Kilo Option, page 31
He looked at his watch in the dim red battle light. “We’ll give it one more minute before we go in.”
“If they suspected that they were under attack they would have surfaced the boat,” Krasilnikov suggested. He was their communications and electronic countermeasures specialist. Like many submariners, he was a slightly built man. A small size was a premium on a cramped submarine.
“At the very least flooded this compartment and locked us out,” Yernin agreed.
“That’s a cheery thought.”
They removed their weapons from waterproof pouches and checked the loads. They carried Mac-10 compact submachine guns loaded with rubber bullets. The ammunition was powerful enough to incapacitate a man, but would not penetrate metal, such as the pressure hull or any of the hundreds of miles of vital plumbing aboard a submarine.
Yernin pulled the Mac-10’s ejector slide back, thumbed off the safety catch, and motioned for Krasilnikov to open the hatch.
A very slight odor of almonds mingled with diesel oil and electronics wafted up to them when the hatch was open. The compartment below them was empty.
Yernin cautiously stuck his head through the opening. The two men who’d been waiting for them lay in a heap near a hatch a few meters aft. One of them had his hand on the dogging lever. Realizing they were in mortal danger, they’d tried to retreat and seal off this section of the boat. But they’d not had enough time.
There were no sounds in the boat except for the air-circulating fans which had helped disperse the deadly gas throughout the boat. Before the captain and his crew knew that they were in serious trouble, it was already too late.
Yernin climbed down into the boat, completely indifferent to the forty-five or fifty bodies he knew they would find aboard. But when he looked up into Krasilnikov’s eyes he could see that the young man was already deeply affected by what they had done with such seeming ease.
It would put all of them on edge, which was just as well, Yernin thought. It would make them more respectful of the danger they were in.
Mohammad’s Star sent one pong from its active sonar, and ten minutes later Captain Razhin and his executive officer, Lieutenant Ivan Ablakin, locked aboard and came forward to the control room.
Yernin and Krasilnikov had already begun moving bodies into the forward spaces, away from the galley and crew’s quarters.
“The status board is all green,” Yernin told the captain, who studied the gauges and dials at the sub’s control station forward of the periscope pedestal.
“We’re settling at the bow because of the redistributed weight,” Razhin said.
His XO adjusted two of the ballast tanks, and the bow came up three degrees.
“Da,” Razhin grunted, satisfied. “The remainder of my crew will be locked aboard within ten minutes.”
“How soon can we head south?” Yernin asked.
Razhin looked beyond him toward the open hatch forward of the sail. “Was anyone left alive?”
“No.”
The short, wiry captain met Yernin’s steady gaze. “This is a hard business.”
“There was no other way,” Yernin replied coolly. “You and your men volunteered.”
Razhin dismissed the comment with a wave. “I agree, Comrade Yernin, with the necessity. But I do not share your disregard for life.”
“Your own included?”
Lieutenant Ablakin looked up sharply.
“Anyone’s life,” the captain answered steadily. “How long before the bodies are out of our way?”
“Give me another man and we’ll have it done in a half-hour.”
“Very well,” Razhin said. “In that case, providing there is nothing wrong with this boat, we’ll get under way then.”
“Is your brother clear on his instructions?”
“Yes. Nikolai and his crew will move the Good Hope to Kuwait City where they’ll refuel and restock, then catch up with us,” Razhin assured him.
Nikolai Razhin was captain of the Good Hope and a Black Sea Fleet submariner just like his brother, so he fully understood the operation. The surface ship would provide a noisy cover for Mohammad’s Star when she passed through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The Chicago’s sensors would be overloaded long enough for the Kilo boat to sneak past and get out into the open sea.
If the Good Hope were to be stopped and boarded, it wouldn’t matter. Her paperwork was in order. Razhin and his friends were on holiday. They’d chartered the boat out of Bombay and were on their way back. An unlikely story, but there was no proof to say otherwise.
Nikolai’s complete loyalty was assured by the presence of his brother aboard the Iranian submarine. If he made a mistake, his brother’s life would be at risk. So he would be careful.
Maslennikov liked the idea when Yernin suggested using fathers and sons, or at least brothers, for the mission.
“We all have work to do,” Yernin said. “Let’s get on with it.”
Captain Razhin was hunched over the plotting table checking their course when Lieutenant Ablakin brought him a glass of tea from the galley. They’d been under way for three hours, and the boat was running at twelve knots without problems.
Razhin looked up tiredly. “Thanks. Has the crew settled down?”
“Fomenko, Yezhov, and Voskoboy are getting some sleep. I’ve put them three hours and on and three hours off, same as us.”
“Then you should be in your bunk, Ivan. Both of us should not be awake at the same time for now.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Razhin glanced over at the control station on the opposite side of the conn. Yernin was taking watch-on-watch with the rest of them. Tonight he was steering the boat.
“He’s a man without a soul,” he said.
“In his business it would be a hindrance.”
“Have you looked into his eyes?”
Ablakin shivered. “It’s like looking into a graveyard. I wouldn’t want him as my enemy.”
“No,” Razhin agreed. He held the warm glass between his hands, suddenly cold.
“What’s bothering you, Captain?” Ablakin asked.
Razhin looked up. “He’s hiding something.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve not been told the entire story. Captain Maslennikov said that we would be told everything once we set sail. But I don’t believe we have been.”
“How do you know?” Ablakin asked, looking at Yernin’s back.
Razhin shook his head. “I don’t. It’s just a feeling I have.”
“Don’t you trust Captain Maslennikov?”
“With my life,” Razhin replied quickly. “But I don’t think even he knows what’s in our helmsman’s twisted brain.”
“I see what you mean, Captain,” Ablakin said thoughtfully. “Whatever it is will involve murder.”
45
THE FRENCH RIVIERA
They’d shut off the pool lights, as well as all the lights on the patio and throughout the house. The only illumination came from the stars in the perfectly clear sky.
The night breeze had died, so there were no sounds on top of the hill, not even the dry rustling of palm fronds.
Lane swam underwater toward the ghostly figure in the far corner at the bottom of the pool. He was weightless and timeless, completely out of touch with the real world above. He felt as if he could hold his breath forever, it took no effort.
At the last moment the figure unfolded itself and glided soundlessly to him. Frances, her pale skin luminous, her eyes fixed on him as if he were her savior. Captain Nemo come to the rescue 20,000 leagues under the sea.
They embraced and slowly rose to the surface, their bodies intertwined like sea creatures engaged in a mysterious mating ritual.
He swam with her to the shallow end of the pool, where wordlessly he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Diaphanous gauze curtains hung nearly still, moving only slightly on a chance zephyr, brushing their bodies like butterfly wings as they passed.
He laid her on the big bed beneath the skylight and went into her arms, kissing her lips, her neck, his tongue tracing patterns around the nipples of her breasts, and lower until she cried out with pleasure.
“My god … I love you.”
“I love you too, Frannie,” he said, looking into her eyes as he entered her.
Her hips rose to meet him, and although she wanted to close her eyes and hold him so tightly that he could never leave her, she kept looking at him, touching him with her fingertips, her lips brushing his chest, his neck. Her body enfolding him, a deep, sensuous joining, her knees around his hips, but not squeezing tightly. Going with their natural rhythms without forcing anything, though it took every ounce of power within her not to scream his name and clutch him madly.
For those moments neither of them wanted to be anywhere else. No fantasies, no regrets, no impatient thrustings, hurrying to get it over with. Pleasure. Slowly. Deliberately. The pleasure of making love with someone for whom it wasn’t simply sex. It was something profoundly more important than that.
When they came in unison they finally held each other tightly, rolling over and over, sliding off the edge of the low bed onto the thick fur throw rugs on the floor, never wanting to let each other go. Never wanting this exact moment to end.
But gradually they parted. Tentatively at first, neither wanting to break the other’s pleasure, they lay back.
“Rather,” she whispered huskily.
“Every hospital should provide this exercise,” Lane said languidly. “Wonderful recuperative benefits.”
Frances laughed. “Is that what they meant by playing doctor when we were children?”
“Something like that.”
She propped herself up on one elbow, a leg thrown over his, and traced a pattern on his chest with a fingernail.
“We could quit and go to Tahiti,” she suggested playfully.
Lane smiled. “Is that why you joined the service, Frannie, to quit when things got difficult?”
“Touché,” she said, lying back again. “None the less, the thought has crossed my mind.”
“Then get out, there’d be no dishonor in it.”
“What, and become Mrs. Somebody? Stay home and cook porridge, clean nappies, things like that?”
“Become an adviser, an analyst.”
“Like you?” she shot back, and was immediately contrite. “Sorry, William.”
“If you’d seen with your own eyes what he did you’d know why I took this assignment.”
“Who are we talking about, Yernin or Hussein?”
Lane glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was coming up on 4 A.M. His flight left the Nice airport at six.
He got up and padded across to the bathroom, conscious that Frances’s eyes were on him. At the doorway he looked at her. She was beautiful in the soft starlight.
“Just answer me that much, would you please?” she said.
“Both,” he replied, and he went into the bathroom to get ready to leave.
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA
The meeting was held in a rambling two-story house hidden behind a tall whitewashed wall in a back alley off Al-Jami’ah Street near the race track. Lane arrived at 1:00 P.M.
“Was Ms. Shipley understanding?” Ben Lewis asked, showing him upstairs.
“No, but she’ll go along with whatever I want for the time being.” Lane dumped his bag in the corridor.
“She has important friends who could screw this operation for us.”
“She won’t.”
“If it blows up in our faces, people could get killed.”
“She won’t,” Lane repeated harshly. “And unless you’ve forgotten, a lot of people have already been killed. It’s why we’re here.”
They went upstairs to a roof garden that looked toward the city center. The skyline was dominated by the central water tower and the telephone exchange. Illegal drinks had been laid out on a low table. Several maps and a dozen or more photos were spread out on another.
“Would you like a drink, Bill? A glass of wine?”
“Where’s Tom?”
“He’s coming over with Walt Zimmerman, who’s chief of CIA operations here. I believe you’ve met.”
“When do I go in?”
Lewis looked at him over the rim of his glasses. In the old cold war days Lewis’s Russianness was a great asset. He knew how they thought, how they would react to any given set of circumstances. He, Tom Hughes, and Lane had become an unbeatable team. They’d become so close that outsiders swore they were capable of mental telepathy. But now things were different, sometimes even strained between them. The world had changed.
“That depends on you, but the timing is getting critical. After Nukhayb it’s anybody’s guess what Hussein might do next. You need briefing, and you need training. Say twenty-four hours. Forty-eight at the most. If you’re up to it.”
“I’ll manage,” Lane said. “Who’ll be training me?”
“The CIA. They have a station on the desert for just this sort of thing. And they’ll be taking you across the border when the time comes.”
“That means they know my mission.”
Lewis shook his ponderous head. “Not exactly.”
“But they know I’m going in to assassinate somebody.”
“Yes.”
“Ask us no questions and we’ll tell no lies?”
“Something like that, Bill,” Lewis admitted. “But we’re all on the same side here. They’re not the enemy.”
“You’ll handle briefing me?”
“Tom and I. He’s up to speed now.”
“What does he think about this mission?”
Lewis gave him a flat look. “I didn’t ask.”
Lane went to the table with the maps and photographs. They were all of the desert. The maps were topographic with latitude and longitude lines drawn at three-second intervals, which was the equivalent of a little over three hundred feet in latitude, and a little less than that in longitude.
The photos were satellite shots presumably of Saddam Hussein’s desert camp. In two of the shots three shadowy figures were visible some distance from the camp. One of them was a hundred yards or more from the other two.
“We think the lead one is Hussein,” Lewis said. “He likes to take walks in the cool of the evening. To clear his soul, or commune with his gods or something. The other two are his personal bodyguards.”
“How recent are these?” Lane asked.
“Most of them were shot twenty-four hours ago. Before you leave you’ll be given the latest information. It’s about as good as it gets.”
“Unless there’s cloud cover.”
“We’re not trying to get you killed, Bill,” Lewis said earnestly. “If it’s cloudy, we wait. If there’s some uncertainty about his exact location, we wait. Whatever it takes.”
Lane put the photographs down, walked to the edge of the roof garden, and looked out over the sprawling city. Here and now he was just as vulnerable to an assassin’s bullet as anyone else. Even presidents and popes with all their security were not immune. But the question came down to a philosophical issue, like all the important ones did.
If we could have killed Hitler in the thirties, before he brought the world to war, before he killed untold millions of people, should we have? Morally, ethically, should we have sent an assassin?
He had wrestled with this point of morality on two levels from the moment several weeks ago when he’d known they’d ask him to assassinate Hussein. The first was the philosophical issue for which he had no answer. But the second was the more practical issue. Morals aside, was he the man for this job? Was he capable of lying in wait in the desert, drawing a bead on the deposed Iraqi leader’s head, and squeezing the trigger?
He shivered, feeling the buck of the assassin’s rifle against his shoulder. Getting away would be the problem, but first he had to bring himself to pull the trigger.
Lane did not consider himself to be an intellectual. Far from it. But he was intelligent and he had a strong imagination. Qualities that were perfect for an intelligence analyst. But not so perfect for the field man because a lot of things could go wrong out there, and he could imagine every one of them and more.
“The weather over the Gulf has closed in, but central Iraq is supposed to be clear starting tomorrow night.” Lewis said. “If you’re ready by then, we could get the latest satellite images, pinpoint his location, and you could be in and out within a matter of hours. Certainly no more than a night and a day.”
“That’s a long time to hide out in the desert with a pissed-off army hunting for me.”
“His position is secret, so even if they do come looking for you they won’t make a big production out of it in case we take notice and call in the air force.”
Hughes and Zimmerman appeared at the head of the alley and started back on foot.
Lane stepped away from the edge of the roof. “When do I leave for the training camp?”
“As soon as Tom and Zimmerman show up.”
“They’re here now.”
Lewis’s eyes were bright. “You’ll do this, Bill?”
“Do I have a choice? Do any of us?”
“You have a choice.”
Lane nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“It’s a good thing—” Lewis said, but Lane stopped him.
“What about Yernin?”
Lewis was startled, but he switched gears without stumbling. “He’s disappeared.”
“Keep looking for him.”
“We will,” Lewis said.
“See that you do.
46
THE PERSIAN GULF
Technically, this was their first combat-ready patrol, Lieutenant Zaki Al-Rashid told himself. Until this moment the PHM9 Prince Faisal had engaged only in practice maneuvers within fifty kilometers of her home port of Al Jubayl. And this time instead of a mostly American crew, she was primarily being commanded and operated by a Saudi Arabian navy crew.
Only his XO, Lieutenant Robert Morrison, and their chief engineer, Lieutenant Kurt Moon, were American. And their orders were to defer strictly to their Saudi captain. It was a good feeling, only tainted slightly by a feeling of fear. This cruise would make or break Rashid and his crew. All of Riyadh was watching, especially the royal family, for him to maintain the proud Arabic tradition of self-sufficiency and fearlessness in the face of the enemy.
