"You're either a fucking lunatic, or you're a genius," Julian Seale said. "I still haven't decided which."
"Let's find out." Crocker adjusted his headset, nodded to Lex. "Go alive."
"Going live," she said, fingers flying on her keyboard.
On the plasma wall, in the upper-right quadrant, taking over a quarter of the screen in total, static lines appeared, then steadied, resolving into an image, black and white. Poole filled the screen, pulled back, adjusting the camera from his end, then his headset, and then Crocker could see Lankford seated past him in the command post, and Colonel Moss beside them both.
"Icecrown, standing by," Poole said.
"Status?"
Moss leaned forward. He was wearing his commando blacks, and the resolution from the satellite feed made his mustache look like a ragged smear of ink across his upper lip. "SPT stands ready. Waiting on your order, sir."
"Make it bleed," Crocker said. "They can't come out via air," Crocker had told Poole ten hours earlier. "And they can't take the Caspian route, that would never work twice."
Poole looked up from the map spread on Crocker's desk, frowned. "Then the northwest routes are out for the same reason. Turkey, northern Iraq, etc."
"That's what I'm thinking."
Poole moved his finger on the map, drawing a line east. "Afghanistan's out, too."
"Right."
"Doesn't leave much room."
"It leaves the south."
"That's the Persian Gulf, Boss."
Crocker tapped the map, southeast Iran. "Abadan."
"You're sitting on the Iraqi border there, same problem," Poole said.
"If you go west, which is what they'll think we're doing. Instead, we take them south…" Crocker's index finger followed one of the two blue lines bracing Abadan to the east and west, rivers running down into the Persian Gulf. "… by boat, have them met at the foot of the delta-say, by the SBS-transfer them to a RHIB, and then from the RHIB to a naval vessel in the Gulf."
"I like it," Poole said, after a moment. "But I foresee problems, namely getting the Admiralty to commit to bringing any of its precious toy boats in that close to Iranian waters. They'll cry 'Silkworm' and argue that the danger of a missile strike against the vessel is too great a risk; they'll tell the PM that one defector and one spy versus two hundred sailors isn't an equitable trade, and they'll be right."
Crocker scowled, looked up as there was a knock at the open door, Daniel Szurko sticking his head into the office, a blue file folder in one hand. "Paul?"
"Something I can do for you, Daniel?"
Szurko stepped in, smiling awkwardly at Poole. "Minder Two."
"D-Int."
"Something I can do for you, Daniel?" Crocker repeated.
"Hmm?" Szurko canted his head, looking down at the map on the desk. "Figured it out yet?"
"Working on it at the moment," Poole said.
"You have to get them out via the Gulf, you know." Szurko looked from Poole to Crocker. "It's the only possible route."
"Yes, we've just been discussing that," Crocker said. "The question is, how to give the exfil room to run."
"I've been wondering that, too." Szurko smiled at them both, then remembered the file in his hand, offered it abruptly to Crocker. "Meet Hadi."
"Hadi?"
"I think she can help. Let me know if there's more I can do."
He left the office, humming to himself. Poole watched him go. After a second, he said, "That's called eccentric, yes?"
"That's called brilliant," Crocker said, and showed Poole what was in the file. "We have device launch," Moss said. "Seventeen minutes, forty-six seconds to target."
"You know where to put it, Colonel?" Crocker asked.
"We're your Special Projects Team, sir. It's our job to know where to put it."
Crocker, for the first time in ages, felt himself smile. "Keep the channel open."
"Confirmed."
The screen flickered, changed, showing an exploded close-up of the northern edge of the Persian Gulf, satellite image overlaid upon the graphic. A small green dot appeared, moving from a position south, marked HMS Illustrious, tracking quickly north, towards southeastern Iran, the large, deep delta south of Bandar-e Khomenei, the largest oil refinery in the region. A timer appeared beside the moving dot, a countdown, seconds quickly ticking past.
Crocker watched for a moment, then turned to Seale, who was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, chin held in a hand. He slid his eyes to Crocker, grinned.
"Special Projects Team happy to be let out of their box to play?" he asked.
"More than you can imagine," Crocker said.
It took thirty-six minutes exactly from the time Daniel Szurko stepped out of Crocker's office to the time that Colonel Richard Moss, the head of the Special Projects Team, stepped into it. He arrived the way he always did when asked to report to D-Ops, snapping to attention and offering a crisp salute, even though, technically, there was no need for it. SIS fell outside of the Ministry of Defense, and thus was not a military institution.
That said, the SPT existed in the gray area between the two, the unit primarily comprised of combat engineers and military-trained technical specialists in a variety of fields. Theoretically, the unit existed to supplement D-Ops' operational capabilities, to take on those jobs or mission-related aspects that required specialized knowledge. If an operation required a dam breached, or a bridge blown, or power to a certain section of a certain city in a certain country cut at exactly the right time, it was the SPT that would make it happen. Moss was proud of his team's abilities, but as jealous of his men as Crocker was of his Minders.
"Paul," Moss said.
"You know Nicky Poole," Crocker said.
"Of course, good to see you, Nick."
"And you, Colonel."
Moss nodded, looked from one man to the other, then settled, as appropriate, on Crocker. "And what can the SPT do for you today, sir?"
"You're going to put a hole in a boat," Crocker said. "A reasonably sized hole, in a very big boat."
Moss's military bearing cracked as he smiled with pleasure.
"Live for it, sir," he said. At two minutes, Crocker put his headset back on, signaling to Lex. The screen flickered, the satellite transmission resuming. On the screen, Poole, Lankford, and Moss were all in profile, watching a separate monitor, and past them, Crocker could see at least two other members of the SPT who were aboard HMS Illustrious in the Persian Gulf. He slid his eyes up the clock, saw that it was less than ten minutes to eight in the morning in Iran.
"Closing to target," Moss said, glancing to the camera. "Awaiting the order to arm, sir."
"Arm," Crocker said.
"Arm, arm, arm," Moss repeated, turning away, and the command echoed again, distant. "Would you like to see it, sir? We've got a nice visual on her."
"Safe?"
"As houses, sir."
"By all means."
One of the SPT technicians moved, sliding back in his chair, and the screen flickered, went dark, then lit again, displaying the live feed from the torpedo speeding through the water. Another flicker, and now a new image, morning sunlight shining off the Gulf water, and the image magnified once, twice, again, bringing the view of a massive oil tanker closer and closer to the camera. Two pilot boats were running alongside it, escorting it out of the delta channel.
"One minute to impact, standing by."
"Hello, Hadi," Seale said from behind Crocker. "Good-bye, Hadi." "She's the same tanker the Somalis tried to hijack back in '07," Crocker told C. "Iranian Navy managed to arrive in time before she could be boarded. It is conceivable that an action against it could be taken as the Somalis seeking revenge."
"The Somalis hijack ships, they don't sink them, Paul." She looked up from the photographs that Szurko had supplied to Crocker, staring at him as if not entirely certain he was joking. "You want to blow it up?"
"Not precisely," Crocker replied. "The problem is that both Chace and Cougar are being actively hunted. We have to find a way to clear a route for them, to open a passage through which they can make their exfil. Nothing overland is viable, and Chace can't fly. The water is the only option left to us, but we still need a distraction."
"Meaning you want to spill oil into the Persian Gulf."
"The Iranians are practiced at cleaning up their spills," Crocker said, quickly, trying to diminish the indictment. "They'll respond immediately, and the damage will be relatively minimal. But it will justify foreign interest, bringing ships in closer. And it will divide their attention-no matter how badly they want to find Cougar, they won't be able to ignore this."
Gordon-Palmer frowned, studied the photographs again. "It'll have to go to the Prime Minister for approval, and the only way I can see him allowing it is if he can maintain deniability."
"I'll take responsibility."
"Of course you will."
"I'm sending Poole with the SPT to Iraq within the hour," Crocker said. "Lankford will rendezvous with them, but they'll need to proceed to one of our ships in the Gulf for this to work."
"The Admiralty has agreed to the plan?"
"Provisionally. If we can get permission to hit the tanker, they'll bring in HMS Illustrious to stage from, and they're offering SBS support for the exfil, as long as we can get Minder One and Cougar out onto the open water."
"They won't go inland?"
"They have expressed reservations. Something about armed soldiers and foreign soil, I believe."
"Ah, yes, I'm told that's called 'an act of war.' " She actually smiled before asking, "And they can make it onto the open water?"
"Working on that part now. But if we're going to use the Hadi as a distraction, we'll have to do it by morning tomorrow in zone. Any later and instead of a distraction, we'll have confusion, and that will hinder as much as help."
"Yes, agreed. Very well, Paul, I'll sell it to the Prime Minister. But I know what he'll say."
"He'll say that if we don't pull this off, it's my job."
"Ah, at long last, Paul," C said. "You're learning."
On the plasma wall, the Hadi floated placid and stable, beginning to steam forward, into the Persian Gulf. On the headset, Crocker listened to the countdown.
"Impact, impact, impact," Moss said. "Good impact."
Nothing visibly changed on the screen.
"Not seeing anything," Seale murmured.
"Confirm impact," Crocker said into the mike. "No visual."
"Above the waterline, you'll not see anything yet," Moss said, and Crocker thought the man was decidedly pleased. "Triple-D device, sir, directed charge low to the hull. She's bleeding now, sir, trust me."
As if in response, Hadi began to turn to port, and on the screen Crocker could now discern motion on the deck of the ship, antlike figures moving aboard the massive oil tanker. Crocker wasn't certain, but on the surface of the water he thought he was seeing the first striations of color, the rainbow refraction of oil on water.
"Congratulations, sir," Moss said in his ears. "It's a bouncing baby environmental disaster."