Gradually, Tangretti made himself relax, then continue crawling. The two SEALs reached the flatbed, crouching in the shadows, as Hutch and Richardson joined them.
Avery pulled a Geiger counter from an equipment pouch and swept the wand along the side of the truck. The instrument had been designed for covert ops such as this one — in this business, you never knew when you were going to be surreptitiously searching for traces of nuclear material — and it was silent, without the irritating clacking sound made popular by the movies.
"Okay, guys," Avery whispered over the tactical channel. "I've got a positive."
"Copy that," Mayhew said over the SEALs' headset receivers. "How strong?"
"Just a trace. But they've been moving something nasty around on this truck."
After carefully recording the readings taken from a complete sweep of the back of the truck, Avery and Hutch moved on to the next vehicle. Tangretti and Richardson used strips of duct tape, pressing them down at different points on the back of the truck, then lifting them, rolling them up, and transferring them to small, watertight plastic tubes. The nature of the trace radioactivity could be determined in a radiation lab stateside. Traces of plutonium dust, for example, would adhere to the tape and be detectable later, as would alpha particles; beta or gamma radiation would leave no source particles, however, but might contaminate dirt or specks of metal lying on the flatbed. By analyzing the strips of tape in the lab, looking for types of radiation and the nature of any particles adhering to them, the NEST birds — the
Nuclear Emergency Search Team scientists — would be able to make a very good guess at just what those trucks had been transporting, and when.
The fact that there was radiation was a lucky break, Tangretti thought as he sealed his first specimen container and stowed it in a pouch. If the Iranians had been more careful, they'd have stowed the material securely in a lead container, and no amount of duct tape in the world would have picked anything up. The likeliest scenario was that they'd assembled nuclear warheads somewhere else, then shipped the warheads here on the trucks. With a bit of sloppy technique, traces of radioactive material might have been smeared on the outside of the warheads, then transferred to the trucks during the ride.
Tangretti and the others had been assured during their briefing stateside that any radiation they encountered on this op would be very low level — as much, perhaps, as they would get in a chest X ray — and would not be hazardous. He tried not to think about the fact that exactly how much radioactivity was lingering on the outside of the warheads depended almost entirely on how careful the Iranian missile technicians had been in assembling them. There was a good chance that the warheads weren't actually atomic bombs, but were instead "dirty bombs" using conventional explosives to scatter a cloud of plutonium dust. Such a bomb could contaminate much of a city and cause thousands of deaths through cancer — a true terror weapon. If that was what they were dealing with here, all bets were off. Plutonium was the single most toxic substance known to man, and a microgram could kill you.
Tangretti was very careful in how he handled the tape, and he planned to dispose of his black combat gloves just as soon as he had the chance.
For the next hour the four SEALs continued their covert reconnaissance. They took samples and readings off all of the trucks, as well as from a couple of jeeps and a covered four-by-four parked nearby. They examined several of the tunnel entrances, verifying the thickness of the steel doors — and the fact that the Iranians tended to leave those doors open. They took photographs with a digital camera, transmitting each image as they snapped it back to Mayhew, who routed them on up to the satellite and back to Washington. And they took careful GPS readings at the tunnel entrances, relaying that data back as well.
Three more times they froze in position as Iranians wandered past, including one with a large, black German shepherd on a leash. The dog caught their scent and barked; its handler cuffed the animal and forced it to keep going.
So much for high security in a top-secret nuclear storage facility.
Finally, the four SEALs made their way back to the opening in the fence, unwired it, slipped through, and wired it tightly shut behind them once more. Half an hour later they were climbing the lines lowered by their teammates at the top of the canyon rim.
This, Tangretti thought, was the ideal SEAL mission. Somehow, the Hollywood version always seemed to end in gunfire and mayhem, but a totally successful sneak-and-peek like this one had the operators slipping into the objective, doing their job, and slipping out again, all without being detected by the enemy. Even quietly killing a sentry would have compromised the mission, since the chances were good that the man's body would be found, and the Iranians would know someone had been inside their base.
All that remained now was for the team to exfiltrate the area, link up with the ASDS offshore, and then get back to the relative security of the Ohio. According to the last report they'd had, Ohio had given ASW forces the slip and would be at Waypoint Bravo as planned.
As planned. Tangretti felt an unpleasant twinge at that, a foreboding, more superstitious than anything else. So far the op had gone perfectly. They'd gotten where they were supposed to be and done what they were supposed to do.
But there was still that old military maxim about no plan surviving contact with the enemy.
There was still plenty of room for something to go terribly, terribly wrong.
20
"Good morning, Commander," Stewart said as Lieutenant Commander Hawking entered the Combat Center.
"Thank you, sir. Is that what it is?" He looked at his watch. "Morning?"
"It is indeed. Did we get you up?"
"I was racked out, yes, sir. You know, this six on, twelve off, shit sucks. Sir." He looked at Stewart, then at the two SEAL officers with him. "On the other hand, you guys look like you don't sleep. Ever."
"It seems that way sometimes, Commander. How are you doing?"
"I'm still a nonqual puke, sir, if that's what you're asking." He shook his head with a wry and lopsided grin. "I had no idea there was this much to driving a sewer pipe underwater."
"Not what I meant. How would you feel about driving your Manta?"
Stewart saw the flash of excitement in the young man's eyes.
"Sir! Ready, willing, and able, sir!"
"Have a look at this." He gestured, inviting Hawking to examine the chart now on the plot table. A blue line running south to north marked Ohio's movement during the past several hours, and her current position — eighteen miles southwest of the island of Jazirehye Forur, and forty due south of Bander-e Charak.
Two islands guarded the approaches to Charak Bay. The larger one, to the northwest, was Jazireh-ye Qeys, nine miles wide, east to west, and crowded with military bases, missile batteries, and an airstrip. The smaller, Jazireh-ye Forur, measured less than five miles wide, north to south, and appeared uninhabited — a barren, volcanic lump of rock. The opening between the two measured about thirty miles.
Marked across the northern half of the chart were dozens of symbols and notations in red — small diamonds marking sonobuoys, and lines, circles, and rectangles indicating the probable positions and courses of ships or submarines using active sonar. The red symbols formed a curved wall all the way from Ras-e Nay Band, a cape 112 miles west of Bandar-e Charak, to Hormoz Island, 160 miles east of the port. Another heavy area of active sonar activity was the north-south corridor between Qeshm Island, outside of Bandar Abbas, and the Musand'am peninsula.