Such tactics were to be expected; they did not prove the enemy knew the Iranian subs were there. Damavandi suspected that if the American did spot them, he would be off and running at high speed. An Ohio-class sub could easily outpace a Kilo or a Ghadir-class boat. All he needed to do was move at high speed, then go silent once more.
But instead the American continued moving slowly north into the straits.
"Captain!" the sonar officer called.
"Go ahead."
"Target vessel is increasing revolutions! He appears to be increasing speed to ten knots."
What now? "Maneuvering! Increase speed to ten knots."
The newest sonar contact, Sierra Two-nine-five, was another tanker, this one moving north, deeper into the straits. Stewart had just given the order to fall into the vessel's wake, moving close enough that they could feel the pounding of the screws and the rough shuddering of the turbulent water just ahead.
Two could play this game… using the passage of a large, twin-screwed tanker to mask the far quieter creeping of a submarine just astern.
"Control Room, Sonar," Chief Sommersby called. "We've lost everything but Sierra Two-nine-five. Estimated range to target… one hundred yards."
"Very well. Maneuvering! Slow to six knots!"
"Maneuvering, slow to six knots, aye aye!"
The Straits of Hormuz were a tough playground for submarines in any case, with shallow bottom and narrow sea lanes always crowded with shipping. Even in the best of circumstances, sound echoed weirdly from rocks, shoals, and obstructions.
Stewart looked up toward the overhead. "Catch us if you can," he said.
"We have lost them, sir," Lieutenant Shirazi reported. "They used the noise from the tanker to mask themselves."
Damavandi looked up from the plot table and bit off a sharp curse. Mullah Hamid Khodaei was at his side, studying the tangle of red and blue lines showing the relative movements of Ghadir and the American intruder. Turning to the cleric, he shrugged and said, "As
God wills."
"Perhaps," the cleric said, "God wills a more aggressive approach."
"Indeed? And what would God, the Almighty, suggest that we do? He may be able to suspend the laws of physics, but I cannot."
"Be careful, Captain," Khodaei snapped. "Remember who it is with whom you are speaking!"
Damavandi glanced at Commander Tavakkoli, who carefully looked away. The rest of the personnel in Ghadir's control room appeared to be very still, very intent, and very careful not to appear to take notice of the sudden confrontation at the plot table.
"And what do you propose that we do, Mullah Khodaei?"
"Use our active sonar, of course."
"To do so would reveal our presence, Mullah."
"So? The enemy clearly knows our submarines are in these waters already. And we must know where he is, and what he is doing."
Damavandi considered this. He also considered Ha-mid Khodaei.
Mullahs were Islamic clergy, men who had devoted their lives to the study of the Qu'ran and the Hadith, doctors of the law of sharia who were considered to be experts on all religious matters.
Religious matters. Unfortunately, within the Shi'ite fundamentalist worldview of the current Iranian government, everything was a religious matter, from the way a man dressed and spoke and acted, to the zeal with which he carried out his duties to the state. The Guardian Council, in its infinite wisdom, had seen fit to install civilian mullahs on board each vessel of the Iranian navy, ostensibly to safeguard the spiritual lives of the crew.
However, at the same time they were in an excellent position to report on the loyalty and the religious zeal of the men in command of those ships.
It was an idea rooted in Soviet doctrine. As far back as the Second World War, or earlier, perhaps — the Russian Civil War — Russian military units had gone into battle with commissars actually sharing command with military officers. It had been, Damavandi reflected, a bad idea. The commissars were supposed to guarantee the political reliability of both the officers and the men, in an atmosphere steeped in mistrust and paranoia. In fact, all too often command decisions did not fall into clearly separate domains — the military and the political. The effect, he believed, had been to weaken the Soviet army, if only because its commanders were unwilling to take risks that might result in their arrest and court-martial.
The mullahs of the Guardian Council had applied the concept to military units within the Iranian military, especially the elite Pasdaran. They'd avoided the inherent problems of divided command, technically, by not giving the unit clerics rank or official military status, but officers were expected to pay careful attention to their advice, and to disregard that advice at the peril to their own careers.
Damavandi had three choices now. He could follow Khodaei's advice. If things went wrong, he at least would be able to demonstrate that he'd done God's will. Or he could use his better judgment, his military judgment, which was to remain hidden and to continue to draw close the net already spread about the American intruder. If his strategy worked, his rejection of Khodaei's advice would be ignored. If it failed, however, he would have to answer for it at his court-martial.
The third option was the one most often adopted by Soviet commanders saddled with a militarily incompetent commissar. He could buck the whole problem up the chain of command.
"Maneuvering!" he snapped. "Bring us to periscope depth!"
"What are your intentions, Captain?" Khodaei asked.
"We are all very small parts of a much larger plan, Mullah," he replied. "A misstep on our part could cause that plan to unravel. We will ask headquarters how to proceed."
"By the time they make up their minds, Captain, the American will have eluded us!"
"I think not," Damavandi replied. He gestured at the chart on the light table between them. "It's not as though he has many places in which to hide."
14
"Up periscope."
Stewart waited as the scope slid up out of its well, took hold of the handles when they reached his chest, and rode it the rest of the way up, circling to make sure there weren't any skimmer surprises close by.
It was night on the surface, but the Type 18 scope, switched to low-light mode, revealed the surroundings in eerie swatches of black and green, punctuated by the bright white stars of lights.
According to the plotting tables behind him, Ohio rested now just a mile south of the island of Hormoz, one of the twin guardians to the port city of Bandar Abbas.
Bandar Abbas is nestled into a bight in the southern Iranian coast just at the point where the Straits of Hormuz take a sharp elbow turn to the southwest and the entrance to the Persian Gulf proper. The bight is sheltered by the island of Qeshm, sixty-eight miles long, which at one point is separated from the coast by a shallow strait less than two miles wide. The easternmost tip of Qeshm, however, is some fifteen miles south of Bandar Abbas; just to the east of that, two small and roughly circular islands form the gateway to the sheltered waters of Iran's largest and busiest port. To the southwest is Larak, and ten miles to the northeast is Hormoz.