Damavandi could hear the monster now, a deep-throated pounding transmitted like multiple hammer blows through Ghadir's hull. The supertanker was now crossing Ghadir's bows almost directly due north. Ghadir had adjusted her course and speed to slip into the tanker's wake. There was a zone perhaps a hundred meters long aft of the tanker's two monstrous screws where the snorkel could be raised and the diesels switched on, and the listening Americans would never hear it.
He continued to guide the maneuver from his station at the periscope. The tanker was so close now he had to angle the scope up to see the highest parts of the superstructure. "Maneuvering! Come right fifteen degrees!"
"Coming right fifteen degrees, by the will of Allah!"
Damavandi grimaced at the helmsman's appeal to
God but said nothing. Ghadir's mullah, Hamid Khodaei, was standing close by, wearing an unreadable expression. It wouldn't do to alert Khodaei to his… heresy.
Well, not heresy so much as practicality, and an alternate point of view. He considered himself to be a good Muslim, but did not share the belief of most of his officers that theirs was a divinely appointed mission, and under the protection of Allah. Claiming that it was God's will and not the captain's, that was bad enough. Using the name of Allah to bless an act of war seemed little short of blasphemous to Damavandi.
Of course, if the mullahs back in Tehran knew his views on the subject, he would find himself relieved of command in short order. If he was lucky, he might retain a desk job in Bandar-e Anzelli, on the coast of the Caspian Sea. If he were not, it might well require the protection of Allah the Merciful just to keep him alive.
Besides, if religion kept the men focused on their duties, kept them sharp and willing to face hardship, overcrowding, and discomfort for the cause, then Damavandi was all in favor of it.
Allah, he thought, would understand.
Through the periscope, the Texan Star appeared to be turning away from the Ghadir; in fact, the sub was now swinging directly into line with the tanker's stern, about eighty meters back. From this fish-eye vantage point, the sheer bulk of the supertanker was more abundantly clear than ever. The Texan Star was 304 meters long at the waterline; Ghadir measured just seventy-six meters bow to stern, exactly a quarter of the supertanker's length.
In tonnage, however, the Texan Star's displacement was nearly nine times that of the slender Ghadir-class boat. To Damavandi, it felt as though he were a minnow attempting to slip in behind a whale.
The supertanker was crawling along at a bare six knots — one did not race a vessel of that much sheer bulk and mass through straits as twisting, shallow, and narrow as these — but the wake still throbbed and thundered around them. Ghadir shuddered as she plowed through turbulent water, secure, now, in the knowledge that any nearby Americans would not be able to hear her.
"Raise snorkel!" Damavandi ordered. He had to shout to be heard above the thunder.
"Snorkel raised!"
Damavandi walked the scope around one-eighty to check the snorkel, which had emerged from the aft part of the sail and protruded now a meter above the water. Everything appeared correct. The head valve was open, marked by a slender rod extending above the snorkel head. An engineering auxiliary, meanwhile, was draining the tube into Ghadir's bilges.
A moment later Engineering reported the snorkel drained, and the head valve closed. Damavandi ordered the outboard induction valve opened. When this was done, he gave the final order. "Commence snorkeling!"
The control room lights dimmed suddenly, then came back up. Damavandi heard the clatter of Ghadir's diesel engines starting up aft.
"Diesel engines engaged, Captain! Electric motors off-line and charging!"
The operation was hazardous. The snorkel only extended about three meters above the sail, which meant the submarine had to travel at a shallower depth than was usual for periscope operations. Shallower meant she was more badly buffeted by the supertanker's wake, and that, in turn, meant Ghadir's crew needed to stay very sharp, to avoid accidentally surfacing.
Even if they didn't pop to the surface, there was a chance the supertanker's crew would spot her periscope and snorkel. That was unlikely, of course. Both tubes were slender and camouflage-painted, a hundred yards astern, and the wake they drew would be lost in the far greater seething of white water boiling from the tanker's churning twin screws.
These were risks worth taking, however. By trailing the Texan Star for the next six hours or so, which would take them well out into the Gulf of Oman, Ghadir could safely recharge her batteries, preparing her for another eighteen to forty-eight hours of submerged silent running. Her sister boats were performing the same operation, but in rotation, so that at any given time at least five of the Iranian subs were silent and listening.
There remained one serious concern — and that was the Pittsburgh and any of her sister Los Angeles-class subs that might be in the region. Weeks ago Ghadir and her two sisters had been repeatedly towed out of Bandar Abbas and back. The hope was to make any watching American sub captains believe the Ghadir boats were not yet operational, and that the display would actually bring the American subs into the open. The Americans had to be curious about the new submarines, and about their capabilities. Apparently, that had not happened. There'd been absolutely no sign that the Americans had penetrated the considerable ASW defenses surrounding Bandar-e Abbas.
In fact, though, Damavandi was personally convinced the Americans had been out there, watching and listening to every move.
The fear was that the American SSNs might still be out there, watching. Unlikely — since the Americans probably didn't have one SSN to track each of the nine Iranian submarines separately.
But when it came to American submarine technology, Damavandi was unwilling to make any rash pronouncements about what the enemy could and could not do.
Soon, though, it wouldn't matter. When the American Ohio arrived, there would be too many Kilo- and Ghadir-class submarines closing on her for the American SNNs to handle. If the Americans fired first, so much the better. That would be the rallying call to Iran and to the entire Islamic world to commence the jihad that would drive the U.S. Navy out of the Gulf once and for all. If they didn't, the Ohio would be driven until she did fire first, or until she entered Iranian waters.
And when that happened, the Ohio would die, and Operation Bold Fire would begin.
Jihad…
"So what do you make of it?" Captain Creighton asked the young man across the plot table from him.
"Damnedest thing I've ever seen," Lieutenant Commander Harold Chisolm replied, rubbing his bald scalp. He was Pittsburgh's executive officer, but submarine tactics — at which he'd excelled at New London — were his specialty. "It could be an exercise, tracking tankers coming in and out of the Gulf."
"But you don't think so."
"No, sir, I don't. Kilos — and I assume the new Iranian-built boats as well — pack Type 53 torpedoes: 533mm, range fifteen to twenty kilometers, with active/ passive sonar and wake-homing variants. There is absolutely no reason to get that close to a tanker you're about to kill."