Warren Murphy - The Final Crusade

Destroyer 76: The Final Crusade

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Prologue

On the day the Ayatollah died, a rocket launched by the Mujahideen Khalq struck the square called Maydan Sepah, in the heart of Tehran, narrowly missing the shop of a wizened old rug merchant named Masood Attai.

When the dust cleared, Masood breathed a prayer to Allah. The prayer turned into a muttered imprecation when he noticed the lightninglike crack that had appeared on the rear wall. The portrait of the Ayatollah, which Masood had only an hour ago rehung with black crepe, lay on the floor, its glass front shattered.

He looked for the nail. It could not be found. Masood walked out into the settling dust, pinched his flared old nostrils with cracked fingers against the smell of the burning cars, and sought a nail in the rubble. After nearly a decade of war with Iraq, and now harassment by Iranian counterrevolutionaries, even common nails were at a premium.

He found a nail-a thick one with a large square head-amid the ruins of the Museum of Iranian Art and Archaeology. He carried it back to his shop and, using a wooden mallet, drove it into the wall in a new spot.

He was hanging the portrait of the Ayatollah when the Western woman walked in. Masood knew she was a Westerner because, contrary to Islamic law, she wore no face-concealing chador. Her skirt hung well below her knees, but shamefully, her ankles and calves were bare. Masood found himself staring. It had been a long time since he had seen a young woman's naked legs. Not since before the Revolution.

To his surprise, the woman inquired of his health in impeccable Farsi.

"Salaam. Hale shoma chetore?" she asked.

"Khube," he replied "Shoma?"

When the woman replied that she was fine, he stepped down and asked her if she sought a special rug.

The Western woman shook her head, saying "Na, na."

"I have many fine rugs," Masood repeated in the same language.

Her eyes sought the hanging portrait.

"Such a large nail," she ventured, "for such a small portrait."

Masood frowned. "The Imam deserves the best," he said.

"And very old."

"I found it in the rubble of the Archaeology Museum. It is a crime. So many fine artifacts in ruins."

"In the Archaeology Museum, you say?" Her black eyes were thoughtful. "It could be anything then. Even a relic."

"A nail is a nail," Masood Attai said, shrugging expressively.

Reluctantly the woman turned to a fine Ghiordes prayer rug. She knelt, showing the trim line of her thighs. She was a very fine woman. A thoroughbred, Masood thought. She tugged at the corners with expert fingers.

"Have you any Mamluks?" she asked upon returning to her feet.

"Alas, no," Masood said. "Not since the fifth year." The woman did not ask the fifth year of what. She evidently knew that in modern Iran time was measured since the Revolution.

"I will come again, then," the woman said. And she clicked out of the shop and into the street without a sign of fear on her comely face.

Another rocket struck moments later. It demolished a green-tiled mosque down Firdausi Street, in the direction the woman had walked. Masood looked out of his shop doorway and saw the woman turn down a side street with quick, businesslike steps. Her chiseled profile was knit in thought. It reflected no other emotion and Masood wondered what it would be like to enjoy such a woman on a cool spring night....

Returning to his shop, Masood noticed that the last concussion had caused the portrait of the Ayatollah to tip. He restored it, wiping ancient dirt off the square nail head with a sleeve. It seemed to be just an old nail. Why had the woman displayed such interest in it? he wondered.

Chapter 1

Lamar Booe tossed on the narrow cot. He could not sleep. At first it was because the cot, like all the others jammed into the hold, continually shifted and creaked as the great ship plowed through the swells. Then, after the cots stopped shifting, it was because Lamar knew that meant the ship had entered smooth water.

The Reverend-Major came down from the deck to confirm it.

"We're in the Gulf," he whispered, going from cot to cot, shaking the men awake. They reached under their cots for their tunics. They pulled them over their undershirts. Only afterward did they begin assembling their weapons. Bolts slid into receivers. Magazines clicked into ports. Safeties were tested.

The Reverend-Major touched Lamar Booe on the shoulder.

"We're in the Persian Gulf," he whispered.

"Pershing Gulf," Lamar corrected. "When we're done, the world will call it the Pershing Gulf."

"Old Black Jack would be proud." The Reverend-Major smiled. It was a beatific smile. Not the smile of a soldier about to take a force into combat, but of a man of God leading his flock to righteousness. The smile soothed Lamar's anxious soul.

He reached for his staff. Unlike the others, he would not carry a weapon into battle with the heathen. He sat on the side of the cot, the staff across his knees. They trembled a little. He tightened his grip. He had kept the staff on the bed with him throughout the night because he didn't want the greasy floor to get to the standard he was chosen to carry into battle against the forces of darkness.

Lamar had also slept in his white tunic. The gold stitching across the front gleamed faintly in the weak light.

They waited in the darkness. Some prayed quietly, half-audibly. The close air tasted of oil, heavy and moist. It had made some of them ill-so ill they could not eat, and so nauseated from not eating and the constant rolling motion of the ship that many of them suffered from the dry heaves. A few ate just to have the relief of something to vomit up from their stomachs.

The Reverend-Major, trying to keep their minds off the uncertainty of what lay ahead, walked among them, wielding a rodlike aspergillum and sprinkling blessed water on their heads. An M-16 rifle hung from his shoulder. His tunic was purple, of fine silk. It was a proud garment, Lamar thought.

It was a proud venture, bold and good in the eyes of the Lord. Then why were his knees trembling? Lamar wondered. From a pocket inside his tunic, he took a miniature Bible and opened it to a random page. He forced his eyes to read. They skimmed the text, but the light was too dim and he could not concentrate, not even on the sweet word of God.

The Reverend-Major began speaking.

"We fear not the missiles of the Iranians," he said.

"Amen," they returned.

"We fear not the wrath of their mulllahs," he intoned. His eyes lifted to the darkened ceiling as if to a blacked-out heaven.

"Amen."

"For we know that God has chosen us to be his instruments."

"Hallelujah!" they chorused, their voices lifting.

"And we will triumph," said the Reverend-Major.

"We know this!"

"I will now bless the weapons of any who wish me to do so," the Reverend-Major said quietly.

The men collected into a ragged line. Lamar had no weapon in need of blessing. Besides, he wasn't sure his legs would be steady enough to carry him. He knew he would be ready when the time came. But not now. Not just now. His hands whitened on the staff that had been sanctified and personally presented to him by God's Right Arm of Earth, the Reverend-General himself.

He knew its holy strength would be his when the time came. For Lamar Booe had faith. And faith was all he would ever need.

But when the muffled toots of the tugboats came through the hull, his hands started to shake.

The great ship was being steered into the loading dock.

Rashid Shiraz smiled when he saw the old tanker, the Seawise Behemoth, appear in the Gulf. He picked up his field glasses and watched as the tugboats surrounded it and, like waterbugs pushing the carcass of a beetle, muscled it closer to the Kharg island oil facility, on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf.