"At Langley," replied Stansfield.
"Keep me updated, and good luck." With that the president left the room.
Strait of Hormuz Persian Gulf
THE WIND SWEPT across the surface of the dark water as layers of billowing, low-slung clouds raced overhead in a crisscrossing pattern.
The higher cluster headed northwest toward the open water of the Persian Gulf, while the lower clouds moved inland from the island dotted Strait of Hormuz to the mainland of ancient Persia and present-day Iran. The moon peeked through an occasional hole in the clouds. With the howling wind, the rain came and went in varying degrees of strength. It was not a night to be on the water.
In the shallows of a five-foot swell, a mast broke the surface and continued to rise, slashing into the high side of the trough like the ominous dorsal fin of a shark. White foam churned behind the narrow object as it continued southward. Rising a full ten feet above the waves, it instantly began to search the night sky. The thin tiger-striped object was an electronic support measures antenna designed to detect radar emissions. Seconds later the thin mast was joined by another. This mast scanned the horizon a full three hundred sixty degrees, and then both objects submerged as quickly as they had appeared.
Underneath the stormy surface, a very expensive piece of hardware silently stalked the coast of Iran. Unbeknownst to all but her crew, she had just released her lethal cargo. As the 688class attack submarine turned for international waters, two heads bobbed to the surface and then three more. The swells rose and fell around them as they converged in a circle. One of the men wrestled with a black bag, freed the strap that was holding it together, and then pulled a cord. The IBS (inflatable boat: small) began to unfold and fill with air. Less than a minute later the boat was fully inflated, and two of the men began the process of attaching a small outboard engine to the back, while a third readied the fuel bladder. The rough seas tossed the boat in every direction, but the men worked undeterred.
As soon as the motor was secured, the last two men climbed into the boat, their black wet suits making them nearly invisible against the dark rubber. The engine was primed three times, and on the second pull it caught. The man in back twisted the throttle, and they scooted forward up the side of a swell.
Lieutenant Commander Dan Harris held on to one of the straps at the front of the boat and checked the compass strapped to his wrist. Next he looked at his Global Positioning System. The small GPS device strapped next to his compass used eighteen satellites orbiting the earth ten thousand miles up in space to tell him his exact location to within four meters.
The submarine had dropped off Harris and his men thirty meters from where he had requested. Harris grinned through his thickly bearded face at the professionalism demonstrated by those anal-retentive submariners.
They were, from top to bottom, nothing if not perfectionists.
The muscular commander gripped the hand strap a little tighter as the boat crashed nose first into the shallows of a swell. Dan Harris, Annapolis class of'81, was somewhat of an oddity. He was both cultured and uncouth, temperamental and unflappable, angry and calm, emotional and logical, compassionate and ruthless—he was, in short, whatever the situation dictated. He had learned by watching the naval special-warfare commanders that had gone before him. The U.S. Navy was a huge bureaucracy, and if you wanted to be able to run your command your own way, you had to spend an awful lot of time stroking the egos of the admirals who wrote the orders. Lt.
Commander Dan Harris had walked that fine line almost to perfection, and that was why he was about to head into action while his colleagues were sitting behind desks at Little Creek and Coronado.
The small rubber boat slammed into a wave, and a deluge of cool, salty water sprayed over the bow, drenching the five bearded members of the U.S. Navy's top secret counterterrorist force SEAL Team Six. Harris shook the water from his face, and his ponytail whipped from side to side in the air behind him. The five men crashing through the rough water on this stormy night were known in the covert-operations business as longhaired SEALs. They were allowed to break Navy regulations on facial hair and hair length for just this type of mission.
They were the best shooters in the business, and hence, given the most clandestine and often roughest missions.
The men possessed many similar traits, but at first glance the most notable was their dark features. Lt. Commander Harris had handpicked the men, and for tonight's mission they were traveling extra light. Harris had brought along his best.
There would be no room for mistakes.
Bandar Abbas, Iran
A LARGE WAVE crashed to the beach, its back end sending a spray of salt water into the air. Mitch Rapp adjusted his turban and wiped the salt water from his face. He looked up and down the coast checking to make sure he was alone. Walking toward the pier to the north, he stopped, picked up a pop can and dropped it into his canvas bag. He continued his hunched shuffle. When he reached the wood pier, he walked underneath and checked the other side. Next, he walked back under the pier and up the incline of beach to check the small recesses where the wooden structure was secured to its concrete foundation.
For the next ten minutes Rapp methodically checked every part of the structure to make sure it was unoccupied. He had picked the landing zone, and it was his responsibility to make sure there were no surprises.
Rapp checked his watch while the wind whistled through the tangled web of wood pilings that supported the pier.
Everything was on schedule. Rapp had given up almost ten years of his life for this moment, and he was not going to let it slip away.
Persian Gulf
THE NUCLEAR-POWERED aircraft carrier USS Independence pounded through the stormy waters. She and her battle group of twelve ships and two submarines had been on patrol in the northern part of the gulf for the last twenty-three days.
Late the previous evening the group had been ordered to proceed on a sweep to the south and east, back toward the Strait of Hormuz Just three hours earlier, under the cover of darkness, the large gray carrier had taken on two U.S. Air Force helicopters, which now sat just amidships of the carrier's island structure.
Both helicopters were painted a flat tan with stripes of a slightly darker brown. They belonged to the 1st Special Operations Wing—the people in charge of getting American commandos in and out of the hairiest places on earth. The first and larger of the two helicopters was an MH-53J Pave Low. With a price tag of close to forty million dollars, the Pave Low was considered the most advanced military helicopter in the world.
It took a crew of six to fly this large and complex helicopter, and its navigational system rivaled those of the most advanced fighter-bombers in the U.S. arsenal. The Pave Low was equipped with the Air Force's Enhanced Navigation System, or ENS. Using twenty separate systems, such as Doppler navigation, automatic direction finders, attitude director indicators, GPS, and a bevy of compasses and gyroscopes, the ENS told the pilots exactly where they were at all times.
This system was what allowed the highly trained aviators of the 1st Special Operations Wing to fly hundreds of miles, at treetop level, in the worst of weather conditions and land exactly on a target within seconds of their stated extraction or infiltration time. Which, in the business of special ops, could mean the difference between success and failure, or more pointedly, life and death. It took an unusual aviator to handle this large, complicated helicopter and the Air Force made sure that only the most qualified pilots were given the controls of these technological marvels.
The second helicopter was only two-thirds the size of the hulking Pave Low. The MD-5300 Pave Hawk was equipped with a reduced version of the Pave Low's Enhanced Navigation System. The smaller, more agile, helicopter would be riding shotgun for tonight's mission. Inside both crafts, the pilots and flight crews were methodically running down their preflight checklists. There would be no room for mistakes. The slightest mistake could result in death and if it happened over land, worse, an international incident.
Iranian Coast
LT. COMMANDER. CLAN Harris held a pair of night-vision binoculars up to his eyes and tried in vain to search the landing area. Even though they were only several hundred yards onshore, he could barely see a thing.
The boat was being thrashed in and out of the stormy sea, which made it impossible to hold the binoculars steady. Just when he had an area framed, the boat would shift and he'd end up staring at the back of a wave ten feet in front of them.
Harris secured the night-vision binoculars in a waterproof pack and stuck his right hand into the neck of his scuba suit.
The commando retrieved the earpiece to his secure Motorola MX300 radio and cupped it next to his left ear. Above the din of water and wind, he shouted, "Iron Man, this is Whiskey Five.
Do you read? Over." Harris's throat mike picked up his words and broadcast them.
The crackled reply came over the earpiece.
"Whiskey Five, this is Iron Man. I read you loud and clear. Over."
Harris turned his back to the wind in hopes that he could hear better.
"We are in position. Iron Man. What's the status of our LZ?"
"Everything is secure."
"Roger that. We'll see you in five." Harris pulled at the neck of his wet suit with his left hand and stuffed the headset back inside. Turning to his men, he shouted, "Grab your gear, and let's get moving."
Each man checked his swim pack and put on his fins and dive mask. When everyone had given the thumbs-up sign, Harris gave the order to go over the sides. Once in the water the SEALs unsheathed their K-bars and punctured the sides of the rubber boat. Musty air hissed its way free.
After ten seconds, the weight of the motor began to pull the deflated boat under the surface and to the bottom.
Seeing the pier from the boat was hard enough; trying to do it from the water was futile. Everyone took a compass reading, and then Harris ordered his best swimmer to take the lead.
The five men swam in a tight formation, checking their heading as they went. After several minutes of rough swimming, they neared the pier, maneuvered around the south side of the structure, and lined up to catch a wave. In unison, the five SEALs rode a wave in on their bellies. One by one they gently landed on the beach, and like alligators they scurried their way along the wet sand until they were safely out of sight under the pier.
Without being ordered, each man moved into a defensive position of cover their Heckler & Koch 10-mm MP-10 submachine guns already extracted from their waterproof packs and ready to fire. Attached to the threaded barrels of the weapons were thick, black water-technology sound suppressors that made the weapons extremely quiet. Two of the men crawled to the north side, two stayed at the south side, and Harris moved to the middle. All of them remained right at the surf line.
The waves continued to pound the beach a clamoring of thunderous echoes reverberated from the tangled maze of the pier. The surf raced up the beach and enveloped all of Harris except his head and weapon. The frothing water subsided in a retreat, and then seconds later was replaced by another wave.
Harris looked around the left side of a barnacle-coated piling and studied the wooden labyrinth before him. The roar of the surf and the howling wind made listening difficult. As Harris looked in and around the maze of wooden supports, the SEAL heard a faint whistle followed by another and then a third. Then, about thirty feet away, a man in a white robe stepped from behind one of the pilings and waved. Harris kept the thick, black silencer of his submachine gun trained on the man's head.
Mitch Rapp approached with his arms extended outward and his hands open.
In a voice just loud enough to be heard over the crashing surf, he said,
"Danny Boy."
Harris took his eyes off Rapp for a second and checked the areas to his left and right. Then rising to one knee, he said, "It's good to see you, Mitch."
Rapp was one of the few people from the intelligence community that Harris trusted. This trust was based on two facts. The first being that Rapp, like Harris and his SEALs, actually put his life on the line and got down and dirty out in the field. The second, Harris had seen Rapp in action, and he was efficient, lethally efficient.
"We don't have a lot of time to screw around, so let's get you and your men changed and get rolling."
Harris stood and whistled; then he motioned for his men to follow. Rapp led the five SEALs up into the recesses of the pier where it met with the road. While they changed, Rapp kept watch. Each of the SEALs folded up his wet suit once on his legs and again on his arms. Then they pulled djellabas, sandals, and turbans from their packs. Within minutes they were in disguise and ready to go.
Rapp pulled the group into a tight circle. He had worked with all of the SEALs on previous missions and greeted them individually. Harris had brought along four of his best. To Rapp's right was Mick Reavers, a big linebacker type who weighed in at about two hundred fifty pounds. Next to Reavers were Tony Clark and Jordan Rostein, both medium-built demolition experts who had been swim buddies since they went through Basic Underwater Demolition School, or BUDS, as it was known in the SEAL community. And lastly there was little Charlie Wicker, known by his friends as simply Slick.
Barely five foot six. Wicker weighed less than one hundred fifty pounds, but what he lacked in size he made up for in talent.
Wicker could climb, slither, and shoot better than anyone at SEAL Team Six or Delta Force. He was possibly the best sniper in the business, and with that position came a strange respect.
Other soldiers tend to give snipers a wide berth. Their survival instincts tell them it's not a good idea to mess with someone who can shoot you dead in the head from a thousand yards. Harris and his men had received continuous intelligence updates while onboard the Honolulu.
Thanks to Rapp's intelligence from the ground and the high-resolution satellite imaging of Bandar Abbas, Harris and his men had been able to coordinate the formation of their plan with Rapp before leaving the boat.
Rapp, bent down on one knee, looked at the other five bearded Americans and asked, "Any questions before we get started?" Each of the men answered with a simple shake of his head. Rapp nodded and said, "Good. Harry, let's get things rolling."
Harris touched his lip mike and said, "Bravo Six, this is Whiskey Five. What's your status? Over."
There were several seconds of static, and then the reply came back.
"Whiskey Five, this is Bravo Six. We are ready to roll. Over."
"What's your ETA for our extraction? Over."
"Three two minutes. I repeat three two minutes. Over."
Harris looked at his men and Rapp, who were all listening to the same conversation over their headsets.
"Start the extraction countdown on my mark. Over."
"Roger."
All six men sitting under the dark pier synchronized their digital wristwatches accordingly. Harris spoke precisely.
"Three, two, one, mark." Harris pressed the button on his watch and said, "We'll see you in thirty-two minutes. Bravo Six."
Looking to his left, Harris said, "Slick, you hit the road first. "Then, jerking his thumb, he added, "Get going."
The wiry sniper rose and left the group without saying a word. Two minutes later Tony and Jordan moved out, and then finally Rapp, Harris, and Reavers made their way out from under the tangled wooden structure.