Protect and defend (21 page)

“You lived abroad?” Ashani was playing dumb, as he knew that she had.

“Yes. Cairo, Damascus, and then Beirut.”

Ashani nodded and acted surprised.

“But then again…I’m sure you knew about Beirut.”

“What about Beirut?” he said with a straight face.

“I did not come here to open old wounds, but I think it’s very important that we be honest with each other if we are going to find a way out of this mess.”

Ashani hesitated and then said, “I would agree.”

“Then I find it hard to believe that as Iran’s minister of intelligence, you didn’t already know that my father was killed in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut back in nineteen eighty-three.” Kennedy would have liked to have added that the bombing had been carried out by Hezbollah and sponsored by Iran, but there was no need to state the obvious. Ashani knew who was behind the carnage, and he knew Kennedy knew as well.

Ashani took a sip of tea and then delicately said, “I’m sorry about your father. I do not like all this violence. Too many innocent people have been killed.”

Ashani’s man placed a cup of steaming tea in front of Kennedy and backed away. Kennedy picked up the cup with both hands and said, “Far too many.”

“There are many in my country,” Ashani said while putting both arms on the table and leaning closer to Kennedy, “who question how evil the U.S. really is. You have rid us of both Saddam and the Taliban. As you well know, we Shia and Sunni do not like each other. The only time we stop fighting is when someone like you gets in the middle.”

“Sad but true.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then Ashani said, “We have a situation here that I am afraid could spin out of control. There are many people in my government who want blood for the destruction of the Isfahan facility. Our Persian pride demands it.”

“Pride can be a very destructive thing.”

Ashani snorted. “Yes. You are right, but I’m afraid there are few people in my government who see it that way. They want someone to pay for this offense.”

“Then they should crack down on the insurgents and leave us and Israel out of it. Or are they too afraid to admit they have an internal problem?”

“I did not come here to discuss the inner workings of my government,” Ashani said a bit more seriously. “I was invited to listen to you and find a mutually agreeable solution to this mess.”

Kennedy sipped her tea and then said, “President Alexander is flirting with the idea of opening limited diplomatic relations.”

“Interesting. What is the incentive for my government?”

“You have twenty to thirty percent inflation; you import forty percent of your oil, even though you have the second-highest oil reserves of any country behind Saudi Arabia; and your economy is about to collapse. You have an internal revolt brewing that like before will be met with a crackdown from the religious extremists. Although this time it is less certain they will succeed.” Kennedy stopped to see if Ashani wanted to argue any of these points. He didn’t, so she continued.

“If you were to meet us halfway and agree that it is time for our two nations to bury old wounds and forge a lasting peace that respects both Islam and freedom, we would restore relations on a level that would encourage American investment in your country.”

“There are many in my country,” Ashani said, “who think you were behind the destruction of the Isfahan facility.”

Kennedy looked him straight in the eye and said, “I can promise you, we had nothing to do with the attack.”

“That may well be the case. I am just telling you, the hard-liners will want something more concrete than the possibility that American banks might invest in our country.”

“American financial institutions will follow the U.S. government. That is why the president is prepared to offer you a billion dollars in guaranteed loans.”

Ashani was surprised. “What is the catch?”

“The money must go toward building new refineries. The loans will be interest-free for the first three years, and after that they will be locked in at five percent.”

“The money has to be used to build refineries?”

“The president feels it is the only way he can get a majority of the Congress to back it.”

“You want us to renounce our nuclear program?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not publicly.”

“But privately.”

“It would help.”

Ashani winced. “There are those in my country who are obsessed with becoming a nuclear power.”

Kennedy leaned in and whispered, “Your economy is close to collapsing. You are on the verge of another revolution, only this time, you guys are going to be the ones thrown out of power. This is a chance for you to stave off disaster.”

Ashani scratched his beard, looked past Kennedy and the dusty front door. With just his limited view he counted five men in urban combat gear holding their weapons at the ready. This could be Tehran in a year or two if economic stability wasn’t reached. One thing bothered him, though. Ashani looked carefully into Kennedy’s eyes and asked, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you offering to help us?”

Kennedy nodded. Despite Ashani’s relatively open mind, there was no getting over the fact the he had spent all of his adult life in a country that blamed America for virtually every woe. “Because we feel,” Kennedy started out slowly, “that there are enough people like you, Azad, decent people who want to put an end to the hatred and violence. Who knows what type of government might take over after a second revolution? Who’s to say it won’t be more fundamentalist and anti-Western than the current government?” Kennedy shook her head. “We have learned the hard way that economic instability in Middle East is not in the best interest of the United States. The lack of opportunity makes it all too easy for the clerics to preach their hatred. We want to see a resurgence in Persian pride. We want you to take control of your own destiny. We want to see you make advances in science and health. We want to see you succeed, if for no other reason than we stop getting blamed for your failures.”

Ashani had a look of intense concentration on his face. Everything she had just said was true, but selling it to men whose entire power base was dependent on a hatred of America would be exceedingly difficult.

Kennedy knew what he was thinking. “I know this is risky. That is why I am here and not Secretary of State Wicka. My president sent me because he knows you and I have proven that our two countries can work together.”

“That is true, but this is a big step.”

“What is your alternative, Azad?” Kennedy put her arms out and motioned in each direction. “Is this what you want? Car bombs and sectarian violence, kidnappings and bloodletting? We both know your country is closer to this than the mullahs would ever admit.”

With downcast eyes, Ashani slowly nodded.

“Then what is your answer?”

In Ashani’s mind there was no doubt this was the right thing to do, but selling it to the Supreme Council would be extremely difficult. His mind kept returning to Amatullah. The Peacock President would hate this with every fiber of his body. Still, there was a chance that the Supreme Leader would see it as an opportunity for his people to avoid years of pain and suffering. Finally, Ashani looked at Kennedy and said, “It is my sincere hope that this will be recorded as the moment our two countries forged a new and lasting friendship. I must warn you, though, that this is going to be very hard for me to sell to the Supreme Council.”

“I know it will, but I hope for the sake of both our countries you succeed.”

Captain Pete Halberg was a prime candidate for an ulcer. The forty-five-year-old graduate of Annapolis never lost his temper. Not with his wife, not with his six kids, and never with his crew. He internalized stress by shoving it down into the pit of his stomach, where he fed it with black coffee. Usually ten cups a day or more. His only saving grace was the twenty minutes he put in on the heavy bag in the bowels of his sub’s engine room. That and the bottle of Tums antacid tablets that he went through every week. On this particular morning the pucker factor on the bridge was running high.

Command of any submarine was an intensely stressful, yet rewarding job. Commanding one of America’s newest fast attack submarines was in a league all by itself. The United States Navy had entrusted Halberg with the two-billion-dollar technological marvel and given him 134 submariners to lead. The cruise had been fairly routine up until two days prior when they’d received a flash message from Submarine Task Force Commander or CTF 54. Their orders were to leave the Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group, which was on patrol in the Persian Gulf, and proceed to the Gulf of Oman, where Halberg and his crew were to locate and track one of Iran’s three Kilo-class subs that had left port in a hurry.

Shortly after midnight they’d followed a Liberian supertanker filled with crude through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the deeper waters of the Gulf of Oman. At 377 feet the U.S.S.
Virginia
was seventeen feet longer than the depth of the main shipping channel. There wasn’t a sub in the world, other than her sister ships, that could come even close to her capabilities, but she had her limits. Halberg and his entire crew had breathed a collective sigh of relief when they reached the deeper water of the Gulf of Oman. The
Virginia
’s strength lay in her stealth, firepower, and speed. To use those, however, she needed room to maneuver. If the Persian Gulf was a six-lane divided highway on a dry sunny day, the Strait of Hormuz was a narrow dark alley on a dark rainy night. Twenty-seven miles at the narrowest point, it was dotted with islands and packed with shipping traffic. Most of its supertankers were nearly 1,000 feet long. The currents were quick and once outside the main shipping channel there were countless uncharted wrecks.

Based on the information provided by CTF 54, Halberg and his executive officer, Dennis Strilzuk, agreed on the most likely location of the Kilo. They set up a patrol grid and then Halberg turned over the command duty officer watch to the exec so he could grab a few hours of sleep. Four hours later he woke up refreshed and returned to the bridge. Traveling at five knots on an easterly heading, the lightweight wide-aperture array picked up the Kilo running at the same speed in the opposite direction, parallel to the Iranian coast.

It was a predictable maneuver that they had seen the Iranians use dozens of times. They would run their subs out of their base in Bandar Abbas in broad daylight for all the world to see and then transit through the strait on the surface. Once clear of the shipping channel they’d dive and then put the pedal to the metal. Usually, just north of Muscat, Oman, they would decrease speed to five knots and begin a series of lazy figure eights to make sure no American subs were trailing them. Then they would slowly work their way north and skirt the Iranian coastline just inside territorial waters, looking for an American warship they could fall in behind and tail back through the strait.

When Halberg arrived in control, Strilzuk explained what was going on.

“About thirty minutes ago, he broke for international water and started running the race track right here on the shelf.” Strilzuk pointed to a location on the chart that showed where the Gulf of Oman stepped its way up from a depth of 1,000 meters to 100 meters. The location was right on the doorstep of the Strait of Hormuz.

Halberg sipped his coffee. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Why go to all that effort to disappear and then start beating your chest?”

“Unless you want to be found,” Halberg mused.

“That’s what I was thinking.” Strilzuk handed the skipper a printed message from CTF 54. “This came in about an hour ago.”

Halberg scanned the message without the aid of glasses. With his oldest child already in college, he was very proud of the fact that he didn’t need reading specs. According to the message the Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas was a beehive of activity. Her two remaining Kilo subs, the
Tareq
and
Noor,
had rushed out of port in the middle of the night along with four of their minisubs.

Strilzuk pointed to the nearest color monitor and said, “These satellite photos were taken at zero four hundred. Every frigate in the harbor is glowing. They’re getting ready to put their entire navy to sea.”

Halberg looked down at the plotting table. The old paper charts had been replaced by a flat computer screen that provided real-time tactical information. With the aid of a complex navigation system, the display showed the exact location of the
Virginia,
the Iranian Kilo they were shadowing, and virtually every other ship in the Gulf of Oman. Halberg pressed a button and the screen changed magnification to show the tactical situation in the Persian Gulf. Two of the six Iranian subs were already missing. The other four were all headed northwest toward the Eisenhower strike group. Halberg assumed the missing subs were also headed in that direction. He’d been patrolling these waters on and off for nearly twenty years, and this was as aggressive as he’d ever seen the Iranians.

Halberg changed the plotting screen back to his immediate area of responsibility. He looked at the location of the Iranian Kilo that they had identified as the Yunes, the most modern of their subs. She appeared to be guarding the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

“Why don’t you grab some sleep,” Halberg said to Strilzuk. “I’ll start the next watch early.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” Halberg settled into his chair in the Command and Control Center and asked for a cup of coffee. As he studied the battlefield layout on the array of screens in the CACC, he got the feeling that this was not going to be another boring day at sea.

Rapp was wearing a loose-fitting pair of pleated black dress pants and a gray dress shirt that was untucked. He stood behind Stilwell looking down at one of the flat-panel monitors. The screen was split in two. The left half showed Kennedy. The right half showed Ashani. Their conversation was relayed via a pair of desktop speakers with reasonable clarity. As Kennedy had predicted, the dialogue was progressing without conflict. This should have reassured Rapp, but it didn’t.