The Gulf (60 page)

“Burgee!”

“Yo.”

“Everett here.”

“Join up on me,” he shouted. Yes, he could hear tension. He swallowed, trying to relax his throat.

The Z-bird was rocking cheerfully on the chop when he reached it. Already inflated, it was rigged to fall bottom-first and land upright. He was pleased to see it had done just that. He cut at the cargo net over it, heard the snore of other knives helping; it came away and he pushed it into the water. Attached weights sank it silently from sight. He unslung his gear and tossed it in, got a leg up and rolled over the gunwale. He slammed into bags, hard shapes, the lashed-down motor. Lem Everett rolled in at the same moment on the other side.

Gordon kept low, pulling the others aboard. The raft rode lower with each body. When the team was in, he grunted a command and they moved apart, each taking his assigned position, checking and unlashing equipment. He heard a click as Burgee attached the gas tank. Then the electrician's anxious mutter: “I think she took some water. Do it, baby, come on, you whore—”

The muffled Evinrude caught on the first pull. Gordon eased breath out, then looked around.

Three hours before midnight, the sky soared above them like the loft of a huge and ancient barn. The Milky Way was a winter snowfall caught on the points of the stars. To the north—ahead, as Clint angled the throttle—the horizon flickered orange to distant flame. Against it, he could make out the island, low to their left, rising gradually to starboard. A few cold-looking blue and yellow lights glittered minutely along its flank. He watched them for two or three minutes but saw no movement.

That was good.… He stood up for a moment, bracing himself on Lem Everett's rubber-covered shoulder. As far as he could tell, they'd dropped on target. It was hard to judge distance, but they should be just over ten miles out.

“Lem.”

“Yeah, John?”

“Got a fix yet?”

“Working on it.” Everett raised the bearing compass to his eye and sighted on the peak. A moment later, he shifted to the left tangent of the island, then to a distant red planet that marked the Mubarek oil field. With three points, they could fix their position.

“Got it?” he muttered again, unable to wait.

“Five more degrees. Clint, come a little left.”

Gordon glanced over his shoulder. He'd thought he might see the helicopter, the glow of the turbines, but nothing moved against the constellations.

The trip had been low and fast, terrifyingly low and incredibly fast. After the lift-off, they'd huddled dressed out on the bench seats of the H-53, not speaking, just waiting. Then at last the green light had come on, and they'd shoved the raft out the rear ramp and followed it silently and without hesitation into the roaring night.

He'd wondered then, as he stepped into space, how many of them would see the dawn again.

He shoved that thought into a hole in his brain and tamped as much of his anxiety as he could down after it. Then he concentrated again on the island. It was closer now, but still there was no sign of movement. He became conscious at the same time that the boat was riding easier, that the seas that had been popping against the port side had dropped. The motor sounded louder. The wind, light before, had fallen away almost to nothing.

He ran over the plan again, then groped about on the floorboards. They'd brought all the standard gear, the standard tools—just in case. But the most important … He breathed out as his fingers felt corners through nylon net. The gadgets. God, if they'd lost those …

He took three deep breaths, visualizing a blue-green hillside, the straggling forms of grazing beasts. It helped. But instead of grass and earth, he smelled kerosene and rubber and dead fish. His hands moved automatically over the Mark 16, tightening straps jolted by the drop, checking the oxygen bypass valve, the bottle valve handwheel, clamping the display tighter to his mask. In between, they bumped an unfamiliar object and he touched it again, puzzled for a moment before he recognized it.

He hoped he didn't have to use the flare pen. A red star as the destroyers approached was the signal he'd failed to clear the channel, that the attack had to be aborted. Of course by then, the air would already be working the island over, and they could expect irate Iranians galore. How they'd escape then, he didn't know. Except for their knives, and his automatic, they weren't armed. EOD divers seldom used rifles. Nor was there room for them, with all the gear they had in the boat.

“Mark,” said Everett suddenly.

“What?”

“Mark, outer boundary. We're here.”

They were at the edge of the mine field. Below them somewhere … He stopped thinking about that, too. “Cut it, Clint.”

The motor stopped suddenly. It hadn't been loud, but now the silence became vast. He eased the hood from his ear and heard the sigh of wind, the splash of waves. Then the rumble of a heavy motor, a boat or truck, from the island. They were only two miles off the beach. He could hear dogs, too. He felt exposed. He wanted to pull the sea over his head like a child's blanket.

“What?” whispered Terger. “What'd you say?”

“Nothing.” He was whispering, too. “Lem, you're sure this is it?”

“Just did another round. Good fix. Grab it while you got it.”

“Okay. Tony, drop the master.”

He saw the paramedic lift it in the rear of the boat, a lumpy shadow by starlight. The master reference buoy, a lead mushroom with two sandbags lashed to it. Lead and sand were nonmagnetic. Their search would be plotted from it in through the mine field to clear water.

A muffled splash and the slither of uncoiling line. “It is down.”

“Okay, good. Tending line?”

“Hundred yards.”

“Pay out as soon as we're in the water.” He knew he didn't have to say all this, but he wanted to be sure everyone understood. “Let her drift off out of the area. Then wait. Stay low in the boat. If anybody comes out to investigate, pop the valves and let it sink. But stay with it; you're our ticket out of here.”

“
Comprends, moi.
But—”

“But what?”

“Don't stay too long.” He could hear the grin.

“You leave us here, Frenchy, and I'll come back and ha'nt you and Regine and both your ugly kids. Everybody else! Grab your gear and in the water. By the numbers.” He'd made each man memorize what he carried, as Everett had memorized the anchor bearings. But he didn't dare let them forget anything, so he checked it all, hurrying now: jackstays, lift bags, buoys, each man's equipment. As he was satisfied, he slapped each diver's shoulder. One by one, they slid to the side, became humped shadows in the starlight, were gone.

His turn. He wished he wasn't so tense, but it couldn't be helped. He sprayed and fitted his mask and checked that the display was in view. Then cracked the supply valve.

“John?
Bonne chance.
” Said very quietly, under the watching stars.

He nodded, and dissolved into the warm sea.

*   *   *

He recalled now, sinking, the sketch they'd studied aboard
Iwo Jima.
Nothing clever, no computer graphics. This had been a pencil diagram on lined paper, just as it had come from the hands of the defector.

Gordon hoped the man was right. And that whoever had debriefed him spoke good Farsi.

He turned his mask from side to side, looking for Burgee. A few feet away, an outstretched arm glowed nightmare green. He remembered his own chem light, and snapped and shook the plastic tube. It began to burn, cold and eerie in the endless night.

The mine field, a kidney-shaped area bent around the anchorage, was said to be eight hundred yards deep. The destroyers would need a marked lane at least a hundred yards wide. That defined the Q-channel they had to clear. He and Burgee were taking the port side, working by compass bearings from the reference buoy. Everett and Terger, meanwhile, would work into the mine field to starboard. He'd overlapped their lanes to ensure they didn't miss anything.

Now, sinking, he ran through the memorized bearings again, then twisted his wrist toward him. The numerals and needle of the compass glowed tritium luminescent, unnoticeable in daylight, but so complete was the darkness through which they fell, it seemed bright.

The depth pressed its thumbs into his ears. He worked his jaw and swallowed, felt the wheeze and pop as they equalized. Passing 33. The sea was quieter here than in the Narrows. Only an occasional distant whistle, and the Rice Krispies crackle of bottom dwellers. The 16 vented no bubbles, so that familiar rumble was absent. Gas sighed through his breathing tubes, and rubber creaked as he finned downward.

When the needle reached 40, he stopped, gripping the line in his glove. The anchor and sandbags should be thirty feet farther down. He pressed the button on his hand light, pointed it at his hand, aimed a finger down.

Burgee nodded and continued his descent. Gordon floated weightless and without motion, waiting as below him the number-two diver's light came on. It fanned slowly around. The visibility was excellent tonight, easily fifty feet, possibly more; it was hard to tell in the gloom.

The light angled up and blinked twice, then went out.

On the bottom, Gordon turned his on again. The mushroom lay quietly on a sandy bottom grooved with innumerable tiny ripples. It reminded him of the desert they'd flown over on the way to Kenya. The sandbags were splayed out from it, leaning inward like a tent.

Burgee had the jackstay out. He clipped it to the fitting on the anchor, then paid out line. Gordon snapped the end to his belt, then fumbled around his body. Where the devil … His hand recognized it then dangling on its line: an AN/PQS-2A, a hand-held mine-detection sonar the size of a calf's head.

He took a few deep breaths, appreciating the steady flow of purified, oxygen-enriched air. Then he clipped on the waterproof earphones and turned up the volume.

A steady hissing beat came through them, sounding like the screw of a passing freighter. He steadied the sonar in front of him, chest high, and with his knees in the sand, pivoted slowly, closing his eyes to concentrate on what came through his ears.

The rhythmic sibilance continued without change. When the transducer bumped the buoy line, he unlocked his lids, clicked on his light, tapped the compass, and pointed to the left.

Burgee moved away, swimming slowly just above the bottom. Gordon couldn't see him, but he knew the number-two diver was following 240 magnetic. He paid out line till it ended, then moved out following it. When they collided, they switched off, and Gordon swam while the other stayed.

Doing this three times put them 120 feet to the left of the reference, in position now to turn ninety degrees right and begin the long sweep. He marked the position with a buoy from his vest, cracking the tube of a chem light like a king crab leg before sending it up. Putting lights on the surface added risk, but they had to have orientation in this immense blackness. He didn't think they could be seen from shore.

But if the Pasdaran patrolled the mine field …

He swept the sonar through another circle, but the throbbing hiss was unaltered. He signaled Burgee out on 330.

They'd done this twice, stopping to sweep each time they reached the line's end, when he heard a thud. He fanned the sonar back and forth before him. Whooshes to either side, a metallic thud like a heartbeat out to their left. He grabbed Burgee, who was already starting away, and clicked on his light to match compasses.

The green meteor bobbed outward, grew faint, and disappeared. Gordon glanced at his watch as he waited. 2145. This was going about as he'd expected. Slowly. Except for the danger, clearing a mine field was a deliberate, rather boring process. He'd figured it would take them till 1
A.M
. That gave them an extra hour, just in case. He hoped they wouldn't need it.

The line tugged twice. He clicked the sonar off and let it dangle, then finned ahead, gathering line in a loose coil as he moved. Burgee's chem light reappeared, then the dazzling beam of his flashlight, probing about in the gloom.

Gordon valved air, the bubbles loud in his ears, and sank till his knees grated on the bottom.

The mine was the size of two 55-gallon drums welded end to end. The nose was half-buried in white sand. Scabrous brown paint discovered olive drab beneath. A rusty cage of angle iron was bolted around it. He recognized it as the shipping frame. It was removed for an airdrop, but more convenient to just leave on if it was laid from the deck of a ship.

Not moving, breathing deep to keep the vise from clamping his throat, he studied it from twelve feet away.

There were two bomb lugs on top, about a yard apart. It had stubby fins at the exposed end. The tail.

His mind brought back the clipped voice of the instructor at Fort Story. Use the logic tree. Take acoustic, magnetic, and pressure precautions. Limit stay time on the site. Don't hurry; always move slowly around a live device, but do what you have to do and then get out.

His hand waved the other back. Burgee nodded and retreated another ten feet. He kept his light on, though, gilding the waiting weapon with a tremulous radiance.

Gordon moved left a little—they'd happened on it at the nose—and began working his way in. You always approached a bottom mine from the side. Since lines of magnetic flux converged at the nose and tail, its sensitivity was greatest there. Six feet away, he stopped again, sinking back to the sand, examining it more closely.

It was a Mark 36, all right. He sipped air cautiously, going over again what he wore and was carrying. Everything was nonmagnetic, recertified monthly to be sure it picked up no stray fields. He hoped Maudit, who'd done the checking, had been thorough.

Usual procedure was to stop here and sketch the mine, in case someone else had to finish the job. But if he didn't, there was no one else. And they had a lot of ground to cover.