Читать книгу End Game - Dale Brown - Страница 21

Sattari leaned over and took the headset from the submarine captain, cupping his hands over his ears as he pushed them over his head. He heard a loud rushing sound, more like the steady static of a mistuned radio than the noise he would associate with a ship.

‘This is the Mitra?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Captain. We’re right on course, within two kilometers. You’ll be able to see the lights at the bottom of the tanker in a few minutes. I believe we’re the first in line.’

Sattari handed the headphones back, shifting to look over the helmsman’s shoulder. A small video camera in the nose of the midget submarine showed the murky ocean ahead.

From the waterline up, the Mitra appeared to be a standard oil tanker. Old, slow, but freshly painted and with a willing crew, she was one of the vast army of blue-collar tankers the world relied on for its energy needs. Registered to a company based in Morocco, she regularly sailed these waters, delivering oil from Iranian wells to a number of African customers.

Or so her logbook declared.

Below the waterline, she was anything but standard. A large section of the hull almost exactly midship had been taken out and replaced with an underwater docking area for the four midget submarines. The vessels would sail under the tanker, then slowly rise, in effect driving into a garage. The submarines measured 8.4 meters, and the opening in the hull was just over twenty, leaving a decent amount of space for maneuvering.

The murky image on the forward-view screen suddenly glowed yellow. The camera aperture adjusted, sharpening the image. A set of large spotlights were arranged at the bottom of the hull; as the Parvaneh came closer, another group of colored lights would help guide the sub into the hold.

‘Is the tanker moving?’ Sattari asked.

‘Three knots.’

The submarines could dock whether the mother ship was moving or not, and as long as it wasn’t going more than four knots, most of the helmsmen felt it was easier to get aboard when the ship was under way. But in this case, the fact that the tanker was moving was a signal that there were other ships in the area. Sattari sat back in his seat, aware that not only was his mission not yet complete, but the success or failure of this final stage was out of his hands.