Seal Team Seven

Monday, 30 May

0005 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Tetsuo Kurebayashi had been unable to sleep. Despite the years of self-discipline and self-denial, despite the rigors of his Ohtori commando training, the excitement, the overwhelming sense of fulfillment of a mission accomplished blended with the heady anticipation of another mission about to begin, left him wide awake.

Besides, it was noisy within the steel confines of the hijacked freighter. A small army had come aboard as soon as they'd been safely tied up to the dock, and the Iranian construction personnel were now hard at work, attempting to cut through the reinforced steel containment walls that surrounded Yuduki Maru's precious cargo.

Dressing, he'd gone up to the vessel's bridge. Iranian soldiers had finished removing the machine guns ruined by the American commandos but had not replaced them. Instead, grim-looking Iranian Pasdaran stood guard with automatic weapons. The compartment still showed the signs of battle — the soundproofing tiles overhead shredded by hundreds of bullet holes, the teletype printers and several consoles smoke-stained and pocked by stray rounds, most of the glass in the large, slanted bridge windows missing. A brown stain on the tile deck marked where an Iranian soldier had died.

Glancing around once, Kurebayashi stepped through the door and onto the open starboard wing of the bridge.

Isamu Takeda was already there, leaning against the railing. "A, Isamusama," Kurebayashi said, startled. "Sumimasen!"

"Please, Tetsuosan," the Ohtori leader replied, also speaking Japanese to maintain a sense of privacy from the nearby Iranian troops. "Join me."

"Hai, Isamusama!" Kurebayashi gave the requisite, respectful bow, raising his eyes no higher than the collar of Takeda's limey-style blouse. "You honor me."

"We have come a long way from the streets of Sasebo, neh?"

Clearly, Takeda was in a reflective mood. Kurebayashi grunted an assent, joining his leader against the wing railing. It had been a long time, almost fifteen years, since they'd met one another in the rock-throwing riots staged to protest the American military presence in the home islands. That had been at the very beginning, when Ohtori was first being born from the fallen ideals and promise of the Japanese Red Army.

It had taken that long to find a weapon suitable for bringing the American imperialists to their knees.

"The general tells me it will take a little time yet to reach our goal," Takeda said. He nodded toward the activity on Yuduki Maru's deck. The flare of cutting torches cast monstrous, flickering shadows across the steel.

"After waiting this long," Kurebayashi said, "I suppose we can wait a few hours more. The arrangements are made for our share?"

"Yes. It will be flown to Bangkok tomorrow night, then placed aboard a ship to be smuggled into Yokohama." He smiled easily. "It will be most poetic, don't you think? The Western devils brought down by the demon they first unleashed upon our people seven sevens of years ago."

"Hai, Isamusama! It is justice, and partial payment as well."

"I know how you feel about working with the Iranians, Tetsuosan," Takeda went on. "But it is proper naniwabushi, neh?"

In Japan, the practice called naniwabushi, meaning to get on such close personal terms with someone that he was obligated to generosity, was basic to any good businessman's repertoire. Terrorism too was a business, sometimes even a profitable one, certainly one to be pursued with the dedication and attention to detail of any corporate endeavor. By planning the capture of the Yuduki Maru, by penetrating the security measures put in place by the freighter's owners and actually executing the takeover, Ohtori had placed a tremendous obligation upon Ramazani and the other plotters within Iran's military. As payment, Ramazani had promised Ohtori two hundred kilos of plutonium — one tenth of the cargo locked away in the freighter's hold. This mission, Operation Yoake, had yet one final act to unfold, one that would find consummation at Yokosuka some three months hence.

Yokosuka, just twenty-eight miles south across Tokyo Bay from the Japanese capital, once one of Imperial Japan's first naval bases, had for five decades been the largest U.S. Navy shore facility in the Far East, covering five hundred acres and including the headquarters for COMFLEACT, the Commander of Fleet Activities, which oversaw the logistics and maintenance for all U.S. Navy forces in the western Pacific. Just a few kilos of highly radioactive plutonium, dispersed by a remotely detonated car bomb, would be more than enough to render the entire area uninhabitable for the next several centuries. And that would be only the beginning. Two hundred kilos would provide blast-scattered death enough for many car bombs, many places around the world. The blast that had shaken the World Trade Center in New York City over a year ago would be utterly forgotten, a mere shadow of the horror, blood, and lingering death that was to follow.

It would be... what was the American term? Payback. Yes, it would be payback indeed for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To drive that particular point home, the attack was planned for the sixth of August, some sixty-eight days hence.

Kurebayashi looked away from the dazzle of the torches and work lights, staring instead at the black water slowly rising and falling along Yuduki Maru's starboard side. Turning and leaning over the railing to peer into the darkness aft, he saw one of the sleek Iranian patrol boats motor slowly past the freighter's stern, at the very edge of the illumination spread by the work lights ashore.

All was quiet, but Kurebayashi was ill at ease. He'd been thinking a lot lately of the black-garbed commandos who'd risen from the sea and so nearly overturned Yoake. He was fairly sure that they'd been American SEALs — though both the U.S. Marines and the Army Special Forces used SCUBA equipment when necessary. The SEALs had a well-deserved reputation throughout the world's freedom-fighter underground as ruthless, efficient, and implacably deadly foes.

He didn't believe for a moment that the Americans were going to let Ohtori and the Iranians walk away with two tons of plutonium. If they were going to try again to stop the theft, it would have to be now, before Yuduki Maru's steel-lined vaults were breached, before the plutonium could be scattered to waiting terrorist cells around the world.

Kurebayashi felt a small chill down his spine at the thought. "If you agree, I will inspect our sentries," he told Takeda.

"Of course, Tetsuosan."

He bowed again, then left the Ohtori leader on the bridge wing. According to the schedule, Hotsumi and Masahiko were on duty on the fantail, while Seito stood guard over Yuduki Maru's crew, locked away now in the aft crew's quarters. Throughout the voyage north to Bandar Abbas, the Ohtori gunmen had maintained their own watch independently of the Iranians. These Pasdaran were too lax, too ill-disciplined to maintain a proper military watch. And there was a very great deal at stake.

0040 hours (Zulu +3)

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Roselli had guided the Boghammer across the harbor, approaching at last a deserted pier in a remote and poorly lit part of the waterfront. There, they'd shut down the engine and tied the patrol boat to a ramshackle bollard. One by one then, with the others standing watch, they'd donned their black gear and SCUBAs, tested them, and checked once more their weapons and equipment. At 0015 hours precisely, they'd rolled over the side of the Boghammer, moving stealthily in the shadows beneath the rickety pier, donned fins and face masks, and slipped beneath the ink-black surface of the water with scarcely a ripple to mark their passing.

It was a two-hundred-meter swim from the pier where they'd left the Boghammer to the dockside construction area where Yuduki Maru had been moored. They navigated by compass and by counting the strokes of their swim fins.

Halfway across, Murdock could hear sounds transmitted through the water from the target, the clank of steel on steel, the thump of something heavy being dropped. Sound propagates through water much more efficiently than it does in air, and far faster. It felt as though they must be nearly on top of their target.

They continued swimming. As the noises grew louder, Murdock cautiously moved to the surface until the upper half of his head broke the water, rising just enough to give him a frog's-eye view of the target. Yuduki Maru's stern rose like a black wall against the glare of lights on the dock side. The dazzling flare of a cutting torch shone like a brilliant star.

Submerging again, Murdock had waited until the other three SEALs moved close enough that he could signal by touch. They were dead on course, and only about thirty meters short of their target.

Moments later, they'd swum up against the slime-slick bottom of the Yuduki Maru, where she rode at her moorings in twenty-one feet of water. Reaching into a pocket of his loadout vest, Murdock extracted a small metallic case the size of a pack of cigarettes, nudged the transmit switch with his gloved thumb, then positioned the device against the freighter's hull.

The homer was part of the specialized VBSS loadout, originally brought along against the possibility that they would need to mark the Beluga for a second boarding attempt. He heard nothing when he turned it on, of course; the highfrequency chirps emitted by the device were well above the human auditory range.

But someone equipped with the right equipment would be able to pick up the signals, and home on them. Murdock and the other SEALs allowed themselves to sink to the muck of the ill-defined harbor bottom, and waited. SEALs were very, very good at waiting.

0052 hours (Zulu +3)

SDV #1

Outside the Bandar Abbas shipyard

With a dwindling whine of its electric motor, the lead Mark VIII SDV settled gently to the muddy bottom, closely followed by the other two. Moving carefully in the cramped darkness, MacKenzie switched on his own rebreather, then disconnected the life-support line that had been feeding him off the bus's bottled air.

The long three-hour run north from the drop-off point had been routine. There'd been a few tense moments as they cruised past the island of Larak, a few miles east of Qeshm. The SDV's pilot had reported over the plug-in intercom that sonar had detected a rotary-wing aircraft hovering overhead, and moments later, they'd heard the telltale throb of approaching propellers. An Iranian patrol boat was passing overhead.

There was no telling what the helicopter had seen — or even if it had seen anything at all in the darkness. All three SDVs had powered down until they were only barely making way, traveling in near-perfect silence; the patrol boat had passed close overhead, circled a time or two, then headed off toward the west.

With sonar reporting the area clear again, the three SEAL minisubs had continued on their way. The Mark VIII featured a sophisticated Doppler Navigation System, or DNS, that allowed pinpoint navigation even in waters as foul and choked with mud as those of the Gulf. It also mounted an OAS, or Obstacle-Avoidance Sonar subsystem, allowing the subs to keep track of one another and to avoid obstacles — sunken hulks, coral heads, or the structural pylons of Gulf drilling rigs — even when the water was almost completely opaque.

At 0041 hours, the SDV's pilot had alerted the passengers over the intercom: A high-frequency sonar signal had been picked up on the predicted bearing. MacKenzie had allowed himself to relax a little at the news. Murdock and the others were okay. They'd penetrated the harbor, located the Yuduki Maru, and planted the sonar homer. Now it was up to the rest of Third Platoon.

MacKenzie dragged the passenger compartment hatch back, then carefully extricated himself from the grounded bus. He had to operate almost entirely by feel; it was past midnight, and even at high noon, the visibility in the silty waters of the Gulf was never more than a few feet. A shimmering glow suffused from the surface overhead, creating a kind of ceiling to the watery world. There were floodlights up there, MacKenzie decided, illuminating the surface of the water at the harbor entrance. By that glow he could just make out the vague shadow of a net hanging vertically in the water above him.

The luminous dial of his depth gauge showed a depth of forty feet, well within the safe working range for Mark XV SCUBA gear. Carefully, he moved aft along the side of the SDV and opened the hatch to the cargo compartment. Other divers appeared in the water around him. Together, they broke out a small sled, a raft stretched across two small pontoons, to which their equipment and heavy weapons had been lashed. It took a moment to valve air from the sled's ballast tanks until it assumed neutral buoyancy. Then Holt and Frazier assumed positions to either side of it and began guiding it with gentle, flippered kicks toward the net. The other SEALs followed.

MacKenzie marked the net with two red-glowing chemical lights, their glow too dim to reach the surface but bright enough here to let the SEALs see what they were doing. Brown, Kosciuszko, and Fernandez produced cable cutters, and together they went to work on the submarine net.

In moments, they'd cut a six-foot gap through the net, marking the opening with the chemical lights. Leaving the three SDVs parked by the net, the twelve SEALs one by one slipped through the opening and into the inner harbor.

MacKenzie checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was 0058 hours. They were behind sched and would have to hurry. He wondered how Coburn was holding up, but when he caught sight of the Old Man sliding through the opening in the net, he looked okay. MacKenzie assigning himself as the captain's dive buddy, touched Coburn in query and received a jaunty OK hand signal in reply. So far, so good.

Kosciuszko was holding a black device the size of a paperback book before him as he swam, studying the LED readout on a tiny screen. Sensitive to the frequencies used by Murdock's homer, the hand-held sonar would guide the SEALs to their target.

With firm, thrusting kicks that felt good after three hours of immobility in the SDV, MacKenzie and the others began swimming through the jet-black murk. He thought he could already hear the water-transmitted clangs and bumps of construction work somewhere ahead.

0112 hours (Zulu +3)

Beneath the freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

In Vietnam SEALs had learned the art of patience, deliberately assuming uncomfortable positions in order to stay awake and alert for hour after dragging hour while waiting at the side of a jungle trail for the appearance of an enemy column.

Such extreme measures weren't necessary here, waiting in the black murk beneath the Yuduki Maru, though each of the four men was alert to the signs of drowsiness in himself and in the others. Drowsiness here, twenty feet beneath the surface, could be a Symptom Of CO2 poisoning, due to malfunction, chemical exhaustion in their Drager LAR V rebreather rigs, or simply from working too hard.

Each move they made was slow and deliberate; the bottom, obscured in drifting silt, was a tangled, potential deathtrap of concrete blocks, discarded truck tires, broken glass, empty packing crates, and slime-covered railroad ties, jumbled together in a kind of chaotic obstacle course. They'd taken up a bottom watch position, the four of them within touching distance, resting back-to-back so that they could see in all directions. There was little to see. They were underneath the wooden pier, close to one of the massive, algae-shaggy pilings that descended from the dim glow at the surface into the tarry muck of the bottom, and visibility was effectively zero.

In fact, while swaddled in his wet suit and dive gear, the only sense Murdock still had was hearing, and he was focusing all of his attention on the sounds echoing through the black water around him. The heavy-equipment noises from the Yuduki Maru's deck had ceased, but loud thumps and bumps continued to transmit themselves through the water at irregular intervals, and occasionally he could hear the creak and pop of wood shifting as men moved on the pier directly above his head.

And then he heard another sound... one that made him reach back and urgently tap the other SEALS. It was a metallic, tinkling noise, a bubbling that came in short bursts of noise, followed by silence.

The SEALs' rebreathers were silent, giving off no air bubbles. What they were hearing was almost certainly a SCUBA rig... no, two rigs, judging from the one-two, pause, one-two rhythm of the noise. Iranian divers... and they were coming toward the SEALS.

0115 hours (Zulu +3)

Inside the Bandar Abbas shipyard harbor

Coburn didn't realize that he was in trouble until the thought struck him, with all of the impact of religious revelation, that he'd somehow forgotten what the mission was.

He'd been swimming steadily ahead through the silt-laden water, checking his wrist compass occasionally to maintain the assigned heading of three-two-zero degrees, but mostly relying on the dimly sensed shadows of the other SEALs around him. He was working harder than he'd expected. His muscles were still up to the task the SEALs had set for themselves, but Coburn found he was having to fight for air as he swam harder and harder, trying to keep up. The effort was much like that of Hell Week, a demanding test of stamina and willpower as the recruit's reserves were drained completely, then challenged by yet another seemingly impossible task.

He was thinking about Hell Week when he realized that he'd lost sight of the other divers. That in itself was not surprising, the silt in the water had been growing steadily thicker as the team moved deeper into the harbor, until the water was so murky that his dive buddy could have been six feet away and remained invisible. The shock came when he stopped to think about what to do next and realized that he didn't know why he was here. A training mission? Yes, that must be it... though he had the nagging feeling that this operation was far more important then the usual SEAL qualification dive. He shook his head, trying to clear it. How could he forget what he was doing in the middle of an exercise? There was a reason for that, but he couldn't remember what it was.

His head hurt, the pain throbbing with his accelerated heartbeat, and he was having trouble clearing his ears. The full mask squeezed uncomfortably against the borders of his face. His thinking felt... muddy, somehow. And God! He was feeling so tired, so sleepy.

0115 hours (Zulu +3)

Beneath the freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Murdock strained to catch the tinkling gurgle of the enemy's SCUBA rigs. Had the SEALs been discovered already? There was no way to tell. Possibly the Iranians had picked up the telltale pings of the sonar homer, though the high-frequency device had been designed to avoid the usual sound channels used by conventional sonar ears. More likely, it was a routine patrol, checking the Yuduki Maru's bottom for mines or listening devices, or sweeping the area for any signs of enemy frogman activity. The bad guys had to be a bit nervous after that first attempt to take the freighter back by seaborne assault.

Silently, Murdock spoke to the others with touch and shadow-shrouded gesture: Roselli and Higgins, go that way... Jaybird, come with me. Splitting into two teams of two, the SEALs circled left and right. It was always difficult to tell the source of underwater sounds, but the SCUBA bubble noise was sharp enough that the SEALs could localize it to the general direction of the shore. Most likely, the enemy divers had gone in near Yuduki Maru's bow and were approaching now along her bottom. Murdock drew his Mark II Navy knife and sensed Jaybird doing the same.

The sounds were closer now and sharper. That way. Moving out from under the pier, Murdock scraped along inches beneath the steel ceiling of the freighter's keel, trying to localize what he was now certain were the noises from two SCUBA regulators. They needed to be careful in their identification, since it was quite possible that the two SEAL teams could blunder into one another by mistake. Shadows moved a few feet in front of him, materializing out of the drifting silt.

Yes! Those were no SEALS, not with dark gray wet suits and the bulky, steel cylinders of air tanks strapped to their backs. Evidently, they were checking Yuduki Maru's bottom, for one swam close to the hull, dragging his hand across the surface, while the other hung a few feet back. Both carried bangsticks, meter-long rods tipped with shotgun shells, weapons designed to kill sharks but equally effective against men.

Murdock touched Jaybird to make sure he saw, then lunged forward with three hard kicks to his fins. Exploding out of the muck beneath the ship, he collided with the lead Iranian frogman, left hand blocking the other's bangstick hand, knife hand spearing for the throat. Jaybird hit the second diver an instant later, rolling him over and carrying him toward the bottom.

Bubbles angrily hissed and gurgled in the water. Murdock's knife slashed the rubber of the Iranian's hood, then penetrated to the flesh below. Blood, ink-black in the almost nonexistent light formed an expanding cloud about both men. The bangstick slipped from the man's fingers, though he continued struggling in Murdock's grasp. Gradually, those struggles died away... and then the frogman floated limp and unresisting in the water, just as Roselli and Higgins loomed out of the shadows from astern, knives at the ready.

Murdock glanced up. Jaybird had killed his man as well, slitting the man's throat like an expert.

Turning the bodies over, the SEALs closed the regulator valves shut, stopping the flow of air from the tanks. Men on the pier following the divers' progress by their tell-tale bubbles on the surface might wonder at having lost the bubbles... but they would wonder a lot more if the rhythmic bubble patterns turned to two steady streams that no longer moved. The SEALs had just purchased a little more time while the people on the surface assumed that their divers had moved beneath the ship... ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps. After that...

Damn, where were the guys off the SDVs?

0116 hours (Zulu +3)

Inside the Bandar Abbas shipyard harbor

Coburn's breaths were coming in short, panting rasps now. The pain in his head was almost unendurable, and he had to stifle an urge to yawn inside his mask.

Damn this Hell Week shit. Push a guy until he's so damned tired he doesn't know whether he's coming or going, until he's about to fall asleep on his feet. Maybe it's time to ring the fucking bell, to get out now while the getting's still good.

Compass heading... what was his heading? Holding the wrist compass up before his mask, he tried to focus on the numbers. Two-three-zero... he needed a heading of two-three-zero. Damn! He was way off course! The next marker in the exercise was that way! How much time had he lost?

He had to keep moving, keep working. He wasn't going to quit, wasn't going to ring the damned bell. But God, he was so sleepy!..

A hand descended on his arm, yanking him to one side. Angrily, Coburn turned to fend off this unexpected attack from behind. The other diver was much bigger than he, and stronger. Coburn reached for his knife...

...and the move was expertly blocked. The other SEAL positioned himself so that his face mask was six inches from Coburn's. The SEAL captain found himself looking into MacKenzie's worried eyes.

MacKenzie. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in the Persian Gulf, going after that Japanese freighter.

Then Coburn remembered where he was, and the realization was at once terrifying and embarrassing. He floated there in MacKenzie's grip, almost limp, as the SEAL master chief reached out and snagged another diver out of the gloom.

Ellsworth, the platoon's corpsman. Coburn watched as MacKenzie signaled to Ellsworth with his free hand, forming a "C", an "O," then holding up two fingers.

CO2. Coburn's symptoms of the past few minutes began to make some kind of sense. He'd been breathing awfully hard since they'd left the SDVs, partly because the long night swim was hard work, partly because — he made himself admit the fact now — he'd been excited. Maybe too excited. He'd started breathing so hard that he hadn't been ventilating his lungs properly... or possibly he'd simply not been giving his rebreather's CO absorbent time to purge all of the carbon dioxide from his gas mix.

He wanted to kick himself.

MacKenzie pointed toward the surface and Doc nodded. The only treatment for carbon-dioxide poisoning was to abort the dive at once. Coburn felt MacKenzie handing him off to Ellsworth. Together, they started for the surface.

0118 hours (Zulu +3)

Beneath the freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Murdock and the other three SEALs had dragged the bodies of the two Iranians to the bottom and wedged them securely among the broken concrete blocks and discarded rubber tires beneath the pier, then returned to their back-to-back watch position. How long before the bad guys topside decided to come looking for their missing frogmen?

If the SDV team didn't show up damned quick, he would have to start thinking about what the four of them could do on their own.

Not that they'd be able to do a hell of a lot. A four-man Rambo-type assault was a possibility, but not a good one. SEALs got results by working as a team according to a carefully worked-out plan, not by going in with guns blazing in some kind of wild, death-or-glory banzai charge. Besides, though they were armed, they had no grenades, no explosives, and once on board they would be outnumbered at least ten to one. Getting themselves shot would accomplish exactly nothing. The smart move would probably be to return to the Boghammer and try to raise Prairie Rome on the sat comm. Presumably, the air assault portion of Deadly Weapon was still under way, even if the SDV attack had been aborted.

Or was it? It wouldn't be the first time that a nervous Pentagon or an indecisive Administration had gotten cold feet and called off a major attack at the last possible second. Maybe the SDV SEALs and the airborne assault had both been called off, but nobody had bothered to inform the four SEALs already in the harbor.

It was a lonely thought.

Then as if on cue, other divers materialized silently out of the inky water, familiar shadow-shapes in SEAL black gear vests and Mark XV SCUBAs. It was too dark to recognize features behind those full-face masks, but MacKenzie's big-boned lankiness was a welcome sight indeed.

Murdock counted them as they gathered around, and realized with a small stirring of alarm that there were only ten men in the group. The last sat-comm transmission from Prairie Home had said that there would be twelve. Who was missing?

There was no time to find out. With swift, silent efficiency, the SEALs parceled off into two groups. As in the first assault against the freighter, they would go aboard in two groups, both of them on the starboard side this time, to avoid being seen from the pier.

Unpacking their gear from the cargo sled, the SDV SEALs extended their hooked painter's poles and unshipped their weapons. In moments, the first two SEALs were on their way up the Yuduki Maru's side.

0121 hours (Zulu +3)

Inside the Bandar Abbas shipyard harbor

Doc Ellsworth broke surface close beneath a wood-and-concrete pier extending west from a massive stone jetty. Coburn surfaced a moment later, and Doc guided him to the algae-caked bulk of one of the pier's bollards.

This appeared to be a fueling pier. A Combattante II-class patrol boat was tied up alongside, and the sailors aboard were passing fuel lines across from the jetty.

The Combattante II was a French-made boat, about 155 feet long, weighing 249 tons, and carrying a complement of about thirty men. Originally equipped with harpoon missiles, the Iranian Combattantes were now armed only with one rapid-fire 76mm cannon in a turret forward and a 40mm antiaircraft gun aft. Doc was less worried about the patrol boat's armament than he was about the men working on her afterdeck.

But Doc's first thought was for his patient. As Coburn clung gasping to the bollard, Ellsworth pulled off the SEAL's mask, then examined his face closely in the dim light. There was a lot of bloody mucus hanging in clots from Coburn's nose... probably from a ruptured sinus. No froth at the nose or mouth, which was damned good because then Ellsworth would have to consider the possibilities of embolism or lung squeeze. Chances were, Coburn had been breathing so hard he'd popped a sinus.

Hard breathing almost certainly meant CO2 poisoning. The symptoms were subtle, but included drowsiness and loss of concentration, confused thinking, and sometimes the headache that might be associated with the dilation of the arteries in the victim's brain.

"How do you feel?" he whispered in Coburn's ear, just loud enough to be heard above the lapping of the water at the pier and the voices of the working party nearby. "Head?"

"Head hurt like a bastard for a while there," Coburn said. "It's better now."

"Tingling in your hands? Nausea? Chest pains?"

Coburn shook his head. "Negative."

His speech was taut and coherent. MacKenzie had spotted Coburn's trouble in time. The insidious thing about CO2 poisoning was the way it crept up on you, robbing you of your concentration and mental clarity, while making you breathe harder... which in turn made the condition worse. A two percent excess of C02 in the gas mix was enough to trigger harder breathing. Ten percent caused unconsciousness, while fifteen brought on spasms and rigidity. Death was usually from drowning.

One thing was sure. They didn't dare risk letting Coburn dive again. Doc gestured toward the shore, where rocks and mud rose from the water at the point where the pier met the land. They could take shelter there, without having to worry about clinging to the bollard. They would also be able to unstrap their H&Ks and have them ready, just in case. "Let's get comfortable."

Together, they started moving toward the shore, keeping to the shadows beneath the pier.

0121 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

MacKenzie was first up the freighter's side, hauling himself from the water hand over hand along the painter's pole. The last time he'd done this had been at sea, safely shrouded by the anonymity of night. This time it was night... but the glare of lights from the shipyard facilities ashore and from the work area on Yuduki Maru's forward deck was bright enough that he could imagine himself etched clearly against the ship's side.

In fact, his combat blacks provided camouflage enough against the ship's black side, and the SEALs had chosen their approach carefully, coming in over the quarter where they were unlikely to be noticed by casual observers ashore. Still, guards in a passing patrol boat or sailors aboard one of the other ships in the harbor could easily look the wrong way at the wrong moment. They might assume that the divers emerging from the water were part of the "salvage work" going on aboard the Japanese freighter... or they might sound an alarm. Security lay in moving swiftly, with no waste motion and no delays in the open.

As he reached the top of his climb, hanging from the freighter's gunwale, he could hear voices coming from the deck above his head.

"Dokokara kimashita ka?"

"Ah, Osaka kara kimashita."

Japanese. At least two of them.

Clinging one-handed to the painter's pole, MacKenzie drew his Smith & Wesson Hush Puppy. The team wasn't bothering with laser sights this time; the gadgets were too sensitive to salt-water immersion.

This one was going to have to be quick, crude, and dirty.

0121 hours (Zulu +3)

Fueling dock

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Doc helped Coburn in a clumsy side-kick as they made their way along from piling to piling, always staying in the shelter beneath the pier. As they passed beside the patrol boat, they could hear the voices of Iranians on the dock and aboard the vessel, calling to one another in Farsi. Doc concentrated on staying afloat. Both men were burdened with weapons and gear, and it was a struggle just keeping both of their heads above water. Moments later, they cleared the patrol boat. They were less than ten yards from the shore now.

Across the water toward the north, less than one hundred yards away, the Yuduki Maru lay tied up to the construction pier, bathed in light from shore and from her own forward deck. As he moved through the water, Doc could see her aft starboard quarter... and two tiny, black figures dangling against her hull near the fantail. Shit! If anyone on the fuel dock looked that way...

0121 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Twelve feet to MacKenzie's left, Kosciuszko clung to the second painter's pole, pistol in hand. MacKenzie exchanged silent nods with the other SEAL, wordlessly counting down with a three... two... one... now!

Pulling themselves fully erect, MacKenzie and Kosciuszko reared over the freighter's fantail gunwale, balanced back against the gripper hooks at the tops of their poles, weapons tracking and firing in a blurred succession of rapidly triggered shots. The sound-suppressed gunfire sounded like a ragged chain of heavy blows, scarcely louder than the slaps and thuds of bullets striking flesh. The two Japanese guards were caught in intersecting lines of fire, struck again and again and again before they'd even had time to fall. Their assault rifles clattered onto the deck; one man crumpled where he stood; the other stumbled back three steps, half turned, and very nearly went over the rail before dropping to his knees, then collapsing onto his back, arms out-flung in a spreading pool of blood.

MacKenzie swung himself over the rail and took a kneeling position, standing guard while Kos attached and unrolled two caving ladders. In seconds, two more SEALs were on the fantail... then two more. Kosciuszko and Nicholson hauled away hand-over-hand at a line, dragging the platoon's heavy weapons up the ship's side. Moments later, MacKenzie had his M-60 machine gun, a one-hundred-round ammo box snapped onto its receiver and the first round already chambered. Kosciuszko too had a 60-gun, wielding the massive weapon in his huge hands like a carbine.

As the other SEALs came aboard, they dispersed immediately, every man already briefed on his deployment. Fernandez and Garcia stopped long enough to draw their M-16/M203 combos from the heavy weapon pack, tuck some grenades into their pouches, and load up. Magic Brown picked up his M-21 rifle and nightscope, while Scotty Frazier grabbed a shotgun. Doc's beloved full-auto shotgun remained on the deck unclaimed.

The rest of the SEALs carried their standard loadouts, H&K MP5s with Smith & Wesson Hush Puppies as backups.

Silently, MacKenzie willed the SEALs to move faster. They didn't have much time now at all.

0122 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Murdock dropped into a crouch at MacKenzie's side. "What's the word, Chief?" His whisper was scarcely audible above the soft scufflings of the moving SEALS.

"Hey, L-T." It was the first time Murdock had been called that since joining SEAL Seven. "Welcome aboard."

He looked around at the silently moving SEALS. "Who's OIC? DeWitt?"

"You are, I guess. Coburn brought us in, but he's out of the game. Diving casualty."

"Aw, shit! What happened?"

"Maybe CO2 poisoning. I'm not sure. Doc's with him."

DeWitt joined them, clutching his H&K against his chest. "Hey, Lieutenant," he said. "I'm damned glad to see you."

"Glad to see you. Mac tells me Coburn is scratched. I don't know the plan. You two'd better take the lead."

MacKenzie considered this, then nodded. "I think so too." He glanced at DeWitt. "Lieutenant?"

"Affirmative. But stay with me, L-T, huh? I'll feel a lot better with you at my back."

Murdock grinned. "You'll do fine, 2IC. Where are you supposed to be?"

"Bridge."

Murdock nodded. "The bridge again. Okay, let's move it!"

It took a few seconds more to sort out the last-minute details. Roselli and Higgins were posted on the fantail, guarding the SEALs' escape route, manning the sat comm, and providing the rest of the team with a ready reserve. Jaybird would partner with Murdock. Tactical radios were set to the proper frequencies. By the time Murdock was set, the rest of the platoon had already dispersed, leaving him, the three SEALs off Beluga, Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, and Chucker Wilson on the fantail. DeWitt gestured forward. That way.

0125 hours (Zulu +3)

Bridge access ladder

Freighter Yuduki Maru

With his AKM slung over his shoulder, Kurebayashi was on his way back up the ladder toward the bridge. After completing an inspecting tour of the freighter, he still felt uneasy. The atmosphere held that undefinable tension, a charge that was nearly electric in its intensity, that often presaged a storm.

The air was dry, however, and the sky clear. Perhaps, Kurebayashi told himself, it was simply his nerves.

For a long time now, he'd been questioning his own motives, and his future. What was it he wanted from the Ohtori? What did he expect to accomplish?

Martyrdom, certainly... but Kurebayashi questioned the popular idea that he and those with him would be transformed into stars if they successfully fulfilled their vow and brought low the American giant. Oblivion seemed a likelier fate, and Kurebayashi had found himself dreading that possibility. To be snuffed out, never to know whether all of his pain and sacrifice for the cause thus far had borne fruit... the very idea was repellent now, even though he and his comrades had discussed the possibility countless times before.

Or was it simply that he was afraid? The thought shamed him, burning more than the fear of oblivion as he turned the corner on the landing just below the bridge access corridor. He stopped for a moment, steeling himself. Perhaps if he spoke again with Takeda, he would feel better.

At the top of the steps, two Iranian Pasdaran stood guard, lounging in the passageway, their red scarves much in evidence. One looked down at Kurebayashi, smirked, then said something in Farsi to his companion. The other laughed unpleasantly.

Barbarians...

Silenced gunshots chuffed from some unseen source above and behind Kurebayashi's head. The laughing soldier's eyes bulged as crimson flowers blossomed at his throat, the bridge of his nose, his forehead. The other was still trying to raise his G-3 rifle when a trio of 9mm slugs punched a three-inch triangle through his chest, centered on the middle of his breastbone. His mouth gaped to shout a warning; three more hissing rounds slammed into his face in a wet spray of blood and bone.

Kurebayashi did not wait to identify the attacker, did not even pause to analyze what had just happened. Dropping straight to the landing on the steps, he rolled onto his back, dragging his AKM around as he fell. Shadows flitted across the top of the companionway. Someone was up there in the passageway over his head, moving toward the bridge.

Carefully, he raised his rifle, waiting for a target to move into his line of sight.

0126 hours (Zulu +3)

Bridge access passageway

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Chucker Wilson studied the passageway ahead, empty now save for the bodies of the two Iranians sprawled on the deck beneath twin smears of scarlet on the bulkhead they'd been leaning against. The bridge door between them was closed, and there'd been no sign that anyone on the other side of that massive steel bulkhead had heard.

Lieutenant Murdock slapped his shoulder; it had been swift-triggered three-round bursts from their H&Ks that had brought down the guards. And now the way was clear. At their backs, Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt and Jaybird Sterling stood up, getting ready to advance.

Captain Coburn had been right. Wilson knew he wasn't cut out for any job with the fleet, anymore than he was cut out for a job as a civilian. It was good to be back with the Team again, back where he belonged.

Murdock started toward the bridge door, and Wilson followed, four feet behind.

Somewhere in the back of Wilson's mind, an alarm bell was going off. Something was wrong.

0126 hours (Zulu +3)

Bridge access ladder

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Kurebayashi could hear the footsteps moving across the deck, soft and muffled, but identifiable nonetheless as stealthy footsteps. In another two seconds, the American commando — this must be the work of the Yankee SEALs — would be visible through the open companionway at the top of the steps.

Ever so slightly, his finger tightened on his AKM's trigger.

0126 hours (Zulu +3)

Bridge access passageway

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Wilson knew what had set off the mental alarms. The L-T was advancing toward the bridge door, his H&K held stiffly in front of him with the muzzle covering the door and the two bodies. In a moment, he would step past a companionway, the rail-guarded opening in the deck giving access to a ship's ladder and the next deck down.

And Murdock's attention was so completely focused on the bridge door, he didn't appear to even be aware of the companionway. If there was someone down there, out of sight but ready with a weapon...

There was no time for finesse or even for a radioed warning. With the telescoping butt stock of his own H&K already pressed high against his shoulder, Wilson lunged forward, shoving past a startled Murdock, pivoting sharply to face into the open companionway.

There was someone down there, sprawled on the landing with an assault rifle already raised. Wilson squeezed his trigger as the muzzle flash from the other weapon obscured the enemy soldier's face. His H&K's sound-suppressed burst mingled with the bone-rattling crack-crack-crack of an AKM; he felt something pluck at his thigh, felt something else nudge him hard in the side, but he held his stance, triggering two more quick three-round bursts. The guy on the landing jerked sharply as though kicked, rolled to one side trying to rise, then shuddered and collapsed. Only then did Wilson notice that he was Japanese.

MacKenzie, with his big M-60 slung around his neck, and Bearcat Holt appeared on the landing moments later, probing the body for signs of life.

"That's a dead tango," MacKenzie said, but the words sounded far away and muffled.

Murdock helped Wilson to the deck. "Son of a bitch, Chucker," Murdock whispered harshly in his ear. "Did you think I was going to leave my back open?"

It was only then dawning on Wilson that he'd been hit. There was still no pain, but his side felt numb, as though he'd taken an injection there full of novocaine, and his leg felt hot, sticky, and wet.

"Thought... you weren't gonna check your tail." Holt knelt at Wilson's side and began breaking out a first-aid dressing. Gunfire exploded in the distance.

"That tears it," Murdock said. "We're out in the open now."

"Okay!" DeWitt snapped. "Let's hit the bridge!" Wilson wondered why everyone sounded so very far away.

0126 hours (Zulu +3)

Forward deck

Freighter Yuduki Maru

As the first chatter of automatic weapons fire echoed across the freighter's deck, a SEAL fire team was just moving into position beneath the ladder on the starboard side of the ship's superstructure forward. Chief Ben Kosciuszko and Rattler Fernandez just had time to take cover behind a wooden crate on the deck when the gunfire from topside brought all work forward to an immediate halt.

Someone yelled a warning in Farsi, and then soldiers with readied weapons were trotting aft toward the deckhouse. Kosciuszko eased his M-60 around and squeezed the trigger. Full-auto thunder pounded across the steel deck, hammering down three of the lead Pasdaran soldiers and scattering the rest.

Fernandez raised his M203, sighting at the clutter of propane tanks and cutting equipment stacked up in the center of the deck.

"Hey, Chief," Fernandez yelled above the M-60's thunder. "This ship has pretty thick decks, right?"

"Ten inches of steel, Rattler. I don't think you can hurt 'em with your toy."

"Let's find out, man." He triggered the 203, which loosed its 40mm grenade with a hollow-sounding thump. The projectile slammed into an acetylene tank and detonated; the entire front half of the ship lit up in a savage, yellow glare, as white flames clawed at the sky. Men were screaming, lying prone and pounding on the deck as flames ate their backs, or running madly to escape their own blazing clothing and skin.

The survivors, completely demoralized, ran for cover or dove headlong over the railing, preferring the cool black of the water to being burned alive on deck.

A single automatic rifle barked challenge from the bow, and Kosciuszko opened up in reply.

0126 hours (Zulu +3)

Fuel-dock

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Gunfire exploded in the night, full-auto bursts cracking across the black water from the direction of the Yuduki Maru. From their vantage point in the stinking mud beneath the shore end of the fuel pier dock, Coburn could see tiny figures running along the freighter's forward deck, or on the pier at the ship's port side. It looked like all hell had broken out aboard the Japanese freighter, with flames engulfing part of the deck halfway between the bow and the superstructure, accompanied by the familiar chatter of a pig, an M-60 machine gun.

"What's happening with the Combattante?" he asked. Cautiously, Doc crawled out from beneath the pier, looking down the line of wooden pilings to the moored patrol boat. "Shit," he said. "Looks like trouble."

Coburn duck-walked through the mud to Doc's side, to a point where he could see the patrol boat's stern alongside the massive pilings of the fuel pier. Steel pipes threaded their way across the dock, and beyond them, embedded in concrete, were several storage tanks.

The gunfire and explosions aboard the Yuduki Maru had certainly captured the attention of the Iranians aboard the gunboat. Coburn couldn't see the craft's forward turret, but the open 40mm mount was being rapidly swung around, as Iranian sailors yelled at each other and pointed. Soldiers were trotting across the pier now, looking for firing positions. Gunfire from the patrol boat would slash into the Japanese freighter's side if the bad guys dared open up. And SEALs caught on deck would be sitting ducks...

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Doc asked.

"Wouldn't be one bit surprised." Coburn fished into his black gear and pulled out a hand grenade. Doc too produced a grenade, holding the arming lever shut as he worked the cotter pin free.

"Those POL tanks look good," Coburn said. POL — petroleum, oil, and lubricants, in this case diesel fuel — an ideal target.

"A SEAL's wet dream," Doc said. "On my mark now, three... two... one... go!"

Together, they let fly, sending the grenades arcing high above the pier, then bouncing with a stony clatter on the concrete among the fuel pipes. "Bepaweed!" someone screamed, and then the night dissolved in thunder. Diesel fuel gushed across the concrete from ruptured lines and tanks.

Coburn pulled out a second grenade, a canister this time, with AN-M14 and INCEN TH3 stenciled on the side. The AN-M14 was an incendiary grenade, packed with thermite and given a two-second fuse delay. He exchanged glances with Doc, pulled the pin, and let fly.

The thermite burst amid the pooling fuel oil at 2200 degrees, hot enough to burn through steel. Thunder rolled again, and this time the sky turned to flame.

0127 hours (Zulu +3)

Bridge

Freighter Yuduki Maru

They'd waited outside the bridge until they heard gunfire rather than bursting in at once, figuring that the battle might offer a diversion for the bridge assault team. Taking up positions on either side of the door, Murdock and MacKenzie counted down silently as the gunfire built to a crescendo of thundering noise. There was a deck-jolting concussion — what were the guys playing at out there? — and then Murdock went through the bridge door first, his H&K stuttering softly as he tracked its muzzle across a startled Iranian soldier, punching the man back against a bank of computer consoles. MacKenzie was right behind him, swinging the deadly gray bulk of his M-60 as lightly as Murdock's H&K, and when his finger closed on the trigger, the bridge rang with the hammering, rapid-fire detonations of that machine gun.

Half glimpsed as he swept the bridge were flames lighting the night outside — one blaze on Yuduki Maru's own forward deck, other greater, brighter fires erupting two hundred yards to starboard, lighting the night in an unfolding glory of yellow and orange that caught a large patrol boat in silhouette.

Murdock didn't pause to admire the view, however. He tracked left and killed another man by the teletype machines, then pivoted back to cover Mac. Three Iranian naval officers, one with ornate gold braid on his white uniform, tried to scatter for cover as MacKenzie's searing fusillade scythed through them. One down... two... three... Another man, an army officer, grabbed for his holstered pistol, then seemed to dissolve in red mist and fragments as MacKenzie's weapon cut him down as well.

"Wheeoo! Rock and roll!" MacKenzie yelled into the sudden silence as his finger came off the trigger. "Just a-playin' in the band!"

"Yeah, you left 'em dead in the aisles," Murdock replied, stepping closer to the dead naval officers, probing them with his foot. "Watch it with that thing, huh? We still have to get this ship out of... uh-oh."

Murdock froze, his H&K aimed at the figure standing alone on the Yuduki Maru's starboard bridge wing. The man was holding a pistol, but the muzzle was pointed uselessly at the overhead. Possibly the guy hadn't had time to aim... or maybe he was trying to surrender. He was Japanese, which meant Ohtori. Another Ohtori prisoner would be a real bonus for the intel boys. "Easy there, guy," Murdock called. "Drop the weapon. Ah... buki o sutero! Drop your weapons!"

"Put it down!" MacKenzie added, his voice sounding as loud as the full-auto mayhem of a moment earlier. "Now!"

The Japanese terrorist wavered for a moment, the pistol aimed at the sky in a trembling, uncertain hand. Suddenly, he snapped the muzzle down against his right temple and jerked the trigger. There was a crash and the man's head snapped over against his shoulder, the left side of his skull suddenly gone soft beneath a wet mat of disarrayed hair. The pistol fell over the railing; the terrorist dropped to his knees, then fell full-length on the deck.

"Son of a bitch!" Jaybird said, coming up behind Murdock. "Was he crazy?"

"Worse," Murdock said. "He wanted to die for his cause. Hard to fight people like that."

"Well, better them than us," MacKenzie said. "Let's make sure the rest of them do the same. C'mon, Jaybird. Help me set up this pig over there."

Together Jaybird and MacKenzie braced the M-60 on a smashed-open section of the bridge window.

There were bodies all over the freighter's forward deck, visible now as the flames dwindled. It looked like someone had touched off some propane tanks; the only fire now was from burning scraps of wooden crates, but it was bright enough to give MacKenzie a perfect view of the deck. A soldier took aim at the bridge and fired, the bullet going wide. MacKenzie answered with a burst that sent the man toppling sideways into the water. Wild shots were coming from the shore, but nothing coordinated or effective.

For the second time, Murdock approached the bridge computer console, tapping in memorized commands. The computer was giving readouts in Japanese again; obviously someone had been working with it recently, trying to access the cargo locks. Switching it back to English, Murdock scrolled rapidly through various user logs and menus. Good. His password was still in place... and the cargo hold had not been breached.

He let go a low, heartfelt sigh of relief. This op would have been immeasurably more complicated if the bastards had managed to break into the hold. He keyed his Motorola. "Prof! This is Murdock!"

"Copy, L-T," Higgins's voice replied. "We're set up and ready to go."

"Call 'em in," Murdock told him. "Tell 'em the package is safe!"

"Roger! I'm on it!"

The lieutenant glanced across the bridge to where Wilson was lying on a fire blanket on the deck. He looked unconscious. "Also tell 'em we need medevac for a casualty."

"Right, L-T."

"Razor?"

"Here, L-T."

"Where's 'here?'"

"On the fantail, L-T. With Prof."

"Head on down to the engine room. I'll have Mac meet you there. I want you two to go over the engines of this tub. Find out if we can get her under way again."

"Roger that, L-T. On my way."

"Mac, you hear that?"

"Sure did, Skipper." The big Texan somewhat reluctantly yielded his M-60 to Holt, who'd done all he could for the wounded Chucker. Roselli's original rating before he'd joined the SEALs had been a machinist's mate, while MacKenzie was a master chief engineman. He wanted his two best snipes in the freighter's engine room before he even thought about backing off from the Bandar Abbas dock. "Jaybird?"

"Yeah, L-T."

"You take Mac's pig for him. Holt, you're with me. I want to check out the ship's con before we try moving her."

"Aye, aye, Skipper."

"Right, L-T."

They had a busy several minutes ahead of them now.

0130 hours (Zulu +3)

Fuel-dock

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Cautiously, Doc peered past a stack of crates toward a vast and well-lit expanse of concrete fronting a row of machine shops and storage buildings. Coburn knelt beside him, his face still a nightmarish mix of blood and greasepaint. "What's the word, Doc?"

"I don't like it, Captain. Too open."

Another explosion boomed in the night at their backs. The fueling dock was still burning furiously, the livid orange flames adding to the light bathing the waterfront strip. Hundreds of Iranians had descended on the area and were fighting the blaze now. Doc and Coburn had hidden behind a pile of concrete pipe sections as the fire trucks and soldiers hurried past, then slipped deeper into the shipyard, putting as much distance between themselves and their handiwork as they could.

Now they were about eighty yards from the water, and still some two hundred yards or more from the Yuduki Maru's pier. Doc could see the forward half of the Japanese freighter, revealed in the gap between two small buildings. The fires on her deck appeared to have died down.

Damn! The ship was still too far for the short reach of their tactical radios. Each time Doc tried, he heard only garbled bursts of noise and static.

Coburn pointed to a line of military vehicles parked beside a storehouse, apparently untended. "There's transport."

"Yeah." Doc's voice sounded less than certain.

"We've got to get to the Maru's pier," Coburn said. "In a jeep we can just drive up to the dock like we own the place."

"And maybe get nailed by our own guys when they think we're the Iranian cavalry." But Doc had to agree that riding would get them where they needed to go faster than by shank's mare. And though he'd said nothing to the patient about it, Coburn was not in good shape. The immediate effects of the CO2 poisoning had been banished by getting rid of the rebreather, but the SEAL Seven commander could well have internal injuries. Doc wouldn't be able to know that for sure, though, until he had Coburn back aboard the Nassau. Where other ships had a sick bay, the LHA had no less than three well-equipped hospitals with a total of six hundred beds and all the high-tech medical wonder gadgets you could ask for.

But for any of that to do any good, Doc had to get his patient off the beach and aboard the Nassau. "Okay," he said at last. "We'll give it a try."

Ellsworth and Coburn moved together, sticking to the shadows at the perimeter of the field, circling the well-lighted part until they reached what appeared to be a small motor pool. Doc selected a vehicle, a military jeep of obvious American manufacture, handed Coburn his H&K, and slid in behind the wheel.

"No keys," Coburn said.

"No problem," Doc replied. Drawing his knife, he used the hilt to smash the face plate off the ignition block assembly. Selecting two wires, he cut and stripped them with his knife, then brought the bare ends together. The engine ground, then caught as Doc pumped the gas.

Coburn watched the process, which took less than five seconds, dubiously. "Your record says you're a country boy, Doc."

"Yup, that's me. Just a sweet, simple country boy..."

"...trying to get along in the big city, yeah," Coburn said, finishing the old line for him. "I've heard that one before. Remind me never to trust you with my car."

Doc gunned the engine once, put the jeep in gear, and pulled out of the motor pool area. "Hey, I'm just a laid-back kind of guy," Doc replied easily. "You can trust me with your car, your money, your girl..."

"Yeah, you're laid back like a rattlesnake. I don't know if... watch it!"

Doc had seen the danger at the same instant, a line of Iranian soldiers moving along the catwalk atop a massive, concrete structure that looked like a dry dock crib. He increased the jeep's speed slightly. "Don't sweat it, Captain. We're Iranians too, remember? This here is an official Iranian government vehicle."

But the men on the catwalk evidently were not convinced. Muzzle flashes popped and stuttered as the Pasdaran infantry opened fire. Bullets sparked off the pavement and slammed into the jeep's side.

"Right," Coburn said. Twisting in his seat, he aimed his H&K and loosed a long, full-auto burst. "Unauthorized use subject to heavy penalty!"

Doc spun the jeep's wheel, sending the vehicle hurtling down a narrow alley between two warehouses. They emerged on the waterfront, driving along a broad, concrete wharf. Startled Iranian soldiers and dock workers dove left and right, scattering from the jeep's path.

"I hope you're a better corpsman than you are a driver," Coburn yelled. Then a burst of machine-gun fire slammed into the jeep from the front, shattering the windshield and shredding the right front tire. Doc felt the jeep going out of control, the rear skidding wildly to the left, and he fought to keep the vehicle from flipping over. Smoke exploded front beneath the hood, and the engine died. Still spinning now, they skidded another ten feet and slammed hard into a bollard rising from the water's edge.

"Damn, the pedestrians are getting worse every..." He stopped. Coburn was slumped over in the passenger's seat, fresh blood bright against his scalp. "Shit!"

Half standing in the wrecked jeep, Doc grabbed his H&K from the back seat, thumbed the selector to full auto, and cut loose at a squad of advancing Pasdaran. Two collapsed on the pavement and the others scattered. Doc glanced back over his shoulder; the Yuduki Maru was still a good fifty yards away.

"The sea is your friend," Doc said. He'd meant the words, drilled into SEAL recruits throughout their BUD/S training, to be ironic, but right now he was well aware of the truth behind them. He checked Coburn, finding a strong pulse. It looked like a round might have grazed his scalp, knocking him unconscious, though Doc wanted to give him a thorough look-over.

There was no time for that now, though. Another bullet slammed into the side of the jeep. "C'mon, Captain," he said, dragging Coburn's limp body from the passenger's seat and draping him over his back in an awkward fireman's carry. "Let's us go for a swim!"

With Coburn still over his shoulders, Doc leaped off the wharf and into the cold, dark embrace of the harbor once more.

0132 hours (Zulu +3)

Helo Devil Dog One inbound to Bandar Abbas

The helicopters had launched nearly an hour earlier, but they'd been orbiting over the Gulf since that time, well out in international waters. Devil Dog flight consisted of six UH-1 Hueys, "Slicks" off the Nassau and the Iwo Jima. Each carried a Blue/Green Team, a joint SEAL/Marine Recon boarding party of fourteen men, and they came in low and fast, close behind a flight of two Marine SuperCobras. The Cobras clattered across the Yuduki Maru's deck, less than twenty feet above her steel deck, then wheeled across the dockyards and waterfront buildings beyond.

Automatic gunfire chattered from a dry dock; there was a rippling flash, and then a bundle of living flames slashed from the lead Cobra, lighting the sky with their contrails. The rocket barrage struck a catwalk running along the side of the dry dock, flinging shards of metal and fragments of bodies far across the compound.

By now, the entire shipyard was in chaos. A siren wailed its mournful ululation against the crump and rumble of exploding ordnance. Somewhere in the distance, antiaircraft batteries were going off with a stolid-sounding crump-crump-crump, apparently at random and apparently without actually bothering to aim at anything. Green tracers drifted across the sky above the horizon.

Over the shipyard, however, the American forces appeared to have won a momentary control. Flames continued to boil into the sky from the fuel dock, which was now blazing from one end to the other. The fire had spread to the patrol boat as well, and fresh explosions continued to rack the sadly listing vessel's frame as fuel and ammo stores detonated. Ashore, men were running everywhere, some armed and moving with purpose, but most scattering in desperate bids to find shelter or simply to leave, as quickly as possible. Very few stood their ground and attempted to duel with the circling Cobras. Those who did were cut down almost at once, by rocket salvos, or by ratcheting fusillades of 7.62mm minigun rounds, sprayed from the helos' chin turrets so quickly the tri-barreled cannons sounded like chain saws.

The lead Huey, meanwhile, circled the Yuduki Maru once, trying to draw fire from her deck or from the pier alongside. When no one accepted the offer, the Slick came in at a hover, twenty feet above the forward deck, tail low; from its open cargo doors, ropes and black-faced men descended with stomach-wrenching drops.

The technique was called "fast roping," and it was a quick way of getting from an airborne chopper to the ground... or to the deck of a ship. The first men thumped onto the deck and moved clear, H&Ks held at the ready. More men followed, sliding down the rope on gloved hands.

The men hitting Yuduki Maru's deck now were drawn from Marine Force Recon and SEAL Seven, First Platoon, and were part of the Maritime Special Purpose Force, or MSPF Designed, in the language of the Pentagon, "to optimize forces available to conduct highly sensitive and complex special missions," the MSPF was trained to conduct raids deep in enemy territory, to reinforce U.S. embassies or other facilities at need, to extract important people or documents, and to conduct hostage rescues. The theory was that, more often than not, when a crisis situation went down it would take two or more days to move the Army's Delta Force into position, but the U.S. Navy and the Marines nearly always had units positioned somewhere close by, allowing MSPF insertion at virtually a moment's notice.

SEALs and Recon Marines had been practicing joint MSPF exercises for a number of years now, and though the traditional Navy-Marine rivalry continued to run deep, this particular collaboration had been used with outstanding success on a number of occasions.

As soon as the first fourteen men were down, the Huey cast off the ropes, dropped its nose, and roared off into the darkness as its prop wash lashed the water below. The second Huey came in right behind the first, and fourteen more men roped their way to the freighter's deck.

The other Hueys deposited their loads of Blue/Green commandos ashore, dropping them into open areas that blocked avenues of approach to the pier from inland. Other helos clattered overhead, big Marine Super Stallions, each loaded with fifty-five combat troops and their gear, bound for LZs along the roads leading from the shipyard to Bandar Abbas and other coastal towns. They were protected by AV-8 Harrier jump-jets, wondrous aircraft that swooped and stooped like great birds of prey or slowed to a magical, helicopter-like hover. An Iranian armored battalion was reported to be somewhere near Bandar, and the MEF's Marine Air contingent was committed to stopping those tanks from reaching the shipyard. Meanwhile, Harriers and SuperCobras staged a surprise raid at the Bandar Abbas airport, turning a dozen military planes into twisted, blackened skeletons, and savaging twenty more with shrapnel and machine-gun fire. More air support was already on the way, a flight of Marine F/A-18 Hornets off the Iwo Jima, rigged for their role as close ground support with cluster bombs and laser-guided ordnance.

Soon, the Yuduki Maru was an eye of relative peace in an expanding storm of violence.

0140 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Murdock crossed the steel deck to where one of the newcomers was giving orders to his men. There was no easy way to separate the Marines from the SEALs in the MSPF. All wore black gear with full assault loadouts; all wore full-head safety helmets and had their faces heavily blacked. Most carried H&K subguns, though a few varied the routine with M-16/M203 combos, or with combat shotguns. The only real outward difference was in their backup weapons; SEALs carried 9mm handguns, while Marines favored the venerable .45 Colt.

Watching them as he approached, Murdock could tell that they were working as a well-rehearsed, well-practiced team.

The officer in charge of the unit turned toward Murdock. "Captain Cavanaugh," he said, extending a gloved hand. He didn't salute, not when enemy snipers could be watching the scene from the buildings in the distance. "U.S. Marine Corps."

"Semper Fi," Murdock replied, taking the Marine's hand and firmly shaking it. The rank of captain in the Marines was equivalent to Murdock's rank of Navy lieutenant. "Welcome aboard!"

"A real pleasure. You the OIC?"

"That's me!"

"I was told to report to you, Sir," Cavanaugh said. "We thought maybe you boys might need some help!"

"Good! We could use it." Murdock pointed toward the burning fuel dock. "Listen! I've got two guys ashore. Probably back that way. One of them may be injured. Think you could spare some of your boys to go look for 'em?"

"No problem, Sir. That fuel dock fire was their idea?"

Murdock cocked an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be a damned bit surprised."

He was interrupted by a loud cheer from the top of Yuduki Maru's super-structure, a cheer that was taken up by the MSPF team members on the deck. Turning and looking up, Murdock saw the American flag rising up the freighter's main truck in a series of short, jerky movements, illuminated by the lights from shore. He wondered if one of his SEALs had brought the flag, or if it was courtesy of the Marines.

"Okay, make yourself at home, Captain," Murdock told Cavanaugh. "We're seeing what we can do about getting under way."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Cavanaugh said. Then his teeth shone brightly against his black face. "You guys did a real good job, Navy. Almost as good as the Marines!"

Murdock grinned back. "Just don't let me hear any shit about the Marines always being first to hit the beach!"

Yuduki Maru was secure. SEALS, and now Marines as well, continued to move through the freighter's passageways and compartments, ferreting out remaining pockets of Iranians or Japanese terrorists, but it looked as though this part of the battle had been won. Minutes earlier, DeWitt and Frazier had killed an Ohtori gunman standing guard outside the crew's quarters. They'd found the captive Japanese merchant marine sailors and officers locked inside, including the stolid Captain Koga, a prisoner aboard his own ship. Murdock had ordered that the crew be kept locked up, at least for the moment. It was safer that way, without having to worry about Ohtori gunmen hiding among the former hostages... or about civilians blundering into the middle of a fight.

Gunshots continued to bang and thump in the surrounding darkness, but for the moment, at least, it appeared that the Yuduki Maru was firmly in American hands. A Huey Medevac chopper had touched down on a clear stretch of the dock side a few moments before. They'd have Wilson aboard and on his way to the Nassau in another few minutes. Roselli trotted across the deck. "Hey, L-T!"

"Whatcha got, Razor?"

"Me'n Mac have been going over the engine room and boilers. Except for that twist to the starboard shaft, everything's shipshape. We can have her up to steam and ready to move out in twenty."

"Do it. How much trouble is that bent shaft gonna cause us?"

"Some, especially when we're maneuvering inside this damned, tight-ass harbor. Course, if you don't mind us denting some fenders on the way out..."

"Dent all the fenders you want, just so we get this scrap heap to the Gulf of Oman."

"I've got a good engineman in my platoon," Cavanaugh said. "I can have him lend a hand."

"Outstanding."

"L-T, this is Prof" crackled in Murdock's earphone.

"Copy, Professor. Go ahead."

"We've got VIPs inbound, Skipper. ETA two minutes. They say we should clear the deck."

"Roger. Who is it?"

"They say it's NEST, L-T. Looks like the show's going to be taken out of our hands." Higgins sounded annoyed.

"That's okay, Professor. We've done our part."

The black, unmarked Huey dropped toward Yuduki Maru's forward deck two minutes later, right to the tick. NEST — the Nuclear Emergency Search Team — was an elite and high-tech government unit set up under the auspices of the Department of Energy in 1975. Its mission was to search for and identify lost or stolen nuclear weapons or SNM — Special Nuclear Materials — and to respond to nuclear bomb or radiation-dispersal threats. Most of its activities were highly secret, for obvious reasons; one indication of the unit's efficiency was the very fact that few people had heard of it, though in the past twenty years it had responded to many hundreds of alerts. In the United States, NEST teams were based at the Nevada Test Site and at Andrews AFB. Overseas, a team was permanently stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany; the NEST coming in to the Yuduki Maru now would be a special field detachment from the Ramstein group, deployed to II MEF when the emergency first began.

Murdock watched as the helicopter lowered itself gently to the deck, its skids just off the steel. Twelve men climbed out, six of them swaddled in bulky white antiradiation garments, anonymous behind the helmets that made them look like lunar astronauts. The others wore nondescript Army fatigues, without emblems or rank insignia. One of them strode purposefully toward Murdock as the Huey lifted off with a roar. "You Murdock?"

"Yes, sir."

"Smith. Senior NEST control officer. What's the situation?"

"As far as we can tell, Sir, the cargo's intact and secure. We stopped the bad guys before they could breach the hold."

"We'll be the judge of that, Lieutenant," the man said. "I want you to keep your people well clear of the cargo area. Only those personnel absolutely essential to the defense of this vessel are to be on this deck. Your men will stand by until we can tow this vessel clear of Iranian waters."

"Tow, Sir?"

"Yes. One of the destroyers with the Marine force offshore will work its way in as soon as the enemy batteries on some of the Gulf islands are neutralized. We should rendezvous with the Recovery in the Gulf of Oman sometime late tomorrow."

Recovery, the ARS 43, was a W.W. II-era vessel fitted out for diver support, salvage, and ocean tug duties.

An explosion thumped in the distance, followed by a burst of muffled gunfire. "Pardon my saying so, Sir, but that's a dumb-ass idea. The whole damned Iranian army's going to be all over this place before too much longer, and we don't want to risk an attack on this ship! We can be out of here in twenty minutes.

The NEST officer looked startled. "The ship is ready to sail?"

Murdock looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes, Sir."

"But are you sure it'll make it? I was told some Navy SEALs caused a lot of damage to its engines and it had to be towed."

"I've got good men on it down in the engine room now, Sir," Murdock said, a little stiffly. "We have one good screw, and the con's all right. We'll take her out on her own steam."

The NEST officer didn't look happy, but he was obviously tempted by the idea of getting clear of Bandar Abbas in twenty minutes instead of several hours.

"What about those Iranian gun and missile batteries on the islands?"

Murdock grinned. "Sir, I imagine the SEALs and Marines are on top of that right now."

He was guessing, but Murdock was sure he was right. He'd participated in too many planning sessions and simulations to believe that the planners for Operation Deadly Weapon had failed to arrange a safe path clear of the enemy coast.

"Very well," Smith said at last. "You will make all preparations to get this ship under way as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir. As soon as two of my men show up."

"Eh? What's that? What do you mean?"

"I've got two men ashore, sir. They didn't make it back after liberty. We can't sail without them."

DeWitt, standing nearby, turned suddenly away, stifling a laugh. Jaybird grinned broadly and nudged a smiling Roselli with his elbow.

The NEST officer sputtered. "You-you can't do that! The cargo on this vessel..."

"Is of the utmost importance and takes precedence over all other considerations, yes, sir. I wouldn't worry, Mr. Smith. One of the missing men is my commanding officer. The other is one of my most steadfast and dependable men. I feel sure they'll turn up soon."

The officer gave Murdock a black look, then spun on his heel and stalked toward the Yuduki Maru's deckhouse. Murdock shook his head as he watched him go. The plutonium shipment did have absolute priority, of course, and if Doc and the Old Man didn't show up fast, the Yuduki Maru would have to sail without them.

But it had been fun giving that stiff-assed DOE prick's tail a good twisting.

Roselli stepped closer. "Still no word about Doc and the captain, sir?"

"Not yet. The Marines'll keep looking, though, even if we have to pull out."

"I'd like to volunteer for a shore party, L-T. I could help look for 'em. I know how Doc thinks."

Murdock gave a lopsided grin. "I hate to break it to you, Razor, but they don't have bars in Iran. Alcohol's illegal here, remember?"

"Poor Doc," DeWitt said, shaking his head. "We can't leave him here, Skipper. He'd die of thirst!"

"We'll leave it to the Marines," Murdock said. "I need you here, Roselli, watching those engines with Mac."

"Yes, sir." Roselli looked crestfallen.

"Ahoy the Maru!" a voice called from the shore. "Man in the water, starboard side!"

Murdock, Roselli, DeWitt, and Jaybird all raced for the freighter's starboard rail. Murdock couldn't see anything against the black water... no! There! And two heads, not just one!

Roselli and Jaybird were already stripping off their load-bearing vests. Stepping up on the railing, they vaulted smoothly over the side, Jaybird going in feet-first, Roselli cutting a perfect and strictly-against-regs dive. Murdock leaned against the rail and watched. It looked like Coburn was wounded, with a lot of blood on his face and head despite his immersion in the water. Doc had one arm across the captain's chest and was pulling him along with a slow but powerful sidestroke.

In seconds, Roselli and Jaybird had reached the two swimmers. Jaybird took Coburn and started hauling him toward the shore, while Roselli helped a clearly exhausted Ellsworth. Marines and SEALs splashed off the side of the wharf to lend a hand, and others gathered at the side of the water. DeWitt was already on his radio, ordering the medevac chopper to hold up for one more. By the time Coburn was hauled from the water, a couple of corpsmen had reached the dock with a Stokes stretcher. It was hard to tell from here, but Murdock was sure he saw Coburn moving his arms as he was fastened down. He was conscious, and that was a damned hopeful sign.

Murdock had to grip the rail to avoid showing the weakness that swept through him. Coburn and Doc were okay! Until that moment, he'd not realized how worried he'd been about his people. Turning, he strode back toward the Yuduki Maru's deckhouse.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood on the freighter's bridge, peering out through paneless windows at the Blue/Green Team members ashore and on the forward deck. Smith glowered over his shoulder to his right, while a still-damp Jaybird stood behind the wheel and Holt manned the engine-room telegraph. Roselli had joined MacKenzie and several MSPF snipes below in the engine room, but Higgins had transferred his satellite gear to the freighter's bridge and was watching with professional interest. The other SEALS, less Doc, Chucker, and Captain Coburn, were scattered about the ship. The medevac chopper had lifted those three out several minutes earlier.

Murdock picked up a microphone and pressed the switch. "Now hear this, now hear this," Murdock said, and the words boomed from loudspeakers all over the ship. "Make ready to get under way."

A rifle shot popped from somewhere ashore, but he scarcely noticed it. The Marine perimeter now enclosed the entire shipyard, and the last report from the air contingent had placed the nearest organized Iranian forces just outside of Bandar Abbas proper, a good three miles down the coast.

"Cast off forward," he ordered, and the Marines manning the forward line tossed it across to their fellows on the pier. A pair of SuperCobras thundered overhead, keeping watch.

Murdock walked to the starboard bridge wing and checked aft. With the freighter tied port-side-to and bow-on to the shore, and with only one engine working, maneuvering in this tight harbor would be tricky. He was glad it was the starboard screw that was off-line, though, and not the port.

It occurred to him that this was his first command — at least if you didn't count the little Beluga or the Boghammer patrol boat. He'd had classes in ship handling at Annapolis, of course, and during his senior year he'd conned a guided-missile destroyer out of Norfolk on a training exercise.

This, however, was completely different.

"All back," he said, and Holt moved the telegraph handles to reverse. "Back her down easy. Starboard helm... just a touch."

Yuduki Maru's engine rumbled through the deck beneath their feet. Slowly, slowly, the freighter moved astern. With the rudder to starboard, the ship's bow pressed in toward the pier, while her stern moved away. Moving to the port wing, Murdock checked aft. The ship's stern was now five feet from the pier, the stern line stretched nearly taut.

He'd given the freighter room astern to maneuver. "Forward on the engine," he said, and Holt rammed the telegraph handle to the forward position. "Keep your helm starboard."

The freighter's slow, backward drift halted, then reversed itself. Tugging on the stern line until the pier gave an ominous creak, the Yuduki Maru started to swing, her bow moving out from the pier now in a tight circle. When the still-smoldering ruin of the fuel pier lay dead ahead, Murdock gave his next order. "Cast off stern lines!"

Free now of the shore, Yuduki Maru slid forward, barely making way. Slowly at first, then faster and with more confidence, the plutonium ship eased clear of the dock, gliding past the fuel dock and the wreckage of a half-sunken patrol boat. Reaching past the helm to the console, Murdock thumbed a large red button, giving a deafening blast from Yuduki Maru's air horns.

And from the Marines watching ashore came a rising, answering growl of noise, a thunderous cheer as the Yuduki Maru put to sea once more.

"Okay, gentlemen," Murdock said to the others with him on the bridge. "Let's go home."