"Lieutenant Wolfe?"
He turned to face two men. The speaker was a lean, hard individual who might have been as old as thirty-five, with sandy hair matted against his forehead by the rain. Like the others, he was wearing a dark blue Navy work jacket, with no indication of rank.
"Yes?"
"I'm Commander Drake, Detachment Delta." He indicated the man next to him, dark-skinned, dark-eyed. "This is my exec, Lieutenant Mayhew. You're the Detachment Echo guy… from Black Stallion?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you want to go back there?" Mayhew asked with a sudden grin.
"I don't want to, no," Wolfe said. "But I guess someone decided you boys needed a friendly native guide."
"It would help to have someone who'd seen the ground before," Drake said. "And maybe someone who can tell us what to avoid this time around."
Wolfe nodded, tired. "I can tell you where we went wrong before, Commander. You'll have to make your own mistakes for yourself. New ones, all your own."
He'd intended the words as a joke, but he caught the flash of irritation in Drake's eye. The man seemed a humorless sort, not the kind of officer who would allow himself to become familiar with those under his command.
"We will not be making any mistakes this time around, Lieutenant," Drake said.
"I'm very glad to hear that, sir."
He lifted his wrist, peering at his diving watch. "It's late… but I'd like to go over your debriefing, if you don't mind."
How many times had he been through it already? The grilling? The memories? "Very well, sir."
"Let's get on board, and get the hell out of this rain."
His first job, though, was to check in with Ohio's OOD, who assigned an enlisted man to take him to the compartment set aside as bunking quarters for the SEALs.
Ohio-class boats might be roomy compared to an SSN, but space was still precious. Sixty-six SEALs could not simply insert themselves into a boat already occupied by over 140 enlisted men and officers without crowding. Sleeping space for the SEALs consisted of racks stacked five high, with room to lie down but not to sit up — with about eighteen inches of headroom between one rack and the next rack above.
Ohio's enlisted crewmen had the same facilities.
Submariners might be used to such cramped sleeping arrangements, Wolfe thought, but living in a sardine can took some getting used to. SEALs learned to sleep in the mud — or go forty-eight hours at a stretch with no sleep at all — but when they had a rack, they expected it to be a real bed, not a coffin with a mattress in it. Nor did the officers usually barrack with enlisted men; Commander
Drake and Captain Martin were sharing a cabin, Wolfe understood, but the lieutenants were racking out with the enlisted SEALs.
Rank might have its privileges on a submarine, but not when those privileges took up space.
"I assure you, General, that your country has nothing to fear in this matter." Admiral Mehdi Baba-Janzadeh, Iran's Minister of Defense, folded his hands on the desk. "We have a clear division of our mutual areas of interest, your people and mine. Your nation's help, both in terms of military assistance and in the more, ah, technical matters at Arak and Natanz, will assure our hegemony over the Persian Gulf, and your security at home, for many years to come."
General Igor Sergeyev studied the man across the desk for a long moment before replying. Outside, the sun beat down hard on the gray streets of Tehran, and he could hear the rumble and clatter of traffic on Mozhdeh Street. "We recognize that, Admiral," he said slowly, in his somewhat halting Farsi. "But my superiors at home are… concerned. A major war in the Gulf could easily grow to something larger. Things could get out of hand."
"General, I promise you that there is no need for concern. We do not intend to actually fight the Americans. Not in an all-out, protracted war."
"Neither," Sergeyev said with a bland lack of expression, "did the Taliban."
"Ah. Point taken. But I assure you that it will not come to that."
"How can you be so certain? The Americans have been… insatiable since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—"
"I am sure," Baba-Janzadeh said, interrupting, "that the Americans lack the will to fight, in particular when they are confronted with high casualties. Look at the record! Their leaders are terrified of an engagement that will, in their words, become another Vietnam. They take every opportunity to avoid direct combat, preferring to use stand-off weapons or intermediaries simply in order to preserve American lives. In Afghanistan, they relied for the most part on anti-Taliban rebels, on locals, and upon the use of massive air power when the Taliban had almost nothing in the way of antiair defenses."
"Iraq had a sizable army, and formidable defenses."
Baba-Janzadeh shrugged. "That, General, is a matter of opinion. Their army had been largely destroyed during their first war with the Americans, and had not been substantially rebuilt."
"And the American invasion of Iraq was not carried out by surrogates."
"No… though you will notice that their propaganda machine stressed that it was an allied coalition that was attacking Iraq, not solely the Americans. We also know that they originally planned to carry out much of the campaign using Kurdish surrogates in the North. That idea was rendered ineffective when the Turks refused to allow American operations from their soil.
"And the outcome of that invasion only proves my point. American forces suffered relatively few casualties in the actual invasion. Subsequent combat losses were incurred over the next several years, in guerrilla warfare against Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda fighters. Meanwhile the western press — especially the American press — agonized over mounting casualties and castigated the Bush administration for the 'Iraq quagmire,' as they liked to call it.
"The nation of Iran, my dear general, is far better able to defend itself, far more capable and deadly than the Iraqi military ever was. Faced with the certainty of high casualties if they invade our country, the Americans will back down."
Sergeyev raised an eyebrow, but refrained from the obvious rejoinder. In eight years of insanely bitter warfare, Iran had been unable to overcome Iraq. The two had, in essence, fought one another to a bloody and mutually exhausted standstill between 1980 and 1988. If Iran had recovered in some measure in the two decades since, it hadn't been to the point where they could last for long against an all-out invasion by the United States.
In any case, Baba-Janzadeh was right about the will and the determination of the American public, or, rather, of the American government. They remained mesmerized by the specter of their long struggle in Vietnam, by the fear of finding themselves again mired in a war they could neither win nor from which they could extricate themselves.
"It is not my place, Admiral," Sergeyev said after a moment, "to criticize your government, or even to offer military advice. My government only wishes certain… assurances that the balance of power in this region not be upset by Iranian adventurism."
"Adventurism? We seek to claim our rightful place as leaders of Islam! Of Shi'a Islam! To achieve this, we challenge the American Satan, which has invaded our neighbors and which now threatens us! It is they who threaten the balance of power in the region, my dear Sergeyev, not us!"
Sergeyev made a placating gesture. "Please, Admiral, I meant no offense," he said. "And I assure you that it is not Moscow's wish to intervene in your internal or regional affairs. Certainly not! But… do you see our concern? If you provoke an American attack, and if you are conquered, the United States will be the only power in the region! Iraq's government follows America's dictates. They must, because the Americans put them in power, and keep them there! The Saudi princes remain committed only to themselves, but have been increasingly pressured by Washington lately. Again, support from the United States is all that keeps them in power. The same with the Emirates and lesser Gulf states. Even Syria has become… tractable of late. With Iraq's conquest, they feared they would be next.