Fifty-five
Hawke stood out on the port bridge wing of the stage yacht Cygnus, listening with grave concern to the rapidly increasing blood-curdling jihadist war cries of Allah’s warriors, countless numbers now massing inside the great walls of the citadel. It was perfectly obvious what they intended. Storm through the gate, charge the Cygnus, and kill every last one of the infidels, Hawke’s men, with their overwhelming force. It was time to go, long past time to go.
Unless they could scramble off the damn yacht and somehow race the entire length of the concrete pier to the patrol boat in one hell of a hurry, they’d all be trapped aboard Cygnus. But Hawke wasn’t going anywhere until he was assured that the phantom had been destroyed.
“Stony, ETA on the combat divers?”
“Just kitted up. Should be on deck any second.”
“Time is running out.”
“Once they’re safely in the water, we disembark our forces and move as rapidly as possible to the patrol boat, roger?”
“Roger, that. The sooner the better. How many grapnel lines down to the dock?”
“Six.”
“Good-okay, here they come, I’ve got the SEAL UDT in sight on the foredeck. Get ready to move on my command.”
“Standing by.”
“Go!” Hawke said simply.
Stony’s four-man demolition SEAL team suddenly executed a backflip off the bow rail, splashing down simultaneously. From his height, he could see four trails of bubbles streaming upward as he watched them disappear into the deep. Stony and Hawke both knew they were sending these men into grave danger.
This dive would take them very near the world-record scuba free-diving depth of 330 meters or 1,083 feet. The SEALs were wearing ADS (atmospheric diving suits) and breathing a mixture of hydrox and nitrogen trimix because of the very high ambient pressure they would encounter. A thousand feet below the yacht’s hull they would find Perseus and his six satellites and destroy them. Hawke looked at his watch. How long would it take to descend to the black towers, rig the charges, set the timers, and return as rapidly as possible to the surface?
And did he have that long?
The patrol boat at the other end of the dock suddenly looked a very long distance away. There were four U.S. Navy sharpshooters aboard that ship who’d been exchanging sporadic fire with snipers in windows of random buildings rising above the top of the enclosing wall. There were two men manning the twin. 50-caliber Browning heavy machine guns on both the bow and the stern. Both teams of gunners were laying down heavy suppression fire at the gate. It was the only thing holding the howling horde in check.
The Iranian boat’s twin engines were cranked up, waiting for the attack team’s imminent return from Cygnus. But Hawke was distinctly uncomfortable. It all seemed far too easy. Blow Perseus to hell, disembark, make a mad dash down the pier, board the vessel, weigh anchor, and get the hell out of here. None of this jibed with his prior experience of spec-ops warfare.
No. When it seemed too easy, it usually was, and you could be sure a bloody firestorm was waiting for you just around the The first mortar round rose into the night sky. He heard the report of the round leaving the tube behind the wall. And then another and another round was lobbed over the wall in the direction of the Iranian patrol boat where four brave men stood between life and death for their comrades.
He grabbed his combat radio, turned toward the hijacked patrol boat, and shouted “Incoming!” He saw two of the four sailors who’d remained aboard the patrol boat dive into the water a nanosecond before the mortar rounds hit the vessel. The two valiant men firing the Browning. 50s remained at their battle stations on the bow and died there. One of the incoming mortar rounds must have found the petrol tanks because the vessel simply disintegrated, the shock wave of the explosion preceding an eruption into a pillar of flame and smoke.
The mortars were the signal. Instantly, the massed jihadists at the gate had the sign they’d been waiting for. Having eliminated the enemy’s only means of escape, they came streaming en masse out through the narrow tunnel. Stony’s snipers aboard Cygnus fired as rapidly as they could, their high-powered scopes enabling them to kill the forefront of the first wave. Corpses were stacked in front of the gate as the main force emerged, screaming and howling like the hyenas and jackals they were.
A bloodthirsty mob was pounding down the central dock, headed for the pier at the end where Cygnus was moored. Hawke saw that many of them were carrying long makeshift boarding ladders, roughly fashioned of wood and lashed together with leather. He was already taking fire. He heard a few rounds pinging off the bulkhead above his head, but the enemy forces weren’t close enough yet to make their ancient AK-47s effective.
Hawke got on the combat radio to Stony, each word punctuated by a squeeze of his trigger as he picked off the nearest targets.
“Haul aboard the landward grapnel lines, Stony, then join me up on the bridge. High ground. We can direct the defense from here. Rig every one of the grapnel lines on the seaward side of the vessel. We might need them.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Where are Stokely and Brock?”
“They remained down on the dock. First line of defense, Brock told me.”
“What!”
“Aye, they’ve taken up a defensive firing position behind some stacked steel barrels. They’ve both got M-60 heavy machine guns. Chopping ’em up pretty good, sir.”
“Damn it! Get them aboard immediately. That’s suicide. They’ll be overrun by this mob in seconds, hacked to pieces with bayonets and scimitars. Have you still got a grapnel line down?”
“All aboard save one.”
“Get on the radio. Have them grab that damn line and haul them aboard as fast as you can. Give them covering fire while they’re exposed coming up the side of the hull.”
“Roger, it’s happening as we speak.”
Hawke saw Brock and Stoke safely hauled aboard and shouted, “Here those bastards with the ladders come, Stony. I’ve wanted to say this since I was six years old: Repel boarders!”
The jihadist warriors, AK-47s in their hands and curved Arabian knives clenched in their teeth, began to position the ladders against the hull and started scrambling up like jabbering monkeys. Hawke’s men waited, then shoved the ladders away from the rail and sent them tumbling back down into the midst of the howling mob or splashing into the water on the far side of the pier. But ladders were going up the entire length of the hull, faster than Hawke’s men could shove them away. The fire was murderous and Hawke knew he was taking unacceptable casualties.
“D ivers still down?” Stony asked, joining Hawke as they both poured fire into the masses of warriors climbing the ladders. Far too many were getting aboard. And more were still streaming through the gate. This battle was going one-sided fast, Hawke realized. A strategic retreat was called for and the patrol boat for their escape wasn’t exactly seaworthy at the moment. It was nonexistent.
“Where the hell’s my UDT squad?”
“No sign of them, Stony,” Hawke said, looking at his watch. “They’ve been down there twenty minutes. We need to get the hell off this damn boat. Now.”
“Good God, Alex, you’ve been hit!”
“Somebody got lucky. A round penetrated my body armor beneath my arm. Nothing vital, I assure you, despite the fountain of blood.”
“I’ll get a corpsman up here immediately.”
“No. There are men below who need attention far more than I do. Somebody can stitch me up when the seriously wounded have been attended to. Now, enough of that; what is our situation?”
“I’m afraid the bastards have got us trapped, sir. We’re already vastly outmanned and outgunned and our escape plan just went up in smoke at the far end of the pier.”
“That was Plan A,” Hawke said, grimacing in pain and mowing down a tightly bunched group of black-turbaned fighters trying to sneak aft from the bow and flank them on the starboard side. “It’s time for Plan B.”