Seal Team Seven (22 page)

As one, the platoon stood up, looped swim fins over their right arms, gathered up their rucksacks, and made their way in two lines toward the rear of the aircraft, bunched up on either side of the paradrop package. There, the cargo ramp was coming down with a grumbling whine; beyond that opening, the night was darkness and the shrill thunder of wind and engines. Murdock felt the bite of cold, surprising this close to the equator.

“Check equipment!”

The equipment check was carried out in three phases. Each man checked his own gear, making sure buckles were fastened, straps and weapons secure, equipment snug. Next, he checked the gear of the man in front of him in line, and finally he turned around and checked the man behind him.

“Sound off for equipment check!”

“One okay!” Kosciuszko called from the head of the port-side stick.

“Two okay!”

And so it went down the paired lines, until Murdock completed the litany with “Fourteen okay! This is it, SEALs. Stand in the door.”

The Hercules's rear door was gaping wide now. Stars gave illumination enough that the waves a mile and a half below were intermittently visible, a glint of pale illumination in the darkness below the arc of the Milky Way. Murdock's heart hammered beneath his rebreather pack. It always pounded like this before a jump. Like more than one guy had said on similar occasions, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is neither a sane nor a natural act.

A light on the forward bulkhead flashed from red to green.

As one, the two lines of men grasped the equipment package and slid it aft on the cargo rollers set into the deck. With a heavy rumble, it slid down the ramp and into space, its static cord popping its drogue almost at once, the main chute appearing seconds later, then vanishing into the night.

Almost the moment the cargo was clear, Third Platoon rushed down the ramp after it, plunging headfirst into space. The mob rush allowed the platoon to free-fall close together, enabling them to stay together for the descent and splash down in a tight group.

The excitement that had been building inside Murdock exploded behind his eyes like a magnesium flare. The wind blasted at his face and wet suit as he spread his arms and legs and arched his back, assuming the classic free-fall position that actually let him turn his body into an airfoil and fly . . . at least for a few precious, fantastic moments. In the darkness, his companions were visible as mere shadows, sensed more than seen as their bodies occulted the stars around him. Free-fall was glorious, a buoyant weightlessness, transformed to literal and ecstatic flight by the lack of any fixed reference point save his own body suspended in space.

Together, they fell through the night until the luminous dials of their wrist altimeters read five hundred feet. Then they pulled their ripcords; Murdock could hear the pops and cracks of the other chutes around him an instant before his own parasail deployed, yanking him upright with a sensation that felt like he was heading straight back into the star-strewn sky.

His chute clear, he released his rucksack, letting it dangle at the end of its tether. Hauling on his risers, he guided the parasail into a gentle turn against the wind, killing his forward momentum. He could see the submarine now, a long, black shadow against the luminous sea.

He prepared for the landing, loosening the left side of his reserve chute, donning his swim fins, and readying his quick release by turning it to the unlocked position and removing the safety clip. One hundred feet above the water, he steadied his chute with his face into the wind and put his fingers over his Capewell Releases, which secured the parachute straps to his harness at his shoulders.

Moments later, he splashed into the water, pressing the left-side Capewell Release and releasing the chute before he was fully submerged. Underwater, he released the second Capewell, then hit the quick-release box to free the leg straps. The harness fell away, leaving him free in the ocean.

The
Santa Fe
rose like a black steel cliff from the sea, less than fifty yards away. Pushing his rucksack before him like a swim board, Murdock headed toward the sub. Around him, he heard the gentle splashes of other members of the unit.

Third Platoon, SEAL Seven, had arrived.

For nearly eight hours after the SEALs had been plucked from the water off the coast of Somalia, the Los Angeles attack sub
Santa Fe
had been running south at her maximum speed of better than thirty-five knots. Her goal was a place on the charts, a featureless spot in the ocean where, if
Yuduki Maru
continued on her steady, northward course, submarine and freighter would meet.

The SEALs spent most of that time in the
Santa Fe'
s torpedo room, which had been vacated by the regular crew. The space was cramped to the point of claustrophobia, and the passage was monotonous.
Santa Fe'
s crew seemed to draw apart from the visitors, recognizing them as fellow professionals but unwilling to cross the wall of reserve that separated one group from the other. Submarine crews, like SEALs, were well known for their silence around people not their own.

For the last several hours of the passage, Murdock and DeWitt were guests of the Captain in the control room. Commander George Halleck was a lean, taciturn man, all creases and sharp edges. It was well past sunset on Sunday, though the only indication of day or night beyond the sub's steel bulkheads was the fact that the compartment was red-lit, a measure that preserved the officers' night vision against the need to use the periscopes or to surface.

“We have sonar contact with your target, gentlemen,” Halleck said. The three of them, plus Lieutenant Commander Ed Bagley, the boat's Executive Officer, were leaning over the control room's plot table, where a back-lit chart of the area rested under transparent plastic. The
Santa Fe'
s skipper tapped the end of a south-to-north line with his grease pencil. “About here. Course unchanged, still zero-one-two. Speed eighteen knots.”

“They're making it easy for us,” the boat's XO said with a grin. He was taller than the Captain, and heavier, with thick eyeglasses that gave him an owlishly unmartial appearance.

“How far?” Murdock asked.

“Approximately thirty miles,” Halleck replied. “Exact range can't be determined by passive sonar, of course, but my best people have their ears on, and they're pretty sure of the number.”

Passive sonar—listening for the engine noise of the target—was preferable to the more accurate and informative active sonar, because it didn't give away the sub's presence.

“Has anybody else tried approaching them?” DeWitt wanted to know.

“About the time we were fishing you boys out of the water,” Bagley said, “they skirted within thirty nautical miles of the Seychelles Islands. Half the Seychellan navy turned out—three patrol boats, actually—but they didn't come closer than a couple of miles and no shots were fired. It was more like an escort than an attempt to stop them.”

“There's also this,” the Captain said, handing Murdock a black-and-white photograph. “That was transmitted to us by satellite an hour ago. The time stamp says it happened about an hour before that.”

“Still after sunset,” Murdock observed.

“Affirmative.”

The “photograph” had actually been taken in radar, so details like hull numbers and slender masts were not visible and the water, daylight-bright, had the look of wrinkled metal. Still, the shot showed a remarkably detailed image of a ship, smaller than
Yuduki Maru
and riding lower in the water. Something like a white bed sheet had been stretched above her deck.

“That's
Hormuz,”
Murdock said.

“So the Iranians rendezvoused with them?” DeWitt added.

“Actually, we don't know that for sure. If they did rendezvous, it was at a point where we had no satellite coverage, and our AWACS radar simply didn't have the resolution to be certain. They at least came very close, certainly within a mile or two.
Hormuz
is now five miles off
Yuduki Maru'
s starboard beam, traveling parallel to her course but quickly falling behind. She can only make nine or ten knots, top speed.”

“I guess that confirms the Iranian connection, though, doesn't it, Lieutenant?” DeWitt said.

“I damn well guess it does.” Murdock tapped the sheet in the photograph. “What's this? A tarp?”

“Probably,” Halleck said, rubbing his chin. “A tarp or canvas rigged as an awning. Whatever they're doing, they don't want our satellites or recon planes to get a good look.”

“The question, then, is whether they used that hole in our satellite coverage to transfer part of
Yuduki Maru'
s cargo to the
Hormuz.”

“Or if they moved soldiers from the
Hormuz
to the
Yuduki Maru
,” DeWitt pointed out.

“We'll have to assume both,” Murdock decided. “It'll be Plan Alfa.”

In their planning sessions, they'd allowed for the possibility that
Hormuz
might rendezvous with the plutonium freighter before the SEALs could deploy. Plan Bravo would have sent Blue Squad aboard the
Yuduki Maru
, with Gold Squad waiting in their CRRCs as a backup. Alfa called for Blue to take the Japanese ship while Gold Squad boarded the Iranian
Hormuz
. It meant there would be no immediate backup for either team once they boarded the ships. The Fourth Platoon was now deploying to Masirah, just in case something went wrong in Third Platoon's assault.

Murdock suppressed the thought, and the surge of adrenaline that accompanied it. If something went wrong, the mission would be in the hands of Lieutenant Mancuso and Fourth Platoon.

It also meant that, in all likelihood, he and his teammates would be dead.

“We have one other joker in the deck,” Halleck said. “Sonar has picked up another contact pacing the
Yuduki Maru
. It may be submerged.”

“The Iranian Kilo.”

“Looks that way. The sonar profile looks like a conventional sub. Stealthy, no reactor coolant pump noise or anything like that. She may be trailing the plutonium ship by another four or five miles.”

“Have they heard us?”

“Not so far as we can tell. There's been no change in her course or speed since we picked her up.”

“How big a problem is she for you, Captain?”

Halleck grimaced, then shrugged. “For us, not much. The big danger is whether she's there as escort, or as insurance.”

“What do you mean, Captain?” DeWitt asked.

“He means that if we board the
Yuduki Maru
and take down the tangos before she reaches port, the Iranians might decide to put a fish into her.”

“That's about the size of it,” Bagley said. “Washington would have the devil of a time proving the ship hadn't been blown up by us, on purpose or by accident.”

“And we get blamed for contaminating half the African coast,” DeWitt said. “Cute.”

“Will you be able to take her out?” Murdock asked.

“We won't, no,” Halleck replied. “Not without letting those people aboard the freighter know we're out here. But the
Newport News
is already getting into position. They'll take care of the Kilo when you go aboard.”

“Good.” Murdock nodded. “How much longer to drop-off?”

Halleck consulted the large clock mounted on the bulkhead at the forward end of the control room. “I'd say another twenty minutes to get into position. We'll keep running ahead of them then, and you can leave any time after that.”

“Can't be too much longer, or the separation between
Hormuz
and the
Yuduki Maru
will become too great. We'd better get ready to swim then. If you'll excuse us, Captain?”

“Of course.”

The platoon had been preparing for their swim for the past several hours, going over their rebreather apparatus, weapons, and other gear with the loving care and attention that had long been the hallmark of the SEALs. Each man was wearing a black wet suit and SCUBA gear, and his face had been completely blackened with waterproof paint. Weapons had been sealed, and explosive charges and detonators were stored in waterproof pouches. While they didn't want to sink either of the target ships, the theory was that if they couldn't capture them, the SEALs might at least slow them by damaging some critical piece of machinery.

That, at least, was the idea. The gap between theory and practice, however, was often turned into a yawning abyss by Murphy's Law. All the SEALs could do was try to be prepared for anything that might go wrong . . . and stay flexible enough to meet the problems they simply could not anticipate.

There are several ways to egress a submarine. Simplest would have been for Halleck to bring the
Santa Fe
up until just the top of her sail was above water, with the SEALs going out through the sail cockpit.
Yuduki Maru
had radar, however, and it was possible that even so small a target as that would be picked up at a range of less than ten miles, so the platoon egressed, as planned, through the after lockout compartment.

Because of the positioning of their water intakes, modern submarines cannot rest on the bottom as their World War II predecessors could. Besides, the ocean here was deep; they were over the Somali Basin, which plunged to better than five thousand meters—over three miles straight down. The
Santa Fe,
now traveling north some eight miles ahead of the
Yuduki Maru
and about ten miles ahead of the
Hormuz
, slowed to a crawl, maintaining just speed enough to maintain way, her conning tower scraping along just beneath the surface.