The Shark Mutiny Read Online Free

stand alone against the imperial West. The print was a replica of the giant portrait of Mao that gazes with chilling indifference across the square from the Tiananmen Gate. Today, it served to remind the Chinese High Command in this brightly lit room precisely who they really were.
    The other three men in the room were Iranian: the most senior a black-robed, bearded Ayatollah, whose name was not announced. The two Naval officers accompanying the holy man were Rear Admiral Hossein Shafii, Head of Tactical Headquarters, Bandar Abbas; and Rear Admiral Mohammed Badr, the Iranian Navy’s Commander-in-Chief Submarines.
    Admiral Zhang, who stood six feet tall, was by far the biggest and the most heavily built of the Chinese. But he spoke softly, in an uncharacteristic purr, a smile of friendship upon his wide impassive face. The language was English, which all three Iranians spoke fluently. The words were translated back into Chinese by Vice Admiral Yang who had, in his youth, studied for four years at UCLA.
    “Gentlemen,” said Admiral Zhang Yushu, “as you are all well aware, the new Sino-Iranian pipeline from the great oil fields of Kazakhstan will come on stream within a few weeks. Thousands of barrels will flow daily, from out of Russia, right across your great country, south to the new Chinese refinery on the shores of the Hormuz Strait.
    “This, gentlemen, should herald a new dawn for all of us, a dawn of vast profits for Iran, and thank God, an end to China’s endless reliance on the West, in the matter of fuel oil. The alliance of the past ten years between our two superb nations was, indeed, made in heaven.”
    Admiral Zhang paused, and opened his arms wide. And he walked around to the right side of the huge table and stood beaming at the men from the desert. The Ayatollah himself stood first and took both of the Admiral’s hands in his own, wishing everyone the everlasting peace of Allah. Then the two Admirals from Bandar Abbas stood up and embraced the legendary Chinese Navy commander.
    Zhang walked back to his position at the head of the table, and glanced briefly at his notes. He allowed a flicker of a frown to cross his face, but then he smiled again, and continued: “I have no need to remind anyone of the enormous cost of building this one-thousand-mile pipeline, and the construction of the refinery. It ran, of course, into billions of U.S. dollars.
    “However, as of this moment, there is but one dark cloud on our horizon…and that is the extraordinarily low cost of a barrel of oil on the world market. Last nightit was down to thirteen dollars and falling toward a ten-year low. The Arab nations cannot be controlled because of their reliance on American protection and commerce. Which leaves us to sell at a half, or even a third of our oil’s true value. Now, Iran is earning twenty percent of every barrel to reach the new refinery, and at present that’s under three dollars. It will thus cost your country millions and millions in unearned revenue every month.
    “Gentlemen, I ask you. What is the solution? And I must remind you, this is a PLOT…a diabolical Western PLOT…to devalue our great economies…to allow them to dominate us, as they have always tried to do.”
    Admiral Zhang’s voice had risen during this delivery. But now it fell very softly again to the calm, gentle tones of his welcome. “We have the solution, my friends. It is a solution we have discussed before, and I believe it is a solution that will find much favor with both of our governments.”
    The Ayatollah looked genuinely perplexed. And he looked up quizzically.
    Admiral Zhang smiled back, and without further ceremony, he said flatly, “I am proposing we lay a minefield deep in the historic, national waters of the Islamic State of Iran. Right across the Strait of Hormuz.”
    Admiral Badr looked up sharply and said immediately, “My friend, Yushu, you have become a tried and trusted confidant of my nation. But I feel I must remind