Location
Larak → Khasab
Mosquito Fleet · Mission 12 (Variant 12B) · Larak → Khasab
NO ORDER. NO BRIEFING. NO RADIO. You are in a small wooden fishing dhow. Yusef is at the tiller. Faezeh is asleep on the foredeck on a folded sail. The hard drive is in a plastic bag inside Yusef's coat. Three IRGC patrol craft are sweeping the lane between you and Khasab. They were your colleagues. Yesterday they were your friends. Engine off. Stay in the lee of Hengam. Wait for the patrol gaps. Cross to the Omani side before sunrise. — (no signature)
Cockpit and net traffic recorded during the operation, timestamped from mission start.
The wooden dhow is the oldest working vessel of the Persian Gulf, and one of the hardest problems in its modern security. For centuries these lateen-rigged craft have carried fish, dates, livestock and cargo between the Arabian and Iranian coasts; today the same hulls also move sanctioned goods, fuel and, at times, weapons or IRGC-linked personnel.
Their ubiquity is their cover: hundreds ply the strait at any moment, most entirely legitimate, none easily distinguished from another at a distance or on radar. That ambiguity has real consequences — the crowded surface picture of dhows, fishing boats and merchant traffic was part of the confusion around the USS Vincennes shootdown of Iran Air 655 in 1988, and it complicates every boarding and interdiction decision the US and its partners make. For the IRGC, the dhow fleet offers concealment and deniability; for anyone policing the waterway, it poses the enduring challenge of telling a fisherman from a smuggler from a combatant before it is too late.
A scene from the campaign's narrative, shown after a successful run. Mild spoilers.
The sun is up over the Musandam mountains. The water is the color of honey. Faezeh is asleep against Reza's shoulder. She has been awake for thirty hours.
Yusef is at the bow of the dhow, untying lines for the Omani fishermen who own it. His back is to the strait.
A British man in a linen jacket is waiting on the small pier. He is not the kind of British man who looks British. He is the kind of British man who has been on this pier once a month for nine years and who walks the same way to the small breakfast café two streets up after he is done with his work. He has thinning hair and gentle hands.
"Captain Tahami," he says. He pronounces the surname correctly. "We have a car for your fiancée. There is breakfast on the way. There is also coffee."
He hands Reza a small clean towel.
"Thank you for the drive," the British man says. "It will be put to use."
He picks up Faezeh's small bag himself. He does it gently, the way you do it for someone who is asleep.
"You'll get a new name," Yusef says, behind Reza, without turning around. "British or American or whoever wants the drive. They'll put you somewhere quiet. Probably cold."
"What about you?"
Yusef finishes the line and finally turns around.
"I'm too old for a new name," he says. "I have my brother in Bandar Lengeh. He has a fishing boat. I'll be a fisherman, for the remaining years."
He looks at the strait one more time. Forty-seven years.
"You should go inside, Captain. The sun is bad for her."
He turns back to the lines.
The British man waits patiently with the small bag.