Seal Team Seven #20: Attack Mode (8 page)

“Sounds good. We guessed at the Marshalls. At even two hundred eighty miles a day, the
Willowwind
has had time to get well beyond them by now, but I hope she hasn’t. It’s been eleven full days since the hijacking. That would be about twenty-nine hundred miles the ship could have traveled. She could be heading west and be halfway to China.”

“That would make our search tougher.”

Thirty-two minutes later, Murdock watched the two Tomcats take off from the forward hydraulic rams. The sleek birds climbed into the sky and turned, heading southwest, their afterburners painting two red flames in the near darkness. At over fifteen hundred miles per hour, the Tomcats would need only twenty minutes to be over the capital of the Marshalls. Cruising the atoll wouldn’t take long. Murdock had no idea what kind of port facilities they had there. The coral heads might require a big ship to anchor well off and use small boats to go ashore.

In the lead F-14, Lieutenant Ralph J. Kleen settled into the seat and checked his wingman, “Rusty” Clover. They were in a loose formation heading for a speck of coral about six hundred and fifty miles away. Kleen had memorized the configuration of the freighter they hunted. She wasn’t exactly a standard brand. She had one large onboard crane amidships and an unusual house just in back of that. It gave her a slightly out-of-balance appearance. She was three hundred feet and had
Willowwind
painted on both sides of her bow.

“Home Base, this is Skycap Fourteen.”

“Home Base, go.”

“We’re coming up on eighteen thousand and leveling off. Speed just at fifteen forty and steady. I show time to objective as seventeen minutes and twenty seconds.”

“Roger that, Skycap Fourteen. Start your verbal report of what you see at minus three.”

“Will do, Home Base.”

Captain Olenowski looked over at Murdock. “We’ll know if our ship is there soon. If she is, what is the next step?”

“We can’t blow her out of the water and drop all that plutonium into the ocean just off Majuro. Somehow we have to board her, take down the pirates, and regain control of the ten tons of plutonium.”

The captain lifted his brows. “Right now I’m glad that’s your job, Commander. Sounds like somebody could get hurt.”

“We hope it’s only the bad guys who pick up the bullet holes, Captain. We train for this almost every day.”

“I saw an odd-looking rig below deck this morning. Is that yours?”

“Must be our Turtle. Yes, sir. It’s ours. It’s a small amphibian that lets us swim up to an island or landmass, roll out of the water, and motor inland to an objective. She’s well armored and has a fifty-caliber on a mount over the driver.”

“Thought you’d go in by Sixties.”

“We usually do, when noise isn’t a factor. The Turtle will be used more for silent missions and sneaking in and out.”

A few minutes later the radio came on.

“Skycap Fourteen calling Home Base.”

“Go Fourteen.”

“We’re about five out. It’s almost full light. We’re picking up three or four small atolls on our right. We’re down to a thousand feet, and there doesn’t seem to be much development on any of the coral humps, and no freighters anchored. Now we have the big one coming up. String bean of land with a beautiful lagoon in the middle. Yes, she has an airport but not a lot of roll-out room. Docks, where are the docks?”

“Skycap, there might be only offshore anchoring.”

“Right, I see a tanker and two merchantmen. Right, small boats moving from each of them to a pier with warehouses behind. Figures. The two merchantmen are too large to be our baby. The whole island down there
can’t be more than thirty miles long. Two sections. No more freighters. Sorry. Our boy isn’t here at the capital.”

“Skycap, check once more, then start your return on a heading slightly northwest. You should be able to look over ten more atolls up there. Some you saw when you came in. The last one should be about five hundred miles from Majuro. Check them all out, then we’ll give you a new heading to come home.”

“Roger that, Home Base. We’re turning now and flying generally northwest, following the chain of atolls up that direction. Looks like slim pickings so far. Oh, we saw one freighter on our trip down. We checked it out, but it was far too large and had the wrong configuration. Skycap out and moving northwest.”

“So, if the ship isn’t in the Marshalls, where is she?” Murdock asked.

“There are thirty-four of those little chunks of sand and coral out there in the Marshalls. We’ll have to check all of them. They’re scattered all over the Pacific.”

“But if the ship isn’t here, where did it go?”

The captain shook his head. “Hell, the South Pacific is a monstrous place. Huge, with all sorts of chains of islands. Just to the west is the Federated States of Micronesia. It includes the Caroline Islands and a total of six hundred spots of land and atolls. If that ship gets in there, we’re in deep shit.”

“So first we check out all the other Marshalls,” Murdock said. “Don’t we have some people on Kwajalein?”

“Missile base, tracking I’d guess. Yeah, when we get inside the Marshalls, we’ll send a dozen planes out to check every atoll in the area. They’re spread out almost eight hundred miles from one side to the other and from top to bottom. Take us a while.”

“Now what can we do?” Murdock asked.

“Now, Commander, we wait. That’s the hardest part of this job. I was used to kicking a Fourteen around at twenty-five miles a minute. Now I sit here and wait for somebody else to have all the fun.”

He grinned, and Murdock knew he was only partly serious.
But the SEALs knew something about waiting, as well.

“Skycap looking for Home Base.”

“Go, Skycap.”

“Captain, we’ve covered nine atolls so far, and nothing larger than a twenty-foot power boat at any of them. Moving on up to the most northern one. Be there in about ten minutes. We’re doing a high fly-over at fifteen so if there is anything on any of these specks of dust out here, they won’t even know we were up here.”

“Good idea, Skycap. Tell us soonest. Home Base out.”

Murdock looked around the CIC and nodded. “Yeah, Captain, I know, now we sit and wait again.”

Five minutes later one of the crewmen came into the CIC.

“Captain, sir. Communications has some civilian on the international hailing frequency. Says he wants to talk to the U.S. Navy or the missile base on Kwajalein.”

“Patch him through here, Petty Officer. Put it on the speaker.”

A moment later a scratchy voice came into the CIC.

“Not sure who I’m talking to. My name is Keanae. I’m on board the
Willowwind.
I know Don Stroh. A lot of people know about this ship. We’re now anchored at some small island. My guess is one of the northern Marshalls, probably Sibylla Island. And I’m in deep trouble here.” Before he could say anything else, they heard two gunshots sound over the radio, then the transmission cut off.

Willowwind

Sibylla Atoll, Marshall Islands

Keanae dropped the microphone when the bullet dug into his right shoulder. The second shot missed him. He spun around toward the door of the radio room, grabbed a heavy notebook off the counter, and threw it at the gunman, who still stood in the open hatch. The notebook absorbed the next shot, then slammed into the terrorist’s chest. The blow surprised and hurt the gunman, who almost dropped his handgun.

In the three seconds that the man hesitated before he brought up the weapon for another shot, Keanae jolted forward three steps and tackled him around the waist, driving him backward against the bulkhead. His skull crashed into the hard metal. The shooter dropped the weapon and slid down the bulkhead, unconscious.

Keanae knew the three shots would bring other crewmen on the run, other hijackers. He scooped up the revolver, darted down the companionway to a ladder, vanished down a deck, and then rushed to his nearest hideout. This one was in the kitchen, and with the total cooperation of the three cooks. No hijacker ever came into the kitchen. In the canned goods and dry good storage compartment, he had moved cases of canned goods and boxes of Corn Flakes and fashioned a concealed area large enough to lie down in. At least in this spot he didn’t have to worry about food or drink. He let out a sigh and tried to relax. He had contacted someone; he wasn’t quite sure who. It sounded like military, which would be either the
Navy or the men at the missile listening site. Either one would do. Now he had to wait and see what developed.

He had intended to hit the radio room at three
a
.
m
. But Shigahara must have been worried about the radio and its potential to hurt him. He had shut down the radio and put three men in the room. One could be sleeping, but two had to be awake and alert and armed at all times from midnight to six
a
.
m
. Keanae thought of a diversion, maybe a small fire in one of the cabins, but he gave up on that one. He didn’t want to endanger the crew, and a fire on a ship like this might take off and nobody could stop it.

That meant he had to chance a daylight hit. Two of the hijackers went off duty at six
a
.
m
. and he moved in. He had opened the hatch silently. The man was at the console, his back to the door. He should have shot him with his silenced .45. Instead he threw two empty tin cans from the kitchen to the man’s left. The hijacker whirled that way and gave Keanae time to surge into the room and club him with the automatic. He went down and out. Keanae wasted a few seconds binding his hands and feet, then turned on the radio and began sending out his calls on the international hailing frequency. The tenth time he made the call he had a contact. They asked him to identify himself, and he had just got his message through and his location when the hatch must have been opened silently and a hijacker opened fire.

“Hey, Keanae, you okay?” a friendly voice came from beyond the stacked foodstuffs. “Thought I saw some blood on your shoulder when you came blasting through here. And there’s a bunch of blood spots on the floor. You come out of there and I’ll do some first aid.”

In the surge to get away, Keanae had forgotten about his shoulder. He’d been shot before. Now that he knew he had been hit, the shoulder began to throb with pain. “Yeah, let me move some Corn Flakes. You know what you’re doing?”

“I’m the ship’s emergency medic,” the second cook said. His name was Wally Torrance. He was five-eight
and forty pounds overweight and didn’t give a damn.

“Hey, Keanae, you never did tell us who you really are. After watching you work as a seaman for those six days in port, it was obvious you weren’t no swabby. You got to be CIA or maybe FBI.”

“Afraid I can’t say, Torrance. Get this shoulder patched up so I can have a nap. I don’t like being shot. You have a dozen or so ibuprofen?” He took four of the pills, then watched the medic at work.

“We still anchored right off this little island?” Keanae asked.

“Oh, hell yes. If we got underway you’d feel it. From what I hear topside, we’re just sitting here and waiting. I don’t know what for. How the hell these guys gonna break down them lead tanks of plutonium to sell them? Won’t they get fried into crispy critters by that hellishly powerful radioactivity?”

“They’ll probably try to sell it in the two hundred-pound lots.”

“Yeah? What’s the going price for plutonium?”

“Whatever the seller asks and can get from the terrorists.”

“We’re talking twenty, thirty million a lead bottle here?” Torrance asked.

“Sounds like a low-ball price to me, but just depends how much the terrorist nation needs the plut.”

“You call it plut? Goddamn, then you got to be a CIA spook.”

“Whatever, Torrance. Did the fucking bullet come out of me, or is it still inside?”

“We got an entrance hole and we ain’t got no exit hole, so you’re about five ounces of lead heavier than you were.”

“How long do I have to get it out before it kills me?”

“Five days if you want to live long enough see your grandchildren.” Torrance put a final wrap on the bandage and fastened it with plastic tape. “Best I can do, CIA man. At least you won’t bleed on the Corn Flakes.”

“Thanks, and remember, I’m just a lowly swabby.”

“Yeah, sure. Hell, I won’t tell nobody.”

On the bridge, Shigahara shouted into the phone. “What do you mean two of our men are on the floor of the radio room unconscious?”

“Out like a light. Sanchez has a big scrape across his forehead like he got pistol-whipped. His hands and feet are tied. Socha has a nasty bump on the back of his head. He ain’t moving. He could be hurt bad.”

“Lucas, you take over the radio room. Lock the door and don’t let anyone but me inside. Put Sanchez into the hall and slap him until he wakes up. Watch Socha to see if he comes out of it.”

“Aye, aye, Captain, sir.”

Shigahara growled into the set and pushed the button for Engineering. Somebody grabbed it on the first ring.

“Inbrook, why aren’t we moving?”

“The computer. We just got it figured out. Rather Ken Schafer figured it out. It was simple. Somebody put a new program into the works. Every time my computer was given an order to perform some function, any kind, even coming up with the internet, the program told the computer that an illegal act had been performed and shut it down.”

“A virus?”

“Not really, but kind of.”

“So you take that program out and we’re moving?”

“Not quite. Schafer says he needs to write a new program that will cancel out the bad one. Take him about three hours. He also told me that if you want him to do it, the charge is ten thousand dollars. He says he don’t work for free.”

“What? I should have him shot.”

“Then we’d never get away from this island.”

“That little sonofabitch. I remember him. Too smart for his own good. Nothing else I can do. Yeah, tell him we have a deal. You come up to the bridge and I’ll give you five thousand. He gets the other five when we’re moving.”

“He figured you’d go for it. I’ll be right up. Oh, he’s been working on the new program for an hour. Figures another hour and he’ll have it. Maybe we can get under way in two hours.”