Ohio's operational status was hazy, at best. She was in the AO — the Area of Operations — under the military jurisdiction of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, headquartered across the Gulf at Manama. Operationally, however, she was following orders given by Naval Special Warfare, which in turn was operating under the authority of the Joint Special Operations Command, headquartered back at Fort Bragg, Stateside. If CENT-COM issued him a direct order, he would clear it with J-SOC first.
Stewart doubted that CENTCOM would attempt to force the issue… but it could happen. Even in this age of instantaneous satellite communications, messages went awry and decision makers neglected to talk with one another. The biggest problem was that the situation here had just leaped another level on the crisis meter. With the attack on the Escondido Bay, this was now a shooting war.
And the Ohio was smack in the middle of it.
The cockpit of the Advanced SEAL Delivery System was more like that of a modern combat aircraft than that of any kind of boat or ship Mayhew was familiar with. The two naval officers were squeezed in side by side in a space less than seven feet wide, like pilot and copilot. Digital readouts, touch-screen controls, and a pair of TV monitors were situated on the forward console instead of traditional periscopes or windows on the outside world. The craft boasted two separate sonar systems — forward-looking sonar for detecting obstacles ahead, including man-made ones, and side-looking sonar for terrain and bottom-mapping, and for mine detection.
It was only right, Mayhew thought. The ASDS was a blunt and ugly looking vehicle on the outside, and as cramped as a trash can aft; the cockpit had better have some damned sexy controls if it was to justify the vessel's $230 million price tag.
"Time to bring her up and get a fix," Taggart said. "Raise the masts."
"Up scopes," Mayhew said, touching his control screen.
The ASDS possessed two masts, mounted side by side. The port mast was an optical periscope, though the image came up on a TV monitor on the console, instead of in an eyepiece. The starboard mast was for satellite communications, and also took an automatic GPS fix on the vessel's location each time it was raised above the surface.
The two men studied the image on the screen for a moment, walking it first through 360 degrees to make sure there weren't any surface craft close by. They appeared to have this stretch of beach to themselves.
"We're about five kilometers from where we want to be," Mayhew observed, studying the GPS readout. His official position, at least until he locked out with his men, was navigator.
"Less than two miles," Taggart said. "Not bad for sixty miles of dead reckoning."
Mayhew shot the older man a glance. Was he being sarcastic? Mayhew had trained long and hard with the ASDS, and took supreme pride in his ability to navigate. The truth was, a two-mile error wasn't bad, considering they hadn't poked the GPS mast above water since leaving the Ohio. But there was that whole submariner-SEAL rivalry thing, which could crop up at the damnedest times. Non-SEAL officers tended to see Special Warfare personnel as mavericks, as cowboys — or, worse, as lunatics — and didn't always take them seriously. Mayhew's only strategy throughout the training, both with Taggart and with other fleet officers, was to maintain a strictly professional mien.
But Taggart appeared serious. Maybe he was trying to keep things strictly professional as well.
"Yeah," Mayhew agreed. "Looks like we're just west of the port. We want to be at the river mouth to the east."
The landscape, revealed by an orange sun hot and low in the west, might have been the surface of an alien planet. It was barren, for the most part — sand and rock, salt plain and desert, baking in the summer heat. Several black, dome-shaped massifs rose from otherwise flat pans of sand, salt, and gravel. Inland, rugged mountains — the Shib Kuh coastal range — glowed in the evening sun against the northern sky.
The village of Bandar-e Charak was a clutter of square, single-story buildings for the most part, stretched in an arc along a mile of the coast. A river entered the Gulf on the east side of the town, emerging from behind a long, low sand bar. West were scattered docks, a few petroleum-processing facilities, and a fishery.
Six miles northeast of the port itself, one of those black massifs rose from the surrounding desert floor, a huge, rounded dark backdrop. Their objective — the Darya-ye complex, code-named White Scimitar — was located at the southern edge of that massif, tucked away within a steep-walled valley.
The failed Operation Black Stallion had attempted going in well to the west of Bandar-e Charak, the SEALs moving inland across a beach and a road, then swinging east to come at the site over the flank of the mountain. According to Lieutenant Wolfe, back on the Ohio, Pasdaran troops had been waiting for them up in those hills, with a large patrol emerging seemingly from nowhere. Possibly the SEALs had tripped sophisticated sensors going in, or, possibly, mission security had been compromised, most likely by the radar detection of the two SEAL boats. Either way, the Iranian troops had been hunting for intruders, and they'd found them.
Operation Sea Hammer was planned with an alternate approach, moving up the unnamed river and through the salt marshes behind it, swinging behind Bandar-e Charak and up into the massif from the east.
Taggart took the joystick control on the console in front of him and pulled it to the right. Obediently, the little submersible swung to starboard, turning east.
"We've got a priority flash coming through," Mayhew said. "Five gets you ten we're getting recalled."
"That sort of thing happen to SEALs often?"
"It happens often enough." The message was in text rather than voice. He ran it through the decoder and brought it up on-screen. "Well, shit."
"What is it? We going back to the barn?"
"It's a waffle. They're not calling off the mission, but we're not supposed to make the bad guys mad, either." He read Taggart the text.
"Doesn't apply to us," the submariner said. "We're not Fifth Fleet."
"No, but I'll bet that defense wouldn't help much if we got court-martialed for taking a dump in Fifth Fleet's living room."
"How do you want to handle it, Lieutenant?"
"You're asking me?"
Taggart shrugged. "Way I see it, we're not threatening anybody so long as we're parked out here and safely submerged. Your part of the mission is where it gets dicey — taking fifteen well-armed psychopaths six miles into Injun country. Can you do that without kicking over the hornet's nest?"
"Well, the way SEALs see things," Mayhew replied, "is the successful op is the one where no one sees you going in, no one sees you coming out, and no one ever knows you were there… at least until the fireworks go off. Yeah, we can do it."
"Okay, then. Let's get this bus east to your drop-off."
Churning silently through shallow water, the ASDS motored south at eight knots, unseen from the shore.
Sonar Tech Second Class Caswell listened to the weirdly echoing chirps and pings coming through the broadband equipment. Charting them — determining accurate distances and ranges — was all but impossible. Echoes off the shoal water to the north confused the picture, and there were a number of enemy transmitters. So far he'd identified at least two submarines in the area that were using active sonar, as well as a surface vessel and several stationary transmitters that were probably sonobuoys.