THE PERSIAN GULF OFF THE COAST OF IRAN
A dim red light flashed briefly in the pitch darkness as the afterdeck hatch was opened and closed. A man dressed head to toe in black looked up from where he waited at the rail of the patrol boat gently idling in the three-foot seas. A similarly clad figure beckoned, only his silhouette visible against the nearly featureless backdrop. The man at the rail glanced toward the lights along the coast five kilometers to the north, then turned away. He didn't want to lose his night vision too soon.
He examined his feelings, switching between anticipation of the job at hand, fear of failure, and a Muslim's resignation to fate. "In sha'Allah." God's will. He whispered the prayer for the future, though he wasn't sure he believed in it any longer.
Jamal el-Kassem made his way forward, his thickly soled combat boots affording him good footing on the wet decks. The boat was a Russian-built Pchela-class fast-attack patrol hydrofoil. At 83 feet on deck the heavily armed boat displaced 80 tons loaded, but with a crew of twelve men she could make 44 to 50 knots raised on her hydrofoils, pushed through the water, or rather over it, by two diesels pumping 6,000 horsepower into two shafts. She was an old boat, nearly twenty years since her keel was laid, and all the more rare because she was the only ship of any consequence left to what remained of Saddam Hussein's beleaguered forces.
This and two F/A-18 Jets was all they could count on, Kassem thought unhappily. Not much with which to win back a country illegally taken from them by the infidels. The memory of the last chaotic, horrible days in Baghdad before the Allied forces had entered the city and driven their Supreme leader into hiding in the desert was a blot on his conscience. If he had fought a little harder, held his post a little longer, used a little morecreativity and intelligence in his battlefield orders--if they all had tried harder--Iraq would not have been defeated in the second battle to liberate Kuwait.
The thoughts were almost more than he could bear, as were the memories of his wife and children. He had personally dug their bodies out of the rubble of their apartment building at the edge of the city. They had been murdered in an Allied air strike on the second day of the war, and there hadn't been a thing he could do about it. But that was about to change. Thanks to Saddam. In sha'Allah.
He began to chant the Shahada softly. "Allahu akbar; Allahu akbar; La ilaha illa 'llah." God is most great; God is most great; I testify that there is no other God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet.
Kassem was not an ignorant bedouin, nor was he a rabid anti-Western fundamentalist, though he felt that he had every right to be one; he'd been educated at Princeton, had lived among the infidels for four long years, learning international law and economics, and he'd hated every minute of his exile. He'd been an outsider. He'd even been called a nigger. His dark-complected face was deeply lined and weathered from spending years in desert combat training missions. He was large, by Iraqi standards, standing over six three, yet at forty-five he still moved like a desert scorpion, ready at long last, he thought with satisfaction, to lash out with his poisonous stinger. This time the strike would be aimed not only at their Western enemies, but also at Iran--a nation of men who should have been brothers, not enemies.
Two crewmen who were making the rubber raft ready looked up expectantly. "We are nearly finished here, Colonel," one of them said.
Kassem checked his watch. It was 1:30 A.M. Iran time. "Five minutes," he said, and was gratified to see their smiles. Good men, too good to continue to waste their lives uselessly. All that would end.
He took the ladder up to the bridge deck where his lieutenant, Karim al-Midafi waited. Where Kassem was large, and solidly built, Midafi was short and sinewy. His muscles stood out from the base of his neck like the deeply bedded roots of a willow that could withstand the most violent storm. Where Kassem looked like a rugby player, Midafi could have been a jockey. He was a night fighter, every bit as competent as his partner. They were friends.
"Are they ready down there?" he asked.
"I told them five minutes," Kassem said.
"The captain wants to see you."
"About what?"
Midafi glanced toward the lights on the distant shore, his dark eyes narrowing. He shrugged. "He wants us to understand the consequences if our mission fully develops this morning. The heathen is afraid for his own skin. He thinks that if we're caught and tortured we'll tell them how wegot ashore. Political troubles. He has to be careful now, because too much is at stake. It's money."
Kassem looked into his friend's eyes. "Will he continue to cooperate?"
"If he doesn't I'll kill him with my own two hands."
"We need him to send out the encrypted radio message. We're dead without it."
"He knows it!" Midafi said vehemently. "The bastards are taking advantage of us. When we've regained Baghdad, and our oil finally begins to flow again, I say we treat them the same as they've treated us. We hold them by the balls!"
"In the meantime we need them," Kassem repeated gently.
"More's the shame," Midafi lamented. "They're no different than the Americans."
"Get our equipment and load it aboard the raft. And make sure that we have everything, and that it has not been tampered with. I don't want to be stuck with weapons that are inoperative, or a transmitter that doesn't work."
"I've already checked our gear, but I'll check it again, Jamal." Midafi nodded toward the bridge hatch. "See what he wants. Then make him understand what will happen to him if he crosses us. I swear by Allah, if he does I will somehow come back and put my hands around his neck, even if it means crawling five hundred miles over the mountains and across the desert."
"I'll join you in a minute," Kassem said, and he opened the hatch and stepped over the raised sill into the bridge which was lit only by a very dim red light and the ghostly pale green raster of the radar set.
The captain stood at the windows, studying the shoreline through a pair of image-intensifying binoculars. The helmsman held the boat into the chop while the radio operator listened to something on his earphones. They wore the same uniform as the captain, which was different than Kassem's.
"You wanted to see me, Captain?" Kassem asked. "It's nearly time for us to leave."
Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet Captain Third Rank Vladislav Sidorenkov lowered his binoculars and turned his square-featured Slavic face to Kassem. "We're on station. I wanted to make sure that you were ready before I call for your air strike."
"Karim is checking our equipment. We leave in two minutes."
"Don't be hasty. Your government has very few assets to waste on a futile operation, or because of bad timing, or bad luck."
"Leave that part to us. Just do your job."
Sidorenkov's thick lips curled into a smirk. "Without us you wouldn't have gotten this far."
"It is just you and your bridge crew and chief engineer. We would have drawn the personnel from our own navy."
The Ukrainian laughed harshly. "From where? What navy?"
"Do not underestimate us."
Sidorenkov laid his binoculars down, and motioned to the radio operator, who slid the headphones half off his ears.
"The operation begins in two minutes. Get that off to Base One."
"Da," the operator replied tersely, and he turned back to his equipment.
Kassem studied the...
