The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (4 page)

Nakhoda Yekom Ebrahim Elham stood on the roof forward the funnel on the guided-missile frigate
Jamaran
. The captain was dressed warmly in the big, navy blue greatcoat he wore over his uniform, the collar upturned and his white cap pulled low against the sharp winds. After a trip along the American coast, and then a pass along the British shores, the vessel headed north. This was the crew’s first voyage into cold-weather environs. It would also be the first dry run of the Iranian-built weapons systems in below-freezing conditions; though no weapons would actually be discharged, the data on crew reactions and lubricant gelidity would be crucial in designing future armaments and Arctic wear.

The
Jamaran
was a
Mowj-
class vessel, one of two that the Islamic Republic of Iran had launched from the port facilities of the Bandar Abbas Air Base since 2010. The other vessel, the
Velayat
, was newly commissioned and sailing the southern Atlantic. The purpose of the “Wave”-class ship was expressed in a directive from Daryaban Ali Hammad Sayvari. The rear admiral wrote that the ships would sail “internationally but with particular strategic attention to the maritime borders of the United States.” A cooperative arrangement with Venezuela allowed Iranian vessels to refuel in South America, giving them access to virtually all the open waterways on the planet.

Nakhoda Yekom Elham was equally proud of and humbled by the vessel he captained. For over thirty years, since the dawn of the Islamic republic, the seaman had watched, with frustration, as his nation was forced to purchase outdated vessels from Russia—such as the clumsy
Kilo
-class submarines that had, until recently, comprised the entirety of their underwater fleet. Now, the Iranian Navy had their own
Ghadir
-class midget submarines patrolling against imperialism and Zionism in the Persian Gulf...
their
gulf. Soon, the larger
Qaaem
class would make its way through the seas beyond. Standing on the bridge, Elham let his eyes run slowly over the gleaming white surface-to-air missiles set in their box launchers on the main deck. Beside them was the helipad, which was outfitted with a rapid-deployment Toufan helicopter. The name, which meant “storm,” was a streamlined version of the AB 212 anti-submarine-warfare helicopter. It was a tidy little craft that could move against any air-or-sea-borne target with state-of-the-art weapons including rocket-launchers and two 20mm cannons.

The
Jamaran
was armed with other weapons as well. There was a Nour surface-to-surface missile, which, with recent upgrades, had a range of three hundred kilometers. Below, the ship was equipped with a pair of triple torpedo launchers on either side of the stern. They were armed with 324mm light torpedoes. Like the Toufan, the vessel was equipped with two 20mm manned cannons as well as a 40mm automatic cannon that offered both assault capabilities and point-defense against incoming fire. Yet it was the main gun that was a prize, a 76mm Fajr-27 set on the forecastle. The gun had a range of over seventeen kilometers and could fire eighty-five rounds every minute.

Below deck was some of the finest technology afloat, designed by Chinese and German scientists and built in Iran. The sensor array included a low-frequency variable-depth sonar and radar, a long-range air/surface search and tracking radar, and a navigation radar with a backup system. Sensors attached to the main mast could detect bacteriological, chemical, and radiological attacks within a two- to ten-kilometer radius, depending on the concentration and potency of the materials. Two powerful 10,000hp diesel engines and four auxiliary diesel generators allowed for a brisk maximum speed of 30 knots.

And then there was the crew, 127 of the finest young men in any military service anywhere. Elham was a man of peace, but as a lifelong sailor there were times, like now, when he ached to test his ship, his crew, himself, in the kind of confrontation for which they had been trained.

Drill first
, he reminded himself. There was no dishonor in learning. But rushing—

A dull, bass cello sound rang across the deck. Then another. Then again. Elham was already moving toward the bridge before the first alarm had faded.

A
navidovom
, a petty officer third class, was already running toward the captain. The swarthy young man saluted as he reported. He was trembling. Elham did not think it was merely from the cold.

“Sir, we have encountered a radioactive source that registers 4,000 millisieverts,” he reported, his teeth chattering audibly. “It is coming from Ice Floe 48589.”

The captain stopped just short of the bridge. The glacier and iceberg designations were from the European Space Agency’s environmental satellite ENVISAT ASAR, data that was publicly available to all shipping. Even if they departed at once, by the time the ship reversed course and sailed out of range, that level of radiation would kill half the crew within a month. And they would have learned nothing for the price. That was unacceptable.

Elham punched the stopwatch function on his wristwatch and hurried onto the bridge. The five-man command saluted and he motioned them back to their positions.

“Approach the radiation source at full speed,” the captain ordered.

The helmsman acknowledged the order. Standing behind him, the captain looked out at the dreary sea. He could just about make out a large shape in the haze. Icy sea mist had gathered on the back of his neck. It melted now and ran down his nape under his collar. He unbuttoned his coat as he went to the radio. He snapped his cap crisply under his arm—he would never have tossed it casually onto his seat—and took the headset from the operator and pressed a green button on the console.

“Engineering, this is the captain.”

“Sir!”

“Prepare welding equipment. We will be sealing radioactive materials.”

“Yes, sir.”

Elham pressed a red button. “Sonar, what do you have?”

“Captain, we aren’t sure,” the operator admitted. “At first we thought it was a plutonium-powered satellite from America or Russia, but the configuration is—strange. So was the radiation burst.”

“Strange how?”

“It wasn’t there and then it was,” the operator said. “It was as if someone had twisted a fruit open to reveal its pit. Then squeezed the fruit into something unrecognizable.”

He killed the open line. “Helm, distance?”

“Two kilometers and we are mutually closing,” replied the young man who sat directly in front of the captain. Perspiration was running from under his cap. His hands shook. Elham laid a hand on his shoulder. The man steadied.

A short, lean figure had stepped to the captain’s right elbow. He was Nakhoda Sevom Azizi, second-in-command.

Without turning from the looming shape in the mist, the captain said, “Lieutenant Commander—I want a shore crew in the water in five. If there is a way to seal the object, do so and bring it back. Please command the detachment personally.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man saluted sharply and left the bridge. If he knew that proximity to the source of the radiation was certainly a death sentence, the forty-year-old Azizi did not show it. Elham had given him the mission not just because he was a supremely competent commander but because he had two brothers and sisters and was unmarried. If the rest of the crew had any chance at all, Azizi’s parents would suffer less than some others.

In just over four minutes, Azizi and six other men were paddling north in a black inflatable dinghy. The men wore black wetsuits and appeared as a dark smear in the mist. The boat was kicked around in the rough waters, but the men were well trained and held both their bearing and speed.

“Sir, this is Paria,” a voice came over the headset. It was the sonar chief.

“Go ahead,” Elham replied.

“The computer has assembled the pieces in the ice. It’s an old submarine. It appears it was sealed inside and literally pulled open when the floe separated. The satellite images put the breakup concurrent with the radiation spike.”

“Is it an early American nuclear submarine?” Elham asked. The propaganda value of finding a lost U.S. naval treasure, especially a failed one, would be high.

“We aren’t certain, Captain,” he said. “The pieces have been too badly compacted by the ice.”

“Thank you.”

Elham did not bother relaying the information to Azizi. They would find out soon enough. Now that it was too late, he second-guessed himself: if he had known it was something old, not something new, would he have committed the crew to the mission?

Yes
, he decided. Even in the earliest days of his career, in the eight-year war against Iraq, he always put the security of assets—such as oil platforms—and the capture of any enemy craft over the security of himself and his fellow soldiers. Protecting service personnel was God’s job. Serving the Ayatollah was his. The honor of having this responsibility thrust upon him overwhelmed all other considerations.

The captain wished he had a visual on the team. That was one of the areas Iranian technology lagged. It was important to field home-made assets, but many of them were little different from the old models on which they were based. Modern technology was not easy to come by, especially in this era of heavy sanctions against trade. Sadly, due to international hatred of his people, even science students were not coming back from Russia and China with the levels of education they received in America and Europe during the days of the Shah.

Every moment brought the
Jamaran
nearer to the ice. He could see, now, the jagged edge where a smaller piece had fallen away. The raft was tied to an icy outcropping and the men were standing on a flat shelf; he could see their black shapes moving.

There were white sparks, just a few, but so brilliant they seemed like fireworks in the dull gray afternoon.

“Captain, the Geiger counter found the object,” Azizi radioed. “We are resealing the container.”

“Do you know what it is?” Elham asked.

There was a brief hesitation. “It appears to be the inner workings of a crude nuclear device.”

“A bomb?”

“It would appear to be, but not like anything we’ve seen in briefings. There’s a perfect sphere in a large metal container—I believe the box is lead. The radiation levels are dropping fast.”

The sparks flashed a moment more, then died. After a moment the blue afterimages faded from the captain’s eyes, leaving the outside world once more pale and hazy.

“We’re coming in now,” Azizi reported. “Two of the men feel sick.”

“Understood.” Elham glanced at his watch. “Full stop,” he ordered the helm, then turned to Navsarvan Farshid, who had taken Azizi’s place on the bridge. “Lieutenant, have a recovery team on deck. All medics on hand.”

The officer saluted and left. The
navbanyekom
who manned the External Sensor Array in the sonar room reported that radiation levels had returned nearly to normal. The voice of the lieutenant junior grade did not sound relieved. Nor should it. The nearly eight-minute exposure they had taken was no reason to rejoice. He thought back to other personnel who had made this same critical, fatal decision. In 1961, the crew of the Russian K-19 submarine had spent ten minutes repairing the nuclear reactor’s cooling pipes to prevent a thermonuclear explosion and twenty-eight of them perished. Fifty workers accepted “suicide missions” to tend to the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant exactly fifty years later. There were probably others, many others, though that kind of information did not receive wide dissemination.

And now God has handpicked another crew to join their heroic ranks
, the captain thought.

Although the captain wished he could meet the crew himself, he did not want to leave the bridge. Whatever the object was, it would have to be taken to Bandar Abbas as swiftly as possible—though that might not be possible if enough of the crew were stricken. He turned thoughtfully and went to the nautical chart on the wall behind him. It was an old-style paper chart; an electrical failure during a trial run had convinced him it was unsafe to rely on digital maps.

There is another consideration
, he told himself. An object that hot would have been picked up by the intelligence agencies of at least a dozen nations. Even now, military vessels would be converging here to investigate. Spotting the
Jamaran
from the air or sea, enemies of the Islamic state would be waiting to intercept her along the way. At best, they would be shadowed; at worst, they would be quarantined or sunk in the open seas. The Russians would not hesitate to sink them for transporting nuclear materials in opposition to maritime law.

Contacting their home base would be risky, but it had to be done. The cargo had to be offloaded.

The chart was broken into three dozen sectors, pinned with friendly ports of call and marked with the courses of North Korean, Syrian, and Yemeni vessels. Elham decided there was one place where safe harbor for their cargo might be found.

Elham wore a key around his neck. He removed it, turned, and inserted it in the console. As the communications officer watched, the captain twisted the key and input a series of numbers into the keypad beside it. This brought up an encryption program through which all typed messages would be run until it was disengaged.

The captain stood beside the radio operator and dictated a message. It was what the Vezarat-e Ettela’at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran—the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran—called a “double bind”: even if Washington or Tel Aviv or Moscow managed to break the code, they would not know what was meant by the terse message:

 

ROGUE STARFISH TO AREA THIRTEEN N