He climbed out of the car and locked it. Wandering over to the elevator, still muttering, “…replace the mines on deck before the zero-eight-hundred satellite pass, right? Put the stupid Americans off the trail.”

2

On Saturday morning, April 7, at first light, the Chinese warships sailed, apparently, for home. At least two of them did, the Hangzhou and the Shantou. The other two stayed right where they were at the jetties in Bandar Abbas harbor. Three hours later, shortly before 0950 (local time), the three Chinese Kilos pushed out of Chah Behar into the Hormuz Strait and made their way south toward the Arabian Sea.

The U.S. satellites picked up the entire scenario on bright sunlit waters, and back in Fort Meade, Lieutant Ramshawe wrote a short memorandum to the NSA’s Acting Director, detailing the ship movements.

Two days later a report came in from the Middle Eastern desk at Langley that Iran was moving heavy Sunburn missiles, plus launchers, plus antiaircraft artillery, to a point along their southeastern coast on the Gulf of Oman.

Langley’s man did not know precisely where the hardware was headed, but Fort Meade made a slight adjustment in the satellite’s photographic direction, and from way up in the stratosphere the massive U.S. camera snapped off two shots of the big Sunburns being maneuvered into position facing out to sea, 29 miles south of the coastal town of Kuhestak.

Lieutenant Ramshawe marked up his wide chart, 26.23N 57.05E. He automatically glanced across to see the nearest point of land, but there really was nothing. If the missiles were fired westerly at 90 degrees to the coast, they would head straight out to sea. A slightly more southerly course would aim them at the northern headland of the Iranians’ friends, the Omanis.

That headland, the outermost point of the barren Musadam Peninsula, scarcely had a town or a village on it. The only name marked on Jimmy Ramshawe’s chart, way out on the jutting eastern coast, was Ra’s Qabr al Hindi.

“Christ,” he muttered. “What kind of a bloody name’s that? Imagine coming from there, and traveling to the States…er, Place of residence, sir? Ra’s Qabr al Hindi. Jeez, they’d probably lock you up on principle…heh heh heh!”

In any event, the Lieutenant drafted a report confirming they now had a firm position for the Iranian missiles. And then he returned to his consistent preoccupation, the two remaining Chinese warships in Bandar Abbas, the Kangding and the Zigong. The photographs that had just arrived showed both ships now flying Iran’s national flag.

And Jimmy Ramshawe stared at them for a long time. What if they had laid a secret minefield somewhere out there last week…What if the two frigates had been left behind in readiness to go out and activate the mines?

He knew that such a theory would be ridiculed by Admiral Borden, who had of course ridiculed his every thought about the mines. And thus far had been proved right. Nonetheless, Lieutenant Ramshawe elected to go and see his leader, and present his worst fears.

The veteran Admiral smiled, with a jaded, indulgent air.

“James,” he said. “May I call you James?”

“Jimmy, sir, actually. No one’s ever called me James. I’d think you were talking to someone else.”

The Admiral blinked at the Australian’s forthrightness, which always caught him off guard.

“Right, Jimmy. Now listen to me…. Do you know why the two frigates are now flying the flag of Iran?”

“Not really, sir. But it could be some kind of a Chinese cover-up, while they’re getting ready either to lay mines or activate them.”

“No, Jimmy,” he said with heavy emphasis. “That is not the reason. They are flying the Iranian flag because Iran has just bought the two Chinese frigates. That was the objective of the big dockyard junket. It was a Chinese sales tour…. You don’t think they’d come all that way for nothing, do you?…Not the Chinese. They like money a lot more than they like anything else.

“It was a goodwill sales visit. No doubt in my mind. They conducted a fleet exercise together, exchanged information, and at the conclusion of the festivities, Iran agreed to purchase the two ships. The first two guided- missile frigates they’ve ever owned.”

“Well, sir, if that’s your opinion…I’ll have to agree.”

“Do you have a different opinion?”

“Well, sir. I have been wondering about the mines. And I’m still not sure the Chinese haven’t made some kind of a devious move with a view to laying them.”

“Ah, that’s your prerogative as an Intelligence officer, Jimmy. But it’s been your prerogative for weeks, months, and nothing has happened, as I told you it wouldn’t.”

“Righto, boss. I’ll buy that. Maybe they did just want to store up some Russian mines for some future mission. Anyway, if you’re right, they just paid for them, with the frigate money. Good on ’em, right?”

The Admiral smiled. “You’re learning, Jimmy. In this business, it’s very easy to spend your life chasing your tail…seeing spooks, plots and schemes around every corner. Just stay focused, and keep a weather eye out for the really big stuff, when you’ve got real evidence. That’s all.”

The young Lieutenant left, returning to his office, and gazing once more at his wide, marked chart of the Strait of Hormuz. He stared at it for several minutes, and muttered to himself, “I just wonder what’s sitting down there on the seabed, right offshore of those new missile placements.”

Two weeks later. April 24. China’s Southern Fleet HQ. Zhanjiang.

Admiral Zu Jicai, now C-in-C of the entire Navy, was back in his old office, and he opened up the secure line to Beijing, waiting quietly for Zhang Yushu to come to the phone.

When the great man finally spoke on the line from the Chinese capital, the conversation was unusually brief for two such old friends.

“Nothing on any foreign networks re DRAGONFLY.”

“No suspicion anywhere?”

“None. Shall I activate the field in the next two days?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

“Good-bye, Jicai.”

Three days later. April 27. The Strait of Hormuz.

Hardly a ripple disturbed the flat blue calm of the southern waters of the strait. It was one of those sultry Arabian mornings, in which the livid heat of the desert sun makes life on land almost unbearable, and life on board any ship not a whole lot better.

Six miles northeast of the Musandam Peninsula, the waters were almost oily to look at, as the tide began to turn inward from the Arabian Sea. There was no ocean swell, no little eddying cats’ paws on the surface, no movement in the hot, still air.

But ripples were on the way. Giant ripples, from the big white bow wave of the 80,000-ton black-hulled gas carrier Global Bronco, making a stately 18 knots, southeasterly through the water. The 900-foot carrier was laden down with 135,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas, frozen to minus 160 degrees centigrade. In more comprehensive stats, that’s 3,645,000 cubic feet, or, a 100-foot-high building, 200 feet long by 200 feet wide. Which is a lot of frozen gas, and it forms, by general consensus, the most potentially lethal cargo on all the world’s oceans.

Unlike crude oil, which does not instantly combust, liquid natural gas is hugely volatile, compressed as it is 600 times from normal gas. Tanker corporations are near-paranoid about safety regulations for its transportation around the world. Layer upon layer of fail-safe backup systems are built into every LNG carrier. They are not the biggest tankers on the ocean, but then, neither is the nuclear-headed torpedo the biggest bomb. In any event, the

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