Bloodstorm

15

Murdock moved to the side of the IBS where Lampedusa sat.

“A leak? No lie, Lam? Where?”

“Not sure, Skipper. Listen, you can hear it.” The men in the boat stopped whispering and listened.

“Yeah, I heard a hiss and then bubbles,” said Murdock, “so it’s somewhere on the side or bottom, and we can’t get to it for repairs.”

“We going down?” Van Dyke asked.

“Hell, no. These little boats are built in something like fifteen to twenty compartments, airtight compartments. They simply won’t sink. Remember how they never really collapse all the way? That’s so one lucky rifle shot into an IBS won’t sink it. She has a lot of other watertights to hold her up. So, no sweat. We continue on as usual. Anybody see any lights yet?”

No one responded. Murdock checked his watch. They had motored at a right angle to the path of the destroyer. That should take care of the current drift. Almost no wind to deal with.

Ten minutes later they spotted lights moving toward them.

“She’s still two miles off and I can see some of her side lights, so we’re not on her line of travel,” Lam said.

“We’ll wait until we’re closer to move up,” Murdock said.

“I’d say we’re a quarter of a mile off her course,” DeWitt said on the Motorola.

“Should be. Ed, you ready?”

“All set soon as she comes up to us. No way they can have radar that can find us. Important point is, they won’t be looking for something this small.”

They waited.

“Holt, crank up the SATCOM,” Murdock said. Holt had to hold the antenna. The small dish might not be stable enough in the tiny boat, which bobbed around in the light sea. It could have trouble holding onto the satellites.

Murdock took the handset and used voice.

“Sardine, this is Floater, come in.”

No response.

He had to make the transmission four times before he had a return call.

“Breaking up, Floater. Try again.”

“Sardine, the can approaches. We’ll make contact in ten. Call you when we’re done and give you our coordinates. Over.”

“Read you. Soon as you’re done you contact Sardine. We’ll figure out what to do then. Roger.”

“Button it up, Holt. Keep the spray out of it. We can’t afford a breakdown on our commo gear.”

“We better choggie in on her,” DeWitt said. “Near a half mile off her course and a mile upstream. Pick up our speed to ten?”

“That’s a Roger, DeWitt. We’re right behind you.”

The little rubber boats moved quicker through the silent sea then as they angled toward the destroyer, which they could see now with navigation lights all on and glowing.

A short time later the radio came on again. “Cutting throttle,” DeWitt said on the radio. “Estimate we’re about fifty yards off their course and we’re still a quarter of a mile ahead of her. Be here shortly. We latch on sixty feet from the bow, you hit the stern. Right?”

“Right,” Murdock said. “Tell us when you power forward to meet your buddy.”

Murdock checked. The six lines and cables were laid out across the back of the IBS. Ready for throwing. The more he thought of it, the worse his job sounded. He had no idea how far the screws were from the stern of the ship. He had no idea how far underwater they were, two feet or fifteen feet.

“Now, we’re powering up,” DeWitt said. The tether cord tightened; then the second IBS moved ahead. The big ship lunged at them through the sea. It looked huge from this viewpoint. They were fifty feet off the course line and the ship was coming toward them. DeWitt moved his boat faster, then worked through the slight bow wave and contacted the big ship. He bounced off, then came back again, matching speed with the freighter/destroyer.

Then Khai planted one magnet against the massive hull, and it held. He tightened up the cinch line, and the boat was latched to the Chinese craft. At once Mahanani moved to the side with the extra-large limpet mine, and let the strong magnet pull it against the side of the ship.

Ostercamp placed the second one two feet away, and Jefferson attached the third one. Immediately the men moved the fusing system to On, and waited for DeWitt to call the time to program the detonator to set off the high explosive.

The big limpets were set two feet above the waterline. With any luck they would blow a hole big enough to let water pour into the hull.

On the other boat, Murdock saw DeWitt attach his boat. Murdock cut power and let the tether line swing him around until he touched the big ship gently. Will Dobler attached a magnet to the boat, and latched it to the line that ran around the top of the IBS.

“Now,” Murdock said.

Bradford had the first line and cable in hand with the charge set on the end of it. He threw it down into the water at the side of the big ship with the hope that it would swing under the boat and be sucked into the powerful pull of the screws.

Bradford threw three of them, and then Van Dyke threw the last three. They heard nothing.

“Done here,” DeWitt said softly into the mike.

“Done here,” Murdock said. “Cast off.” Both boats snapped loose the lines that held them to the big boat, and it jumped away from them as it slanted past at ten knots. The SEALS all crouched low in their boats as the big ship plowed ahead. Any watch on the stern would have an impossible job to try to spot the SEALs or their boats in the dark water and the blackness of the moonless night.

Murdock waited until the sound of the big ship faded. Then he called DeWitt.

“I could use some Mugger coordinates, Mr. DeWitt.”

“Roger that, Captain. Be a shake. Yes. Now I have them.”

“Hold until I get that cruiser.”

The second call produced an answer, and Murdock gave the cruiser the coordinates where they bobbed along in the Mediterranean Sea on a three-knot current.

“How long?” Murdock asked on the SATCOM.

“How long did you set those fuses for?”

“Fuses set for fifteen minutes. That’s another six minutes to the blasts,” DeWitt told Murdock, who repeated it into the SATCOM.

“Let us know when they go off and we’ll start moving your way. His radar can nail us as soon as we come over the horizon.”

“Roger. We’re not going anywhere. We have a three-knot drift to the SSE.”

“We hear you.”

They waited.

“Two minutes,” DeWitt said.

Almost at the same time a brilliant flash erupted in the darkness in the direction the Chinese ship had sailed. Then another one and a third one on top of it. A glow showed in the night sky for ten or fifteen seconds. Then it died.

“Three big bangs,” Murdock said on the SATCOM mike.

“He’s not much more than three miles from you,” the man on the cruiser said. “Suggest you rev up your engines and motor away from him at your top speed. We need at least seven miles to be on the safe side.”

“That’s a Roger, Sardine. We can do eighteen knots. Give us twenty minutes and we’ll be six miles more to the NNW.”

“Understand. Twenty minutes. We have heard no distress call from the Chinese. Nothing on the international hailing frequency or any SOS. You didn’t sink her, did you?”

“Not a chance. They are playing it cagey, as I would. See you in twenty.”

Later Murdock checked his watch. It was almost two hours before they saw the cruiser bear down on them. The SEALs had out light sticks so she wouldn’t run them down. They had made three more Mugger location checks. Now the small boats powered up, and moved to the fantail of the cruiser and tied up to lines.

Jaybird bleated in pain as he went up the rope ladder to the chopper landing pad. Lampedusa helped him up the last three rungs.

“We need a corpsman over here,” Lam called out.

“I’m fine,” Jaybird said.

“Yeah, I always carry you up a rope ladder,” Lam said, and kept Jaybird on the deck until two corpsmen hurried up. They talked to him a minute, helped him stand, and hustled him down to the ship’s sick bay.

“On the chopper,” Murdock bellowed. “We’ll leave the IBSs for seed. We might be back.”

The XO was there before they finished loading. Murdock waved at him. “Commander, one of the IBSs has a leak in one of the chambers,” said Murdock. “Can you have it repaired?”

The commander nodded, and Murdock stepped on board the chopper and the crew chief closed the hatch.

This time all of the SEALs slept on the two-and-a-half-hour ride back to Athens.

The last time Murdock checked, the cruiser’s radio had still not picked up any kind of distress call from the Chinese ship.

It was 0240 when Murdock and his charges, less Jaybird, stepped off the NATO bus in front of their quarters. Don Stroh came out of a sedan grinning.

“Shit a bucket full of cookies, you boys have done it again.”

“What?” Murdock said, jolting himself fully awake. “The cruiser didn’t hear any distress calls.”

“True, neither did anyone else in the Med. But our AWACS plane shows that the Star of Asia is now dead in the water, and has been for the past three hours. That old tub ain’t going nowhere. Now all she has to do is ask for assistance and we can board her and take over, get the damn warheads, and then tow her into port.”

“You wish. Her captain won’t allow a boarding party within ten miles. He’ll break out his big guns and challenge you.”

“Challenge the whole damn 14th Fleet task force now steaming within eighty miles of his position?”

“Hell, yes. What does he have to lose? He’s stopped, but he isn’t done. He’s within chopper distance of Athens and lots of places. Choppers can pack a dozen warheads a trip.”

“Oh, damn, I didn’t think of that. So we shoot down the choppers. It was an accident.”

“Hard sell on the international news scene. Hey, your problem. Our work is done. Now I’m trying to decide if I should get breakfast or a shower, or just drop into my bunk and sleep for twelve.”

“I’d suggest the bunk first. The brass has been up all night working on this. They have firm intel that the plane that left here with the warheads has landed in Afghanistan. If I’m any gauge of what comes next, it’s that the President and my boss will both want you and your men to get into Afghanistan and blow that nuclear warhead into tiny, tiny pieces that nobody can put back together again.”

“Not even Humpty-Dumpty?”

“Especially not him.”

The SEALs dragged themselves off the bus and grouped around Murdock.

“So, did we nail that bastard?” Ron Holt asked.

“We did. He’s dead in the water, not going anywhere. But he won’t put out a distress call. Which I can understand. He’s probably waiting for some kind of instructions from his furious friends in Beijing. Now, hit the sack. In seven hours we go see what the top dogs want us to go bark at next.”

“Seven hours? Damn generous of them. I just voted for the sack. I may not even take my shoes off.”

Murdock didn’t have time to. The moment he opened the door to his small two-man room he sensed somebody else was there.

“Well, its about time you got back. Afraid I dozed off there for a minute waiting for you.”

Murdock laughed. What else could happen today? He held out his hand to the middle-aged man who stood up from his bunk.

“Hi, Dad, how is everything back in D.C., and how in hell did you find me this time?”