moved toward the sidearm holstered at his waist. Hawke quietly told Ascarus to pretend to be walking away and dive for cover behind the steel structure where two Zodiac tenders and a large davit were mounted on the foredeck. There was an AR-15 assault rifle waiting for him there and Ascarus picked it up and raised it to firing position while still hidden.
With his left hand, Hawke tugged at his left ear. With his right, he drew the SIG pistol tucked into the waistband of his shorts from under his shirt. He shot the captain in the head, a double tap, one in the forehead, the other between his eyes. Then he stepped backward two steps and dropped down through the hatch just as the cover was being opened for him. Two crew, waiting below, caught him, breaking his fall, and then the three of them raced up two decks to join the fray.
At that same moment, three shots rang out from the highest deck. All the glass in the wheelhouse of the Iranian patrol boat imploded and the three men who had been standing there fell to the deck dead. More shots rang out, and all the radio and communications antennae atop the Iranian vessel were destroyed completely. No news of this confrontation would reach enemy ears. At least that was the plan.
The Iranians, not knowing where the shots had come from, began running in all directions, firing wildly. It was then that Hawke, Stollenwork, and the two SEAL squads appeared at the rail of the deck above them and opened fire on the scattering enemy. The rattle of automatic weapons was deafening.
The firefight didn’t last long.
Three SEALS had taken bullets, none of them lethal thanks to the Kevlar body armor and helmets they all wore. Even now, the medical corpsman was stitching them up.
Captain Shahpur and his fourteen men were all dead, victims of precision head shots by the SEAL sharpshooters.
“Blue Squad,” Hawke shouted down to Stokely Jones. He’d suddenly appeared on deck with his three-man team. “Board and clear the enemy vessel.”
Stoke and his men bounded down the gangway and leaped aboard the patrol boat, disappearing into the wheelhouse. A minute or two later there was a brief exchange of gunfire. Then Stokely reappeared on the stern deck.
“Two dead enemy; they were hiding in the mess hall. All clear.”
Half an hour later, Operation Trojan Horse commenced. The fighting men from Blackhawke had boarded the patrol boat. Nine of them, Hawke’s team, were wearing the official uniform of the Iranian Frontier Guard. So was Chief Petty Officer Ascarus. Hawke cranked up the ship’s engines and signaled the men on deck to cast off the lines that secured the boat to Blackhawke.
He looked at Stoke and Brock as he shoved the throttles forward and headed for the marina at Ram Citadel. He grinned broadly at both men as the big Iranian vessel, now with Hawke at the helm, accelerated rapidly toward Iran’s coastline.
“I hate the expression,” Hawke said, “but so far, so good.
“Damn straight,” Stoke said, smiling.
“Bad luck to say so, though,” Harry Brock said. “At least in the Marine Corps.”
Hawke glared at him. “Harry, try, really try, to be positive. It seems every mission with you is more evidence that you’re getting well past your sell-by date.”
Brock stared back blankly. “Huh?”
“Never mind, Harry, just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut until we clear the jetty. Does that work for you?”
Twenty minutes later, the lighted channel buoys marking the entrance to the marina at Darius Saffari’s Ram Citadel loomed up in the fading and dusky light. When Hawke had first seen the aerial satellite photos of the compound, and the marina, he knew a waterborne attack was the only realistic way inside the enemy compound.
Fifty
The Ram Citadel
The setting sun stained the frothy seas red. The last curtains of evening were about to fall. There was no moon, and the coming night would be pitch-black. The commandeered patrol boat proceeded up the citadel’s narrow marina channel slowly, doing about five knots. Hawke’s team, visible on deck and in the wheelhouse, were all wearing the IRGC uniforms borrowed from the dead Iranian sailors killed in the firefight. Hawke and his men would be first ashore, do a recon, and signal the SEAL team when they’d secured a beachhead.
Hawke eyed an armed guard positioned at the end of the jetty. He snapped to attention and saluted as the big patrol boat slid into the harbor, the Iranian flag snapping in the ever-freshening wind.
Hawke, at the helm, returned the man’s salute. Then he sent Ascarus, wearing the late captain’s uniform, out to the stern rail to shout out a greeting and tell the man that they needed to take on fuel. He’d seen a fuel dock in one of the sat photos. That fuel dock had been the genesis of Operation Trojan Horse, his idea for getting his men inside the massive walls of the citadel aboard a captured patrol boat.
“Damn,” Stoke, who was standing next to Hawke at the helm, said, “man’s got himself a big-ass yacht for a terrorist.”
“Mine’s bigger,” Hawke said under his breath, intently studying the three-hundred-foot white-hulled yacht. She was moored at the end of a long steel pier. The name, Cygnus, was painted in gold leaf on her wide transom. No hailing port. There was something odd about the boat that Hawke couldn’t quite put his finger on. He slowed the patrol boat so he could get a closer look.
“Stoke, something’s wrong with that boat. What is it?”
“Yeah, I was thinking that. That’s one very old yacht. Looks like a design from the 1950s, right?”
“Right.”
“But it looks brand spanking new. Like it’s never left the dock.”
“That’s it. Exactly. Google the yacht Cygnus on your mobile, see what you come up with.”
“Gimme a sec… yeah, here it is. Her original name was Star of Persia. Her first owner was the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Sold or donated in 1978. Cygnus is now owned by another entity, something called Perseus Corporation, LLC.”
“Perseus,” Hawke said. “Our intel is good, Stoke. I think we’ve found our man.”
“Why’s that?” Harry Brock, eavesdropping, asked.
“Darius Saffari was a scientist at Stanford. His AI involvement there was with a research program called the Perseus Project.”
Hawke told the Red Team, his crew of “IRGC sailors,” to get the mooring lines ready. They would tie up at the fuel dock, take on gas, and assess the situation ashore through powerful binoculars before committing to direct action. The SEALs, or Blue Team, dressed in their distinctive black assault gear, would remain out of sight until the fortress had been breached. Their immediate responsibility was to neutralize enemy forces inside the compound and then do a house-to-house search for the “machine” and locate a very large two-story building that had been identified by CIA analysts at Langley as a possible bioengineering lab.
Hawke’s team would attack the residence and take out Darius Saffari.
Hawke slowed to idle speed, then eased the patrol boat alongside the dock where the pumps were located. He was surprised to see a large number of pirate scows moored together at the finger piers opposite the fuel dock. They were the longboats, narrow of beam, huge outboard motors hung on the sterns, the ones used by pirates to venture far offshore to take prizes. He hadn’t realized the Iranians and the Somalis had become such bosom buddies. But of course it made sense. Kidnap Western tankers and crewmen, use the ransom monies to buy weapons for al-Qaeda, Hamas, whoever. One big happy family.
While crew fore and aft heaved lines ashore and began to secure the boat, Hawke grabbed his binoculars and went out onto the stern deck to size up the shorefront situation. This was a critical phase in the operation. It could all go to hell right here, in a heartbeat.
It was an absolutely pitch-black night. No distinction could be seen between sky and water-the horizon simply didn’t exist. All around him was a cold, damp, murky greyness, broken only by the white water boiling at his stern.
