Persian Gulf has surely not gone unnoticed by Al Jazeera and other media. The Iranians know we’re here. News of the race has been leaked. But they don’t really know why. I needed a pretext to get as close to their shores as possible without arousing suspicion. Thus, a sailing race with the king of Saudi Arabia.”
“As you well know, the Iranians have got warships patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. And heavily armed patrol boats up and down the entire coastline.”
“Absolutely. I’m counting on it, to be honest. We’ll need to be on our guard constantly. I’ve a dossier for you below in my stateroom. A profile of the commander of the Iranian Frontier Guard in the Eastern Province. He’s the guy whose patrol boat seized four Saudi fishing vessels when they accidentally entered Iranian territorial waters last week. The fishermen are in prison now, or dead. We’ll deal with him, sooner or later, I suspect.”
“Okay. I’ve got the picture now. Too bad about the race, though. I was looking forward to it. So was the sailing crew I hired.”
“Looking forward to a bit of racing myself. I’ve got an American friend, America’s Cup winner named Bill Koch. Someone once asked him if this wasn’t a rich man’s sport. Bill said, ‘No it isn’t. There’s one rich man on board and there’s twenty-five poor men on board and they all enjoy it a hell of a lot more than the rich man does.’ ”
“Something in that, all right.”
“People say it’s expensive and they’re right. But these huge yachts give a hell of a lot of people a hell of a lot of jobs. Look what Blackhawke did for the Turks. People call boats like this maxi yachts. I call them ‘Marxi yachts’ because they redistribute the wealth.”
Carstairs laughed, “Game, set, and match, Alex.”
“Laddie, a word of caution. What your crew says or does, or even what they say they see on their screens, may have been planted there by the enemy. Trust no one aboard, even me. Follow your gut. Saffari was able to take over an entire Russian submarine. Don’t believe anything you see, hear, feel, or touch without talking to me first. Other than that, full speed ahead.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Hawke returned his captain’s salute and headed below. He had work to do. The plans for the assault on Saffari’s redoubt were in the final stages. He and the SEAL team commander, Stony Stollenwork, had come up with what they both believed was an ingenious way to breach the impenetrable fortress walls. But Hawke still wasn’t satisfied with the plan. As he’d said last evening when the meeting broke up. “It’s not enough that it’s ingenious, Stony, it has to bloody well work!”
“If it’s to work in this instance, sir, it bloody well better be ingenious,” Stollenwork replied. Hawke smiled. He genuinely liked the man. He was a bit slouchy and craggy faced, and he had a phenomenally deep voice, perfect for command. Wry, dry, and bombastic, sometimes all at once, he was also fiercely intelligent.
T he race signal flag was hoisted and the gun fired. The two yachts entered at either side of the starting line in a traditional America’s Cup match racing start. The course would follow the one used for twelve-meter yachts for years. A windward leg, followed by a downwind leg, another upwind leg followed by a triangular reach, and then a final downwind leg. Hawke, who had the topside helm, knew that with the wind out of the east, he was perfectly positioned for his race across the Gulf to Iran. The other two men in the afterguard, Laddie Carstairs and Steve Hall, agreed. The sun was shining above and the fresh salty air, finally blowing at suitable strength, felt wonderful on his cheeks. He’d always had an innate sense of the wind. It was going to be a good passage.
From the start line to Bandar-e Bushehr was roughly a hundred miles. In this boat, Hawke could cover that much water in four hours. That would put him off the point where Saffari’s compound stood at dusk. The SEAL commander, Stollenwork, had requested 1800 hours for the insertion of the assault team. Hawke would make sure his request was granted.
The two megayachts approached the half-mile-long starting line surging directly toward each other. Hawke drew starboard and had the opportunity to control the king’s yacht. Kingdom quickly bore down and moved away from the starting line. Hawke, at the helm, recognized the classical tactic instantly. Kingdom ’s skipper wanted to be at full speed when he hit the line, but timing was everything in this game. Should his opponent arrive even a fraction too early, he’d be forced to restart.
Hawke remained patient; he wanted to hit the line on a starboard reach, Blackhawke ’s best point of sail. He kept one eye on Kingdom and the other on the compass.
“You’re dead on it, skipper,” the tactician said. “Maintain your course.”
Hawke’s hired gun, Steve Hall, who would be calling tactics, had an impressive sailing resume. In addition to his Olympic Gold in sailing, Hall had a pair of Ph. D. degrees from MIT, hydrodynamics and electronic engineering. He’d spent years in a quest to discover why boats go fast and how to predict performance before the starting gun fires.
When Hawke offered Hall the chance to join his crew in the “race,” he’d jumped at it. Although the massive clipper ship had never been designed for racing, she’d certainly been designed to go fast, and Hall was fascinated to see firsthand what she could do against a traditionally sloop-rigged boat. So far, he was impressed.
The starting flag was hoisted and the gun fired.
Kingdom was surging forward at twenty knots. Her destroyer bow knifed through the water, sending a foaming bow wave down her topsides. Her white hull shined and reflected the water as though it were made of glass. Hawke was on a reach at twenty-three knots. All he had to do was swing the helm to starboard and he’d be off on a perfectly timed start. Kingdom was already trailing by ten seconds, blanketed in the dirty air created by Blackhawke ’s towering sails. The tactic had worked.
“She’s slowing!” Hall shouted. “ Kingdom ’s slowing!”
Hawke glanced back at her and saw he had the lead, for the moment at any rate.
Laddie Carstairs smiled broadly and clipped Hawke’s shoulder. “Good start, skipper.”
“I rather liked it myself,” Hawke replied, grinning as he eased the helm over two degrees. “Now we find out if we can hold them off in a tacking duel. Any second now she’ll-”
“She’s tacking now!” Laddie shouted suddenly, and Hawke whipped his head around to see Kingdom go on to port tack.
Hall, in a deathly calm voice, called, “Ready about!” alerting the crew that they, too, would be tacking momentarily. His stopwatch ticking off the seconds, he waited precisely forty-five seconds from the moment the opponent had tacked and then shouted to the crew, “Tacking!”
The helm went over slowly as Hawke timed the turn and the sails. He and his architect had designed the sails to retract into the masts at the moment they might have the effect of slowing the yacht and then extend as soon as the tack was completed. This remarkable feat of engineering allowed the sails to remain full of air throughout most of the turn. Hawke and Laddie were all smiles as Blackhawke slowed only slightly during the tack and then suddenly accelerated, the huge bow wave coursing back along her gleaming jet-black hull. It was clear to both men that her radical hull design gave her the ability to go to weather (into the wind) despite her enormous beam.
“Good God, Alex,” Hall said. “She’s ferociously quick, isn’t she?”
“This is the moment I’ve been waiting five long years for, Steve. I’m glad I’m sharing it with you.”
The hired sailing crew on deck cheered loudly, astonished by the boat’s performance as well. All battle-tested veterans of maxi yacht races around the world, they had wrongly assumed this big beast would come to a dead stop in a tack like that, dead in the water, unable to regain momentum. Shouts of surprise and enthusiasm also could be heard from many of the spectator boats that were lining this first leg of the race.
Hawke eased the helm gently to port and spoke softly to the sail trimmers.
“Okay, lads, let’s see just how high we can go. Trim in slowly as I bring her bow up into the wind.”
The closer to the teeth of the wind a yacht sails, the faster she goes.
He moved the wheel a fraction to the right as the hydraulic winches pulled the sails toward the centerline of the massive yacht. The compass remained centered at 120 degrees, just 30 degrees off the wind. In a true race boat that figure would have been closer to 18 degrees, but Blackhawke had not been designed to race. Tons of electronics, furniture, not to mention radar systems, weaponry, and ammunition, lay beneath her deck.
All was quiet in the cockpit for a few minutes. And then Hawke noticed the compass move to the left half a degree.
He now whispered, as though afraid to break the fragile bond between yacht, wind, and water: “Lads, another small trim, please.”
The giant masts turned a fraction to the left. The sails moved closer to the wind. Blackhawke had gained another half a degree to windward. All three men held their breath as the yacht gained still another degree to
