"After they smeared mud in our faces — running off the SEALs in Operation Black Stallion and sinking the Sirocco? Yeah, they think they can do it. And it's even possible they could."
"Sir… the Iranians don't have much of a navy. They couldn't hope to win against us, not in the long run."
"Here's a hot news flash, Captain. If they try to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, we will go to war. Our strategic imperative is to keep the international shipping lanes in and out of the Gulf open.
"But — and this is a very important 'but'—while they can't win a long war, they can hurt us, and badly. General Van Riper proved it could be done by sinking the Fifth Fleet — at least in simulation. The U.S. public has been ambivalent about our presence in the Gulf since Iraqi War Two. They don't like to hear about high casualties on the evening news. What do you think the reaction of the American people would be if we lost a supercarrier in there? Or even if we just lose the Ohio?"
"Well, I would like to believe that the American public would roll up their sleeves, pitch in, and do what has to be done."
Brady sighed. "Maybe they would. Maybe they'd be willing to try, at least. But their representatives in Washington may think differently."
Stewart considered this. Most Americans he knew were behind the War on Terror one hundred percent, but for many recent operations — Iraq and Afghanistan were two excellent examples — the emphasis had become tangled up with the idea of not losing lives. The notorious Rumsfeld Doctrine, applied in Afghanistan, had emphasized the need to keep American casualties to an absolute minimum by relying on high technology — smart bombs and UAVs — and on the efforts of local forces.
And yet, in war, lives were lost. Always. And in Afghanistan, it was more than possible that the reliance on unreliable local militias had let many in the al-Qaeda leadership, including bin Laden himself, escape.
One reason the second Iraqi war had become so unpopular at home was the high rate of casualties — not so much the losses suffered during the actual invasion, which were remarkably low, but in the insurrections and suicide bombings that followed.
Maybe Brady had a point. Maybe American will would fold in the face of a really nasty butcher's bill… especially if it came all at once. Part of the horror of 9/11 had been the deaths of three thousand people in the space of a handful of minutes. There were close to twice that many sailors on board a single supercarrier….
He also clearly heard Brady's warning.
The Ohio would be in truly tight straits, both in terms of physical geography and politics. The Straits of Hormuz were dangerously narrow and dangerously shallow, especially for a leviathan like the Ohio.
But worse than that were the political shoal waters. If Ohio was discovered, she might be sunk or run aground, and the propaganda triumph Tehran would enjoy in trumpeting the news — an American nuclear submarine destroyed or, worse, captured — might well unite the fractured Islamic world. Even if the Ohio wasn't sunk or captured, even if she were simply spotted and shown to be invading Iranian territory, Tehran might still get a political win out of it, and attack the Fifth Fleet under the guise of self-defense.
There weren't a lot of good options. The only one that worked would be to carry out the assigned mission in complete secrecy, without being discovered. That was the textbook outcome his superiors were expecting of him and his command, of course.
But Stewart knew just how likely it was that any mission of this size and scope could be carried out perfectly according to plan.
No plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy. Who'd said that? The Prussian strategist van Moltke, he thought… or was it Napoleon? Shea would know. He'd ask the XO about it later.
"One more thing, Captain."
There's more? But he didn't voice the thought. "Yes, Admiral."
Brady extended a hand, and one of the aides produced another envelope from the briefcase. Brady opened it and handed the contents to Stewart.
Photographs. Several of them, all with digital imprints, and cropped in a fuzzy, dark circle, which indicated they'd been shot through a submarine's periscope. He recognized the legend — the SSN Pittsburgh. These had been shot ten days ago, on May 28.
Most of the shots were of the low, dark conning tower of a submarine. Two were underwater shots, looking up at a sub's keel from beneath, and so close you could see the individual hull plates, and see how clean the bottom was.
"Those were taken of the new Iranian diesel boat," Brady explained. "Jack Creighton's been tracking her in and out of Bandar Abbas. We think they're getting her ready for a long patrol."
"What would a 'long patrol' be for one of these?"
"Several weeks at least. What we're concerned about is the fact that the Iranians know Ohio is coming, and have guessed her mission."
"In other words, they're laying an ambush."
"It's a possibility. We think, we think, that they may try to intercept you while you're still in the Indian Ocean. Not to attack you. They'd rather catch you inside their territorial waters. But if they can pick you up with a sonar sweep coming in, they might trail you into the straits, then put a couple of torpedoes up your ass the moment you enter Iranian waters."
Brady seemed to be following his thoughts, watching his face. "If the job was going to be easy," he said, grinning, "we wouldn't be paying you the big bucks, right?"
"It's not the paycheck," Stewart replied absently. "It's the benefits and the retirement package."
An old joke, with just enough truth to it that Brady gave him a quizzical look, as though trying to decide whether he was serious.
He sighed. "Consider me duly warned, Admiral. We'll watch our ass."
He just wished he could promise that Ohio wouldn't get caught. Stewart, however, never made promises that he wasn't absolutely certain he could carry out.
10
It was starting to rain, a thin, warm, tropical mist that floated on the air more than fell, and turned the glare of high-intensity floodlights into soft blurs of white. Marine guards, in camo utilities and carrying M-16s, stood stoically in the drizzle, watching the night.
Lieutenant Christopher Wolfe stood on the concrete dock near the pier, watching the line of powerfully muscled, hard young men filing past him and onto the pier. The SEALs, as ever, bore an aura of quiet and deadly competence. They were very, very good at what they did, and that expertise carried over into their silent manner.
Outwardly, they ignored Wolfe as they passed him. A number had formed up a working party and were shifting ammunition containers and other equipment from a pile on the pier up onto the Ohio's afterdeck, helped by dungaree-clad sailors off the sub. Others, each with a heavy sea bag over his shoulder, were filing onto the pier and up a specially rigged brow leading to the forward deck, then taking a sharp right to the weapons loading hatch just ahead of Ohio's sail.
He felt their notice of him, and their curiosity, even if they didn't voice it.
Weapons, Lieutenant Christopher Wolfe thought, and his mouth pulled back in a wry but humorless grin. That's what we are. They might as well load us through the weapons hatch.