rendezvous in five mikes. Careful of the sandbars out there; they’re hard to spot and will be on your port.”
Jacob ignored the GPS and navigated by the sonar display which was more useful in avoiding the sandbars that rose frequently and sharply up through the incredibly shallow waters around Basrah. For such an important city, the Iraqi government and Coalition Authority had not seen fit to dredge or widen the narrow and treacherous waters around it. The only deep water port in the region was the port in Umm Qasr, and that was barely serviceable by 19th Century standards.
John’s voice crackled to life once again, “Delta Hotel this Juliet Bravo over.”
“Send it,” Jacob replied.
“Delta Hotel we’re going light your path. Follow to our position, over.” Suddenly, a bright beam of yellow light streaked through the green filter of his NVGs. Tim immediately keyed in on the unexpected flash, and peered under his NVGs to satisfy himself that they had not been spotlighted. Jacob turned the Zodiac toward the infrared beam, and drove to a secluded pier where he idled, the craft. The current made it difficult to hold the position, but he was not about to moor the Zodiac. Doug looked up a ten foot, fire-escape style ladder that dangled precariously off of the side of the pier. Everyone on the Zodiac was alert with weapons drawn.
“Don’t shoot me in the face. I got a Hollywood career ahead of me,” John exclaimed jokingly as he popped out above them silhouetted against the yellow-hued luminescence of the dock lights. John waved them up, and Jacob and his team ascended the ladder. One of John’s men climbed down and took the Zodiac, disappearing back into the dark river.
“Glad you ladies could make it!” John slapped Jacob firmly on the back as he walked them over to a couple of white Toyota 4Runners. “Around here these will draw less attention than any military vehicle. Same goes for fatigues. They are a no go. Everyone strip off your black tactical clothes.” John grabbed a duffle bag out of the back seat of the lead SUV, and pulled out a couple of red-checkered keffiyeh, the traditional Iraqi headdress, that could be used both as a turban or simply wrapped around the face and neck as a protective scarf against the frequent sandstorms.
“Here put these on,” John threw some tan cargo pants and shirts their way. “From now on you guys are just some regular looking schmucks trying to blend in as much as possible.” He looked back at the hulking Doug and said, “Well I guess everyone but you big man. You better find a bridge somewhere and hide under it! At least you’re the right color!”