President Hayes had heard enough. He pondered the ramifications for a long moment. If he chose not to act, the end result could cost American lives. Yes, he could lose men tonight, but these men had assumed a risk when they signed up. If he walked away, it could cost the lives of noncombatants Hayes knew what he had to do.

With a no-nonsense tone, the president asked, "General Campbell, what do you think we should do?"

In his clipped military tone, Campbell replied, "I think it's an opportunity we can't pass up, Mr. President."

"Dr. Kennedy, I assume you think we should go in?" asked Hayes.

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Thomas?" Hayes looked to the director of the CIA.

Stansfield paused for a second and then nodded.

The president turned lastly to General Hood.

"Jack, what do you think?"

The general folded his large hands and thumped them on the table once. "I think we should grab him."

President Hayes squinted at the map of Iran on the large screen while he thought about the potential risk. After about twenty seconds of silence, he said, "You have my authorization."

As soon as the sentence was completed, Kennedy and Campbell were on the phone giving the mission the green light to the various players and commands involved.

Stansfield slid two white sheets of paper across the table.

They were identical. One was for the president's records, and the other was for Stansfield's. The president grabbed a pen from his breast pocket and put his signature on both sheets. The relatively bland document was a presidential finding, required by law whenever the president authorized any type of covert mission. These simple documents had been a source of much controversy in Washington over the years.

"When do you plan to notify the committees?" asked President Hayes.

By law, the chairman and ranking minority member of both the House and Senate intelligence committees had to be informed of the intended action before it took place. This, however, was an area that was grayer than the London sky and one that was abused often, and sometimes for good reasons.

Stansfield placed his signed copy in a folder and said, "Fortunately, the gentlemen in question all have plans for this evening. I will alert their aides that I need to speak to them in about an hour. If all goes well, they will not be able to make it out to Langley until after our people have safely completed their job."

"Good." President Hayes stood and pulled on his cuff links.

"My wife and I will be attending an event at the Kennedy Center. Where are you going to monitor the mission?"

"At Langley," replied Stansfield.

"Keep me updated, and good luck." With that the president left the room.

Strait of Hormuz Persian Gulf

THE WIND SWEPT across the surface of the dark water as layers of billowing, low-slung clouds raced overhead in a crisscrossing pattern.

The higher cluster headed northwest toward the open water of the Persian Gulf, while the lower clouds moved inland from the island dotted Strait of Hormuz to the mainland of ancient Persia and present-day Iran. The moon peeked through an occasional hole in the clouds. With the howling wind, the rain came and went in varying degrees of strength. It was not a night to be on the water.

In the shallows of a five-foot swell, a mast broke the surface and continued to rise, slashing into the high side of the trough like the ominous dorsal fin of a shark. White foam churned behind the narrow object as it continued southward. Rising a full ten feet above the waves, it instantly began to search the night sky. The thin tiger-striped object was an electronic support measures antenna designed to detect radar emissions. Seconds later the thin mast was joined by another. This mast scanned the horizon a full three hundred sixty degrees, and then both objects submerged as quickly as they had appeared.

Underneath the stormy surface, a very expensive piece of hardware silently stalked the coast of Iran. Unbeknownst to all but her crew, she had just released her lethal cargo. As the 688class attack submarine turned for international waters, two heads bobbed to the surface and then three more. The swells rose and fell around them as they converged in a circle. One of the men wrestled with a black bag, freed the strap that was holding it together, and then pulled a cord. The IBS (inflatable boat: small) began to unfold and fill with air. Less than a minute later the boat was fully inflated, and two of the men began the process of attaching a small outboard engine to the back, while a third readied the fuel bladder. The rough seas tossed the boat in every direction, but the men worked undeterred.

As soon as the motor was secured, the last two men climbed into the boat, their black wet suits making them nearly invisible against the dark rubber. The engine was primed three times, and on the second pull it caught. The man in back twisted the throttle, and they scooted forward up the side of a swell.

Lieutenant Commander Dan Harris held on to one of the straps at the front of the boat and checked the compass strapped to his wrist. Next he looked at his Global Positioning System. The small GPS device strapped next to his compass used eighteen satellites orbiting the earth ten thousand miles up in space to tell him his exact location to within four meters.

The submarine had dropped off Harris and his men thirty meters from where he had requested. Harris grinned through his thickly bearded face at the professionalism demonstrated by those anal-retentive submariners.

They were, from top to bottom, nothing if not perfectionists.

The muscular commander gripped the hand strap a little tighter as the boat crashed nose first into the shallows of a swell. Dan Harris, Annapolis class of'81, was somewhat of an oddity. He was both cultured and uncouth, temperamental and unflappable, angry and calm, emotional and logical, compassionate and ruthless—he was, in short, whatever the situation dictated. He had learned by watching the naval special-warfare commanders that had gone before him. The U.S. Navy was a huge bureaucracy, and if you wanted to be able to run your command your own way, you had to spend an awful lot of time stroking the egos of the admirals who wrote the orders. Lt.

Commander Dan Harris had walked that fine line almost to perfection, and that was why he was about to head into action while his colleagues were sitting behind desks at Little Creek and Coronado.

The small rubber boat slammed into a wave, and a deluge of cool, salty water sprayed over the bow, drenching the five bearded members of the U.S. Navy's top secret counterterrorist force SEAL Team Six. Harris shook the water from his face, and his ponytail whipped from side to side in the air behind him. The five men crashing through the rough water on this stormy night were known in the covert-operations business as longhaired SEALs. They were allowed to break Navy regulations on facial hair and hair length for just this type of mission.

They were the best shooters in the business, and hence, given the most clandestine and often roughest missions.

The men possessed many similar traits, but at first glance the most notable was their dark features. Lt. Commander Harris had handpicked the men, and for tonight's mission they were traveling extra light. Harris had brought along his best.

There would be no room for mistakes.