“Blue Squad,” Hawke shouted down to Stokely Jones. He’d suddenly appeared on deck with his three-man team. “Board and clear the enemy vessel.”
Stoke and his men bounded down the gangway and leaped aboard the patrol boat, disappearing into the wheelhouse. A minute or two later there was a brief exchange of gunfire. Then Stokely reappeared on the stern deck.
“Two dead enemy; they were hiding in the mess hall. All clear.”
Half an hour later, Operation Trojan Horse commenced. The fighting men from Blackhawke had boarded the patrol boat. Nine of them, Hawke’s team, were wearing the official uniform of the Iranian Frontier Guard. So was Chief Petty Officer Ascarus. Hawke cranked up the ship’s engines and signaled the men on deck to cast off the lines that secured the boat to Blackhawke.
He looked at Stoke and Brock as he shoved the throttles forward and headed for the marina at Ram Citadel. He grinned broadly at both men as the big Iranian vessel, now with Hawke at the helm, accelerated rapidly toward Iran’s coastline.
“I hate the expression,” Hawke said, “but so far, so good.
“Damn straight,” Stoke said, smiling.
“Bad luck to say so, though,” Harry Brock said. “At least in the Marine Corps.”
Hawke glared at him. “Harry, try, really try, to be positive. It seems every mission with you is more evidence that you’re getting well past your sell-by date.”
Brock stared back blankly. “Huh?”
“Never mind, Harry, just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut until we clear the jetty. Does that work for you?”
Twenty minutes later, the lighted channel buoys marking the entrance to the marina at Darius Saffari’s Ram Citadel loomed up in the fading and dusky light. When Hawke had first seen the aerial satellite photos of the compound, and the marina, he knew a waterborne attack was the only realistic way inside the enemy compound.
Fifty
The Ram Citadel
The setting sun stained the frothy seas red. The last curtains of evening were about to fall. There was no moon, and the coming night would be pitch-black. The commandeered patrol boat proceeded up the citadel’s narrow marina channel slowly, doing about five knots. Hawke’s team, visible on deck and in the wheelhouse, were all wearing the IRGC uniforms borrowed from the dead Iranian sailors killed in the firefight. Hawke and his men would be first ashore, do a recon, and signal the SEAL team when they’d secured a beachhead.
Hawke eyed an armed guard positioned at the end of the jetty. He snapped to attention and saluted as the big patrol boat slid into the harbor, the Iranian flag snapping in the ever-freshening wind.
Hawke, at the helm, returned the man’s salute. Then he sent Ascarus, wearing the late captain’s uniform, out to the stern rail to shout out a greeting and tell the man that they needed to take on fuel. He’d seen a fuel dock in one of the sat photos. That fuel dock had been the genesis of Operation Trojan Horse, his idea for getting his men inside the massive walls of the citadel aboard a captured patrol boat.
“Damn,” Stoke, who was standing next to Hawke at the helm, said, “man’s got himself a big-ass yacht for a terrorist.”
“Mine’s bigger,” Hawke said under his breath, intently studying the three-hundred-foot white-hulled yacht. She was moored at the end of a long steel pier. The name, Cygnus, was painted in gold leaf on her wide transom. No hailing port. There was something odd about the boat that Hawke couldn’t quite put his finger on. He slowed the patrol boat so he could get a closer look.
“Stoke, something’s wrong with that boat. What is it?”
“Yeah, I was thinking that. That’s one very old yacht. Looks like a design from the 1950s, right?”
“Right.”
“But it looks brand spanking new. Like it’s never left the dock.”
“That’s it. Exactly. Google the yacht Cygnus on your mobile, see what you come up with.”
“Gimme a sec… yeah, here it is. Her original name was Star of Persia. Her first owner was the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Sold or donated in 1978. Cygnus is now owned by another entity, something called Perseus Corporation, LLC.”
“Perseus,” Hawke said. “Our intel is good, Stoke. I think we’ve found our man.”
“Why’s that?” Harry Brock, eavesdropping, asked.
“Darius Saffari was a scientist at Stanford. His AI involvement there was with a research program called the Perseus Project.”
Hawke told the Red Team, his crew of “IRGC sailors,” to get the mooring lines ready. They would tie up at the fuel dock, take on gas, and assess the situation ashore through powerful binoculars before committing to direct action. The SEALs, or Blue Team, dressed in their distinctive black assault gear, would remain out of sight until the fortress had been breached. Their immediate responsibility was to neutralize enemy forces inside the compound and then do a house-to-house search for the “machine” and locate a very large two-story building that had been identified by CIA analysts at Langley as a possible bioengineering lab.
Hawke’s team would attack the residence and take out Darius Saffari.
Hawke slowed to idle speed, then eased the patrol boat alongside the dock where the pumps were located. He was surprised to see a large number of pirate scows moored together at the finger piers opposite the fuel dock. They were the longboats, narrow of beam, huge outboard motors hung on the sterns, the ones used by pirates to venture far offshore to take prizes. He hadn’t realized the Iranians and the Somalis had become such bosom buddies. But of course it made sense. Kidnap Western tankers and crewmen, use the ransom monies to buy weapons for al-Qaeda, Hamas, whoever. One big happy family.
While crew fore and aft heaved lines ashore and began to secure the boat, Hawke grabbed his binoculars and went out onto the stern deck to size up the shorefront situation. This was a critical phase in the operation. It could all go to hell right here, in a heartbeat.
It was an absolutely pitch-black night. No distinction could be seen between sky and water-the horizon simply didn’t exist. All around him was a cold, damp, murky greyness, broken only by the white water boiling at his stern. Abdul Dakkon, the brave fellow who’d saved his life in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, had given him a striped kaffiyeh as a farewell present. He wound it tightly around his neck to keep the chill night air out. He also wore it for luck.
Hawke knew they were expected. But, he hoped, the recent action at sea had gone undetected by the omnipresent, all-knowing “machine.” The Iranian vessel and the Red Team’s IRGC uniforms might still give them the element of surprise. He raised the infrared binoculars, studied the situation ashore with intense concentration, and finally spoke into his Falcon battle radio.
“Laddie, heads up. I see silhouettes of enemy sharpshooters atop the compound wall. Searchlights atop the towers at the corners. The shooters are posted about every fifty yards. Order your two snipers to take up concealed positions on the topmost deck. Now. When I give the order to fire they need to start picking these bastards up there off as rapidly as humanly possible. We’ll be exposed all the way in. If we take fire from that elevation, we don’t stand a chance of getting inside.”
“Aye-aye, sir, consider it done.”
At that moment, klieg lights atop the high towers lit up the world. Darkness was no longer an advantage. Only the stolen camo of their uniforms would save them now.
Hawke said calmly, “There’s a gate in the wall, end of this pier and to the right about five hundred yards. Three guards are giving us the evil eye. Ascarus and I will deal with them.”
“Good hunting, sir. Over.”
On the dock and standing with his team beside the fuel pumps, Hawke said, “Stoke, check out the three guards standing at the marina’s gate. You and Brock remain here and top off the fuel tanks. Ascarus and I will go have a friendly chat with those gentlemen. Keep an eye on us. If we manage to get that gate in the wall opened, that’s your signal. We move to infiltration and every last man aboard goes ashore firing at anything that moves.”