“Set the diversion for 0115,” Murdock said. “We’ll bring in the SEAL choppers at 0120. In that five minutes the deck guards should be all running to the bow to see what’s happening.”
“Sounds good from here. I’ll check with Lemoore. Oh, tell Platoon One to loan you eight men. Give you a little more power.”
“Any weapons restrictions, sir? We’d planned on using MP-5’s with suppressors to cut down on sound and bullet travel.”
“On that basis you have weapons free.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Commander, good luck.”
They broke the connection.
Murdock went to talk to Lieutenant Socha, First Platoon leader. He had his men outside their bird checking equipment.
“Joe, you ready for this?” Murdock asked.
Socha stood up and towered over Murdock by four inches. He was heavily muscled and looked like an overgrown grizzly bear.
“Hell, yes, been waiting. What am I going to do with fifteen swimmers around that frigate?”
“Admiral Kenner just talked to me, and said you might loan eight of them to me to take down the big ship. Be a help.”
“You’ve got them. Want them with suppressed MP-5’s?”
“Right. Pick them out and send them over. We’ll integrate. Thanks for the loan.” They shook hands, and Murdock felt the pain of the big man’s grip.
A half hour later, Murdock had his twenty-four men teamed up. Each of the twelve pairs had specific assignments. Murdock and Jaybird would get to the bridge. Others would fan out and capture any North Korean sailors they saw as they took down engineering, communications, the engine room, and the guards on all of the ten decks.
“Every team knows its assignment. We don’t know the names of the decks. Those assigned to clear any deck guards work by the numbers. One is the top deck, down one is number two, and so on. When you have secured a facility, report in. Use your weapons with discretion. There are twelve hundred passengers on board and probably six or seven hundred in the crew. Let a terr get away rather than risking a shot that might hurt a civilian. It’s the middle of the night, so there shouldn’t be a lot of vacationers running round the decks. Questions?”
“Do we take prisoners?”
“Absolutely. We don’t have to transport them anywhere. Use your plastic riot cuffs and check them for hideouts. If you find one with a radio, give me a call. We should listen in. Does anybody speak Korean?”
“Skoshi,” Franklin said.
“That’s Japanese,” Mahanani said.
“Oh, yeah. Damn.”
“Okay, flake out, you guys. We have three hours until we shove off. You men from First, you all have on your cammies, right? You won’t be needing any wet suits?”
“Yes, sir,” they chorused.
“Good. Double-check your weapons and ammo. Your combat vests should be filled with regular ammo loads. If not, try to bum some off the Third guys. See you all in about two and a half.”
Murdock heard the other choppers coming. He went to the edge of the baseball field lights and waited. The first bird slanted in and landed. The motor shut down, the rotors stopped, and a short, slightly heavy man crawled out of the Forty-Six and looked around. When he saw Murdock he came over.
“Who’s running this cattle call?” the man asked. He held out his hand. “I’m Phillips. This is the most fun my crew has had in months. We get to shoot up a spot on the Pacific Ocean.”
“Murdock,” he said, taking the man’s firm grip. “Yeah, and if you do it right, my boys won’t get their asses shot off by some trigger-happy North Korean slants.”
“Best of luck on board.”
“Thanks, and don’t run into each other out there.”
“We won’t. We worked it out. We’ll come in single file and stay a hundred apart, with our landing lights on. Plenty of firepower and flares all over the place. Should be a good show. This will be a carbon copy of an exhibition we put on during the daylight for some VIPs a couple of months ago. This time we won’t have a shack to blow apart, just some ocean.”
The five other choppers came in one by one and landed. Lieutenant Phillips went to brief his crews.
Murdock went over, sat in his Forty-Six, and tried to think of anything they hadn’t planned. It was all on paper. Now all they had to do was make it work in practice. They had taken down a ship or two before. The bridge, engineering, the engine room, and communications were the prime areas they needed to nail quickly.
He had forgotten to tell the men about guides. He’d tell them later. When the SEALs spotted any workers on the ship, stewards, cooks, anybody, they should be used as guides to show the SEALs how to get quickly to each team’s assigned area.
By 0030 there had been no return call from the admiral. Murdock woke up the chopper pilot and asked him if he could get in touch with Lemoore. The pilot made two tries, then got somebody. He handed the headset and mike to Murdock.
“Lemoore, this is Murdock on the beach. Did your Eighteens get the timetable on our little party?”
“We did. This is the OD. We have the birds on the flight line and ready. They only need fifteen minutes to get to the coast. They’ll be off and over your area on time. As soon as they see the flares from the choppers, they’ll make their runs.”
“Thanks, just checking. Murdock out.”
The next time Murdock looked at his watch it was five minutes to takeoff. He rousted out his men and stuffed them into the bird, and saw the six Lemoore field choppers warming up. He made a quick check with Lieutenant Socha.
“We’ll lift off five minutes after your two sixes leave,” he said. “Give them time to get to the target. By the time we get there it should be lit up out front with lots of racket and firing.”
“What about pickup of my men from the water?” Socha asked.
“Stay cool around the liner. We’ll have the dock-level hatch open so your guys can climb in that way and won’t have to worry about a chopper pickup. Tell your pilot that on your way in. If everything goes right, we can get a chopper liftoff after daylight. First we’ll want to see the ship get under way just far enough so the Eighteens can take care of that frigate. After you do your job, he won’t be able to follow the white ship. But we don’t want him using his big guns either.”
Murdock went back, stepped into the Forty-Six, and watched the other choppers lift off and head west. He touched his stopwatch button. In five minutes they would be on their way.
The two U.S. Navy CH-46 helicopters took off precisely on time, and choppered their way across the five miles to the beach, and then slightly to the north, where they could see the hundreds of lightbulbs outlining the luxury cruise ship.
The SEALs stood in two lines along the sides of the bird. At each door lay a thirty-foot coil of rope, one end fastened to the bar over the side opening. The door snipers watched the fantail of the big luxury liner as they came up from the stern.
In front of the ship they saw flares, heard rapid-fire machine guns, and heard depth charges boom as the six choppers fought a war all their own. The snipers scanned the fantail as the first bird approached. It edged across the stern of the big ship. One sniper saw a gunman alongside a panel and drilled him with three silenced shots. He crumpled and lay still. The big chopper hovered over the fantail fifteen feet off the deck.
“Drop now,” Murdock thundered, and the first two men at each door kicked out the coils of rope and fast-dropped to the deck, then left the rope and scurried to assigned locations facing outward to cover the other men coming down.
In twenty seconds all twenty-four SEALs had hit the deck and run to their assigned positions. Only one more Korean was seen, and he ran for a stairway, but two silenced rounds dropped him before he got up two steps.
All the SEALs had the new Motorolas on. The new radios had the same belt pack and wires up to the ear, but now a new earpiece had a swing-away mike that hovered in front of the mouth or could be rotated up to the forehead or down to the chin.