Kilo Option, page 2
His wife and children were safe in the deserts to the far west of the capital city, but he felt the pain of Kassem’s loss as if it had been his own family in the rubble. He’d been like an uncle to Kassem’s two daughters. But now that their training was finished and it was time to fight, he was more than ready, he was anxious.
As Kassem boarded the inflatable he looked up toward the bridge deck. Sidorenkov came out and stood by the rail. When Midafi had the highly muffled 3-hp outboard motor running and they were heading away from the patrol boat, Kassem looked back again. This time Sidorenkov waved once and went inside, the brief flash of red light all that was visible of the boat which was rapidly swallowed by the blackness of the sea and the jumble of lights on the offshore oil rigs several kilometers to their southeast.
They made it to the stony beach in slightly over fifteen minutes, where in silence they carried the inflatable a dozen meters up into the tall sea grasses and brush above the high-tide line and crouched out of sight of any chance patrol that might be passing. Midafi stood watch while Kassem checked their exact position with a handheld GPS (global positioning system) navigator.
They were within ten meters of their planned landing spot, which placed the Iranian navy base of Bandar-é Emn Khomeini three and a half kilometers up the beach to the east.
Kassem took a pair of binoculars from one of the packs and rose up high enough out of the grass that he could make a complete 360-degree sweep of their position. The lights were confusing at first, making it hard to distinguish between the navy base, the town of Bandar Ma’shur, which had been renamed Bandar-é Emn, and the dozens of oil platforms dotted just offshore. But after several moments he could pick out the lights along the base’s perimeter fence as well as those around a low, heavily barricaded installation a few hundred meters from the coastal highway. It was where electricity for the navy base was generated. The feeder lines, like most of the station, were underground to protect them from missile attacks. But the station did have one exploitable weakness. The ventilator intakes that supplied outside air to the diesel generators had to be out in the open, hidden only by camouflage paint and netting. Finding their exact location had taken nearly five months and had cost the lives of three very good men, all of them Kassem’s friends. But without that information tonight’s mission wouldn’t have had one chance in a thousand of success.
Midafi unlashed the equipment and he and Kassem strapped on the heavy packs. Keeping low, and with M-16s at the ready, they raced up from the beach grasses, across the open ground studded with scrub brush and other beach and desert flora, toward the east.
They stopped twice so that Kassem could study the power station through his binoculars. Fifty meters away he could finally pick out the four air shafts clearly enough to make a positive identification. Their locations and configurations were exactly as he had studied from the photographs and diagrams they’d been supplied. He checked the luminous dial of his watch.
“We’re still on schedule.”
“Good.” At home Midafi was garrulous, but in the field he was a man of very few words.
Crouching on the hardpan, they unslung their packs. Midafi’s contained four lightweight tripods that stood less than a meter tall and were painted flat black for low visibility. Each was equipped with an operator-set firing pack that would spit out an electronic spike after a delay of 0 to 600 seconds. He set the tripods up two meters apart in a straight row.
Kassem’s pack contained four specially modified American-made M72 A2 antitank rockets. He took them out, one at a time, extended their cardboard tubes, and handed them to Midafi, who set them on the tripods. Working swiftly, but carefully and methodically, Midafi aimed the rockets at the four ventilator shaft heads which were disguised to look like small fishing shacks, attached the firing harnesses, and set the firing delay for 300 seconds.
“This’ll give the bastards something to think about,” he said.
“If the jets are on time,” Kassem replied softly. “In sha’Allah.”
He checked his M-16 to make sure it was ready to fire, then headed parallel to a dirt road that connected the power station with the service and supply gate into the base, Midafi falling in beside him in a deceptively slow but distance-eating gait.
They were at their most vulnerable now. A chance patrol might discover them. Motion sensors could have been installed since the last time one of their operatives had been here. Or, and this was the most chilling possibility in Kassem’s mind, the Iranians might have planted land mines. It was not uncommon. Iran and Iraq were the most heavily land-mined countries on earth. So many were planted, in fact, that no one had any idea where they all were. One wrong step and there would be a sudden blinding flash, a brief instant of intense pain, and then, for the lucky ones, oblivion.
Within minutes they reached, unharmed, a position twenty meters below and to the west of the service gate, where they crouched in a ditch. Kassem trained his binoculars on the guard shack. He picked out one man inside and two standing together in the middle of the road on the opposite side of the barrier. A fourth guard came from behind the building, joining the two on the road. They were armed with Russian-designed AK-47 assault rifles, and were dressed in night-operations camos.
Midafi touched his arm. “Now,” he whispered.
Kassem heard nothing but the sounds of small waves on the beach below, machinery running somewhere on the base, and perhaps a truck rumbling somewhere in the distance. But then the distinctive roar of two F/A-18 Hornets came in very low from the north, shattering the relative quiet of the night so completely and suddenly that any rational thought was out of the question.
The first missile strike took out the guardhouse and gate, and moments later the four LAW rockets across the no-man’s land behind them hit the power station’s ventilator shafts.
Kassem and Midafi turned their black tunics and trousers inside out, revealing the Iranian Palace Guards’ dark camo pattern, then rushed up the hill to the shattered gate and furiously burning guardhouse.
One of the Iranian soldiers was still alive, in shock but on his feet. He turned around in surprise as Kassem appeared out of the darkness. For a moment it was obvious that he thought help had arrived, but then his eyes widened as Kassem raised his rifle and fired three rounds into his chest, blowing him off his feet.
The big diesels in the power-generating station, deprived of air because the ventilator shafts were now blocked, shut down, plunging most of the base into darkness. Only a few emergency lights were on anywhere, and those were overpowered by the blossoms of fire springing up on two of the nearby oil platforms, which the jet fighters were attacking.
The base was coming alive like a suddenly disturbed anthill, but no one noticed two Palace Guard officers racing on foot down the hill toward the heavily fortified administration building at the head of the deeply dredged inner harbor.
They had trained for eleven weeks, every conceivable obstacle placed in their path, and so far their training was paying off. But it was too soon for self-congratulations, Kassem cautioned himself. They still had to find what they’d come for, and then get out with it. Impossible odds. But there were no other choices.
The night before they’d left camp, they’d been brought into the emergency bunker of the RCC where Saddam Hussein waited for them.“Go with the blessings of Allah, and of me,” he said. “For our glorious cause!”
Troop transports, jeeps, and armored personnel carriers, along with hundreds of soldiers on foot, some of them only half dressed, were starting to clog the roads. Although some of the activity was moving toward the apparent source of the attack, many of the soldiers were rushing about in all directions. There didn’t seem to be any organization yet. The confusion would not last, but in the meantime it was exactly what they’d hoped for.
Kassem pulled up short in the shadows across from the windowless, two-story building that looked as if it were deserted.
Double chain-link fences topped with rolls of razor wire, through which there was only one entrance, encircled the building. Gun emplacements were mounted on the four corners of the roof, which also bristled with communications antennae, radar domes, and satellite dishes. An emergency generator was up and running, supplying power to the poured concrete building, and to powerful spotlights that bathed every square meter of the fence. But there was no movement anywhere.
Midafi studied the entry gate and guardhouse through binoculars. “There’s at least one of them hiding in there like a rabbit. Maybe two.”
Kassem looked at his watch. “Any second now—”
He was interrupted by a bright flash and explosion at the telephone exchange in the direction from which they’d come. Then one of the F/A-18s roared low overhead, the noise deafening.
“Now,” Kassem shouted. He and Midafi raced across the open ground and along the fence to the main entry.
Two Palace Guards, their AK-47s unslung, nervously watched from the door of the gatehouse.
“Open up! We’re under attack!” Kassem shouted.
“What’s going on?” one of the guards demanded. “The phone lines are down, we can’t reach anyone.”
“That’s why we’re here!”
Another rocket landed somewhere along the base perimeter fence, and the second F/A-18 screamed overhead.
“Move it, you godless dogs!”
The thoroughly confused guard motioned for the other one to release the gate lock, and both gates swung inward.
“Who’s attacking, for God’s sake?” the first guard demanded.
“Get inside, you fool,” Kassem ordered, roughly herding the man back into the guard post. Then he shot both men at point-blank range, their bodies crashing to the floor, blood splashing behind them on the walls.
Midafi had the gates closed and relocked and was waving off a jeepload of soldiers when Kassem emerged. They could hear more explosions offshore as the jets directed the attack back to the oil rigs. The night sky was eerily lit by fires.
Inside the administration blockhouse the main corridor was deserted. They reached the broad stairs at the far end and took them two levels down to a pair of steel doors that led even deeper into the bowels of the building.
A lone guard stepped out of the shadows and raised his rifle, but before he could issue a challenge, Kassem shot him in the chest with a short burst, the force of the three rounds driving the man’s body up against the wall.
Midafi entered the five-digit lock code their operatives had gotten for them.
Something was wrong. Kassem could feel it in his gut. “The guards,” he said, looking back the way they’d just come.
The lock cycled open. “What about them?” Midafi asked.
“There should be more security here.”
“The attack drew them away.”
“It’s not right—”
“We can’t turn back, Jamal! Not this close!”
One piece of information is all we need, my brothers. But you must bring us proof. A serial number, a photograph … something. It is of vital importance. Worth your lives. Worth a thousand lives.
Kassem nodded.
Midafi pulled open the doors, stepped through, then stopped short, his breath catching in his throat as he stared in open-mouthed awe at what lay thirty meters below.
Four huge submarines, each nearly the length of a soccer field, floated low in the water, their decks nearly awash, the top of their sails, from which the periscopes and electronic masts rose, painted with fleet numbers and the green, white, and red flag of Iran. The warships looked like malevolent sea creatures, dark and ungodly, water glistening off the cluster-guard anechoic tiles that covered their hulls like armor-plated fish scales. Heathen inventions. Satan’s tools.
Kassem stepped through the doorway and stood next to Midafi on the catwalk. He too was moved to silence. He had studied the scale drawings and diagrams, had seen the photographs and read the specifications, and he had been briefed by the engineers at the training camp. But he was not completely prepared for the deadly bulk of the four great machines lying in the water below.
Bandar-é Emn Khomeini Navy Base was Iran’s most closely guarded nonsecret. Two years ago Tehran had purchased the last of four Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines from Moscow, and had completed construction of the hardened submarine pens to house them out of harm’s way. Massive high-carbon steel doors protected the openings through which the subs would pass out into the Gulf. Electronic surveillance and alarm devices covered every square meter of the pens, and Iran’s elite Palace Guards patrolled the base with orders to shoot to kill without hesitation. Because of the extraordinary precautions, every intelligence agency in the world knew what was here, or thought they did.
Kassem felt a sudden, deep sense of despair, and defeat. If these ships were allowed to become fully operational, Iraq would never have a chance of survival. They would be caught between their infidel enemies to the west and a more dangerous enemy here on their doorstep.
The forward loading hatch on the submarine directly below them was open, and a torpedo or missile held in a hoist was poised to be lowered. Whether or not it was a nuclear weapon was impossible to tell at this distance. But it was what they had been sent to find out.
Iran had the submarines. But if Tehran also had managed to buy nuclear weapons from their Russian allies, the threat would be infinitely greater. It was information that Iraq would leak to the West, if they could come up with the proof.
Three technicians in white coveralls spewed out from an open hatch in the sail and looked up toward the catwalk where Kassem and Midafi stood in the relative darkness. They were armed with automatic weapons.
“It’s a trap!” Midafi shouted at the same moment powerful floodlights lit the sub pens as bright as day and a Klaxon began to blare.
Kassem fell back through the doorway as the technicians opened fire, catching Midafi with at least a half-dozen rounds to the gut and head. He was dead before he hit the deck.
It was a missile they’d been loading aboard the submarine. Kassem fixed on that thought. A nuclear missile. He was certain of it. Otherwise why the trap?
But Karim was dead! There was no helping that. And, Kassem realized with a sick feeling, the radio transmitter was in Midafi’s pack.
He turned and sprinted back up the stairs to the main corridor as four Palace Guards stormed through the front doors.
“The infidels have reached the submarine pens!” Kassem shouted in formal Farsi. “Thou must block their retreat!”
“How many art there, sir?” the lead soldier asked. He was confused. His orders were to spring a trap on a force of infiltrators, but no one had told him that one of his own officers would be down here issuing orders.
Other alarms were coming to life throughout the compound. More soldiers streamed through the front entrance.
“At least ten, possibly more. No matter what, thou must hold them until I return with help!”
“Yes, sir,” the Palace Guard replied, and he led his troops toward the stairs.
Outside, Kassem commandeered a passing jeep and ordered the driver to take him immediately to the Base Security Command Post. A half-block later he shot the man, dumped his body in the shadows, and headed toward the front gate.
Escape by sea was out of the question without the transmitter to call the patrol boat. Nor could he message his own people about what he’d seen. Which meant he had to make it home at all costs.
For Karim’s sake. In sha’Allah. For Saddam Hussein’s return to his rightful place in Baghdad.
2
THE PENTAGON
A tall, moderately well-dressed civilian took his place all but unnoticed in the line of employees, most in uniform, waiting to turn in their security badges. He carried a briefcase in his left hand and his plastic, Level Two badge in his right. He avoided eye contact with anyone, his actions not particularly unusual because he was known by his co-workers to be standoffish, though efficient and highly regarded as an electronics systems analyst.
When it was his turn he handed over his badge and put his briefcase on the belt that moved through the scanning machine. When it came through he reached for it, but a Pentagon security agent picked it up instead, and a second agent appeared at his elbow.
“If we could have a moment of your time, Mr. Isaacs.”
Isaacs had his hand out for his briefcase. He looked over his shoulder, then back at the first agent, a nervous, guilty expression on his face. He pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.
He was a square, solidly built man, nearly six two, with thick black hair that he combed straight back without a part. His eyes were wide and brown and serious, and his swarthy complexion, sharply chiseled features, and thick dark eyebrows gave him an aristocratic appearance.
“Is there something wrong?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir. It’s pilfering.”
“What, do you mean like stealing paper clips?”
“It’s a little more serious than that,” the agent replied evenly.
The man looked to the other agent. “Am I a suspect?”
“We’re checking everybody,” the agent said. He wore civilian clothes, the bulge of a pistol unmistakable beneath his suit coat at his left side.
“Start paying us more and it might not happen,” Isaacs retorted sharply.
The agents gave him an odd, bleak look, then escorted him into a small office devoid of any furnishings except for a table. “May we look inside?” the one agent asked, setting the briefcase on the table.
“What are you looking for?”
“Whatever doesn’t belong to you.”
Isaacs shrugged. “It’s not locked, so go ahead, but you’re not going to find anything very interesting.”
While the first agent opened the briefcase, the second asked to see Isaacs’s identification. He took it out of his wallet and handed it over.
The second agent studied the ID photo, then looked up at Isaacs’s face. “What does the P stand for?”
