Seal Team Seven (28 page)

“God damn it, Mac,” Garcia yelled from overhead. “
Move
your ass!”

MacKenzie swarmed up the engine-room ladder, joining the other two SEALs. By his watch, only seconds remained of the minute and a half on the timer.

“Go!” he snapped. “Go!
Go!
”

After dogging the watertight door shut, they raced down the passageway outside, retracing their steps. They were ten feet from the door when a loud crack echoed off steel bulkheads behind them, accompanied by the metallic clang of hurtling fragments. Instantly he felt a strange new sensation, an uncomfortable, uneven shudder transmitted through the deck plating.

“Feels like you frigged up the works real good, Mac,” Garcia said.

“Yeah, but we only knocked out one screw.” They stopped in the passageway next to the Japanese crewman they'd caught and tied earlier. As Garcia and MacKenzie watched the corridor approaches, Higgins cut the man free, speaking quietly to him in Japanese.

MacKenzie opened his tactical channel. “Hammer Six, Hammer Six! This is One.”

“Six. Go ahead.”

“Okay, Lieutenant. The bad guys are back in Echo Romeo, in force. We managed half a Kneecap before we split.”

“Copy that, Mac. How badly is she hurt?”

“Can't say for sure, Lieutenant. But my guess is her port shaft is bent to hell.”

“Rog. I can feel the cavitation up here. Okay, Mac. Good work. Make your way topside for E&E. Hold the boarding zone for three minutes. If we're not there by then, you're on your own.”

E&E—Escape and Evasion. MacKenzie scowled at that sour thought. The mission had gone bad, a real clusterfuck. They would have to
run
. . .

“Yessir. Copy that.” He glanced back at Higgins, who was helping the Japanese crewman to his feet. “Uh, Lieutenant? We have one of the hostages here.”

“Good,” Murdock's voice replied. “Bring him along if you can.”

“That's what I was thinking.” Questioning the Japanese crewman could reveal useful details about
Yuduki Maru'
s hijackers and might, possibly, give them a second shot at the freighter.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” he growled at the others. Together, they started up another ladder toward the main deck.

Murdock looked at the terrified Japanese crewman still lying on the deck, hands bound behind him and his back dusted with broken glass. Blood streaked his forehead where he'd been cut by a flying shard. Murdock didn't want the SEAL force burdened by rescued hostages, but he also doubted that the terrorists or Iranians aboard would be lenient with anyone who had helped the U.S. intruders. Mac had one hostage already. Good enough. He would bring another.

“Doc!” he snapped. “You help this guy. We're taking him with us.”

Ellsworth snicked a fresh magazine into his H&K. “Aye, Skipper.”

Roselli and Brown joined them a moment later. “Port MG is spiked, Skipper,” Roselli told him. “I yanked the operating rod and the bolt and chucked 'em over the side.”

“Same on the starboard wing,” Magic added.

“Okay, gentlemen.” Murdock took a last look around the glass-littered, blood-splattered bridge. Was he forgetting anything? “Let's get the hell out of here.”

Tetsuo Kurebayashi poked his head above the deck hatch, staring aft toward the ship's superstructure. It was difficult to see much; it was dark and most of the superstructure lights had been smashed, including the lights on the bridge.

In fact, the bridge looked empty, the large, out-slanting windows eye-socket-empty and lifeless. The machine guns to either side, on the wings, were silent as well.

Had the American commandos been killed?

Kurebayashi was too much the professional to assume that. More likely, the attackers had withdrawn.

But what had they come here to accomplish in the first place? Kurebayashi had assumed their intent was to recapture the
Yuduki Maru,
but they'd seized the bridge and, according to the wild reports brought to him by the Iranians, other parts of the ship as well, then simply abandoned them.

Where had they gone . . . and why?

Cautiously, Kurebayashi rose, half expecting a sniper's shot from some darkened section of the bridge to slam him down, but no shot came.
“Tsuite koi!”
he called to the men crouched in the darkness around him. “Follow me!” When no one responded, he shifted to one of his fragments of badly accented Farsi.
“Akabeh man biaweed!”

He started forward, his AKM thrusting ahead as he moved. Often, he'd been taught at the training camps in Syria and Libya, heroism in battle consisted of nothing more than keeping your wits about you when it counted . . . and in acting when others about you were reacting. At first, none of the Pasdaran hiding in the shadows moved, but as he continued his lone march toward the
Yuduki Maru's
superstructure, others, first singly, then in small groups, began following. “
Isoge!
” he snapped, lapsing back into Japanese as he broke into a run. “Hurry!”

The rescued hostage was less than eager to maintain the SEALs' rapid pace, and twice Murdock had to tell Ellsworth to snap it up, to make the man
hurry
. He'd sent Magic Brown on ahead to flush any would-be ambushers, and ordered Roselli to bring up the rear, protecting their flanks from the Iranian and terrorist gunmen sure to be close on their heels. He stayed with Doc and the prisoner, pushing aft along the open walkway between
Yuduki Maru'
s superstructure and the side of the ship.

When Brown reached the fantail, Murdock gestured Doc and the hostage on, then doubled back to join Roselli. “Anything?” he asked the lanky SEAL.

“They're on our tail, Lieutenant,” Roselli replied. “At least ten of 'em.”

“Let's discourage them until the others get away.”

“A pleasure.” Crouched against the superstructure, Roselli raised his H&K, aiming into the darkness forward. Murdock stood behind, aiming over the other SEAL's head. Shadows moved against the darkness. . . .

“Now!” Murdock rasped, and he squeezed the trigger, loosing a hissing, full-auto burst at the half-glimpsed attackers. A shrill cry wailed from the forward deck. Gunfire barked and flashed in reply, and a bullet howled off steel a foot above Murdock's head.

“Shit, we're gonna get murdered here!” Roselli said.

“Just so they don't murder our guys in the water. Keep firing!”

He spent the last of his magazine, dropped the empty, and slapped in a new one, his last full mag. Thirty rounds . . . and then he'd be down to pistol and knife. He threw the selector switch to semi-auto.

A scream echoed from astern. Looking back over his shoulder, Murdock glimpsed one of the Japanese hostages flying through the air and into the phosphorescent glow of the ship's wake. Apparently, Doc had been forced to convince the guy to abandon ship; a black shadow followed the crewman—Doc in a perfect dive twenty feet into the sea below.

“Skipper!” Brown's voice sounded in his earphone. “We're in!”

“Our side's wet too,” MacKenzie added. “You guys want to stay aboard and play with your new friends by yourselves?”

“Cast off!” Murdock replied. “Razor and me're right behind you!”

He snapped off several quick shots against targets felt more than seen. Murdock could almost feel the irresistible tug of the sea. From the beginning, SEAL training emphasizes that the sea is the SEAL's home, his advantage, his place of refuge, the place to go where the enemy cannot follow. “Okay, Razor,” he called. “Over the side!”

“Right, Skipper! I'm—shit!” The deck lurched beneath their feet before Razor could finish the reply, and a dull, two-part ba-
BOOM
thundered in the night astern of the
Yuduki Maru.
Turning and staring aft, Murdock could just make out something like a vast wall of white spray, a geyser made dimly luminous by the faint luminosity of the sea itself, rising against the night.

“What in Jesus' name was that?” Roselli asked, his voice betraying his awe.

“Offhand,” Murdock said, “I'd say it's that Iranian Kilo.”

A second explosion thundered out of the darkness, accompanying a second towering geyser.

“That'll hold our playmates' attention for a bit,” Murdock said. “Let's go!”

Together, they took three swift, running steps across the deck, catapulted over the railing, and dove head-first into the sea.

“Once the order was given to abort Sun Hammer,” Captain Coburn said, addressing the other officers in the room from the podium at the head of the table, “our people returned to their boats in the water and cut loose from the freighter. Lieutenant Murdock reported some shots fired from the ship's deck, but that the hostiles probably couldn't see much, if anything, on the dark water. Both CRRCs drew away from the
Yuduki Maru,
lowered a sonar transponder into the water, and awaited pickup by the attack sub
Santa Fe.”

Captain Paul Mason shifted uncomfortably against the hard wooden seat of his chair. His back was hurting badly already, and the session had just begun.

Most of the senior officers in the NAVSPECWARGRU-Two community were present for the briefing, along with Brian Hadley—the CIA spook from the National Security Council—and Kerrigan and his MIDEASTFOR staff. Kerrigan, Mason thought, would be sure to take the opportunity to scold the SEAL command for its failure yesterday, but it was clear that the SEALs were going to have a further part to play in this drama.

Otherwise, Kerrigan would never have bothered calling them all together again to keep them up to speed on events in the Indian Ocean.

“At approximately the same time,” Coburn continued, “at 2335 hours, the Iranian attack sub
Islamic Revolution
was destroyed by two wire-guided torpedoes launched some four minutes earlier by the U.S.S.
Newport News.
Our attack subs in the area had detected the
Islamic Revolution
closing on the
Yuduki Maru.
It is possible that the Iranians detected our operation, possibly by picking up the noises made by our SEALs while they were in the water.” Coburn glanced up from his podium notes at Admiral Kerrigan. “The decision to sink the
Islamic Revolution
was made when the
Newport News
picked up the sounds of her outer torpedo doors opening, presumably in preparation for an attack against the
Yuduki Maru.
The attack was authorized by Vice Admiral Winston, CO-MIDEASTFOR, in Naples, after consultation with the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs.

“As for SEAL Seven, the
Hormuz
Assault Team remained aboard the Iranian oiler until relieved by U.S. Marines flown in by helicopter off the U.S.S.
Nassau.
They returned by helo to the
Nassau,
where they are now. The
Yuduki Maru
Assault Team transferred to a Navy helicopter from the deck of the
Santa Fe
early this morning and were flown to the
Nassau.
With them were those two Japanese crewmen, who were flown to the
Nassau,
where they could be immediately debriefed by our intelligence people.

“So our current force disposition has all of our SEALs back aboard the
Nassau,
with II MEF. Their current position is some ninety miles off Ras Asir—that's the northeastern tip of Somalia, the Horn of Africa. The
Hormuz
and her crew are under Marine control and are heading north toward Socotra at nine knots. The
Yuduki Maru,
of course, remains in Iranian hands.” He glanced at the faces of the men around the room, then nodded to Admiral Kerrigan. “Admiral?”

Kerrigan smiled as he took his place at the briefing room podium. He looked, Mason thought, like the proverbial cat that had eaten the proverbial canary, fat, sleek, and contemptuously pleased with himself. SEAL Seven's failure yesterday had let him score big in his campaign against Navy Special Warfare.

“Gentlemen,” the Norfolk staff CO for MIDEASTFOR said. “The President has informed us through the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs that the United States will act immediately and unilaterally to resolve the current crisis in the Indian Ocean. He has directed General Vonnegut of II MEF to prepare a plan for a Marine amphibious operation in order to seize the
Yuduki Maru
and restore her cargo to Japan before, ah, hostile radical forces can off-load it. This operation, code-named Deadly Weapon, will utilize the full assets of II MEF, which, as Captain Coburn has just told us, is currently positioned off the Horn of Africa.

“The failure of the Navy SEAL Team deployed to seize the
Yuduki Maru
demonstrates, I think, the necessity of relying on conventional military forces in situations bearing such serious international consequences as the hijacking of two-ton cargoes of plutonium. . . .”

Right,
Mason thought, a little bitterly.
And it was the SEALs who bought you the time to mount your amphibious operation. The guess now is that the Yuduki Maru won't reach port in Iran before next Saturday.

“As of zero-nine-hundred hours our time this morning,” MIDEASTFOR's liaison continued,
“Yuduki Maru
was maintaining her original course at a reduced speed of about ten knots. She crossed the equator last night and is now eleven thousand kilometers due east of Mogadishu. Her destination still appears to be the Gulf.