Captain Abad’s sonar room had finally located the U.S. submarine Cheyenne, currently steaming slowly on a southerly course, eight miles to the northwest. The total absence of any kind of aggressive move from the Americans, or even an increase in speed, gave him confidence that the Iranian Kilo was in no immediate danger.
Thus he made a decision to press on regardless, keeping up his speed and holding his course to the Strait of Gibraltar.
Cheyenne ’s sonar room kept watching. “She’s headed straight to Gibraltar,” said the CO.
“No doubt,” responded the chief. “We never had one shred of intel that said anything about her destination. But this is obvious. She’ll pass about seven thousand yards to starboard at her current speed, one hour from now.”
“Keep tracking her.”
“Aye, sir.”
Back in the Kilo, Mohammed Abad kept the air intake raised and ordered the submarine to all-ahead, maximum speed. And the Kilo once more accelerated forward, the two masts leaving a slashing white wake above a turmoil of water being churned up by that big Russian five-bladed propeller only forty-five feet below the surface.
The wide ultrasensitive sweep of Cheyenne ’s radar picked up the accelerating masts in a heartbeat. The Kilo was plainly making a run for it.
Commander Redford had little choice but to follow, since his orders were very definitely to stay in contact but also to stay in the Med. So the Cheyenne set off, making a southerly course at around twenty knots.
The Kilo out in front, moving fast, was still at periscope depth and making a major racket just below the surface of the water. The Americans could not fail to track her with consummate ease.
At 0900, high above, the American satellite photographed her wake, ensuring that U.S. military surveillance knew precisely where the Iranian submarine was located.
By 1115 that morning, the Kilo was a hundred miles southwest of Alicante, off Spain ’s Costa Blanca. To the south was the long hot coastline of Morocco. Progress was still fast, and no one had opened fire on her. By dark, the Kilo had progressed over a hundred miles, her speed was steady, and General Rashood, who was no stranger to submarines, estimated that he was more or less on time. He needed to be through the Gibraltar Strait tomorrow, Tuesday, and that could definitely happen at this speed.
His planned landing on the coast of southern Ireland on July 14 or 15 was still on, and suddenly the Cheyenne seemed to be losing interest, slipping back several miles astern.
At midnight, Monday, July 9, Captain Abad ordered an increase in speed as they headed directly to the Strait. She was now driving through the water at seventeen knots. And her CO would make several of these one-hour bursts, despite the stress it put on the battery.
Shakira Rashood had left the Cashel Palace Hotel on Monday morning and asked her driver to take her to the wondrous Atlantic coastline of West Cork, upon which, sometime this week, her husband would land. The journey was a little over a hundred miles, and she had checked into a small hotel in the fishing village of Schull on the shores of Roaring Water Bay. She sent the chauffeur back to Cashel with instructions to collect her in Schull on Thursday afternoon.
Today she had taken a local taxi all the way down the long undulating road to the end of the Mizen Head Peninsula. And from there on this clear summer day she could see the distant lighthouse on the Fastnet Rock. The sea was very blue out here, and the deep Atlantic looked friendly, with two or three yachts sailing close-hauled into the soft onshore breeze.
Shakira had grown to love Ireland in the short time of her stay. She liked the people and was truly astonished at the breathtaking beauty of the countryside. For someone brought up among the sands of the desert, the browns and the stony reds of the Arab landscape, she found Ireland, with its forty shades of green, to be almost beyond her imagination.
She felt as if she was standing in a giant oil painting on the cliff top of Mizen Head. Behind her stretched the switchback of hills that rise and fall among tiny stone-ringed fields that had been divided and divided again, down the centuries, as families had split, shared, and migrated, in the endless surge of Ireland ’s greatest export, her people.
All around her, she had sensed the history, the ancient myths, and the legends. Every time she spoke to anyone at any length, there was a story, because the past is never far away for the Irish. The entire landscape is dotted with reminders, the stone ring forts, the huge stone graves, the tall carved religious stones dating from 2000 B.C., the round towers, and the high crosses.
During her journey south from Dublin, Shakira had stopped whenever she saw something to which she could get close. On the great Rock of Cashel beyond her hotel room, she had spent three hours just wandering around the ancient fortifications, the roofless abbey, and the finest twelfth-century chapel in Ireland. She’d stopped on the road to gaze at ruins, checking her guidebook, perhaps because this sense of times long past was in her blood, this curiosity, this desire to imagine.
No race of people is more devoted than the Arabs to myth and history and far-lost stories of valor and achievement. Except perhaps the Irish. Nonetheless, Shakira Rashood was exceptional. If she had not been an Islamic terrorist, she might perhaps have been a scholar.
She climbed back into her taxi and told the driver to go slowly all along the road to Barleycove and Goleen. Because from those high cliffs she could see way down to the harbor of Crookhaven, the spot chosen by the Hamas High Command, into which they would insert General Rashood after his long journey in the submarine.
Slowly they made their way back along the road to the West End Hotel in Schull, where she took a long bath and then walked downstairs into the bar for a glass of fruit juice before dinner. And as always, there was another legend being related, of how Bonzo, a local fisherman, had once drunk sixteen pints of draught Guinness in an hour and twelve minutes, which was considered to be an Irish free-standing record.
Shakira did not consider it to be in the same category as the legend of Brian Boru, who had stormed and captured the Rock of Cashel in the tenth century. But the bards of the Cashel Palace downstairs bar, on the subject of the great Irish king, were precisely the same as the seamen of Schull speaking of Bonzo. They all recounted the mighty deeds in the same reverential tones: all of them as if these pinnacles of Irish history had taken place yesterday.
Shakira was charmed by all of it, and wondered if it could ever be possible for her and Ravi one day to live here in peace and seclusion, half a world away from the flaming hatreds and death that would never leave the lands of her forefathers. But in her heart she knew that she and Ravi had gone too far, that they were both wanted in too many places, that there were too many people who would shoot them both on sight. The steely-eyed hitmen of the Mossad and the CIA would surely offer neither of them one shred of mercy.
Right above the Kilo, on the surface of the most westerly reaches of the Mediterranean Sea, the rain was lashing down. This was one of those great summer squalls known in the area as a levanter. Captain Abad welcomed it with all of his heart: the belting rain was sweeping across the dark water, giving him noise cover while the submarine ran at periscope depth, snorkeling. Despite the absence of danger, he still had those ingrained submariner’s instincts-the quieter we run, the better I like it.
The majestic Rock of Gibraltar, looming above the narrow strait that separates Europe from Africa, was only about five miles to the west. The sea-lanes were quiet at this time of night, and it was no problem to keep the air-intake mast raised for the generators.
The Kilo was still running fast and making a mighty wake as she came powering through the water. Every twenty minutes, Captain Abad took a short all-around look at the surface picture and could see only a single oil tanker and a freighter, a big container ship, under the French tricolor, probably headed for the port of Marseilles.
There were, so far as he could see, no warships in the vicinity. And his radar sweep was detecting scarcely anything. The sea was surprisingly calm. And the huge generators purred with life, sending a mild shudder through the entire ship.
Captain Abad turned to General Rashood and told him first the good news, that no one was tracking them. And then the bad news, which was they would not arrive in southern Ireland until the small hours of Monday morning, July 16. “And that’s only if we get a good fast run up the Atlantic,” he added.
Ravi, who had been somewhat within himself for the past couple of days, nodded distractedly, as well he might. The terrorist commander had a lot on his mind, not least that sudden, unexpected signal from Shakira on July 3, the one that clearly indicated something had gone wrong-evacuating immediately.
For all he knew, his wife was under arrest. Anything could have happened. He did not even know what country she was in. He just hoped to hell she had made it to Ireland, that she would somehow be waiting for him in Dublin. Right now he could only be patient, trapped in this submarine, running slightly late but still more or less within his original schedule.
And Shakira was not his only problem. Because ahead of him was a journey to England, the country where he was still, probably, among the most wanted men, both by the police and the military. Wanted for three murders, that is, and the Brits did not know the half of it. The United Kingdom was by far the most dangerous place for Ravi, so many people knew him from the days, a lifetime ago, when he had been an SAS commander, a leader in Britain’s most elite fighting force, Major Ray Kerman.
Encapsulated here, in this Iranian submarine, Ravi suddenly felt, for perhaps the first time, a pang of nostalgia, a mixed feeling of wistfulness, possibly even regret. He always tried to dispel memories of the old life, the camaraderie, the respect an SAS officer enjoys, and the lifelong friendships from his schooldays at Harrow. But he had rendered himself an outcast, estranged from his parents, estranged from the military, estranged from the country that had nurtured him.
He had “gone over the wall” in a moment of rash heroism, horrified by the deprivations being foisted upon the Palestinian people. But, in a sense, it had all been worthwhile. Terrorism had made him a wealthy man, but the greatest prize of all had been Shakira.
And now, in a sense, they were going once more into battle together, in the minefield that England would always be for him. But first they had to get into the country, through one of the most demanding security systems in the world. The mere thought of England sent a thousand more thoughts, all of them worries, charging through his mind-the passports, the immigration officers, the customs officials, the patrolling police in every airport and ferry terminal, the fear of recognition, and, perhaps above all, the target.
Admiral Morgan, he knew, would have ironclad security all around him; not as tight as in America, but sufficiently tight to allow Ravi only one shot, from a rifle not yet made. Beyond that was the gargantuan problem of getting away. Ravi understood with great clarity that he would need every possible moment in England to plan his strategy. He also knew that one mistake would almost certainly cost him his life. And then what would happen to Shakira? Of course, they might get her too, but that was more than he could bear even to think about.
He walked out of the control area and stood alone for a moment. “Sweet Jesus, keep her safe,” he whispered, entirely forgetting about Allah and the Prophet. Ravi’s prayer was to the God he had worshiped long ago at Harrow School.
The Kilo snorkeled in peace, right through the dawn that painted the eastern sky, far astern, the color of spent fire. At 1230, after a solid five hours running and charging the battery, Captain Abad ordered the generators to cease and the submarine to go deep, as they entered the Gibraltar Strait.
The channel is fourteen miles wide here, between the Two Pillars of Hercules, the Rock of Gibraltar to the north, and Mount Hacho on the Moroccan coast to the south. The Strait then runs for thirty-six miles west, narrowing to only eight miles, before widening once more and washing into the Atlantic.
On either side, the land is high-the Atlas Mountains of North Africa and the high plateau of Spain. You might consider this a colossal piece of irrelevance for a submarine journey. But that would be a misjudgment. From the high pinnacles of the Atlas to the Spanish plateau, the geological contours run underwater to form one gigantic continuous arc. Which is why the Gibraltar Strait is quite extraordinarily deep, averaging 1,200 feet.
For Captain Abad, this was hugely significant because it meant his ship could dive to six hundred feet and move quietly on her way, far from the prying eyes of the heavily fortified British naval base, which traditionally scours these waters night and day for signs of a rogue submarine-or anything else that might consider stepping out of line.
The Brits, of course, have irrevocable links with Gibraltar and, with their American allies, quietly control the only entrance to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. Spain has never been very thrilled with this incontrovertible truth and has several times stamped its Iberian boot with anger. In fact, none of the Mediterranean countries- France, Italy, Greece, and the North African group-are crazy about this arrangement.
But the two heavyweights at the Atlantic entrance have never been inclined to listen to anything. Except for submarines. But there was a smile on the face of Captain Abad as he ordered the only soundless creature in the sea to go deep… bow down ten-make your speed five, steer course two-seven-zero.
Slowly the Kilo ran through the Strait, passing deep beneath the ferryboat from Gibraltar to Tangier and then accelerating steadily through the final miles, until the seaway widened to twenty-seven miles between Cape Trafalgar and Cape Spartel to the south. The Atlantic Ocean lies beyond that point on the navigator’s chart.
Immediately after they crossed that unseen line on the ocean’s surface, Captain Abad ordered a course change, forty degrees to three-one-zero. Ahead of them was a dead-straight 180-mile run across the Gulf of Cádiz to the southwestern tip of Portugal, Cape St. Vincent, and then north up the Atlantic to Ireland.
Ravi enjoyed spending time with the navigation officer, Lt. Alaam. They had each been born in the eastern Iranian province of Kerman, and the Hamas C-in-C liked to hear stories of the land of his birth. But today, when the hectic journey of the submarine had highlighted his concern over his wife, he felt curiously out of place.
Peering over the shoulder of the Iranian lieutenant, he could see on the computerized chart the two most famous capes on the Iberian Peninsula, each of them the scene of a titanic British naval victory two hundred years ago-Trafalgar, where Admiral Lord Nelson had destroyed the French and the Spanish in 1805, and St. Vincent, where Admiral John Jervis had crushed the huge Spanish fleet eight years earlier. General Rashood felt an instant connection with these names from a schoolboy past. It was an unspoken pride that nobody else in this submarine could possibly understand.
And, for the briefest of moments, he wondered what the hell he could possibly be doing, surrounded by renegade jihadists, on his way to assassinate one of America ’s most revered naval figures. It was, without question, the most mutinous thought that had ever crossed his mind since he had crossed the line and become a Holy Warrior in the cause of Islam, eight years before.
But, quickly, he pulled himself together, and he thought of Shakira and the merciless way her two very young children had been gunned down by a British Army sergeant in that hellhole of a battle in Hebron. And, of course, he knew there was no going back. Not now. It was too late. Much too late. All he could do was to hope his beautiful wife would be awaiting him in Ireland. Because, if she was not there, he now believed there was nothing left for him. Not in this life. Except for blood, sorrow, death, and tears, and a cause he believed might not be won.
They reached Cape St. Vincent at 1900 hours and made another turn to the north, heading out into deep Atlantic water, with three thousand feet below the keel. They ran at twelve knots now, at PD, which meant they would cover close to three hundred miles each day. It was Wednesday evening, July 11, and Shakira should be looking for Ravi on Monday, at the Great Mosque on the outskirts of Dublin.
It was thus essential that the Hamas military commander reach the shores of Ireland on Monday morning, because he would still be two hundred miles from Dublin. And he needed to make that journey unobtrusively, attracting no attention, revealing absolutely nothing about himself, leaving no imprint on anyone’s memory.
One of the main drawbacks in being a terrorist was the necessity to eliminate your enemy completely. No trace could ever be left; no one could still be walking around with knowledge of you, however slight. Which was why, broadly, Matt Barker had perished.
Ravi understood his own situation as well as Shakira had understood hers. If, during his forthcoming journey across the Emerald Isle, any Irishman tried to get too close, or was too persistent, then Ravi would have no choice. The stakes were too high, the risks too great. It was costing $100,000 just to get him to West Cork. No one must interfere with his mission, however well-meaning.
And again, in this mood of self-examination, General Rashood wondered about his wife. Just what had gone wrong? And where was she? She had not tried to make contact again, but how could she? There was no cell-phone reception deep under the sea. Maybe she had tried. Maybe Shakira had cried out for help. Help that he could not provide. For all he knew, she could be in Guantánamo Bay, being interrogated by the servants of that evil bastard Admiral Morgan.
This particular thought sent that old familiar ramrod of steely resolve up his spine. If Shakira was in Cuba, he would make sure she was the last person Morgan ever sent there. And then, somehow, he and his warriors would get her out. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” he asked Captain Abad.
“Sorry, General. This is top speed. We must be patient. The worst part is over.”
Lt. Commander Ramshawe called Detective Joe Segel down in Brockhurst every day. And both of them were growing increasingly depressed. The detective was heartily sick of chasing the impossible shadow of Carla Martin, and Jimmy was growing more and more concerned for the safety of Arnold Morgan.
He had alerted associates at the FBI and the CIA that the admiral would need more security during his trip to England. He had consulted with the Secret Service agents at the White House and requested extra vigilance at British ports of entry through which a would-be assassin might pass.
Jimmy had even had the FBI search through the airport records in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston for any passenger who had bought an expensive one-way transatlantic ticket on the night of the murder-either to London, Paris, or any of the big European terminals: Amsterdam, Bonn, Hamburg, Madrid, Rome, Milan, or Geneva. Nothing popped up.
Neither Jimmy nor the FBI gave one thought to Dublin, simply because it’s not a big enough onward-journey airport. London probably has twenty international flights going anywhere you could name, anywhere in the world, to Dublin ’s one. Same with Paris and the rest. One call to Aer Lingus would almost certainly have revealed that last Tuesday morning, a woman named Maureen Carson had turned up at the airport and paid more than six thousand dollars with her American Express card to travel on the 10:30 A.M. flight to Dublin.
Such passengers are quite rare, people with no bookings or reservations, only going one way, plainly acting on a spur-of-the-moment decision. Even a bank robber would have found time for preliminary arrangements. Murder can of course be slightly less predictable.
And Carla had slipped through the net, with a lot of savvy and a bit of luck. Jimmy, armed with a lot of facts, but not enough certain knowledge, was unable to close in. There were too many gaps, especially the one in Dublin airport.
The other problem was that no one was very impressed with Jimmy’s diagnosis of the situation. Like the admiral himself, it seemed no one could take seriously the vanishing barmaid as some kind of latter-day Mata Hari. Everyone was polite. But no one was convinced of the danger posed by the lady who had journeyed to Brockhurst with one mission in mind.
What really got to Jimmy was the fact that this Carla Martin had plainly succeeded in her mission. In a very few short days, she had moved in, befriended Arnold’s mother-in-law, and found, almost to the hour, the time of their departure, their destination, and their hotel. The Australian lieutenant commander, on this unproductive morning, was mildly surprised that Carla, or whoever the hell she was, had not managed to come up with the room number or Arnie’s breakfast order-so some fucking terrorist can get in there and poison the bloody eggs and bacon.
Those heavily connected facts and thoughts were quite sufficient for Jimmy’s antennae to start vibrating. But the clincher was the antiseptic precision of “Carla’s” departure. She had carefully erased every detail, sneaked around taking things out of the hotel files, signed for her apartment under a different name, handed over thousands of dollars. And left nothing behind. She had had no car, but there was obviously a 24-hour chauffeur to transport her everywhere: a chauffeur for whom someone was paying, with cash that had not come out of a barmaid’s wages… not to mention the bloody dagger, the one with “ Syria ” carved on the blade in Arabic.
Jimmy’s montage of facts sounded fine when he had them all together. It was simply one of those conundrums that did not play well to a third party. Too many little things, too much lack of one big overwhelming fact that could not be disputed. On the phone Jimmy could sense people growing more bored by the minute, thinking silently, “Shut up, Jim, the admiral’s going to be fine. None of this adds up to an assassination attempt on Admiral Morgan.”
Lt. Commander James Ramshawe knew better. Or at least he thought he did. He checked the airline schedules to London from Washington on Monday night, July 30. Arnie and Kathy would travel first-class on a U.S. airline, the trip arranged by the White House travel department. That would almost certainly be American Airlines, departing 2115, arriving Heathrow around 0830. They’d be at the Ritz by 1015 on Tuesday morning. In Jimmy’s mind, thanks to “Carla,” a Middle Eastern terrorist organization knew all that as well as he did.
He’d already had the Secret Service call the London embassy to ensure that the admiral always traveled in a bulletproof car. He’d asked for extra agents, he’d asked the FBI to alert Scotland Yard that there might be an attempt on Arnie’s life, he’d had the CIA check in with the British secret services MI-5 and MI-6, just to keep everyone on high alert.
But he was still worried. He needed a bodyguard for Arnold Morgan, an experienced operator who would treat the subject as hair-trigger dangerous, as Jimmy himself did. And he did not know such a man, not one who would be available to drop everything and go to London with Arnie and Kathy. Everyone was so stretched these days, and the military would not have sufficient personnel to help out. Everyone was too busy chasing the goddamned insurgents in Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.
But he would not give up. He realized, alone above all other high-placed officials in government circles, that “Carla” had done her work. That something was going to happen.
Shakira was back in the Cashel Palace Hotel. She’d had a farewell Irish coffee with Dennis and retired to bed. The maids had drawn the curtains in her room and turned down the bed. But before she climbed between the spotless linen sheets, she drew back the curtains so she could see the illuminated outline of the Rock of Cashel, which was beginning to seem like an old friend.
Like most terrorists, Shakira Rashood slept only fitfully, awakening every two hours, alert for danger, her long fishing knife tucked under the pillow. She liked to see the ramparts of the Rock against the night sky, and she loved to contemplate its age and the centuries it had stood there, rising from a grassy plain, a place of kings and bishops, saints and choristers, Romans and Normans.
For a while she lay there, lost in the kind of peaceful speculation that so often eluded her because of the terrors of her calling. And then her mind moved on, back down to Mizen Head, where she had gazed upon great waters. And she pictured again those mighty acres of the Atlantic, dark now, flecked with whitecaps, nightcaps, far above the black submarine that was speeding through the depths, unseen, bringing her husband home to her.
Home? Could there ever be a home, like those of other people? Even the poorest of her people had homes, perhaps small, perhaps even squalid, but she and Ravi had nothing. The last home they had in Damascus had been bombed to smithereens by-she believed-the Israeli Mossad.
And it would always be the same. People trying to kill them. She and Ravi trying to survive, trying to live, and love, and do everything they could to destroy the West and all it stood for. All for the Muslim cause, everything for Allah and for the word of the Prophet. They were frontline warriors for the Jihad. But would Allah care for them in this life, as well as in the next? Shakira was not so sure about that.
And she turned once more to St. Patrick’s Rock, wondering how many people down all the years had turned to the great patron saint of Ireland and looked to him for guidance and protection, just as she and Ravi turned to Allah. And were the beliefs of those Irish people any less powerful than her own? She could not answer that, but she fervently wished that she did not need to leave this place tomorrow. And that she and Ravi could shelter here forever, in the shadow of St. Patrick, beneath the Rock.
But tomorrow she was leaving Cashel. Her driver was meeting her at nine in the morning, and she would return to Dublin. But not to the Shelbourne Hotel. She must move on, and she was booked into the Merrion, right around the corner from the Shelbourne, perhaps the top hotel in Dublin, an expensive little palace, exquisitely converted from five Georgian houses, one of which had been the birthplace of the Duke of Wellington, the Irishman who destroyed Napoleon at Waterloo.
She was leaving Cashel because she believed her place was in Dublin where Ravi was coming to find her. Perhaps he would be early; and if he was, she wanted to be with her cell phone in close proximity to their meeting point. When he did arrive, she guessed they would not linger. They would move directly to England, although she did not know how. And from there to the assassination of the man in the three newspaper cuttings she had seen in Gaza, her friend Emily’s son-in-law.
It all seemed a long time ago. Irrationally she wondered how the ridiculous Charlie was getting along without her. That stupid, stupid Matt Barker. She would have liked to spend longer in Virginia, because she really liked Emily. Brockhurst had been another nice peaceful place, and it seemed the world was full of them. But not for her and Ravi, for whom every place was a battleground.
She drifted off to sleep, and the following morning she had a light breakfast in her room, packed her very few possessions, and said good-bye to St. Patrick’s Rock. Her driver was waiting, and they headed northeast, back to the city. And once more Shakira sat back and admired the deep green landscape of Ireland and wondered if she would ever pass this way again.
The Kilo was still running hard, snorkeling as usual, a little over five hundred miles south of Mizen Head. The journey from the Gulf of Cádiz had been untroubled. If they had been detected by an Atlantic-patrolling U.S. submarine, no one seemed especially interested in these vast Atlantic waters. They never saw a warship, hardly ever saw any traffic except for an oil tanker the size of the Suez Canal, plowing north, laden with enough crude oil to fill the Dead Sea.
They were still making twelve knots average and would require only one more burst of speed before they landed Ravi, somewhere off Crookhaven Harbor. General Rashood’s mood of despondency was still upon him. He was desperately worried about Shakira and was half expecting bad news every time they checked the satellite for signals from home base. These were of course unlikely in a “black” operation as secret as this one. And each time there was nothing, Ravi was quietly relieved. If Shakira had been captured or even arrested, he was certain the Hamas High Command would have been informed.
No news, he supposed, was good news, which meant Shakira had made it to Ireland. And thirty hours from now, he expected to join her in that country. Then all he needed to do was make it to Dublin. Ravi and Captain Abad, despite their tensions on board, had become good friends. Mohammed Abad was a dedicated Islamist, a native of the old Iranian medieval capital of Shiraz, south of the Zagros Mountains.
He had trained as a submariner for ten years and was today recognized as the best in the Iranian Navy. Subject to the inevitable regime changes and the ever-possible prospect of war with the West, his position was very strong, and he was widely mentioned as a future admiral. Ravi had not met him before he boarded, but he was deeply impressed with Mohammed’s skillful awareness of the U.S. submarine that had been tracking them in the Mediterranean.
Like Ravi, Captain Abad, who was thirty-four years old, had a younger wife, who was, judging by the photographs he showed the Hamas military boss, just as beautiful as Shakira. Well, nearly. Mohammed himself was a tall-six-foot-two-somewhat imposing officer. He tended to speak quietly, and when he did, his staff listened. Mohammed had attended all of the long months of lectures and practical submarine craft in Russia.
He was the most experienced underwater operator in the Iranian Navy, an expert in navigation, hydrology, electronics, mechanics, and weaponry. Upon the slightest problem in the ship, the crew always called on the commanding officer, who understood the workings of his ship better than anyone else.
Mohammed Abad was a member of the new breed of Islamic jihadists, men who were almost as competent as the best of the Americans or the British. They were men who believed in their nation’s right to total independence from the West and were quite prepared to fight to get it. Twenty-five years ago, such men had not existed. But the desert nations learned, and spent billions training the best of the best. And now the Middle East was bristling with these young, brilliant commanders, strategists both at sea and on land. There were two of them on Kilo 901.
The eight bells of the watch tolled out the midnight hour. Ravi and Mohammed sat companionably sipping sweet tea in the control room. The submarine captain knew better than to question the general about the forthcoming operation, but he could not miss the importance of the mission, the landing of the most renowned Hamas terrorist leader in a desolate civilian harbor in one of the most remote corners of the British Isles.
Whatever was going on was big. Mohammed understood that. And on this particular evening, as they neared the end of their long journey together, he risked a subtle probe. “Will you be working alone, sir?” he asked.
“I will,” replied Ravi. “There is only one task for me, and no one can provide much help. Plus, it’s quieter on your own. Less chance of attracting attention.”
“Will I be picking you up, sir? I have no orders as yet. But no one’s told me to go home.”
Ravi smiled. “My exit from Ireland has not yet been established. I just have to see how things play out.”
“Well, sir, I’ll be here if you need me. And I think you might. Because it’s unusual to be this late in the mission with no further instructions. I have a feeling they want me to wait around for your exit.”
“I’d be grateful for that, Mohammed. You really know how to drive this thing.”
“Give me a bit of deep water and a fully charged battery, and I can make this ship vanish if I have to,” replied Mohammed. “And it would be my honor to pick you up and take you home.”
“Those words will be a comfort to me in the few difficult days ahead. But I expect to come through it okay.”
“Everyone has great faith in you, sir. Whatever it is, you get it done, and I’ll be waiting for you.”
General Rashood climbed to his feet, and he patted the captain on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Mohammed,” he said. “I enjoyed the journey. And now I must get some sleep. Let’s pray for calm seas when we reach Ireland.”
The Kilo ran on, mostly making twelve knots. Captain Abad made no course change. He just continued running hard, snorkeling along the surface, on a course that would give the southwest coast of England a very wide berth. Right now, they were west of the Bay of Biscay, moving north through the Atlantic, straight up the ten-degree line of longitude, which passes ten miles west of Mizen Head.
Even with England and the west coast of Wales between two and three hundred miles off their starboard beam, Captain Abad was nervous about running into any patrolling Royal Navy submarines. These are deep waters, and all along the rocky shores of Great Britain ’s west there were, he knew, listening stations, usually operated in conjunction with the Americans.
He also knew that the two major Western sea powers would, by now, be aware that the Kilo had left the Cheyenne and was somehow out of their reach. Whether the Americans now knew the Iranian Kilo was heading into British and Irish waters was a difficult point. Captain Abad thought they must, and he also thought they would be much more likely to try to whack him out here than they would in the Med.
Right now Captain Abad did not wish to be detected, and he ordered the Kilo to two hundred feet, hammering his battery at ten knots and counting on the enormous area of the ocean to keep him out of harm’s way. They ran all through the night, forced to snorkel every hour. By late afternoon, they were less than two hundred miles off the Irish coast.
As soon as night fell, they contacted the satellite and reported their course and position. There were no signals from home base, so once more Ravi dared to hope that Shakira was safe. Mohammed Abad expected them to run into their insert area sometime after 0400 on Monday, July 16.
General Rashood and the captain dined together for the last time on this journey shortly after 2100. The cooks prepared them Iranian kebab-e makhsus, the special kebab made of sliced tenderloin and served on a bed of polo rice, with nun bread. They drank fruit juice only, and Ravi retired once more to bed for a final rest before the insert.
And while he slept, the water began to grow more shallow as they headed for the hundred-meter line off the southwest Irish coast. The Kilo now ran 150 feet below the surface, and with every mile, the depth gauge recorded the upward slope of the seabed. They came inside the hundred-meter line at 0230, and almost immediately the water was a hundred feet more shallow.
Up ahead, two miles to starboard, was the great jutting crag of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse, guarding Long Island Bay, flashing its warning light every five seconds. Once more Captain Abad came to periscope depth, this time to take a look at one of the world’s most famous maritime fixtures, a slashing white light across the water, a light that had been cautioning sailors for centuries.
The Kilo transmitted nothing except passive sonar, and on this clear moonlit night they again went to one hundred feet with the fifty-meter line only three miles ahead. Thereafter, the sea was only 120 feet deep, and the submarine would need to be very careful as she moved in toward Crookhaven. They needed at least ninety feet to stay out of sight, and this was a rocky seabed. Captain Abad would not dream of going too close to the bottom, and he intended to enter the outer roads into Crookhaven at periscope depth, and on tiptoes, slowly making his way forward.
The harbor at Crookhaven in mid-July is apt to be busy with moored yachts, and anyway the Iranian would not dream of making his entrance on the surface. The navigation planners in Gaza had specified that the submarine remain at PD one mile off Streek Head at the eastern end of the harbor, in approximately 120 feet of water. From there, General Rashood would make his own way inshore.
As they made their approach, the ship suddenly became full of activity. They were just a few feet below the surface now, and a small rubber Zodiac with a wooden deck was being prepared. A makeshift davit, which is a kind of small maritime crane, was being assembled. General Rashood had changed into street clothes: a pair of dark gray slacks, a black T-shirt, loafers, and his brown suede jacket.
His leather bag contained all of his documents, credit cards, and cash, thousands of euros and British pounds, a warm Shetland sweater, and driving gloves. His combat knife was tucked into his thick leather belt at the small of his back. The general carried no other weapons.
At twenty minutes after 4 A.M., Captain Abad ordered the Kilo to the surface, and the Iranian submarine came shouldering her way out of the ocean with a rush of dark water, phosphorescence, and spray. Eight crew members immediately climbed out onto the casing and assembled the davit. They hauled the Zodiac up and out into the air, where two crew members completed the inflation process.
By the time this was completed, a black Yamaha engine, fifty horsepower, was hauled out from the hatch and two ship’s engineers bolted it onto the Zodiac’s transom. Fuel and electric wires were connected, and crew members lowered it over the side into the calm summer sea. Next, they rolled out a net that ran down the casing into the water alongside the Zodiac.
Then General Rashood came onto the deck with the captain, and the two men shook hands. “Allah go with you,” said Mohammed Abad.
“Thank you, Captain,” said Ravi. And with that, he gripped the net and expertly climbed down into the Zodiac, tossing his bag in before jumping aboard himself. The engine was ticking over, and the crewman who had launched the boat now handed over the helm to Ravi and climbed back up the net.
The Hamas general was alone now, and he looked up ahead; the shape of the narrow land on the south side of the harbor made a dark line beyond the moonlit water. He looked along to the right, to the light on Streek Head, then quietly opened the throttle and began to run west, forward to the coast of County Cork.
And even as he pushed out through the first yards of his journey, the submarine moved gently forward and then slipped beneath the surface, heading back south. Ravi had no idea where she was going.
The night was cool now, and Ravi wished he had worn his sweater rather than stuffing it into his bag. The Zodiac ran easily through these inshore wavelets, but he did not want to wind her up and charge into the harbor at full speed, mostly for fear of awakening one of the yachtsmen and then being noticed.
Instead, he just chugged along, heading in toward Streek Head, making about six knots instead of the twenty this light, fast craft would undoubtedly achieve with the throttle open. For the first time in many days, he had no interest in the depth of the water. The Zodiac drew only about a foot and a half, and, as harbors go, Crookhaven has considerable depth. In the eighteenth century, mail boats from the United States, even clipper ships, had pulled in here. There were even dark mutterings during World War II that German U-boats had anchored here and been refueled, such was the widespread hatred of the English in this part of the world.
No one has ever admitted such a thing, but the rumors have persisted, and many people have stark memories of outbursts by mostly elderly Cork men, banging their fists on the table at the opening notes of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”-“I’ll not have it sung in this house. That’s an English marching song.”
It all dates back to the first quarter of the twentieth century and the English occupying army, the detested Black and Tans. Just thirty miles from Crookhaven, east along the coast, stands the village of Clonakilty, birthplace of the Big Fella, Michael Collins, commander in chief of the Army of the Irish Free State-the guerrilla warfare patriots who finally drove the English out forever.
Collins and General Rashood had much in common. Both men taught their eager but reckless troops to fight in a more orderly fashion, against an overwhelming force. Both men carried within them a burning hatred of the opposition, and both men took part in spectacular strikes against their enemy. The heartbreaking heroism of Michael Collins and his Cork-men in the Easter Rising in Dublin, 1916, facing English artillery with only pistols, is the very fabric of Irish legend, right up there with Brian Boru at Cashel.
There is still an annual memorial service down here in Cork on the anniversary of his death. There are books, there are films, there are songs.
Some they came from London,
And some came from New York,
But the boys that beat the Black and Tans
Were the boys from the County Cork.
Even now, it is still commonplace along this stretch of coastline to meet a perfectly normal young Irishman who, in the context of the Easter Rising, will say, “Ah, yes. The boys fought very bravely that day.” As if it had been yesterday. Always as if it had been yesterday.
That rugged coastline of West Cork, home to the boys who beat the Black and Tans, was a fitting place for the archterrorist leader to land that night-in the dark, after a long journey, with murder in his heart, the murder of an enemy to his people. The Big Fella would have been very proud of Ravi Rashood.
He rounded Streek Head at 0520. The flashing-light warning of a jagged rock on the right-hand side coming in was still effective. It was not yet daylight. But dawn was breaking in the eastern sky, behind Ravi.
Crookhaven Harbor is a mile long, and up ahead the Hamas general could see more big moored yachts than he would have ideally liked. There must have been twelve, at least, but none carried lights, and there was no sound from the sleeping crews. There was the occasional soft clatter-clatter-clatter of a loosely cleated halyard, but the yachts sat quietly on their lines in the light wind.
Ravi throttled back, cutting his speed to dead slow, chugging along with the Yamaha engine just idling behind him. So far as he could tell, there was no one on deck, no one looking, and no one on shore. Ireland is not famous for its early risers at the best of times, and Crookhaven Harbor would never have been confused with any seaport in the USA where, it always seems, everyone is up and shouting the moment dawn breaks, loading, unloading, weighing, casting off, revving up, selling, buying, drinking coffee, laughing, lying, doing deals.
Sleepy West Cork was the perfect spot for a mass murderer to slink into Europe ’s most westerly outpost. Ravi chugged on, sliding between the yachts, aiming for a little beach at the edge of the village. He knew there would be little shelving of the seabed in this deep harbor. So he just ran directly inshore, cut the engine, and planted the rubber bow of the Zodiac straight onto the sand.
He grabbed the painter, jumped forward onto dry land, and hauled the boat after him. Swiftly, he dropped his bag onto the sand, took off his shoes, socks, pants, T-shirt, and jacket, and stepped into the water in his boxer shorts. It was freezing, and he leaned over the gunwales to restart the motor. He dragged the boat around so that it faced back down the harbor, and then he leaned over some more and grabbed a tiny clock that had been lying on the deck, with several electric wires holding it in place.
Ravi turned the dial to the sixty-second mark, pressed a small button on the side of the clock, and then marginally opened the throttle of the Yamaha. Then he let it go, and the unmanned Zodiac chugged out into deep water, heading east, at around eight knots, down toward Streek Head. Ravi turned away and pulled on his T-shirt. He was only wet to his thighs, and he put on his pants and his socks and shoes.
But before he had time to pull on his jacket, there was a short dull thump in the water, the thud of explosives. And immediately the Zodiac began to sink, the bottom of its hull blown out with an expertly set hunk of TNT. Ravi had attended to this personally, inside the submarine. The hole in the Zodiac’s bottom was perfect, four feet across. It took precisely fifteen more seconds to vanish completely, below the fifty-foot-deep outer harbor waters.
It was not yet six o’clock. And Ravi scanned the land around him. There was no sign of life. He looked out to the moored yachts and there was neither sight nor sound of anyone. Excellent, he thought, I’ve landed in Ireland, and not one person knows I’m here. But he was wrong. Someone did.
Up on the foredeck of the 54-foot American-built sloop Yonder was Bill Stannard, the skipper and helmsman. He had elected to sleep on deck after a four-hour alcoholic binge at the Crookhaven Inn, right next to the sailing club. Right now, in the early hours of the morning, he was very cold, and he was nursing the opening symptoms of a monumental hangover.
Bill, at thirty-eight, had sailed Yonder across the Atlantic from Rock-port, Maine, with only two crew members. He was meeting the owner, a member of Boston ’s Cabot family, right here in Crookhaven two days from now. The previous evening’s blowout at the inn was his last throw. He would not have another drink for a month, while the owner and guests were aboard. But this did not, of course, diminish his own plight right here on the foredeck, with a head that felt as if it had been hit by a guided missile.
The very slight chug-chug of Ravi ’s motor had awakened him. It was not so much the noise, but a change in the vibrations in the air. Bill was a former U.S. Navy submariner, a petty officer, stationed at New London, Connecticut. And like all submariners, listening was second nature to him: listening for the slightest change in the regular beat of the submarine’s engines, for any alteration in the air pressure, for the merest vibration on the shaft, the distant rattle of a carelessly stowed toolbox.
Ravi ’s engine altered the air around the sleeping Bill Stannard, and in a flash his eyes opened and his senses came alert. It took a few more seconds for him to work out where he was, and indeed whether he was still genuinely alive. But he raised his throbbing head and looked out over the port bow, where he saw a slow-moving Zodiac making its way across the harbor.
At the helm was a heavyset man wearing a suede jacket, which was unusual in a seagoing community. Suede jackets belonged in London ’s Knightsbridge, Dublin ’s Grafton Street, or New York. Out here, seamen wore seamen’s clothes, foul-weather jackets, not suede.
Bill was puzzled, but he was also feeling so acutely godawful that he closed his eyes again. And he debated whether he was sufficiently strong to raise himself up, go below for a cup of coffee, and then get into his bunk. He decided not, which was why the Hamas terrorist had seen no movement on the decks of any of the moored yachts in Crookhaven Harbor.
Ravi walked up to the village, holding his leather bag. He passed O’Sullivan’s Bar and began to walk toward the road which he knew led to the main coast road, back to Goleen, Schull, Ballydehob at the head of Roaring Water Bay, and, finally, Skibbereen.
That was his direction, and the Hamas planners had made it clear that he should walk to Skibbereen, fourteen miles from Crookhaven, because there he could pick up a bus without attracting too much attention and without wasting much time waiting. They had pinpointed a bus from Schull to Skibbereen, but it ran only twice daily. Service from Skibbereen to the east was far more frequent.
Ravi would walk the fourteen miles at approximately four miles an hour, which was three and half hours. His schedule was to get on the bus and make for Waterford, using bus and train all the way, but not staying on any of them for long periods. He had accepted the fourteen-mile walk, but staring at the long uphill road to the top of the cliffs where a few days ago Shakira had stood was a fairly daunting sight, even for a man as fit and hard-trained as General Rashood had always been.
He set off resolutely, striding alone up the hill. In the half-light of the Irish dawn, he had seen no one, and now in broad daylight he still could see no one. Bill Stannard, far below on the foredeck, had not moved. And nothing stirred as Ravi reached the top of the hill, checked the signpost to Goleen, and set off along the high road, occasionally glancing out to his right, to the spectacular view out to the Fastnet lighthouse, Cape Clear, and Carbery’s Hundred Isles.
Somewhere out there, the Iranian Kilo was moving away from the dropoff point. Ravi found himself thinking wistfully of those pleasant breakfast meetings with the captain and the navigation officer, the warm secure feeling, the hot coffee and pastries. Now he did not even have a bottle of water, and he needed to avoid all shops and stores. In rural areas like this, a stranger stands out, is remembered, and should accept human contact only with the greatest reluctance.
The ruggedness of the country was a surprise to him as he left Crookhaven behind. The hills rolled out before him, and the bends in the road came quickly, like a green-lined version of the Yellow Brick Road. Ravi did not think he was in Kansas any more, nor in Damascus, nor Tehran.
This Irish cliff top was like nowhere he had ever been. It could have been two centuries ago, for there was no sign of anything modern. So he just strode along, on his regular 4-mph pace, the same speed Napoleon’s army made on flat ground, under full packs, on the march to Moscow.
In West Cork, there is a code about transportation. With no trains, hardly any buses, and, for a hundred years, a shortage of cars among the residents, it was customary to stop for anyone on the road and offer a ride to the nearest village.
City folk were always amused at the way local farmers tipped their hats and smiled, offering an unspoken Top o’ the mornin’ to you, as cars went by. None of this had yet happened to Ravi, until around 0630 when an old Ford truck, driven by Jerry O’Connell and laden with four large milk urns, came rattling around the corner and almost hit Ravi amidships. Jerry hit the brakes, skidded briefly, the milk urns clanged together, and no harm was done.
Jerry was an Irish farmer, fiftyish in years, and the ninth generation of his family to run a dairy farm down here on the Mizen Peninsula. Most of it was not perfect grazing land, but there were pockets of good grass, nurtured by a lot of rain and summer sunshine, with no frost or harsh weather. The warm air above the Gulf Stream washed around here, and men like Jerry knew precisely where cattle would thrive.
They were all from Catholic families, large Catholic families, with upwards of four or five children. Jerry himself was one of seven, and his younger wife, Katy, daughter of the harbormaster, had borne him five children of his own.
For basic survival money, Jerry made this three-mile journey with his fresh milk every day of his life to the dropoff point in Goleen, where the central milk trader picked it up, decanted it into the milk tanker, and drove it to the bottling plant. There would be four big empty milk urns, from yesterday’s trip, awaiting him when he arrived in Goleen. There was no hanging around.
The near-miss with General Rashood shook Jerry to his foundations. He stopped the engine and jumped out to face the startled Ravi. “Mother of God, sir,” he said. “I’ve nearly run you over, and sure that would have been a terrible thing to do. Can I offer you a ride somewhere? Because you’ll not see a bus along here for nearly three hours. And that would be one hell of a lot of walking.”
Ravi smiled. “Think nothing about it,” he said, in the easy tones of a former British Army officer. “I was probably walking in the middle of the road anyway.”
“Well, that would not have excused me for mowing you down, sir. Not at all. I’m trying to make reparations.”
Ravi stared at the cheerful farmer. And Jerry stared back at the well-dressed stranger. He offered his hand, and said, “Jerry O’Connell…”
Ravi accepted it, and offered, “Rupert Shefford… and thank you for the offer of a ride. Gladly accepted.”
“Which way are you headed?” asked Jerry.
“Skibbereen,” replied Ravi.
“Well, I’m not going that far meself, but I’ll gladly take you along to Schull. There’s a bus at eight o’clock-and wouldn’t you admire the view from here, out to the lighthouse. My old grandpa always told me it was the finest view in Europe.”
“Was he widely traveled?”
“Hell, no. He only once left here for more than three hours, when he went to Dublin for a family wedding. He was so homesick, they brought him home before the reception.”
Ravi chuckled. “Well, I’ll be happy to get aboard, Jerry, and thank you very much.”
Mr. O’Connell did not seem to be in a hurry. “Ah, jaysus, Rupe,” he said. “And what brings you to a tiny outpost like Crookhaven on a fine mornin’ like this? You don’t look like a sailor to me-and you sure as hell don’t look like a farmer… did you stay in one of the hotels last night? I’ve an aunt who works at the Old Castle House.”
Ravi ’s mind raced. “No,” he replied. “I was staying down there with friends.”
“On land?”
“Yes, on land. Couple of fellas from school.”
“Ah, there’s nothing like a reunion, Rupe, talking of old times with a couple of jars of Jameson’s under your belt.”
“We had a good time, Jerry,” said Ravi. And even as he spoke, he realized the options were fast running out for the Irish dairy farmer, who pressed on with the conversation regardless.
“Now, who exactly are these fellows from school?” he asked. “My family have lived down here for three hundred years at least, and I’ll be sure to know them. And their friend will be my friend. What’s their names, Rupe?”
So far as Ravi was concerned, this was becoming lethal. His mind buzzed. Jerry O’Connell already knew far too much. He could identify him; everyone would know in a half-hour that there had been a complete stranger wearing a suede jacket walking along the cliff top at six o’clock in the morning. Lying about his origins. Claiming impossible friendships with people who did not exist.
Ravi could no more come up with names of Crookhaven residents than fly in the air. Whatever he said, the farmer would know he was lying. Ravi distractedly walked over to the farm truck and pretended to see a flat tire on the left rear wheel. Now half-hidden from sight, he delved into his bag and pulled on his leather driving gloves.
“I think you might be in a bit of trouble here, Jerry,” he said. “There’s no air in this tire.”
“That rear one?” replied the Irishman. “Let me have a wee bit of a look.”
He walked over to join Ravi just as the Hamas terrorist was reaching for his combat knife. Not to stab or slash, but to hold it the wrong way around, and to use the handle as a blunt instrument.
Ravi bent down to examine the tire, and as he did so, Jerry O’Connell joined him. “That tire looks pretty good to me,” he said, uttering the last words he would ever utter. Because Ravi straightened up and struck like a cobra. He slammed the handle of the dagger hard into the area between Jerry’s bushy eyebrows, and with the bone well and truly splintered, he dropped the dagger, drew back his hand, and slammed the heel of his palm hard into Jerry’s nostrils, driving the bone known as the septum into the brain.
Ravi Rashood killed Jerry O’Connell instantly, with a classic SAS unarmed-combat blow. The Irish farmer was dead before he hit the roadside grass. His heart had stopped before he landed backward on the sparse grazing soil of West Cork. Wrong place, wrong time.