Commander Redford moved nearer to the “waterfall” screen, which now showed definite engine lines. The computer had already compared them with the Kilo engine sample built into the system.
Chief Gowans muttered, “They fit, sir. No doubt.”
Hank Redford snapped, “Gimme the range.”
“Not close, sir. I’m thinking first convergence. And the bearing hasn’t moved. I’d say she’s coming dead toward us. In my opinion, she’s snorkeling right now. Those Russian Kilos are usually very quiet, but this guy’s making one hell of a racket.”
“We don’t have orders to sink her,” said the CO. “So long as she’s coming straight at us, we’ll hold this course and remain below ten knots.”
“Sir,” said Chief Gowans, “the solution looks good, she’s still out to the east, maybe twenty miles, and still coming our way. She’s not cavitating, which means she’s making under nine knots.”
Back in the Kilo, Captain Abad’s team did not pick up the Cheyenne. He was now running close to the coast of Algiers, and he told himself for the umpteenth time on this journey that the stealth of the Kilo was always his ally. And he could, if necessary, vanish long before he was cornered. They kept running west-sou’west until dawn, making fifteen knots at periscope depth.
In Cheyenne ’s ops room, the engine lines of the Kilo never vanished from the screens. But as her speed increased and the two boats closed to within ten miles of each other, the Americans altered course to one-nine-zero, steering almost due south to gain close contact. This was the most one-sided game of cat-and-mouse. Neither CO had orders to shoot, but the Americans essentially had the Kilo on toast.
Shakira Rashood made a leisurely journey across Ireland, driving out of Dublin and heading south across County Kildare and then on down through County Loais. She brought with her an ordnance map that marked the Coolmore Stud close to the little village of Fethard. So far as she could see, the nearest sizable town was Cashel.
She was not planning to buy a racehorse, but like many Arabs she had an inbuilt affinity with the thoroughbred, and she knew that most of the world’s high-mettled racers traced their ancestry back to the desert sands of her forefathers. There was only one famous Arab horse of whom she had heard, and that was the Darley Arabian. And she wondered whether any of his descendants had ended up at Coolmore, which Michael O’Donnell had pronounced the greatest stud farm on earth.
She was not of course to know that every single flat-racing stallion on the Coolmore roster traced back to the Darley Arabian, through his direct descendant Eclipse. And she wished her husband had been with her, because he, somewhat surprisingly for a wanted terrorist hitman, was quite knowledgeable on the subject. General Rashood’s own father, Iranian-born but London-domiciled, was a horse breeder of some note, having very nearly won the Ascot Gold Cup a few years back.
Shakira and Ravi often walked through Damascus to pick up the English newspapers, and she was accustomed to seeing him turn to the racing pages for the results, cards, and reports. He frequently said he missed going racing in England with his father, and that one day, if he could ever return, he would like to own a couple of decent runners. They both knew this was a distinctly unlikely possibility, mass murderers being generally discouraged from attending British and Irish racecourses.
Shakira had, of course, never even seen a thoroughbred in action, but it was a curious piece of unfulfilled ambition. She liked racehorses, liked being told about them, although it had been impossible for her to display anything but the most profound ignorance in the presence of Michael O’Donnell.
And now she was in the heartland of the thoroughbred, County Tipperary, where the great ones had either been born, been trained, or ended their days as stallions and broodmares. She stopped at the newspaper shop in Cashel and bought a small local history of the thoroughbred industry in and around the town.
The names were strange to her, the Derby winners, Nijinsky, Sir Ivor, Roberto, The Minstrel, Galileo, the world-famous sires, Sadlers Wells, Caerleon, Be My Guest, Danehill, Giant’s Causeway. But the names rang with poetry, seeming to echo through the Golden Vale of Tipperary where she now stood.
Shakira signaled for her driver to park the car in a long drive in front of the hotel where her guidebook had suggested she stay. It was a grand pink-bricked eighteenth-century building, now converted into the Cashel Palace Hotel, a mecca for visiting horsemen from all over the world. There had been a mass exodus north from the town for Irish Derby weekend, and it was no trouble booking a single room for a few days. She just checked in, using a hitherto unused American Express card, issued to a British citizen, Margaret Adams. No one even asked to see her passport.
She took her suitcase up to her room, declining assistance from the doorman. She unpacked carefully, hung a few things in the gigantic old polished wardrobe, and stuffed her essentials into her regular leather handbag: forged passports, credit cards, wallet, several thousand euros in cash, her forged British driver’s license with Margaret’s address in Warwickshire, and her driving gloves.
She had one stop to make at the fishing tackle shop she had noticed in the main street. Shakira felt very vulnerable when she was unarmed, as she had been for several days, ever since she had left her principal weapon jutting out of Matt Barker’s chest.
And now she went into the store and spent a few minutes looking at the fishermen’s knife selection. Finally she chose one with a long straight blade with a serrated edge and leather-gripped handle. She asked the assistant to gift-wrap it, as it was a present for her younger brother.
Shakira did not for one moment expect to use the knife in any form of combat, but neither had she anticipated using her Syrian dagger. She very definitely felt a lot better for having the knife, and she ripped the paper off as soon as she exited the shop, tossed it in a trashcan, and placed the knife in her bag.
Thus rearmed, she climbed back into the car and asked her driver to take her out along the road to Fethard. She had no plans to visit any particular place. She just wanted to see the land where these amazing horses were raised. So far, the cool green landscape of southern Ireland had not reminded her even remotely of her desert homeland, where the Darley Arabian had once lived.
They drove east along the country road amid the endless green of the Irish pastures on either side of the road. In the distance, she could see mares and foals in lush paddocks, but none of them were close to the road.
She remembered that Michael O’Donnell had mentioned an enormous sum of money for his filly foal from Easter Rebel’s dam, and imagined the security on these baby racehorses must be intensive. It did not seem possible that she could ever get close to them, and before long she suggested they turn around and return to the Cashel Palace.
When they arrived, Shakira said good-bye to her driver, who was returning to Dublin and promised he would have a local man at the hotel in the morning to transport her around the southwest of Ireland. No, he did not require payment. She could settle next week when he again came south to bring her back to Dublin.
This was not the first time she had really liked the Irish, and once more she made a mental note to forbid Ravi from killing any of them. So far as she was concerned, the Great Satan’s European cohorts ended in England. The Irish were not to be included in any future attacks. They just weren’t the kind of people to have anything to do with terrorists.