By the time they left the streambed, at a point determined by GPS, they'd all acquired camouflage more effective than the combat black utilities they all wore — a heavy coating of viscous mud. It made them effectively invisible.
It was also heavy, and slowed them down considerably.
Tangretti was forcibly reminded of his BUD/S training — crawling for hours through mud this thick and this fetid in a field at Coronado until every muscle in his body was one sharp, throbbing ache. At last, however, they emerged from the marsh, crossed a road coming down from the north, and began climbing the flank of Kuh-e Gab, the mountain ridge rising sharply behind the port village of Bandar-e Charak.
Now, four and a half hours after exiting the ASDS, Tangretti lay flat on his belly, studying the objective spread out below him through his night vision goggles. The landscape, shrouded in midnight, was revealed through the NVG in eerie shades of green that presented an image that, if monochromatic, still yielded nearly as much detail as daylight. The Darya-ye complex — the target designated White Scimitar — was huge, much larger than he'd imagined it from the sat photos he'd studied, or even from the images transmitted by Black Stallion's
UAVs.
His hide was 750 feet above sea level, on the top of a barren ridge looking down into a valley cleaving the mountain of Kuh-e Gab above Bandar-e Charak. A dirt road wound up the valley from the southeast; when the valley twisted to the southwest, the road continued straight, vanishing into the canyon wall. No fewer than eight tunnel mouths were visible in that cliffside, massively reinforced with concrete. Tangretti had been in Afghanistan, where tunneling into mountains had been a way of life, first to hide from the Soviets, and then to seek shelter from the Americans and their smart bombs.
The excavated area visible in the planning photographs was actually separate from the tunnel complex area, a large, bulldozed area embracing the mouth of the valley about three-tenths of a mile away, on the desert plain between the mountain and the marshes through which the SEALs had come. The area was enclosed by a high steel-mesh fence topped by razor wire. A number of buildings were still under construction there. The trick was to figure out what those buildings were for.
The entire complex, clearly, was a fortress, guarding access to the valley and to the tunnels in the mountain. There were at least a dozen massive bunkers scattered over fifty acres, along with what looked like mounts for antiaircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles. Tangretti counted thirty-seven heavy army trucks, and a number of civilian rigs as well, including five tractor-trailers. There were soldiers everywhere, in front of the main gate, patrolling the fence inside and out, moving about inside the fenced compound, and coming and going up the half-mile canyon road to those enigmatic tunnel entrances into the mountain's interior.
Illumination was provided by several streetlights— dazzlingly bright through his night vision optics — and a searchlight in a tower that swept the sand and gravel outside the fence perimeter. The Iranians even had a tank — an old Russian T-72, squatting in one corner of the compound like some drowsing, prehistoric beast.
Tangretti's experienced eye checked the logistical side of the complex. Water… there was a huge, steel water tank rising on three legs above the main compound. At the bottom were a pair of tank trucks. They probably hauled all of their water in from Bandar Abbas, where the closest desalinization plant was located.
Power. That was a tougher question to answer. One or more of those fortresslike bunkers might house generators, and there were a couple of big, squat POL tanks inside the fenced compound. There was no sign of power lines. Those might all be underground, however. Did the tunnel complex get power from generators in the base at the mouth of the valley? Or did they have underground generators up there?
At his side, Lieutenant Mayhew used his own NVGs to scope out the objective. "Well, Chief," he said after a long moment, "it beats the hell out of me. What do you think the damned thing is?"
"With that kind of security? There're only four options, and it may be some combination of the four, or it may even be all of the above — N, B, C, or a base to launch them from."
"Agreed. Washington's worst nightmare, all wrapped up in one tidy package."
Nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare. The great equalizers when it came to disparities in conventional military forces.
"But we'll need confirmation," Tangretti said. "And for that, we'll have to go down there."
"Like they say, Chief. The only easy day—"
"Was yesterday," Tangretti said, finishing the old SEAL joke. There was no way around it. The SEALs were going to have to penetrate that fortress.
And from the look of things, getting into the place in one piece was going to be a hell of a lot easier than getting out.
The Sultanate of Oman is one of the more enlightened of the nations sharing the Arabian peninsula, a desert kingdom with a middle-income economy, possessing considerable oil and gas reserves but without the wildly excessive lifestyle of their Saudi neighbors. Formerly a British colony, the Sultanate has preserved its longstanding good relations with Great Britain, both politically and militarily. Moderate in both politics and religion, the nation has historically attempted to maintain good relations with all of the Islamic states in the region, including the non-Arab Iranians across the narrow straits.
With just twelve-hundredths of one percent of the land arable, the vast majority of Oman is desert. Nor is all of the country's territory contiguous. The northern tip, the Musand'am peninsula, is separated from the rest of Oman by the federation of seven desert principalities known as the United Arab Emirates. The Omani portion measures just fifty-five miles north to south, and less than twenty-five miles east to west at its widest point. In addition, a tiny Omani enclave, Al Madhah, exists midway between the Musand'am peninsula and Oman proper.
This entire peninsula has long been cherished by other nation-states in the region desiring to control the vital straits through to the Persian Gulf, Iran chief among them. It forms the southern coast of the Straits of Hormuz, and so assumes an exaggerated strategic importance, an importance wildly out of proportion to the actual character of this barren and sandstorm-scoured strip of land.
To defend its territory, the Sultanate of Oman possesses a 36,000-man army — the Royal Armed Forces, or RAF — a 3,000-man Royal Omani Navy, with six warships; and a 3,500-man Royal Omani Air Force flying forty-four combat aircraft, including two squadrons of British-made Jaguars. The RAF itself is well-trained and professional, and includes 6,000 household troops; the 4,500-man Royal Guard of Oman; two Special Forces regiments trained by the British SAS, totaling about 700 men; the 20,000-man Royal Omani Land Forces; and about 3,700 foreign troops, including British advisors. Two tank squadrons are outfitted with U.S. M60 tanks and British Chieftains — a total of perhaps 150 tanks. In addition, the Musand'am peninsula is patrolled by a rifle company of tribal militia — the Musand'am Security Force.
The seven emirates of the UAE are also British-trained and equipped, with an army numbering about 46,000 men, with 335 tanks, 800 APCs, 425 pieces of artillery, 55 aircraft, and 22 ships.