The Shark Mutiny by Patrick Robinson

don’t care if you have to turn up in your office in a goddamned nightshirt and jockstrap at three A.M. But when something goes off bang anywhere near the Ayatollahs, I want Fort Meade on it like a starving wolf chasing a pork chop. Do you hear me, Admiral?”
    “Absolutely, sir.”
    “Then get your ass in gear, sailor. And get your best men moving. And don’t bother chasing the ship owner. I dealt with him while you were still eating your fucking cornflakes.” CRASH. Down phone.
    Admiral Borden was visibly shaken, as many an occupant of Fort Meade had been before him. He actually debated putting in a written complaint to the President about the “unforgivably disrespectful” manner in which he had been treated by the National Security Adviser.
    He went as far as to call his old friend in the White House, Harcourt Travis, the Secretary of State, who laughed and told him, “That would be, I am afraid, a suicide note. Arnold Morgan would probably have both you and the President out of here in an hour. Arnie’s the Big Man on Campus right now. Don’t even think of taking him on.”
    Admiral Borden retreated, but in his mind he was planning to play this whole incident right down, which he believed would exact him a quiet, dignified revenge: that of military intellect over a blowhard.
    As plans went, that one was dead moderate. If David Borden did but know it, career-threatening moderate.
    At that moment there was a knock on the Director’s door. He called to enter, and was not especially pleased to see the frowning face of Lieutenant Ramshawe.
    “Morning, sir. I got in here soon as I could when I heard about the tanker, but it didn’t get on the news till0500 so I guess I was a bit late. Anyhow, my conclusions are that we really do need to examine the possibility of a Chinese-backed Iranian minefield right out there in the strait.”
    “But I believe the tanker exploded off the coast of Oman, miles and miles from Iranian waters.”
    “I know that, sir. But there’s still got to be a suspicion. We know the Chinese ordered a ton of mines from Moscow, and we know they could easily have brought them to Iran. We also know they were groping about in the strait with four warships, and possibly three submarines, all mine layers, at least one night, and possibly more. We simply cannot dismiss the issue.”
    “The Omanis appear to have done so. There’s not a word from them to cast any suspicion on the Iranians whatsoever.”
    “That’s because they don’t know their ass from their elbow.”
    “Very possibly. Nonetheless in the absence of one shred of proof, one floating mine, one whisper of skul-duggery from any of our people in Beijing or Tehran…Jimmy, I cannot instigate anything without being in possession of at least some evidence.”
    “But I have some evidence. First of all, the bloody mines, maybe several hundred, were delivered under top-secret circumstances, and have essentially disappeared. Then we had a fairly large flotilla of ships sail from Chinese bases, direct to Iran. Then we have these night exercises, during which they could easily have laid a minefield out there in the strait.
    “Then we have a very strange situation. You know, and I know, you can lay a minefield and not activate it electronically till you’re good and ready. Now, the Chinks bugger off toward the Bay of Bengal, leaving behind two mine layers, the frigates Kangding and Zigong . And what are the first ships to be seen after the bang? Those two frigates, out there in the strait, flying the Iranian flag. In my view they were out there activating just some of the mines.
    “But here’s what’s really important…Remember a couple of weeks ago we picked up pictures of the Iranian missiles being established way down the coast, twenty-nine miles south of Kuhestak?…Well, I marked the point hard on my big chart of Hormuz. The Global Bronco went up in a near-dead-straight line from there, about twenty-four miles west