Through the scope, Stewart could see a scattering of lights along the coast of Hormoz. More lights gleaming south and west were probably ships and boats entering the sheltered area. Bandar Abbas itself was invisible, fifteen miles to the northwest, but the glow from the city's lights turned the sky all the way across the northern horizon a hazy green, backlighting the bulk of Hormoz Island.
This appeared to be a good place to wait out the Iranian search, at least through the night hours. Come sunrise, they would need to be gone. Hormoz was a ruggedly volcanic island just four miles across but over five hundred feet high, its highest peak capped by the ruins of a medieval fortress. Once these shallow waters became sunlit, an observer on that hilltop — and Stewart had no doubt there would be observers up there— might be able to make out the long, dark shadow of the Ohio as she lurked offshore. When daylight came, she would need to seek deeper and darker waters.
For the next few hours, however, this was a good hiding place. The shallow water — less than twenty fathoms deep at this point — offered shelter from Iranian sonar. Ohio had followed in the tanker's wake for nearly seven hours before dropping astern and creeping off to the north at a bare five knots. With luck, the Iranian subs were still following the tanker, going around the kink in the straits and headed southwest for the Gulf.
They wouldn't go too far, though, before breaking off and returning to this area to begin a careful search. They must know that Ohio's interest was in this stretch of coast — from Bandar-e Charak, 125 miles to the west, through to Bandar Abbas here in the east. They would also guess that Ohio had entered Iranian territorial waters.
Their antisubmarine warfare forces, including swarms of ASW aircraft, would be out in major strength.
"Control Room, Sonar. New contact, bearing zero-one-two. Designate Sierra Two-three-seven. Single screw, four blades. Probable commercial traffic."
"Sonar, Control Room. Very well."
He swung the periscope to the indicated bearing. There, against the black loom of Hormoz, he could see a slowly moving pair of lights casting reflections on the still water. The glow cast illumination enough for the low-light optics to distinguish the shape of the craft, with its characteristic high prow and flat stern — a native dhow, of the type known locally as a ghanjah.
A fisherman, then, or a local merchant… or, even more probable, a smuggler. The authorities in Bandar Abbas, he knew, were plagued by smugglers, carrying everything from drugs and alcohol to illicit human cargo — both refugees from Tehran's religious persecution and the victims of a far darker and more vicious traffic in slaves… even if in the enlightened years of the twenty-first century they were no longer called by that name.
Whatever its cargo, this solitary dhow was motoring slowly through the darkness close by the southern coast of Hormoz, possibly on legitimate business, but more likely, like Ohio herself, attempting to elude local surveillance.
"Down scope," Stewart ordered. The periscope was coated with RAM — radar-absorbing material — in order to reduce its radar signature and the chance of detection, but American sub skippers still preferred to reduce their exposure above the ceiling to an absolute minimum. There was also the danger of collision in these busy waterways; the sonar gang would do their best to keep him aware of approaching threats, of course, but accidents did happen, and a small, quiet craft like that dhow, its engine noise masked by the noisy waters around it, might hit the scope, and that would end the mission — and quite possibly the life of every man on board.
"So what's the game plan, sir?" Shea asked.
"We wait." He glanced at the clock on the forward bulkhead. A quarter past midnight… and in these waters, at this time of year, they could only count on another four to five hours of sheltering darkness. "Two hours. Then we find a deeper hole. And pass the word for Commander Drake, Mr. Mayhew, and Mr. Wolfe to see me."
"Aye aye, sir."
Admiral Baba-Janzadeh didn't like being awakened from a sound sleep. He had not stood a night watch for more years than he could remember, and at sixty-four he was getting too old for this sort of thing.
Still, Admiral Vehedi's call from naval headquarters had been urgent, and indicated that Bold Fire was in jeopardy, and that news commanded his full attention. He left both of his wives asleep and called a motor pool driver to take him to the Defense Ministry. There, in the basement communications center, he watched the situation unfold in lengths of colored string tacked onto a wall-sized map of the Straits of Hormuz.
Six of Iran's nine submarines were currently in the straits, searching for the giant American submarine that had vanished there during the early evening hours. Given the American's known capabilities, it could be anywhere within the straits now, though the most probable area, bounded by a rectangle of bright red string, was somewhere off Bandar Abbas — possibly close to the harbor entrance, possibly south of Qeshm. The local ASW forces had been alerted as well, and they were beginning a sweep of the harbor's waters, a sweep that would move south to Qeshm and southeast into the straits proper as the early morning hours passed. Admiral Vehedi had also put as many of his airborne ASW assets into the sky as he could. They were busy deploying sonobuoys and mines now, seeding those areas through which the Ohio would have to move.
The possibility existed, however, that the Ohio had not entered Iranian waters, but had moved south through the straits. She could be sheltering in the relatively deep waters of the international channel south of Iran's coast, or she could be making for the port facilities of the U.S. Fifth Fleet three hundred miles to the west, at Manama, in Bahrain.
Even if the Ohio was lurking now in Iranian territorial waters, the possibility remained that she would elude the search. Admiral Baba-Janzadeh had a great respect for American technology, and in particular for their ability to move submarines silently and invisibly through the tightest of defenses. His Russian teachers, former officers of the Soviet fleet, had spent a lot of time emphasizing American stealth capabilities. During the Cold War, only rarely had Russian hunter-killer subs found and successfully tracked American ballistic missile submarines like the Ohio and her sisters, and it was an open secret that their Los Angeles-class subs had repeatedly entered Soviet waters — even slipped inside of Soviet ports — to carry out missions of reconnaissance and espionage.
His Russian teachers had spent so much time on the superiority of American technology that he suspected they were trying to save face; that they were anxious to cover the fact that the Americans had penetrated their most heavily defended bastions.
Face-saving or not, the lectures had impressed Baba-Janzadeh, and he was determined not to underestimate the enemy.
Of one thing he was certain. Unless the American submarine captain had broken off and was going to join the U.S. fleet at Manama, his target almost certainly was the new special weapons complex at Bandar-e Charak. American naval commandos had attempted to penetrate that facility weeks before, and had been repulsed. Washington would be intensely curious about what was really going on there. If what Savama had reported about the capabilities of the Ohio-class SSGN conversions was accurate, the Americans could be close to landing a very large and powerful reconnaissance force in south-central Iran. Admiral Baba-Janzadeh was determined to be ready for them.