“It’s the ‘Tanker War’ all over again,” Merk said, referring to the 1980s ship war in the Persian Gulf. Morgan Azar refused to discuss the geopolitics of the past, even though nothing had changed in nearly half a century.
Tasi dove to the bottom… echolocating to get a fix on the depth of the seafloor.
The last mine’s anchor landed nearby in a muted thud.
The sound told her she was close to the mines…
In the darkness, Tasi swam past the cluster, pulsing the mooring cables attached to the buoyant mines, while steering clear of touching the contact spikes.
Chapter Three
On the fishing vessel, an armed guard paced around the deck. Off the starboard, he glimpsed the dolphin Inapo surfacing alongside the ship, taking a breath, spying on the guards.
A glint on the dorsalcam lit up when the guard shined a flashlight. Another guard swung an AK-47 assault rifle, training it on the creature. He opened fire. The shots ripped the surface of the water just as Inapo dove under. The gunfire stirred other guards to spread around the vessel and search the water off the trawler for the navy dolphin.
One guard scouted the darkness beyond the stern. He saw the silhouette of the rubber boat. He pointed into the night, trying to get a fix on the target, panning the water with a flashlight. Several guards moved to the stern and took aim with rifles.
At the bow, a guard pounded on the cabin, alerting the captain about the intruder.
From the RHIB, Merk and Azar watched the commotion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the ship. A trio pulled a canvas off an inflatable boat with an outboard motor, dragged the craft to the gate, and pushed it into the sea.
“They marked us,” Merk said, as Azar cranked on the engine. Merk looked at the open water behind them and knew that if they fled toward Oman the Iranian pursuit boat would catch them. He opened a box and handed a flare gun to Azar, and then took over the outboard motor and gunned it. Merk steered the RHIB not away, but toward the trawler. Azar didn’t like the risky move. The RHIB boomed across the sea at a speed that earned the SEAL nickname “boghammer.”
The Iranian pursuit boat sped toward them. One guard opened fire; another unloaded a staccato burst.
Azar ducked, while Merk stayed low with bullets zipping overhead. Azar released the safety latch on the flare gun, aimed with the RHIB zeroing in… Merk swept the boat in a wide arc… swerved out in an S-curve… and then cut back hard to intercept the path of the pursuit boat. He gunned the engine. Azar fired the flare—
The hot green pellet shot in a comet trail and burst when it struck the gunwale, tumbling in a flash across the pursuit boat, ricocheting off the motorman into the sea. Blinded by the flare, the Iranians couldn’t relocate the RHIB… Merk bore down on them… and rammed the bow of the pursuit boat at an angle. The impact tossed a guard about as he fired wildly. A bullet struck Morgan Azar above the chest, knocking him off balance. He lurched to the side, tipping over…
The collision dumped two Iranian guards into the sea. Clipped, the pursuit boat twisted, rising out of the water. Airborne, it careened, landing on top of the third guard, blasting him under the surface. The collision knocked the RHIB nose-up, lifting it on the side. With the hull rising, Merk gripped the outboard motor; Azar fell into the sea. The RHIB slammed the surface, bounding before correcting itself with Merk tilting the motor out of the water to slow down.
He cut the engine and looked on board for the laptop, but couldn’t find it. It must have tumbled into the sea, Merk thought. He scanned the area where the laptop fell overboard, but didn’t see anything, then looked back at the wounded Azar, floating on the surface. Azar managed to turn on a rescue beacon on his vest and waved Merk to search for the dolphins.
The trawler turned around and headed toward the RHIB. Without the laptop, Merk had no way to com with Tasi or Inapo. Seeing the trawler bear down on him, he started the motor, fishtailed the RHIB around, and raced away.
Underwater, Tasi swam below a sea-mine and grazed it without touching a protruding contact spike, releasing it from the anchor. The metal sphere rose like an overinflated balloon to the surface. The dolphin darted off, whistling for Inapo to clear the space.
On the surface, the trawler opened up speed. Guards fired into the darkness in the area where Merk was fleeing after ramming the pursuit boat. As the captain pushed the engine, knowing the trawler’s heavy cargo had been offloaded, he gazed down at the fishfinder screen and saw a blurred image of a mine rise to the surface, right in front of the bow.
The fishfinder flashed the ascending object at five meters… four meters… rising…
About to hit the mine, the captain slammed the engine off. The trawler lunged in a jolt. The ship rocked hard, bouncing up and down. Holding on, the captain and first pilot peered out the cabin window trying to locate the mine — when it struck the bow and exploded.
The blast blew apart the ship, tearing open the engine room and fuel tanks in an arcing fireball that toppled the boom cranes into the water. Secondary explosions hurled the guards overboard in jets of fire, their bodies flailing as they splashed into the sea.
In the RHIB, Merk looked back with despair at the fiery wreck of the trawler. Having raced past Azar, he searched the sea, but couldn’t locate his wounded teammate’s green beacon. Merk turned the boat around and felt for the night-vision goggles or flare gun, but couldn’t find either device. So he took a chemlight from his vest, twisted it on, and tossed it into the sea.
He guided the RHIB toward the chemlight, calling out Azar’s name. “Morgan… Morgan… Hey, Azar… Come back.” No response. A long moment passed.
And then: Merk spotted Morgan Azar floating facedown in the water. He zoomed over to him, cut the engine, and hauled his teammate on board, flipping him over. Azar wasn’t breathing or coughing, not a wisp of life.
Merk stretched out Azar’s limbs, unzipped his wetsuit and, with two hands, pushed down on the chest, compressing it, rapidly pumping thirty times. He then tilted the veterinarian’s head back, opened his mouth, stuck a finger inside to clear the air passage, and breathed two hard breaths into his lungs. Pump and blow. He resumed pumping Azar’s chest again and again, thirty times. Still nothing. So Merk pressed his lips to Azar’s mouth and blew two more deep shots of air into his lungs. A trace of air leaked out of the mouth, along with a faint echo of a heartbeat. Merk cocked his arm and punched Azar in the sternum. The jolt shocked the motionless body into a spasm, but then it stopped. He listened for a heartbeat, but the faint echo was gone.
Merk searched the rubber boat, but didn’t find the first-aid kit where the shots of adrenaline were stored. Like the laptop and flare gun, the first aid kit must have fallen over. “Jesus, Azar, don’t die on me,” Merk said, surveying the burning debris field. He searched for signs of the dolphins. “Fuck…” he said, panning the surface. No sign of them.
The sea was empty except for the wreckage, except for a few floating corpses, except for the smoldering debris. Now Azar was dead, lifeless, like everyone around Merk. He knew it was his fault that the veterinarian died, his fault for pushing the core mission of the dolphins from surveying an underwater pipeline to spying on the Iranians laying sea-mines in the strait. Now Merk had the problem of the two missing biologic systems. Did they escape the blast radius of the mine? Were Tasi and Inapo knocked out? Were they alive, injured, drowning, or dead?