“I’m going back to Guantanamo Bay, and I want Gloria along to put pressure on the ONI guy she’s already had a run-in with,” McGarvey said. “When I find out where bin Laden is hiding, I’m going after him alone. I’ve always worked that way.”
Elizabeth looked up. “That’s another part I don’t like,” she said. “You’re getting too old for this kind of stuff.”
McGarvey shook his head ruefully. “Too old for fieldwork and too old to turn the head of a pretty woman. Good thing I’m going back to teaching when this is over. And it’s even better that I’m in love with your mother.” He smiled. “She’s practically ancient too, you know.”
Elizabeth laughed lightly. “You make a good pair,” she said. “A dotty old bastard and the only woman on earth who can tell him what to do.”
FORTY-THREE
Captain Tariq Ziyax leaned against the chart table in the control room of the aging Foxtrot diesel-electric submarine, studying the medium-scale chart of the Mediterranean Sea from the Libyan coast across to the island of Sicily. It was coming up on 2200 Greenwich mean time, which put it at midnight local, eighty-five meters above on the surface.
The Shehab had left her base at Ra’s al Hilal three days ago on what the crew had been told was a routine patrol mission, but no other Libyan ship had accompanied them, nor since reaching their patrol station two hundred kilometers off Benghazi had they participated in any torpedo or missile drills, and the crew was getting restless. Only Ziyax and a dozen of his officers knew the real orders.
He was a small man with narrow shoulders, and a sad face that was all planes and angles, like someone out of a Goya painting. His eyes were puffed and red because he’d not slept well since he’d been handed this troubling assignment by Colonel Quaddafi himself four days ago, and his nerves were jumping all over the place, especially now that they were at their rendezvous point.
He wanted nothing more at this moment than to be home with his wife and three children, rather than here in the middle of the Mediterranean, carrying four anthrax-tipped torpedo-tube-launched cruise missiles.
To be caught out here in international waters with such weapons of mass destruction, which actually had belonged to Saddam Hussein before the war, would mean certain arrest and imprisonment. It would also go very badly for Libya if it were discovered that Quaddafi had hidden Hussein’s weapons in the weeks before the Allied forces had attacked.
The secret to leading men was never to allow a subordinate to see your inner fears. Remain calm in all circumstances. Be a man of iron. It was what he had been taught by the Russians at the Frunze Military Academy.
This is especially true aboard a submarine where a man’s worst fears always hovered just a few meters away at the pressure hull.
The Shehab was one of the last Foxtrot Class submarines that the Soviets had built in the early eighties, eight of which had been delivered to Libya. Because of shoddy maintenance practices by the Libyan navy, and because of a scarcity of spare parts since the collapse of the Soviet Union, only three of those boats were still serviceable, and the Shehab was most definitely on her last legs.
But, Ziyax reflected, in an effort to steady his nerves, she was still a potent warship. Under the right command, with the right crew, she was capable of dealing a sharp blow whether to a sea or land target.
At 91.5 meters on deck, Shehab displaced 2,600 tons submerged, and at cruising speed had a range of twenty thousand miles. She was fitted out with ten 533mm torpedo tubes; six forward and four aft. And she had been modified five years ago, two of her forward tubes modernized so that they could handle the ZM-54E1 missiles that had a range of three hundred kilometers, and could carry a variety of payloads, including normal high-explosive warheads, or air-burst canisters of anthrax. Even a small nuclear warshot with a yield of a few kilotons could be mounted to attack a ship or even a shore installation.
Ziyax shuddered to think what the outcome would be if a Libyan submarine ever made such an attack. It would be the end of their nation, and certainly the same fate that Hussein had suffered would befall Colonel Quaddafi. It was why this assignment was so vitally important.
“You will kill three birds with one stone for me, my dear Captain,” Quaddafi had told him. It was early evening, and they were walking in the desert, a half-dozen bodyguards trailing twenty meters behind.
“I and my crew will do our best for you,” Ziyax had promised. He had graduated with a degree in electronic engineering, with honors, from King Farouk University in Cairo, and after two years working for Libya Telecommunications Corporation, helping build an all-new telephone system for the country, he’d been drafted into the navy. He was smart, he was dedicated to his nation, and knew how to follow orders as well as give them. After four years of intensive training in Libya and in Russia, aboard a variety of submarines including Kilos and Foxtrots, he’d been appointed as executive officer aboard a sister submarine of Shehab’s.
He’d also gotten married and started his family, which made him want to finally quit the sea and return to his first love, electronic engineering.
“When you have completed this assignment for me, I will release you from the navy, if that’s what you still want,” Colonel Quaddafi promised.
Ziyax had felt a sudden flush of pleasure. “Yes, sir, but only to return to my old position.”
“You’re needed there as well as here,” Quaddafi said.
They walked in silence for a while, Ziyax thinking about regaining his old life. But then it occurred to ask what task he was being assigned to do. “The three birds with one stone, sir?” he prompted.
“You have read the newspapers, seen the international television broadcasts, so you know that I have promised the West to reduce our military forces in exchange for new trade agreements. The boycott against our people has been lifted.”
“Yes, sir.” Life in Libya, especially in the capital, Tripoli, had markedly improved over the past few years. The nearly universal sentiment held Quaddafi in high regard, even though it had been his arrogance in the first place that had landed them in so much trouble with the West.
“You are to take your submarine into the Mediterranean, and so far as the world is concerned, scuttle her.”
Ziyax’s breath had caught in his throat when he understood exactly what Quaddafi was telling him, and the reason for telling him out here in isolation where there was no possibility of prying ears. “If I’m not to scuttle my boat, what am I to do?”
“You will make rendezvous with a civilian vessel so that your crew can be taken off and replaced by a scuttling crew, to whom you will turn over the boat.”
Ziyax knew exactly whom the scuttling crew worked for, and his blood ran cold, but he didn’t give voice to his thought.
“Since we have made an appeasement with the West, certain of our brothers in prayer have criticized us. This gesture will spread oil on the waters. The second bird.”
Al-Quaida, the thought crystallized in Ziyax’s mind. Still he held his silence.
“You may tell your officers the truth,” Quaddafi instructed. “It may be that you will have to remain aboard for a few days to familiarize the new crew, though I’m told their captain is English. A graduate of their Perisher school.”
Ziyax could not have been more astounded at that moment. “I’m to turn over my submarine to an infidel?”
“Precisely,” Quaddafi said. “Although the West, as well as your crew, will believe that your boat was destroyed and sunk.”