Authors: Patrick Robinson
“Correct. And if I am
not
able to demonstrate that the nation of Israel is prepared to acquiesce to our instructions, I guess Hamas will open fire, and we’ll just have to see if we can stop ’em. I should warn you, however, that if that little scenario should occur, the Knesset ought not to hold its breath for any more help from the U.S.A…. finance or weapons.”
“I do realize that,” said General Gavron. “And quite honestly, I have tried to stay out of the talks. I know there has been nothing formal yet, but these things get around fast. And we are aware that sooner or later we will have to answer a very serious question from the United States.”
Admiral Morgan poured them both more coffee. He stood up and walked a few paces, then retraced his steps. “David,” he said, “what is your personal reaction to the Hamas demand for immediate recognition of the Independent, Democratic, and Sovereign State of Palestine based on the territories on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip…as they say, ‘
occupied by the forces of Israel since June 4, 1967’?
“I guess you know that they want all Israeli troops out of these territories, right away?”
“That’s what they always demand, Arnold. But they are asking the rulers of Israel to commit political suicide. And you know what your great hero Sir Winston Churchill said about that?”
“Not offhand. What was it?”
“The trouble with committing political suicide is you usually live to regret it…”
Arnold Morgan laughed, despite the seriousness of the conversation. He sat back and sipped his coffee thoughtfully.
“Arnold,” Gavron said, “there are thousands of families whose relatives died for those new Israeli lands, died defending them against the Arab aggressor. My grandfather was killed in the Sinai in 1967, my beloved and brave grandmother died on a human ammunition line, passing shells up to our tanks on the Golan Heights in 1967. My father’s two brothers were killed in the battle for the Sinai in 1967, and my niece, age eleven, was killed by a Palestinian bomb in a supermarket twelve years ago.
“I’m sorry, Arnold, I could never agree to a Palestinian State within our borders. Not one that causes us to surrender the lands we fought for, against overwhelming aggression from the Arab nations. My government might agree if America were to get very rough with us. But would
I
? Never.”
Arnold smiled a rueful smile at the old warrior from the Holy Land. “But what about us, David?” he said. “We, who have done so much to keep your nation secure. What about us, in our hour of real need?”
“Well, the East Coast of America is a very long way from Israel. More than 5,000 miles. And just for once, we are not the ones being threatened by an armed enemy.
“In my country, there are vast numbers of young Israelis who were not even born when Egypt split the Bar-Lev line and attacked us on our most holy day of the year. We’d be asking them to support their government giving away great slabs of the only land they have ever known…to the Palestinians. Well, Arnold, that’s what civil wars are made of…”
“You mean Israel is
never
going to agree to the creation of a Democratic Palestinian State, never going to withdraw from the occupied territories?”
“No, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean
never
. But probably not in the next five weeks. That’s just asking the utterly impossible. For a problem that is not even ours. Remember, it’s the U.S.A. under threat. Not Israel.”
“For an officer and a diplomat, that’s a rather shortsighted answer,” replied Admiral Morgan.
“Not really. The U.S.A. would find it very difficult to get rough with us. No American President is going to risk losing the massive Jewish vote in New York.”
“I was not referring to the U.S.A. getting rough,” said Arnold.
“Oh…what were you implying…?”
“I was suggesting that if we get jackhammered by this tidal wave, that will somewhat preoccupy us for a while. And since you did nothing to assist us, you’ll probably find us too busy to help you.”
“But we don’t need help, Arnold. We’re not threatened.”
“If the U.S. Navy and Military are effectively disabled on the East Coast for a period of several months, how long do you think it will take Hamas to turn their thwarted anger on Israel?”
David Gavron was thoughtful. He said nothing for a few moments and then replied, “They are essentially a hit-and-run organization. Terrorists. They do not have our training, our combat readiness. They have no answers to heavy artillery. And we can withstand terrorism. We always have. The Hamas are simply not a big enough force to take down a nation like ours.”
“That may have been so three years ago,” said Arnold. “But it’s not so now. They have a general as accomplished in the field as anyone we’ve seen for years…”
“This damn Kerman character?”
“That’s the man, David. That’s the man.”
1530 (Local), Monday, September 21
The Atlantic Ocean, 14.43N 17.30W
Speed 5, Course Unconfirmed, PD.
The
Barracuda
cruised in warm waters out among the blue-fin tunas just below the surface, less than 10 miles off the most westerly port in Africa. Dakar, capital city of the old French colony of Senegal, was in the middle of its rainy season, and warm tropical rain lashed the calm waters of the deep Atlantic way out to sea.
They’d been waiting for almost four hours now, and the rain had not let up. Every fifteen minutes, Ben Badr ordered his mast up and scanned the surface picture, looking in vain for the patrol boat from the Senegal Navy, which had been due to arrive at around midday.
When it finally did show up, shortly before 1600, both he and Ravi became extremely jumpy. Running this close to the surface, even in waters in which the U.S. Navy had zero interest, it was still unnerving. Just knowing the U.S. satellites, if correctly focused, could pick them up in moments.
The unrelenting rain reduced visibility, and the Senegalese were more than a mile away when Admiral Badr saw them. Immediately he ordered the
Barracuda
to the surface. With a blast of
emptying ballast and an increased hum of the accelerating turbines, the
Barracuda
surged up into the fresh air for the first time for ten weeks. It was the first daylight they had seen since the submarine went deep, just south of the Japanese island of Yakushima, and headed out into the north Pacific.
The great underwater warship shouldered aside the blue waters of the eastern Atlantic, and the helmsman brought her almost to a halt on the surface, facing south awaiting the Senegalese patrol ship that would pull alongside.
The seas were otherwise deserted and the
Barracuda
’s deck crew waved the incoming ship into position on the starboard side of the hull. They could already see a special long gangway out on the scruffy-looking deck, and they sent over lines to help the two Senegalese crewmen to shove it out between the two ships.
General Ravi, standing on deck with Shakira, gazed in some distaste at the condition of the patrol boat, a U.S.–built Peterson Mark-4 Class 22-tonner, almost twenty years old, black-hulled and in dire need of a coat of paint. The once-white deck was rusted, and further rust marks stained the hull. A couple of black tires were leaned against the superstructure. As a Navy ship, it looked like a Third World fishing smack. But it was the only way to leave unnoticed, and the Senegalese, sharing their Muslim faith, had been willing to help, although Ravi guessed his colleagues in Bandar Abbas had paid expensively for this short Inter-Navy 10-mile voyage, probably as much as the boat was worth.
On board were three smiling seamen, jet black in color, with gleaming white teeth, no uniforms, white T-shirts and jeans. They waved cheerfully and tossed for’ard and aft lines across to the
Barracuda
’s deck crew to make her fast.
“Are we actually going on board this wreck,” whispered Shakira.
“ ’Fraid so,” said Ravi. “At the moment, it’s all we’ve got.”
They stood on the casing in the rain and said their good-byes to Ben Badr, Shakira’s brother Ahmed, and the XO, Capt. Ali Akbar Mohtaj. Everyone had known this was as far as the General and
his wife were going, but there was a great deal of sadness in their departure.
Now, however, the task of the
Barracuda
was strictly operational. The mission was laid out, her course set, her missiles loaded, their tracks preplanned. All that was required was a careful command, dead-slow speeds, if they were close to any other ships, and a steady run into deep getaway waters.
There would be satellite signals in and out of Bandar Abbas. There would be possible adjustments in the orders, but the signals coming back to the submarine would be direct from General Rashood. There was comfort in that for all of the
Barracuda
’s executives.
And there was an even greater comfort in knowing that if plans needed to be altered in any way, they would be schemed by the General, the Hamas military leader who would now play satellite poker with the Americans in the final stages of the operation to drive them out of the Middle East forever. On board the
Barracuda
, there was nothing more Ravi could do.
Shakira hugged her brother, kissed Ben Badr on both cheeks, and shook hands with Capt. Ali Akbar. Ravi shook hands with each of them, and then steered his wife towards the gangway. She carried with her a long dark blue seaman’s duffel bag, in which was stored her makeup, shirts, spare jeans, underwear, and Kalashnikov AK-47.
General Rashood watched her traverse the little bridge holding the rail with one hand, and then he too stepped off the deck of the
Barracuda
for the first time since they left the Chinese port of Huludao in the Yellow Sea. And he made his way carefully over to the Senegalese Navy’s 52-foot-long
Matelot Oumar Ndoye
—whatever the hell that meant.
It took all six of the patrol boat’s crew to manhandle the gangway back aboard. The operation was conducted with a great deal of shouting and laughing. Twice it almost went over the side, and by the time they had it safely stowed, the
Barracuda
was gone, sliding beneath the great ocean that divides the African and American continents.
It was heading west, for the moment, out towards the burly shoulders of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, running effortlessly, 600 feet below the surface, in the gloomy depths of its own netherworld, far away from the prying eyes of the American photographer high in the sky.
Ravi and Shakira sat in a couple of chairs under an ancient awning on the stern, beneath the machine-gun mountings. The Captain, a heavily muscled ex-fisherman, had made a sporting attempt to introduce himself, but he spoke only French in a heavy Wolof vernacular. In the end, they settled for a laugh and a rough understanding that he was Captain Reme, and he’d have them moored in the great port of Dakar within thirty minutes.
So far as he could tell, Captain Reme was restricted to only two speeds—all-stopped and flat-out. Right now they were flat-out, in a ship that shuddered from end to end, as its aged diesels struggled to drive the twin shafts at their maximum possible revs.
Happily the sea was calm all the way, aside from a long Atlantic swell, and the
Matelot
shuddered along at its top speed of 20 knots, towards the great Muslim city of Dakar, where at least one of the towering white mosques rivals the finest in Istanbul and Tehran. Senegal has always had one foot in the Middle East and one in West Africa, similar to Dakar, which has been called the crossroads in which black Africa, Islam, and Christianity have met for centuries, occasionally clashed, yet ultimately blended. The bedrock of the country’s subsistence economy is peanut oil and not much is left over for Senegal’s Navy budget. The U.S. Government spent more on the Pentagon’s cleaning staff than Senegal spent on its Navy.
Captain Reme was as good as his word. They pulled alongside in exactly thirty minutes. The elderly diesels had not shaken the ramshackle craft to pieces, and Ravi and Shakira stepped ashore into a working Naval dockyard. Much of the quayside was stacked with fishing gear and shrimp nets, which made it a somewhat more relaxed operation than the one they left ten weeks ago on the shores of China’s Yellow Sea.
But it was a dockyard, no doubt about that. On two adjoining keys, there was a 450-ton French-built Navy patrol craft, twenty-six years old, lightly gunned, named
Njambuur
. Next to it was a Navy coastal patrol craft, a Canadian-built Interceptor-class gun-boat, thirty years old. No engines were running. It was plain to Ravi that the Senegalese Navy was not planning to go to war with anyone in the near future.
They were greeted by the head of the Navy, a broad-shouldered black officer, age around forty, Captain Camara, whose teeth were as white as his short-sleeved uniform shirt. He saluted and said, in impeccable English, how pleased he was to welcome them to his humble headquarters. He had spoken to his friend Admiral Badr in Iran only that morning, and everything was ready, as planned.
He would, he said, be driving them personally out to the airport, a short distance of just three miles. But first he was sure they would like some tea. Their aircraft expected them at 1800, so they had half an hour to kill.
Thus, in the now hot late-afternoon sun, General and Mrs. Rashood were ashore at last, strolling along the peaceful African waterfront, through the very heart of the sleepy Senegalese Navy—just a couple of weeks before they were scheduled to eliminate the entire East Coast of the United States of America. The contrast was not lost on either of them.
Tea with Captain Camara was a cheerful interlude. They sat outside and watched little boats crossing the harbor, sipping English tea with sugar but no milk, from tall glasses in silver holders. The Captain asked no questions about the long voyage of the
Barracuda
, though he plainly understood that there was a dark, subversive edge to its mission.
He knew his guests were important, and he knew they had arrived in a submarine, which had then vanished. But he did not think it was his place to pry into the business of his fellow Muslims, who would shortly be flying home across the vast wilderness of the Sahara Desert, which lies to the northeast of Dakar.