A half hour later, the crew chief, a yeoman second class, pressed Colt Franklin into helping him, and they served the Hotel Del Coronado dinners: three-quarter-pound top sirloin steak with all the side dishes on huge platters with stainless-steel silverware.
“Why don’t we eat on this airline all the time?” Vinnie Van Dyke yelped.
After the meal, the yeoman cleared the dishes; then Murdock took the floor. “We don’t know what we’ll do on this one. My guess is they want us to move in and take down the freighter so we can free the captive nuclear bomb.”
“How big is it?” Miguel Fernandez asked. “I mean, is it a warhead out of an ICBM like we worked before, or is it a stand-alone? Maybe they bought it from China, so it could be a large thing.”
“We don’t know about any of that,” DeWitt said. “All we know is that the British Prime Minister called the President. He called his Secretary of Defense, who called the CNO, and we’re in business.”
“Grappling hooks up the side of the freighter?” Tracy Donegan asked.
“Could be,” Murdock said. “Or we could go up the side out of a rubber duck with hand and foot magnets.”
“I’d guess there is some kind of a quid pro quo that goes along with the terrorists not setting off the bomb,” Senior Chief Sadler said.
“True,” DeWitt said. “They want Israel to agree to the immediate evacuation of all Jews from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, both civilian settlers and Israeli military.”
“They don’t want much, do they?” Jack Mahanani asked. “Just rip out twenty years of colonization by the Israelis. It’ll never happen.”
“Trade that for, say, three million dead Brits?” Frank Victor asked. “That’s quite a price to pay.”
“But it’s second-hand blackmail,” Luke Howard said. “They threaten England, and tell them to tell Israel to pull out their people or the Brits get nuked. Doesn’t make logical sense. Why would the Israeli government react to a second-hand threat? Now, if the bomb was in Haifa Harbor, it would be a direct threat to Israel.”
Murdock spoke up. “We don’t have to sweat the politics. All we have to do is find the damned bomb, throw a lead blanket around it so it can’t be triggered by remote control, and turn it over to the Brits, who will de-fang it.”
“Sure, but then what?” Jaybird asked. “While the threat is there, the Israelis and the Brits can’t lift a rifle against the Arabs. But as soon as the bomb is grabbed and the threat is gone, you think the English and the Jews are going to sit on their hands? They’ll go after the Arabs like wildfire. The killing fields will be bloody red.”
“Not our concern,” DeWitt said. “We do our job and when it’s done, we’re out of there.”
“Maybe,” Jaybird said. “What if Mossad and M-6 ask us for just a bit more help in taking down some of the Arab militants?”
“Unlikely,” Murdock said. “But, like everything else in this old world, it’s an uncertain place, strange times, and you can’t really count on knowing how any of our little explorations are going to turn out.”
6
The SEALs had slept most of the second leg from New York to England. The sleek jet set down at Crawley airport and rolled to a secluded section of the field, where it was met by a squad of armed men who escorted the yawning SEALs into a building that was a combination barracks, assembly room, and mess hall. Accounting for the time zones passed over, it was just after 1300 when they landed.
A British major general met them. He saluted Murdock smartly and tried to smile. He was showing his fifty-one years with a thicker waist and was heavier around the shoulders. The smile never quite made it.
“Welcome to England, Commander. I’m Wellsly-Smythe and the Home Office has given me this rather complicated problem. Please get settled in here. In a half hour I want to have a planning session with you and your top men. There’s a conference room at the far end of this building with an outside entrance.”
Murdock had returned the salute and accepted the man’s handshake. “Good to be here, General Wellsly-Smythe. We’re glad to help in any way we can. This certainly looks like a tough one. We’ll see you in half an hour.”
As the general left, a man came from the other direction. He wore cammies and had on a cook’s white hat.
“I say, if any of you blokes are hungry, we can whip up something up here in the mess. Don’t know if you’d call it breakfast or lunch or dinner. We can probably cook whatever you want. Except lobster. We’re short on the seafood side today. We’re ready when you’re ready.”
The SEALs shouted in delight.
Murdock led the charge along with DeWitt. Murdock called Sadler, Lampedusa, and Jaybird to the front of the line. “We’ve got a meeting in half an hour,” Murdock explained.
The cooks had prepared shepherd’s pie, a thick meaty stew with a crust of mashed potatoes on top. Most of the men ate that with three side dishes of vegetables. For dessert they had deep-dish apple cobbler with ice cream on top. All of the SEALs went back for seconds.
When the SEAL planning team walked into the conference room at the end of the building, they found four fit-looking young men in desert cammies and black berets. None of them wore any rank on his uniform. General Wellsly-Smythe stood behind them. Two British civilians hovered to one side talking to Don Stroh, the SEALs’ CIA control.
“Gentlemen,” the oldest-looking of the four soldiers said. “I’m Captain Charles Brainridge, Special Air Service. These are my three top planners.”
Murdock guessed the man was about thirty-five. He looked in top condition, lean and muscular, with intense blue eyes and a white side military haircut. His cammies were pressed and, Murdock bet, starched. He was not the kind of man you wanted to tangle with in a dark alley.
Murdock stepped up and shook the man’s hand. “Sir, Commander Blake Murdock, U.S. Navy SEALs. These are my four right hands. I understand there is some urgency about this matter.”
“There certainly is,” Captain Brainridge said. “The quicker the better. Gentlemen, let’s sit down. There are pads and pens for your notes. A quick sketch of the situation as we know it. The medium-sized Japanese freighter Sendai Maru sailed into the Port of London well past midnight less than twenty-four hours ago under normal procedures. It asked to be tied up at a buoy pending space at the dock it needed. Permission was granted. The next day a messenger delivered to Her Majesty’s Government an ultimatum. You know the contents. The same message was delivered by messenger to the Israeli government at exactly the same time.
“The SAS was assigned the responsibility of eliminating this threat to the heart of London. We know of the SEALs’ skills in and around the water, and we asked for your help. Our job is to capture the ship and seize the bomb before it can be triggered. The message, which has not been released to the public, warns us that the Arab men with the bomb are ready to sacrifice their lives at any time, and will detonate the bomb on orders even if they can’t get away. Commander, your thoughts on the situation.”
Murdock introduced his team by last name only and with no rank; then he stood.
“Gentlemen, this is a problem that has haunted the Western world since the advent of Arab terrorism forty years ago,” said Murdock. “Now it’s a reality. I’m sure in the terrorists’ demands there is some warning that if any attempts are made to attack or try to take control of the Japanese freighter, the bomb will be set off immediately. Standard terrorist rhetoric.
“Still, we must take down the ship, and do it quickly before they have a chance to trigger the bomb. There are several factors to consider.