Seal Team Seven

Sunday, 29 May

1612 hours (Zulu +3)

Greenpeace yacht Beluga

Off Bandar Abbas

The sun was merciless, glaring down from a brassy, cloudless sky. The yacht Beluga was still following along in the wakes of her larger Iranian consorts, but by this time she'd managed to drop back until she was nearly five miles astern of the Yuduki Maru, far enough to avoid inspection by curious soldiers or sailors aboard the freighter or the other ships, close enough that it was not obvious that she was hanging back.

Throughout the run north past Al Masirah, zigzagging northwest into the Gulf of Oman at the Tropic of Cancer, then north again through the oil-blackened narrows of the Strait of Hormuz, Murdock had noticed that the Iranian flotilla lacked almost any sense of order or convoy discipline. The Damavand continued plowing steadily ahead, towing the dead weight of the Japanese freighter. One or another of the frigates was usually within close support range, but the patrol boats scattered themselves all over the map, and by Sunday morning, two had vanished entirely, probably racing ahead to safe berths in Bandar Abbas.

The formation was made even more ragged by the presence of so many civilian vessels. The Strait of Hormuz was always crowded with commercial shipping, most of it the monster oil tankers bearing the flags of a dozen nations. The biggest were VLCCs — Very Large Crude Carriers — steel islands as long as four football fields end to end, with dead weight tonnages of half a million tons or more. At any given moment, one or more of those monsters could be seen on the horizon from Beluga's deck, entering the Persian Gulf riding high and light, or exiting the passage with full loads that seemed to drag those leviathan bulks down until their decks were nearly awash.

It was the seagoing traffic, of course, that invested the Strait of Hormuz with its singular strategic importance. More than once in recent memory, Iran had threatened to use its surface-to-surface "Silkworm" missiles purchased from China to close the strait to international shipping. So far, they'd refrained. Iran also used the Strait of Hormuz for access to the world's oil markets. But when it came to splinter groups like the NLA, or bands of disaffected military leaders who might actually welcome the political chaos such a shutdown of the economy might bring, all bets were off, and anything was possible. General Ramazani and his fellow plotters might easily decide to close the Strait of Hormuz permanently, leaving them free to pursue their own military objectives without fear of Western intervention in the Gulf. A couple of tons of radioactive plutonium distributed among the warheads of SCUD or Silkworm missiles and detonated across the shipping channel off Ra's Musandam would do just that. Alternatively, clouds of plutonium dust released from Iran's Gulf islands of Abu Musa and Tunb could close the channel and leave the port of Bandar Abbas open.

The situation might even allow Iran's new rulers to practice some good old-fashioned blackmail, threatening to close the strait or to poison the Saudi oil fields unless their demands were met. Murdock had a realistic enough understanding of modern international politics to know that the chances of closing ranks against such threats were nil. Japan and much of Europe still depended on the Gulf for nearly all of their oil imports. Hell, even the United States, given its zigzag record in foreign policy over the past couple of years, might cave in and pay rather than risk having the Strait of Hormuz closed. Murdock was frankly amazed that the go-ahead had been given for Deadly Weapon.

Threading their way north past the civilian traffic, the SEALs stuck with the Yuduki Maru. The Iranian radio-silence order worked to their advantage, of course, as did their straggling. With luck, the SEALs would be able to sail the Beluga all the way into Bandar Abbas, allowing them to provide II MEF with an eyewitness report on the defenses and preparedness inside the port.

Jaybird Sterling had the helm again. The young SEAL trainee did indeed know how to handle a pleasure craft like the Beluga, and he'd been standing watch-and-watch at the wheel with Murdock since he'd volunteered to stay aboard. The other two SEAL volunteers were Razor Roselli and Professor Higgins. During Saturday's early morning hours, the former hostages had been bundled up in life jackets and transported two by two in one of the SEALs' CRRCs to a point well clear of the Beluga, then hoisted aboard a hovering Sea Mustang sent out from the Nassau for the recovery. Colonel Aghasi had made the trip as well, along with eight of the VBSS team SEALS.

Murdock, Roselli, Higgins, and Sterling had remained aboard, ready to make a quick getaway over the side with their diving gear if their cover was too closely probed, but otherwise continuing to report on the Iranian squadron's position and disposition throughout the next thirty-six hours. Higgins had programmed Beluga's on-board satellite communications gear to track a MILSTAR relay satellite, giving them secure and untraceable communications with both Nassau and the Pentagon.

Now Murdock emerged from below deck into the baking heat of the Gulf sun and walked back to the helm. There was a somewhat lonely emptiness to the sky; American helicopters had continued to dog the Iranian squadron day and night until an hour earlier, when the freighter had officially entered Iranian territorial waters. Now the four SEALs were alone. "Looks like we're getting pretty close," he told Jaybird.

"For sure, Skipper. Maybe we should get shined up and squared away for inspection, huh?"

"Shit, Jaybird," Roselli called from the top of the deckhouse. "You look just fine to me!"

"You both need haircuts," Murdock replied, and the others laughed. None of the SEALs looked very military at the moment. All of them had removed their black gear and wet suits and were wearing pieces of uniforms scrounged from the Iranian dead before they'd been put over the side Saturday morning. Jaybird had stripped to the waist; just since yesterday, his California-boy tan had darkened to the point where his skin was as swarthy as that of any Iranian. To aid the disguise, he kept his pale, sun-bleached blond hair covered by a black Navy watch-cap. Roselli and Higgins both wore Iranian tunics that, unbuttoned and with the shirt-tails dangling, gave them the unkempt appearance of a pair of modern-day pirates... or a Pasdaran boarding party. Murdock had relieved Aghasi of his peaked officer's cap and tunic, complete with colonel's insignia, and aviator's sun glasses before packing the Iranian off aboard the helo. He hadn't had time to grow the colonel's bushy mustache as well, but to complete the deception he'd smeared his upper lip with a finger laden with camo paint. The disguise wouldn't fool anyone up close, of course, but through binoculars at a range of twenty meters or more, it ought to get by. The SEALs were banking on that peculiar aspect of human psychology that allowed people to see what they expected to see, rather than what was actually there.

Raising his own binoculars to his eyes, he carefully swept the horizon from west to east.

They were well into the northern portion of the Strait of Hormuz now. That wrinkled-looking mass of bold gray mountain rising to the north was Iran. Almost due west was the rocky, mountainous island of Qeshm, largest island in the Gulf, with its odd, cone-shaped rain reservoirs and impoverished-looking, ramshackle coastal villages. Through his binoculars, Murdock could pick out the anachronistic intrusion of radar dishes and blockhouses marking an Iranian Silkworm missile battery mounted on the erosion-streaked side of a barren hill. Camouflage tarps had been stretched between poles, shielding SAM sites and vehicle parks from the blazing sun... and from the probing eyes of American satellites.

Dead ahead, some fifteen miles across the sun-dazzled water, the port of Bandar Abbas — known simply as Bandar to the locals — rose between sea and mountains in blocks and tiers of white stone. A beneficiary of the wars, both trade and military, of the 1980s, Bandar was a large and modern city with a population of just over 200,000. Though the typically squalid tent cities and slums of most Middle Eastern cities cluttered Bandar's fringes, Murdock could make out the gleaming facades of several modern buildings above the noisome tenement hovels of the low-rent districts. Every building seemed in need of paint, however, and the dhows, fishing boats, and motor craft lining the waterfront were uniformly battered, sun-baked, and coated with ancient layers of filth and grime.

Farther west, Bandar Abbas's airport buildings were visible as gray and white blurs shimmering in the desert heat. Murdock could just barely pick out the shapes of several military aircraft there — F-4 Phantoms and F-5E Tiger IIs, for the most part, sold to Iran before the revolution — as well as the larger bulk of an Iran Air 727.

Returning his attention to the city's waterfront, Murdock examined several port facilities. One fronting the downtown area was clearly a commercial port and ferry dock; others were marinas occupied by high-sterned, lateen-rigged dhows and fishing smacks. Most of the military facilities appeared to be northwest of the city, tucked in behind the lee of Qeshm Island and the hook of the headland on which the city was built.

And that, clearly, was where Damavand was taking the Japanese freighter. Through the binoculars, Murdock identified a small shipyard between Bandar Abbas and the port of Dogerdan to the west, with dry-dock facilities, the looming skeletons of hammerhead cranes, the squat cylinders of POL storage tanks, and the long, low tent-roofed shapes of warehouses and machine shops. Numerous yard and service craft lay alongside sun-bleached wharfs; larger ships, a destroyer and a pair of frigates, were tied up alongside a fueling pier. Patrol boats and landing craft were everywhere, almost too numerous to count.

Shifting the aim of his binoculars again, he studied the stern of the Yuduki Maru. A large number of Iranian soldiers were visible on her upper deck, and the sounds of gunfire, single shots and full-auto, carried faintly across the open water. Many of the soldiers were firing off whole magazines into the sky, celebrating their victory over the Great Satan and his minions. It was unlikely that they'd been told anything about the politics of their mission, other than that it would be a blow against the hated Americans.

"Better get your celebrating done now, you sons of bitches," Murdock said softly. "You might not have the chance later."

"Hey, Skipper," Roselli called from his perch atop the deckhouse. "What do the rules of war say about you wearing a Pasdaran colonel's uniform?"

"Oh, not a whole lot, Chief. The usual hearts-and-violins stuff about piracy, hanging from the neck until dead, drawing and quartering."

"Yar!" Roselli growled. "We be pirates!"

"Aye," Higgins added, clambering up out of the companionway. "Break out the skull and crossbones!"

"You guys're pirates, all right," Murdock replied, continuing to study the Yuduki Maru through his binoculars. It looked like a deck crew forward was casting off the tow from Damavand, though from this angle it was a little hard to be sure. No doubt they'd decided that it made better propaganda for the freighter to be taken into her berth under her own steam, even if she did have to limp along on one screw.

Higgins joined him on the well deck. "Skipper?"

"Yeah, Prof. What's up?"

"I'm not sure," the slightly built SEAL replied, "but I think it involves us." Higgins had been manning the yacht's communications shack almost continuously since they'd taken Beluga, not only transmitting intelligence, but also eavesdropping on the Iranians. The radio-silence orders had applied to all of the ships in the squadron, but there'd been plenty of traffic coming out of Bandar Abbas, and from other warships in the area.

"Okay, you know I don't have much Farsi," Higgins said. "Just Arabic. But I could follow enough to know that they've been trying to raise us for the past five minutes or so. If I had to take a guess, I'd say they started out by telling us where to go, then started telling us to heave to."

"Okay, Prof, thanks. It's nothing we weren't expecting."

"Stick with the radio silence then?"

"Absolutely. Damned thing's bust, right?"

"Can't hear a thing, Skipper."

"Good. Hang tight a sec." Pulling a notebook from his pocket, Murdock began writing quickly, filling three pages with his observations of the port approaches, the military aircraft on the runway, the ships and patrol boats in the harbor, the Silkworm and SAM batteries on Qeshm. Tearing off the pages at last, he handed them to Higgins. "You read all that?"

"Sure. No sweat."

"Transmit that ASAP, coded burst through MILSTAR. Repeat it until you get an acknowledgment."

"Aye, aye, Skipper."

"And keep your primary ready. This'll get hot damned quick."

"Yes, Sir." Higgins took the papers and descended back into the cool darkness of Beluga's below-deck spaces.

Murdock glanced up at Roselli. "You hear all that, Razor? We may have company soon."

Roselli patted the captured G-3 rifle. "Ready to rock and roll, Skipper."

Raising his binoculars again, Murdock swept the harbor. Motion on the water to one side of the freighter caught his attention. "Uh-oh," he said, focusing on the blurry white mustache of a high-speed wake. It looked like a speedboat was coming toward them bow-on, racing out from the naval facility. "Okay, you pirates. Just make sure your powder's dry and your cutlasses are within reach. That company's about to pay us a visit."

In minutes, the Iranian craft was close enough that Murdock could easily make out its details. During the Tanker War in the Gulf during the early 1980s, the Western press had consistently called these fast little attack craft "speedboats," implying that the grenade and rocket attacks on the oil tankers of various nations were being carried out by men in outboard-motor pleasure craft.

That sleek, low shape was no pleasure craft, Murdock knew. It was a long, low, dagger-lean "Boghammer Boat," one of some forty high-speed military patrol craft acquired by Iran from Sweden for naval operations in the Gulf. Though not originally armed, they could carry as many as ten or twelve commandoes, armed with machine guns, RPGs, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers. As he studied the group of three Iranians standing in the Boghammer's enclosed pilothouse, he could see at least two pairs of raised binoculars staring back at him.

He hoped none of those men knew Aghasi personally, for the camo paint on his upper lip didn't do much to change the differences in height, weight, or age between Murdock and the Iranian.

It only had to get them close enough.

"Keep her steady," Murdock told Sterling. The Boghammer cut past Beluga's bow, then whipped past the starboard side, throwing up a choppy, froth-edged surge of dirty water as it slowed. Engine growling, the Iranian patrol boat slipped down Beluga's starboard side, crossed astern, and began moving up the port side from aft. Murdock counted eight men aboard, two of them officers, all armed. An American-made M-60 machine gun had been raised on a makeshift mount in the well deck forward of the deckhouse. One of the soldiers nervously fingered the blunt-snouted tube of an RPG-7, a Russian-made weapon almost certainly captured in years past from the Iraqis. Most Iranian military hardware was still American-issue, weapons and gear left over from the days of the Shah.

One of the officers was standing on the Boghammer's afterdeck, a loud-hailer in his hand. Raising it to his lips, he elicited a piercing yowl of feedback, then began calling to Beluga's crew across the narrowing stretch of water.

"What's he saying, Skipper?" Jaybird asked.

"Haven't the faintest idea," Murdock replied. For answer, he raised an arm and waved the Boghammer closer.

At Murdock's command, Jaybird throttled back, bringing the yacht to a near-idle. The Iranian speedboat drifted closer, then closer still. One man stood on the bow, ready to leap across with a line. Another lineman stood aft, while the officer with the loud-hailer took up a position amidships.

"Higgins? Roselli?" Murdock asked, not taking his eyes off the Iranians. "You both ready to go?"

"Sure are, Skipper," Higgins answered from the shadows in Beluga's open companionway.

"Just say the word, Skipper," Roselli added. He was standing by the mainmast now, holding the G-3 in a casually relaxed and non-threatening pose. From the corner of his eye, Murdock could see Jaybird's H&K, tucked safely out of sight below Beluga's port-side gunwale. His own H&K was lying on the deck at his feet.

"Roselli," he said, a stage whisper through smiling, clenched teeth. "You've got the MG forward. Stand ready."

"Az kodawm vawhed hastid?" the Iranian officer demanded, lowering the loud-hailer. He sounded angry, and his dark eyes flashed as he waved it at Murdock. "Kaf kardam!"

Smiling, Murdock shook his head, then gestured for the officer to come on board. Glowering, the Iranian stepped onto the Boghammer's gunwale.

"Now!" Murdock yelled, dropping to the deck, scooping up his H&K, and rolling back to his knees as he brought the weapon to his shoulder. By the mainmast, Roselli whipped the G-3 into firing position and triggered a short, full-auto burst that chopped into the Iranian behind the machine gun and punched him back against the Boghammer's pilothouse windscreen. Murdock sent three rounds slashing into the officer, who tried to complete his leap to the Beluga's afterdeck, faltered, then tumbled into the water between the two boats. Sterling put the Beluga's wheel hard over, sending the larger yacht smashing into the Boghammer's side with a grinding crash.

Murdock shifted targets smoothly, cutting down an Iranian soldier holding a G-3 rifle, then another whose weapon was still slung over his back. Higgins emerged from Beluga's companionway, firing into the Boghammer's pilothouse, while Sterling, armed now, advanced to Beluga's gunwale, firing down into the patrol boat's after well deck.

Murdock estimated that five seconds passed between the first shot and the last. He and Roselli scrambled aboard the Boghammer to bring it under control, checking the bodies sprawled from bow to transom for signs of life. Two badly wounded and unconscious men were dispatched with single shots through their heads. The SEALs were in no position to tend to prisoners.

"Can you run it, Chief?" Murdock asked Roselli as he studied the simple controls in the pilothouse.

"Aw, shit, Lieutenant. I could run this blindfolded. Throttle, gearshift, and wheel... that's all there fuckin' is to it!"

"Good man. I want you to go over this boat with a magnifying glass, okay? Find and fix anything we broke in that firefight."

"Right, Skipper."

Returning to the afterdeck, Murdock crossed back to the Beluga, where Sterling was finishing tying off a stern line, securing the Boghammer to the yacht. "Jaybird!"

"Yeah, Skipper?"

Murdock put one hand on Sterling's sweat-slick shoulder, and with the other pointed west across the water toward the rugged coast of Qeshm. "Looks to me like we might have a beach over there at the foot of those hills. Think this tub has the oomph to haul herself and the speedboat into the shallows?"

"Sure thing, Skipper."

"Do it. If she's too sluggish, Roselli can help from the Boghammer. Higgins!"

"Yessir!"

"You 'n me just got assigned the grunt detail. Let's start hauling our gear over to the Boghammer."

"Aye, aye, Skipper. You get in the 'Hammer and I'll start passing to you, okay?"

"Affirmative."

In the blazing, late-afternoon heat, the two men began moving all of the SEAL weapons and equipment to the smaller boat.

"Looks to me like you've got this thing pretty well thought out," Higgins said, passing a SEAL rebreather across Beluga's rail to Murdock.

"Nah," Murdock replied, taking the SCUBA and stowing it in the Boghammer's aft well deck. "I'm making it all up as we go along."

"Yeah," Higgins said. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

Murdock decided to take a chance. "So? How do I stack up so far against Lieutenant Cotter?"

Higgins reached for a bundle of swim fins, masks, and weight belts. "Well, I'll tell you, Sir. The L-T'd have had this thing scoped out a week in advance, everything planned down to the last detail. He wasn't one to make it up on the fly, know what I mean?"

"Yup." Murdock suppressed a flash of irritation. He had asked for the comparison.

"But I'll tell you what," Higgins continued. "Whatever plan he'd have come up with, I guarantee you it wouldn't've been this much fun!"

As they continued loading their gear aboard the Boghammer, Murdock wasn't sure whether he'd just been complimented or not.

2115 hours (Zulu +3)

Boghammer patrol boat

Northeastern coast of Qeshm

"Damn," Sterling said as he leaped off the Beluga and onto the Boghammer's after well deck. "I really hate trading this sweet beauty for a stinkpot, skipper!"

"I like the bed-sheet navy too, Jaybird," Murdock replied, casting off the stern line. Beluga rested where she'd been run aground several hours earlier, in a shallow cove several miles from the village of Qeshm at the eastern tip of the island. "But you've gotta admit, she's one of a kind, while this Boghammer is going to be one among forty. And right now, we can't afford to stand out in the crowd!"

"Besides," Higgins said, grinning, "it's kind of nice to be in something that'll give us a bit of speed!"

"Roger that," Murdock said, casting a wary eye toward the darkening sky. An Iranian helicopter droned low over the water several miles to the south, but didn't appear interested in Qeshm. So far they'd been damned lucky. The Boghammer must have been sent out to investigate when the Beluga failed to respond to instructions over the radio; sooner or later, someone ashore was going to realize that the Boghammer had never reported back, and that the Beluga had failed to dock in Bandar Abbas, or wherever they'd been ordered to go. The military bureaucracy — any military bureaucracy — was slow and cumbersome enough that it would have trouble tracking down a covert team as small as four SEALs in one small boat, and the Iranian bureaucracy was considerably more disorganized than most. Still, Iranian aircraft were bound to spot the yacht sooner or later, and any determined search by patrol boats or helos would discover her resting place on Qeshm Island almost at once.

And if they figured out which Boghammer boat was missing...

Jaybird and Roselli had taken a step to further confuse the Iranians. The Boghammer had a hull number painted on both sides of her bow. It looked like the number 10, with a slanted "1" followed by a small "0," but Professor Higgins knew the Iranian numerals well enough to translate the number as 15, and he knew that, unlike Iranian script, their numerals were read left to right. He and Roselli took brushes and black and white paint found in a storage locker aboard Beluga, mixed up a gray that closely approximated the gray color scheme of the Boghammer, and, standing in waist-deep water, had carefully painted out each "0" on her hull. They'd then replaced the numeral with another black "1," transforming the Boghammer from number 15 to number 11.

The likeliest action by the Iranian port authorities once Boghammer 15 failed to report in, Murdock was guessing, would be to send out patrols looking for the missing craft. With luck, no one would notice that there were now two Boghammer 11s, especially at night and within the bustle and confusion of a major naval shipyard facility.

"Okay, Razor," Murdock called. "Let's get away from the scene of the crime. I don't want you guys to have to paint another fake number on our sides."

"You got that right, Skipper," Roselli called back as he eased the throttle forward, eliciting a deeper growl from the engine. "Scraping and painting's for the real Navy. I joined the SEALs so I wouldn't have to do that shit!"

Smoke fumed from the Boghammer's engine vents as her screw churned the water aft to white froth. Veering sharply away from the beach, they began moving into deeper water.

Murdock and Higgins turned to the task of testing out the connections on their HST-4 sat comm and the KY-57 encryption set, the "C-2" communications element that would let them stay in touch with both MEF and Washington. Before abandoning the Beluga, Higgins had transmitted a final set of intelligence data over the yacht's small sat-comm unit, including Murdock's impressions of the port facilities as seen through binoculars from Qeshm. The island provided an excellent OP, just eleven miles south of the port, but to get the detailed intelligence Deadly Weapon would need, the SEALs would have to get a lot closer than that. The transmission had been insurance against the possibility that the four SEALs would be killed or captured while trying to penetrate the Iranian port.

As darkness fell across the Gulf, the lights of Bandar Abbas gleamed like brilliant pearls on a necklace stretched across the northern horizon. Once clear of the beach, Roselli opened up the Boghammer's throttle, the knife-pointed prow came up out of the water above a boiling white streak of foam, and they jolted into the passage between Qeshm and the mainland at twenty-eight knots.

2130 hours (Zulu +3)

U.S.S. Austin

In the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz

The Austin, LPD 4, was a bulky, hybrid-looking vessel, half transport, half carrier, known officially as an Amphibious Transport, Dock. With a crew of four hundred and berthing facilities for nearly a thousand Marines, she was part of II MEF's assault transport contingent — the backbone of the Marine Expeditionary Force — which included the Nassau and the helicopter carrier Iwo Jima.

All together, II MEF comprised a Marine air-ground task force, or MAGTF, comprised of fifty ships and over 52,000 Navy and Marine personnel, the largest and most powerful of all Marine task forces. Under the overall command of FMFLANT-Fleet Marine Force Atlantic-II MEF drew its forces from the 2nd Marine Division, the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, and the 4th and 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigades. The force, which had been on maneuvers in the Med during the opening scenes of the Yuduki Maru drama, had transited the Suez Canal and passed south through the Red Sea, emerging in the Gulf of Aden south of the Arabian Peninsula. After the abortive attempt to reach the Yuduki Maru at sea, the task force had been routed into the Gulf of Oman, closely following the Iranian squadron, dogging their formation with helicopters, AV-8 Harriers, and F/A-18 Homers. They were massed now in international waters just outside the Strait of Hormuz, ready to strike with the entire, staggering might of a reinforced Marine division.

And the very tip of that titanic Army-Navy spear-point was now on Austin's well deck, preparing to get under way.

"Captain Coburn?"

Phillip Coburn straightened up from the bundle of equipment he'd been checking. "Here!"

A commander in Navy khakis approached him across the crowded, metal grating of the deck. "Commander DiAmato, Sir," the officer said, saluting. "They said to pass this on to you."

DiAmato handed him a sheaf of papers. Awkward in his black gear, wet suit, and full rebreather rig, Coburn accepted it and started reading. It was an intelligence update, the latest condensation of data from satellites, reconnaissance aircraft... and from the SEALs already in the approaches to Bandar Abbas.

Metal clanged and gonged in the cavernous space around him and echoed with shouts and the whine of overhead hoists. Austin's well deck was completely enclosed, a vast, echoing cave of gray-painted metal, overhead pipes, and a central well that could be flooded in order to facilitate the launch of various vehicles and small craft. Normally, this was where Marine KMS or the odd-looking, tracked LVTs were loaded before letting them swim out through the huge doors set into the transport's stern. This time, however, the well deck was occupied by several craft that made even the boxy LVTs look ordinary.

Three were Mark VIII SDVs. "SDV" stood for Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, but SEALs referred to the contraption as a "bus." Each was twenty-one feet long, with a beam and draft of just over four feet, and looked like a blunt, overfed torpedo. Hatches in the side gave access to the interior; two SDV crewmen, a pilot and a navigator, manned a cramped compartment forward, while four more SEALs could snuggle in aft, squeezed in side by side.

The three SDVs were being loaded now; their twelve passengers were the ten men of SEAL Seven's Third Platoon who'd returned early that morning from the Beluga mission plus EM2 Wilson and Captain Coburn.

Coburn finished reading the message printout, then handed it back to DiAmato. "Looks like nothing much new," he said. "At least we know where they've stashed the damned target."

"I'd just like to know how a captain rates getting to go out on a joy-ride," another voice boomed from behind.

Turning, Coburn saw the craggy features of Rear Admiral Robert Mitchell, the commander of the Navy component of the MEF.

"Excuse me, Admiral," Coburn said, saluting. "I didn't know you were aboard the Austin."

"I just heloed over from the Nassau." Mitchell returned the salute, then extended a hand. Coburn took it. He'd known Bob Mitchell all the way back in Annapolis; the fact that Mitchell was a rear admiral now while Coburn was still a captain was proof of the adage that special forces assignments slowed a man's Navy career track.

"Heard you were about to go and wanted to see you off," Mitchell continued. Planting fists on hips, he stared at the nearest SDV, suspended above the flooded well deck from an overhead hoist. "You know. I still think it's nuts for a captain to go joyriding like this. How'd you pull that off?"

"Ah, I told Admiral Winston I'd hold my breath until I turned blue," Coburn replied easily. "Besides, I'm still dive-rated. Just because I've got four stripes doesn't mean I'm senile. You need flag rank for that."

Mitchell laughed. "Sounds like even CO-MIDEASTFOR has trouble managing SEALS. Housebreaking you guys must be a bitch."

"Hey, if you want housebroken, send in the Marines. They can break anything if they put their minds to it."

"As a matter of fact, we're planning on doing just that little thing." Mitchell extended his hand again. "Good luck, Phil."

"Thanks, Admiral. See you in Bandar!"

Minutes later, Coburn was tucked into the passenger compartment of SDV #1. He was rigged out in the SEALs' new SCUBA Mark XV gear, an advanced underwater life-support system that used a computer to regulate the rebreather's gas mix. With the Mark XV, a SEAL could dive deeper and stay deep longer than he could with the old Drager LAR V system; he wore a full-face mask that allowed him to communicate by voice, either through an intercom jack or by radio, though the range of radio communications was sharply limited within the radio-wave-absorbing medium of the sea.

Seated next to Master Chief MacKenzie, and just ahead of HM2 Ellsworth and HT1 Garcia, Coburn plugged his breathing system into the boat's air supply, a measure that would extend the range of his own rebreather gear, then waited as water flooded the cramped compartment. It was dark, and the confines were downright claustrophobic. Coburn chuckled to himself as he thought of the ongoing budgetary war that continued to keep the Navy divided into separate, rival camps. Many years earlier, the submariners, seeking to expand their control over a portion of the Navy's appropriations, had managed to push through a rule with Congress that established that only they could build and operate "dry" submarines, underwater craft that provided a shirtsleeve environment for their operators. As a result, arms of the service that could use small, covert entry or reconnaissance craft — arms like the SEALs and the Marines — had to rely on "wet" submarines like the Mark VIII.

For that reason, SDV operations were sharply limited in range. The Mark VIII could manage about six knots on its electric batteries and had an endurance of six hours, so the SDVs had to be piggy-backed to within eighteen nautical miles of the target — three hours in, three hours back — with the further disadvantage that the SEALs aboard were going to be tired long before they even got there. That narrow-minded bean-counting was a typical example of the bureaucratic idiocy that plagued those military circles high enough in the Washington hierarchy to be contaminated by the politics of that town.

Usually in SEAL SDV missions, ferry duty fell to one of the few dry submarines equipped to carry SDVs in special hangars on their decks. Unfortunately, none of the subs so equipped had been available on such short notice, which meant that Austin had been tasked with carrying the SEALs in to a drop-off point eighteen miles south of Bandar Abbas. Austin's captain, Coburn thought, as well as the skippers of her escorting warships, must be sweating bullets about now, wondering if the Iranians were about to launch a preemptive strike against the task force. The Iranians had to figure that the American MEF was here for more than a show of force, that they weren't going to just stand by and watch while the Iranians rifled the Yuduki Maru of her cargo.

What was their response going to be? There was no way of telling. All the SEALs could do was plan it the best they could, then Charlie Mike.

A few yards away, MacKenzie stood on the steel deck grating and watched Coburn talking with the admiral. He'd learned that Coburn was joining the platoon only a few hours earlier, when the captain had met the team in a briefing room and explained the nature of the mission.

MacKenzie didn't like this twist, not one bit. Captain Coburn was a capable officer, but damn it, the guy was getting a bit old for this sort of thing. Coburn was fifty years old and had served in Nam. Three hours in a wet suit, breathing reprocessed air, was incredibly draining, especially for an old guy.

The chief protested, of course, and he'd been slapped down. Coburn had grinned to rob the rebuke of its sting and pointed out that if he, Coburn, was over the hill, Master Chief MacKenzie couldn't be far behind.

MacKenzie grimaced at the thought. He was forty-five... but at least he'd been active in the Teams' diving proficiency drills and PT over the years. When was the last time the Old Man had swum two miles, with fins, in seventy minutes? Or run fourteen miles in 110?

He decided he would stick close to Coburn throughout this mission... just in case.

2345 hours (Zulu +3)

Captured Boghammer patrol craft

Off Bandar Abbas

With her powerful engine barely ticking over, the Boghammer growled past the huge, gray bulks of a dozen Iranian military craft, most yard tenders and oilers, but a few heavily armed patrol boats as well. The sailors on the decks of those craft watched the sleek craft incuriously if at all; Boghammers were common enough in all parts of the harbor that it should not excite curiosity.

So far, the Iranian shipyard and naval facilities appeared quiet. No alarm had sounded, no heavily armed patrol boats were dashing about. Their most serious test had come as they'd approached a massive boom guarding the hundred-yard-wide opening to the shipyard's inner harbor. Half expecting to be turned aside without the necessary password or code, they'd motored slowly toward the boom, only to see the central section slide open for them, allowing them to pass inside. Guard towers rose on either side of the opening; the boom floated on the water's surface but was clearly the support for a heavy antisubmarine net. Guards patrolled everywhere, but none paid more attention to the Boghammer than a casual wave or salute.

Inside the harbor, most activity seemed lethargic. Except for a few armed guards in evidence ashore, the only men visible were lounging and talking on the decks of their ships. Most of the base was dark, save for patches of illumination cast by street lights along the waterfront.

The single area of intense activity appeared to be centered on the forward deck of the freighter Yuduki Maru, which had been drawn up, port side to, at a long pier close by the shipyard's dry-dock area and launching way. Tarpaulins had been stretched across the forward deck in an obvious attempt to block out surveillance by American spy satellites, and a construction crew could be seen by the flaring, actinic light of cutting torches hissing on the forward deck.

"Could be they're running into some computer trouble," Murdock said. All four of the SEALs were inside the Boghammer's pilothouse, peering out through the salt-encrusted windscreen at the activity on the huge freighter. "Without the right password, they're not going to get through the cargo hatches."

"So their only option is cutting their way through solid steel," Roselli said, standing at the boat's wheel. "That should take 'em a while, even with dockyard facilities."

"All night at least," Higgins said.

"That was the idea," Murdock said.

"What the hell is the new password, anyway?" Roselli wanted to know.

Murdock grinned. "'Jaybird." It was the only thing I could think of at the time."

"Ha! Well, they sure won't hit on that by trial and error. It must be giving them fits!"

"I just hope they don't think the Japanese crewmen are giving them the wrong information," Sterling said. "Things could go a bit hard on them."

"Shit, Jaybird, you want we should go in and give them the keys to the stuffs?" Roselli asked.

"I didn't say that."

"Anyway, they know we were up there on the bridge long enough to change the codes. They're probably just mad as hell they didn't get one of us to tell them what it was!"

Murdock leaned over, studying the armed men arrayed along Yuduki Maru's side. More soldiers were on the pier alongside, where workers were preparing to sway several bulky propane tanks up to the ship's deck in a cargo net. "What would you guys say... twelve armed guards on board?"

"About that," Roselli agreed. "Twelve in sight anyway. And another fifteen or twenty on the dock. Ramazani probably has every Pasdaran soldier he feels he can trust in this burg sitting on top of his prize."

"And they're positioning that hammerhead crane over there to off-load the stuff," Sterling added. "If we're gonna do something, we'd better do it damned fast."

Higgins glanced at his watch. "Patience, son. The SDVs ought to be here in another hour."

"If they stuck to sched," Roselli added. "Hey, Sterling?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you get the name Jaybird?"

The SEAL trainee groaned and the other SEALs laughed. With her engine set just one notch above idle, the Boghammer cruised slowly and ever deeper into the Iranian harbor.