A premonitory — no, a remembered—chill trailed cold fingers up his spine.
A Vosper Mark V frigate. Fourteen hundred tons. And heavily armed, including Chinese-supplied antiship missiles.
He knew this ship. Had sweated under its prosecution before, scraping the keel of a stolen submarine across the shallow sands of the eastern Gulf. Had fired his last and only weapon at its consort as it charged in to destroy him. It had connected, but the sister frigate, this one, had swung in next. Only an unexpected intervention had saved him.
Now INS Alborz was exiting As-Suwys — the mouth of the Suez Canal — accompanied by a second combatant and a supply ship. A small Iranian task force, according to the intel summary. Heading in his direction?
“A hundred and forty miles,” Matt Mills murmured from the TAO chair. Damn, Dan thought, am I getting that transparent? Or was it good that he and his TAOs were thinking along parallel lines? He sucked the inside of a cheek, replaying bad memories about that area of the Egyptian coast. That was where he’d patrolled with Moosbrugger and Horn, and intercepted the battered trawler that had turned out to be carrying something the West had dreaded for years.
He sighed, and reached for the phone.
Ammermann answered on the first ring. Dan asked him if he could come to CIC. While he was waiting, he researched the rest of the task force. The second combatant was a Sina-class missile boat, built to a French design in Iran. It too carried antiship missiles. The third must have been a support or logistics ship, or even civilian general cargo. His references didn’t list it, though the intel report gave a name. “Make sure the EW team has the specs on their emitters,” he told Mills.
The West Wing staffer looked around, as if impressed, when he let himself in. But the guy surely was used to large-screen displays if he’d ever been in the Situation Room. Dan motioned him over. “Matt, give Adam your seat for a little while. Take a pee break, or whatever. I’ll watch your screen.”
“Yes sir. Remember, Weps is starting morning systems-operability tests. You might see the ‘missile ready’ numbers going up and down as they take them off the line.”
“Okay, thanks. — Adam, sorry, we’ve sort of neglected you.”
“That’s perfectly okay, Dan. I know things must be getting tense for you.”
Was that a dig? He couldn’t read this guy. He acted sincere, open, but what political animal, from either party, didn’t have layer beneath layer, motivation beneath motivation? Maybe this one just had a better poker face, but his smooth, wide, roughly shaven visage looked guileless and eager to please. Dan noted a simple yellow-gold ring with a deeply embossed crest he couldn’t see well enough in the subdued light to identify. He tapped it. “Harvard?”
“Yale.”
“Like the president.”
Ammermann looked humble. “Oh, sure. But years later, of course.”
“You know, Adam, I keep feeling like I should recognize your name. Why is that?”
“The heavy-equipment manufacturers. My family.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Close to the administration?”
“We’ve been supporters, over the years. What did you need me for, Captain? Some way I can help?”
Dan explained the tight quarters of the launch box; the window they had to hit; the Israeli, still guard-dogging them to the northeast. “He’s staying clear of our firing bearing, which is good. But I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing out here.”
“I could try to find out,” Ammermann said earnestly. “Go right from our office to the ambassador. I believe that’s possible.”
Dan thought it over. He had his own contact with the Israelis, although he wasn’t sure of the man’s name: the smooth little diplomat, or spy, who’d surreptitiously slipped him the Israeli Medal of Courage at a party at the vice president’s house. Back when he’d worked in the West Wing himself.
How ironic that he was now trying to safeguard the same city for the second time. “Well, that’s not actually what’s bothering me at the moment.”
“What’s eating you, Dan? Fuel consumption?”
A flicker on the status board caught his eye; a missile had gone offline. Daily testing, right. Where had Ammermann heard about their fuel state? “Yeah, that, and other things, but what I’m wondering about is this Iranian, uh, task force, I guess, that’s entering the Med. They’ve never done that before, operated up here, and I’m not clear on what might be the motivation. We’re taking on Iraq — their enemy — the Iranians, I mean. Sort of like the Romans took out the … well, never mind that. Any ideas on what they might have in mind?”
Ammermann made a strange side-to-side motion of the head, almost, Dan thought, a gesture he’d seen Indians make. A snakelike weave that conveyed something, but he wasn’t sure what. “You think they’ve got their eye on Savo? Or on you?”
“Call me paranoid. We’ll know more in a few hours, when we get a reading on their track. But it isn’t that far from Suez to here.”
“I could speculate, but it wouldn’t be more than that.”
“Okay. What would you speculate?”
The younger man shrugged. “Even if we’re taking on one of their enemies, we’re still an enemy too. Probably a more hated one, given the history — our support of the shah, the hostage drama, et cetera, et cetera. So if we’ve made a commitment to defend one of our allies — Israel — and we can’t follow through for some reason, we take a pie in the face. How they could do that, how they might interfere — that’s more in your area of expertise, Captain. The alternative might be, they’re just showing the flag. They do seem eager to assert themselves, since Zhang’s been backing them. Especially anywhere we show up first.”
Dan tapped his teeth with a thumbnail. Just the mention of Zhang Zurong brought back bad memories. When they’d first met, at a restaurant near the Gallery Place Metro stop, “Uncle Xinhu” had been a colonel. Ostensibly a defense attaché, he’d actually been a member of the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army, supervising a massive program of technology theft. Dan remembered him as a middle-aged businessman in a dark suit, wearing metal-on-plastic Yuri Andropov glasses. Many years later, he’d suddenly emerged from the deliberate obscurity of the Chinese Politburo as minister of state security. And now, years after that, as the premier, with a new policy: testing and, when possible, displacing U.S. power.
To some extent, it was inevitable; as the U.S. fleet drew down, as the American presence became less imposing, rising powers would be tempted to help push them out. Maybe the Iranians were just showing the flag. But as CO of a task force himself, even if only of Savo Island and Pittsburgh, he was bound to put the most threatening construction on any new player in the east Med.
He glanced up as Ammermann was lighting a cigarette. Dan plucked it from his fingers before the flame from the Zippo could touch its tip. “Not in CIC.”
“Sorry … wasn’t thinking. What d’you want me to do?”
Past him Mills was balancing a fresh cup of coffee, listening. Dan nodded to him. “Matt, anything to add?”
“If Mr. Ammermann can find out what’s behind this, it could help.”
“Okay, Adam, I’m going to give you a covered line. Work your magic.”
“I can’t promise anything, Captain.”
“Just do what you can. If there’s any way we can persuade these guys to turn around and go home, or even just tie up someplace until this thing’s over, it could deconflict the situation. Especially with Captain Marom on a hair trigger over there.”