Brent and his team were just south of Abu Musa, part of a six-island archipelago near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had once established a special weapons facility there, but it had been destroyed hours before the nuclear exchange with Saudi Arabia.
Commander Andreas had suggested they take advantage of the littoral capabilities of his Virginia-class sub. The Persian Gulf had a maximum depth of ninety meters and an average depth of fifty meters.
Once in position, Brent thanked Andreas and issued orders for his group to begin lockout. The first group left the sub and assisted the SEAL chiefs in their efforts to store the load-out bags aboard the delivery vehicle. Those bags included the combat suits, helmets, weapons, liquid fuel and batteries for the suits, and other communications and intelligence-gathering equipment.
Brent, Lakota, and four others from the group, including Schoolie and Thomas, entered the lockout chamber in their wet suits, with their Draeger LAR-Vs buckled to their chests. The Draegers were closed-circuit breathing systems sans the telltale bubbles of conventional scuba gear and were standard issue for “black” operations. Even Thomas had taken a course on their operation as part of his Splinter Cell training. Once sealed, the chamber began flooding with cold seawater.
Dennison’s update regarding the target zone had been brief, and the Snow Maiden had yet to be sighted within the heavily observed five-kilometer perimeter. However, Dennison had once more confirmed that the woman had been in Geneva, as evidenced by the dead operatives in her wake. The major had then turned her attention to Dubai itself, where satellite streams picked up a large militia force. Those well-armed combatants patrolled the streets for eight or so hours at a time, then retreated in boats to the offshore islands, where radiation levels were a bit lower. The patrols were replaced by secondary groups, but for about eight hours each day, usually during nine A.M. to five P.M., the city remained empty.
Much of Dubai’s infrastructure was still intact following the nuclear exchange between its neighbors, including the Burj Dubai or “Dubai Tower,” once the tallest human-made structure ever built at 2,684 feet before it was supplanted by the Chinese “Tower to the Sun,” completed in 2019.
Yet another super skyscraper in the area, the Almas Tower, was of greater interest to Brent because it housed the country’s main vault, a subterranean affair newly renovated in 2018 to include sophisticated biometric security measures. If the Snow Maiden was coming to Dubai for the money, then the Multi Commodities Centre vault should be her main target.
The militia’s commander was also aware of what lay beneath his feet, as the patrols were heaviest near the Jumeirah Lakes Towers area, particularly around Almas. How the Snow Maiden intended to bypass those forces remained to be seen. Brent and his people would have their work cut out for them, if they were to remain undetected — at least initially. The real trick would be to cash in on what Special Forces did best: linking up with and recruiting locals to their cause. If he could turn this militia into allies, then the Snow Maiden wouldn’t stand a chance of escape.
But what if they were wrong about this woman? What if she wasn’t coming to Dubai? They would lay an elaborate trap for nothing, and Brent wouldn’t just be out of Ghost Recon; he’d be regarded as a fool and fall guy by his colleagues. Once again, his career was in the hands of the intel they’d received. Good, bad, or ugly. And in the end, his fellow operators would remember only that the mission had failed, not the true reasons why.
He reassured himself that this had to be the Snow Maiden’s plan: The kid and the money man could get her into the vault, and that was her goal. What else could she possibly want with them? Both were connected to Dubai. There was no reason to believe the money had been moved — no records of such movement. The country had been sitting in a radioactive vacuum for years, and the intel indicated that prior attempts to gain access to the main vault by the leaders of the remaining emirates had failed.
During the submarine ride, Brent had read up on “living keys” and other security techniques. It seemed clever and reasonable that Dubai’s leaders would employ the most sophisticated measures available to them, but they hadn’t anticipated losing so many of their “living keys” in one fell swoop.
Now the Snow Maiden had found some of those keys.
Worse, she wasn’t operating alone, and whatever faction was behind her could be extremely powerful, perhaps backed by the Russians, the Chinese, or maybe even a clandestine group within the JSF or European Federation. For all Brent knew he could be an unwitting participant in the flushing out of a mole.
Brent shoved the rebreather into his mouth as the water rose above his neck and filled the trunk. The others lifted their thumbs. After a muffled clunk, the door swung open, and they swam into a long tunnel of ocean dimly lit by the delivery vehicle’s red lights.
Once everyone was linked up with the craft, the SEAL chiefs shut the lights and set course for the marina. Sometimes the SEAL pilot and co-pilot were part of the combat team, but in this case, after dropping off the Ghosts, they’d return to the sub. Andreas had warned Brent that Russian subs were sniffing for them, so he’d best have an alternate extraction plan in case
The team’s course would take them around the Palm Jumeirah, one of three artificial islands shaped like a palm tree with long fronds once serving as beachfront property for hundreds of homes now deserted. These islands were as surrealistic and improbable as many other parts of Dubai, where architectural ambitions had been fueled by magnificent wealth. The most elaborate of all projects had been known as “The World,” an archipelago of three hundred human-made islands meant to resemble the land masses of Earth. The project had been abandoned, the islands now eroding back into the sea.
Once they skirted those areas, the SEALS would head into the marina and follow the canals toward the city proper. Lakota kept in touch via hand signals and closely monitored the radiation levels. Brent had already picked out several underground locations, subbasements and parking garages within the nearby Gold and Silver Towers that he believed would afford them some protection between observation shifts. Even with their suits, Brent was taking no chances by keeping anyone exposed for more than eight hours. He’d studied the blueprints of both buildings and would put Schleck on the roof of one, Riggs on the roof of the other. Those snipers would be rotated out with the rest of the team.
Within thirty minutes they had slid through the central canal and reached the Nuran Dubai Marina bridge. With the delivery vehicle still submerged, the team began to ascend, breaking the surface beneath the bridge and hidden from satellite view. Local time was 0924. They transferred the waterproof load-out bags to the concrete underpass, and then, with all the gear unloaded, Brent cut loose the SEALs with a hand signal.
“Better suit up now,” said Lakota, consulting her wrist-mounted radiation detector.
Without a word, the group began the process, with Schoolie giving Thomas a hand because he’d practiced donning the Natick 9V Exoskeleton combat suit only a few times. The suits were a flexible and modular armor system, offered NBC protection (which certainly made them a necessity in Dubai), yet still allowed a remarkable range of motion. Brent had once listened to a trainer spend more than an hour discussing the suit’s capabilities — including ballistic and blast protection and integrated data gloves for hand gesture interface with the Cross-Com, which was now part of the fully sealed combat helmet (no monocle or earpiece was required). The suits also had climate systems and user-specific operation modes with voice and facial recognition so enemies couldn’t exploit them — but the bottom line, as Brent reminded his people, was that no amount of technological magic could replace the fervor of the human heart.
“Captain, there’s a problem,” said Lakota, over a private channel.
Brent winced. The volume on his communications system was much too high. He issued a verbal command to lower it, then responded, “What’s up?”
“It’s Schoolie,” she said, gesturing across the way to the back of the group. Thomas, Schleck, and Park had surrounded the man and were working on his helmet. “He can’t get a good seal.”
Brent cursed. “He really wanted to come along, too.”
