When there was no answer, Blake Murdock turned crisply on his heel and strode from the room.
He had to struggle to maintain his composure. Obviously, things had not changed between him and his father. The congressman was still looking to get him into some nice, safe niche inside the Beltway, some place with a political future for the their to the Murdock dynasty.
Outside the headquarters building, he checked his watch. Yeah, there was still time. He wanted to put himself on a four-man break-and-enter team and run through the killing house a few more times before breaking for chow.
It might help him burn off some of his anger. He knew one thing, though, if he knew nothing else. He was more determined now to carry out Sun Hammer than he'd been before, if only because of his father's opposition. Damn the man...
Saturday, 21 May
0215 hours (Zulu +3)
Yuduki Maru
Off the Madagascar coast
Tetsuo Kurebayashi had bow lookout this night. He enjoyed the night watches, for the ship was silent and still, empty save for the pounding of the big freighter's screws churning up the wake astern. When he stood on the foredeck, with his back to the light from Yuduki Maru's towering white bridge and with the night air in his face and darkness all around, it was like stepping into another universe, where he was alone, a solitary Mind and Will in a dark and eternal cosmos.
Craning back his head, he stared up into the star-glorious sky overhead. Here, well beyond the circle of light spilling from the Yuduki Maru's bridge windows, the night was a wondrous immensity. The Milky Way arced overhead from horizon to horizon, diamond dust gleaming against black velvet. Alpha Centauri shone like a beacon high up, near the zenith, while other stars, alien to men raised in northern latitudes, burned in the south. Kurebayashi's eyes traced out constellations unknown in Honshu but familiar to mariners who sailed the southern seas: Centaurus; Vela; the four, tightly clumped jewels of Crux.
He searched for Orion and the Martyr's stars, but that constellation had long since set in the west.
No matter. The spirits of the Junkyosha, the Martyrs, were here, as much a part of this operation as were Kurebayashi and his comrades. He thought about how close he and his brothers were to their goal, to final victory, and excitement quickened within.
So far, everything had gone perfectly according to Isamusama's plan. The most difficult aspect of Operation Yoake had been smuggling eight of the brothers aboard, disguised as members of the Police Special Action force assigned to Yuduki Maru's security contingent, and two more as members of her crew. The Tokyo organization had taken care of all the details. Rumor had it that they had people planted inside the police personnel office who'd been able to reassign security force members, plant false IDs and fingerprint records, and even buy some of the officers of the government-subsidized company that owned Yuduki Maru and her cargo. It was the old, old story playing itself out once more: The technology, the planning, the security arrangements themselves might all be perfect, but the strongest walls were always exactly as strong as the weakest men guarding them. When Yuduki Maru had set sail from Cherbourg, ten of the seventy-five men aboard had been members of Eikyuni Shinananai Tori.
It had been more than enough. The other twenty-three security men aboard had been killed within seconds of Shikishima's destruction, those on duty gunned down by their supposed comrades from behind, those off duty below deck killed by poison gas and gunfire as they slept. Five members of the ship's crew had also been shot, but so far, at least, the rest were cooperating with Yuduki Maru's new masters. The officers had been separated from the men, and both groups were kept locked in carefully searched compartments below, released a few at a time under close guard to carry out their shipboard duties. They'd been promised their lives if they cooperated.
Kurebayashi wondered how many of them seriously believed they would be allowed to live once Yuduki Maru made landfall. The stakes in this game were so fantastically high since the takeover, there had been only one significant threat to Yuduki Maru. For the past three days they'd been steaming steadily on a heading of 012, almost due north. The coast of Madagascar, however, slants from south-southwest to north-northeast, so the plutonium freighter had been steadily drawing closer and closer to the huge island's eastern shore. At this moment she was just 150 miles southeast of Cape Masoala, and needless to say, her abrupt change of course had not gone unnoticed.
Ever since they'd left Cherbourg, the Greenpeace vessel Beluga had dogged the freighter's northbound wake. Perhaps because they hadn't been sure whether the course change was according to plan or not, Greenpeace had made no immediate announcement about the change in course, but as the Yuduki Maru had steadily neared the Madagascar coast, violating her pledge not to approach any coastline by less than two hundred miles, Beluga had radioed the news to the world.
As expected, once the news had gone out, governments along the Yuduki Maru's new course had panicked. The 235-ton coastal patrol boat Malaika, largest ship of the Malagasy Republic's tiny navy, had attempted to rendezvous with the freighter late on Friday afternoon but had been scared off by warnings broadcast over the radio. In two more days, they would be passing through the Seychelles and Amirante Islands, a thousand kilometers northeast of Madagascar, and there would almost certainly be another attempt then.
Well, Kurebayashi and his comrades were ready. He hefted his AKM, comforted by its reassuring bulk.
Nothing, he thought, not all the navies of the world, can possibly stop us now!
0720 hours (Zulu -5)
Headquarters, SEAL Seven
Little Creek, Virginia
Maps of various scales of the western Indian Ocean had been tacked up on every wall of SEAL Seven's briefing room, mingled with blown-up black-and-white aerial photos of two ships. KH-12 satellites had been tracking the Yuduki Maru almost continually since Thursday; holes in the spy sat observation time had been filled in by relays of Air Force high-altitude Aurora reconnaissance aircraft.
Things had been moving quickly since the Broken Arrow alert had gone out. Most of SEAL Seven's energies had been directed toward gathering intelligence. Early Friday Friday afternoon, Madagascar time the missing Iranian oiler Hormuz had been picked up and photographed as well, less than six hundred miles north of the Japanese freighter and plodding south on an intercept course. During the past twenty-four hours, the two ships had closed the gap to a few dozen miles. By now, everyone assigned to Operation Sun Hammer was working on the assumption that the Iranians must be behind the hijacking of the Yuduki Maru. Iran, of course, had denied the charges.
There were orbital snapshots of other vessels as well, the motor sailing ketch Beluga, registered with Greenpeace, and a small Malagasy Republic coastal patrol boat, Malaika. Word had gotten out about the plutonium ship's change of course yesterday, and that, naturally, had complicated everything. "Plutonium Ship Off Course!" were the Friday morning headlines on half the world's newspapers. "Hijacking Suspected!"
Later, the hijacking theory had been all but confirmed when the Yuduki Maru had warned off the Malaika, proving that those aboard, whoever they were, were less than friendly. All of the publicity, however, made Operation Sun Hammer far more difficult. SEALs preferred operations set well out of the glare of media notice.
Master Chief MacKenzie leaned against the plot table with his arms folded, listening to the new lieutenant lay out the mission plan. Everyone in Third Platoon was there, gathered in the briefing room that was part of the CO's suite in headquarters. Also present were Captain Friedman of the Red Wolves light helo squadron, Captain Coburn, and their tactical staffs.