"Gonna take you all day that way, Red. Hell, horse him in."
"You black guys don't know shit about fishing. I got it on a twenty-pound line, man. You playing with thirty. I got me enough yellowtail here to feed me for a month."
"Bluefin, dumb-assed honky, which is better eating anyway," Magic said. He changed bait, cast out into the bay, and let the six-inch-long anchovy run as far as he'd go before he tired. Every ninety seconds, Magic changed bait. They'd been doing that since dawn and had only two fish.
Magic saw the skiff coming out from shore. More fishermen. Maybe they would help churn up some good-sized blues. The skiff came straight at them, and Magic put his hand on a new toy he'd just bought, a new Para Ordinance P12-45. It held only ten rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, but it had a smooth, easy feel. Handguns for civilians are strictly illegal in Mexico, but he wasn't about to cross the border without some protection. He'd heard too many stories about Mexican banditos ambushing unwary gringos. Red kept working the fish. "I'm getting him up," Red shouted. "You got that gaff?"
"You said we wouldn't need one," Magic shot back.
The skiff came straight on and was fifty yards away. The voice came over the water clearly.
"Senor Brown. I have urgent message for you from a Mr. Blake."
"Oh, hell," Red said. "Shit, there goes the fishing."
Red had the fish showing color by then, and he got it close enough to the boat to identify.
"Yeah, a bluefin," Magic chortled.
Just then the frantic fish made one last surge for the bottom, and broke the line. "Oh, damn, Peter Pan," Red bellowed. "Knew I shouldn't have tightened up on that drag."
The skiff came alongside. An Indian-dark Mexican man in his twenties grinned at them. His English was better than most down that way.
"Sorry to hurt fishing. The man said you come home right away. Mr. Blake said you give me ten dollar."
Brown laughed. Sounded just like Lieutenant Blake Murdock, their ever-generous leader.
"What's the message?" Red said, handing the man a ten-dollar bill.
"He say get your ass back to base now. Big fly time tonight at eight bells. No, he say sixteen hundred, Si, sixteen hundred. What time that?"
"Not much time left is what it is," Magic Brown snapped. "Get that motor started there, sailor, and let's head for shore. We must have ourselves a piece of the action some damned place out there in the big fat world."
Jaybird dug Ross Lincoln out of McP's Bar in Coronado, which was run by an ex-Navy corpsman who had served in Nam. He was better at telling stories than he was at serving beer. Lincoln was in a bullshitting contest with him, and the loser on every head-to-head story had to chugalug a mug of beer without breathing or stopping. Lincoln had lost six times in a row. It took them two hours to sober him up, and by that time they had his gear and his weapons packed for him. "That leaves Holt and Adams," Jaybird said at 1200. "Holt took off Friday night solo. No idea where he is."
Lincoln looked up, holding his head. "Holt? Said something about a weekend with that bimbo he met at the Too Late Club. Francine, something like that. Said he gave her phone number and address as his next of kin."
Jaybird snapped his fingers an went to see Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt. He'd have the next-of-kin data for all his men.
Holt showed up an hour later. He couldn't walk. Two men from his squad had to go bring him in from the taxi. He'd be lucky to be sober by the time the plane took off.
Nobody knew anything about Adams. He lived off base the way the rest of the platoon did, and nobody had been to his digs.
"Isn't Adams the one who's always listening to those old songs from the fifties and sixties on KJOY?" Murdock asked Lieutenant (j.g.) deWitt.
"Yeah, Adams is a big bands nut. Always listens to that station."
"Isn't there a DJ on there who used to be a SEAL? Loudmouth Larry?" Murdock asked.
DeWitt checked his watch. "Yeah, he's the one Adams talks about. Don't know when his shift is, but I'll see what I can do." The officer vanished to a phone, and came back five minutes later.
"Loudmouth wasn't there, but I talked to another guy, Sawtooth, and explained the delicate situation. He said he can cover us. He'll do a dedication and tell baby-chick Adams to head back to the nest. If Adams hasn't passed out, he should hear it."
An hour later, they heard from Adams. He was on his way in.
Lieutenant Blake Murdock checked every man before the platoon boarded a truck for a run through Coronado and out to the U.S. Naval Air Station North Island. He'd read the six pages of background on the Kenya situation that had come faxed from Don Stroh and his buddies at the CIA in Washington, D.C. He didn't understand much more than what Stroh had told him on the phone. He put it simply to the men as they waited on the flight line for the long-range Air Force Starlifter transport jet to have its preflight check.
"We're going to Kenya, about halfway down on the Indian Ocean side of Africa. They've had an elected government there since they gained their freedom from British rule back in 1963.
"This is the land of Jomo Kenyatta and the famous Mau Mau uprising and slaughter of whites. Two days ago an Army colonel took over the country and has declared himself dictator. Army strength there is set at about twenty-six thousand, but with little air-power and not much of a Navy.
"We go in and recapture a frigate that the colonel hijacked about twenty-four hours ago. Our target is in Mombasa, the country's only port. We recapture the ship, free the crew, and get the hulk back to sea. Sounds like a walk in the park."
"Them Mau Mau were prime-assed killers in their day," Magic Brown said. "Hey, I'm no relation."
"Where we get supplied?" Jaybird asked.
"We'll land on a carrier that, with its task force, is steaming down that direction right now. We can get all the firepower we need from the carrier. We're taking four folded IBSs with us just in case. Everything else we get from the carrier's supplies and armory."
"How do you rescue a four-hundred-fifty-three-foot-long ship?" Kenneth Ching, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, asked.
"We'll be talking about that on the way over," Murdock said. "Looks like we're cleared to board. Let's move."
Ten minutes later, they had settled into the spartan facilities of the Air Force Starlifter strategic jet transport plane, the C-141. It had a top airspeed of 556 miles per hour, and four big Pratt & Whitney TF33-P-7 turbofan engines to do the job. It could also be refueled air-to-air if needed.
The big plane had a crew of five, and could haul 155 paratroopers or two hundred non-jumpers. That meant the sixteen SEALs were rattling around in the big plane. Most of them sacked out on the floor and on their equipment packs.
"You sure they got us a big enough plane?" Jaybird asked.
"They wanted to be positive we had room enough for all of your ego, Jaybird," Lincoln jibed.
"Speed is the factor, guys," Murdock said. "We can go almost a thousand miles in this bucket without stopping at your local Texaco station."
Murdock watched his men. He was a career Navy man. Annapolis, a ring-knocker, single, and thirty years old. He stood six-two and kept his weight at a solid 200 pounds. He'd done some Gulf War work, been a SEAL for six years, and had been leader of the Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven for just over two years. In that time they'd completed five major missions.
Murdock was the son of Congressman Charles Murdock, long-time member of the House Military Affairs Committee. He grew up in posh Fort Royal, Va. He went to Exeter, and then to Annapolis over his father's objections. His dad wanted him to go to Harvard, get into government service, and then run for his own congressional seat from Virginia when the old man finally decided to give it up.