"Two terrs are down," a Navy captain, Paul Mason, said. "The rest of our people are climbing on board now."
Murdock suppressed the churn of acid fear in his belly those words raised. It was a lot worse standing in this room ten thousand miles away, watching the action unfold on a television screen like the make-believe gunplay of some computer game.
General Bradley, the big, bluff Air Force officer who appeared to be in charge of this room, pointed at the screen. "Damn," he said, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar. "Can't we get a better view on this thing?"
Carter spoke quietly into a telephone, and Congressman Murdock realized he must be in direct communication with whoever was controlling the spy satellite. A moment later, the image of the ship expanded, the view zeroing in on the aft third of the ship. The glowing ghost figures of nine men, two of them prone on the deck, were barely distinguishable against the heat-glow of the ship itself. The imagery remained clear, but the satellite's motion was more apparent. The view kept slipping to the right, forcing the unseen controller to shift the camera angle left in compensation.
It had, Murdock reflected, taken all but an act of Congress to get him here, into this shielded, buried room within the Pentagon labyrinth, impregnable behind four separate security checkpoints. Captain Granger had been his passport into this underground shadow-world, and he'd had to do a fair amount of arm-twisting to pull it off. "Look," he'd told Granger the day before. "The SEALs need a friend on the HMAC, someone who's willing to slug it out with Farnum and his kill-the-military cronies, and I'm it! But damn it, you've got to give me some cooperation on this. Let me see what it is I'm supposed to be defending."
Even yet, Murdock wasn't certain what strings Granger had had to pull to get him into this room. The very existence of this type of high-detail, real-time satellite imagery was still, three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a jealously guarded secret, one that most members of Congress were not privy to. The pictures were like magic, the freighter a ghost ship of green and white light, illuminated by her own heat. Moments before, he'd watched the approach of two tiny rafts to their far larger target, the heat from their laboring engines shining in the infrared image like tiny stars.
My son's down there, he thought, feeling as though he were watching from the satellite's vantage point hundreds of miles overhead. My son's in one of those rafts, and I can't do a damned thing about it.
He wasn't even certain that his son was leading this raid. Admiral Bainbridge had refused point-blank to disclose the names of the men assigned to the raid, and the source of his information, a mid-level staffer on NAVSPECWARGRU-Two's planning staff, had been unable to provide confirmation. When he'd confronted Blake, two days ago at the SEAL base in Little Creek, he'd been bluffing, hoping to get his son to admit to things the congressman had heard but been unable to verify.
But somehow, it was easier for him to assume that Blake was aboard one of those rafts. It was the uncertainty, the not knowing, that made the waiting hell.
He turned to Captain Granger, stiff and starched in his Navy dress whites. "I just want you to know, Ben, that whatever happens now, I'm grateful."
Granger glanced at him but said nothing, and Murdock sensed the resentment the former SEAL must still feel at the strong-arm tactics the congressman had employed to gain entrance to this inner sanctum. Granger, no doubt, had been forced to spend some political capital of his own to win this privilege for a mere congressional VIP. I really called in all my markers on this one, Murdock thought. I just hope I can provide value for value next week when it comes time for the HMAC's vote.
An electronic peep sounded from a speaker somewhere in the room's ceiling, startling in its intensity. "Foreman, Hammer Alfa," a voice whispered, and Murdock had his confirmation. Even through the hiss of static, he recognized his son's voice. "Sierra-Charlie. Moving."
"They're all aboard," Mason said, probably for Murdock's benefit since everyone else in the room apparently knew what was going on. "We're Foreman. Hammer Alfa is the Yuduki Maru strike team. Sierra-Charlie is the code phrase meaning everything's on sched."
"How much longer we got on this bird?" Bradley asked.
"Three minutes, General," Carter replied. "It's going to be damned tight."
"KH-twelve-slash-nine will be over the horizon in fourteen minutes," a technician added. "There'll only be an eleven-minute hole in the coverage."
"Maybe so," Mason said. "But a hell of a lot can happen in eleven minutes."
"We'll still have voice communications, through our AWACS Sentry," Admiral Bainbridge said. He cast a hard glance at Murdock, then looked away. "Being able to see wouldn't help that much anyway."
He resents me, too, Murdock thought. The hell with him. The hell with all of them. I just want my son to come out of this alive. He turned his full attention to the video-game action unfolding on the screen.
2316 hours (Zulu +3)
Freighter Yuduki Maru
Lieutenant Blake Murdock unhooked his harness, then chinned himself gently over the edge of the deck. Shadows moved on the starboard side of the fantail, forty feet away. MacKenzie materialized like a shadow out of darkness, an H&K MP5 clenched in black-gloved hands. Murdock signaled with a thumbs up, then unharnessed his own subgun. He could hear voices in the distance coming from somewhere forward, and a harsh bark of laughter. From elsewhere, higher up, came the metallic rattle of booted feet descending a ship's ladder, then the clump of a fast walk across a steel deck. "Hajibaba! Kojaw meetavawnam jak paydaw konam?"
Still, no excitement in the other voices, no sign that the SEALs had been spotted yet.
The two bodies and their weapons went over the stern, the splashes lost in the churning of the freighter's wake. Blood streaked the deck, but in the near-darkness it looked black, like grease or spilled coffee.
Murdock crouched alongside the superstructure, his H&K aiming up the covered port-side walkway that led past the bridge superstructure and toward the forward deck. More shadows slipped onto the deck alongside; Magic, Doc, and Roselli. MacKenzie, the Professor, and Boomer were all aboard to starboard.
Lightly, Murdock touched Roselli's shoulder and gestured toward the ship's bow. Weapon at the ready, Roselli nodded, then started forward along the walkway.
2317 hours (Zulu +3)
Oiler Hormuz
Jaybird rose above the sentry, a K-bar knife gleaming scarlet-black in the half-light, the guard lying on the deck with a six-inch gash through throat and windpipe, jugular and carotid. There was a very great deal of blood, but no one could have heard the man's muffled gurglings as Jaybird had lowered him to the deck.
The SEAL felt the first tremors of reaction and viciously suppressed them. With all his training, with all his mental preparation, the Iranian lying at his feet was the first man he'd ever killed, and for a trembling moment, the shock threatened to overwhelm him.
Then training reasserted itself. The man was an enemy who would have sounded the alarm if he'd heard Jaybird's stealthy approach from behind. Now he was a dead enemy; Jaybird's long hours of hand-to-hand had made the stealthy approach, the snatch, reach, and slash, almost instinctive. The SEAL wiped his K-bar on the man's pants leg and sheathed it. Behind him, Kosciuszko and Nicholson slithered over the ship's gunwales and onto her rusty deck.
The first thing Jaybird noticed about the ship was her stench. The Hormuz stank, a repulsive mix of diesel oil, dead fish vomit, and unwashed bodies. Next he noticed the peculiar twist to her motion underfoot. Jaybird wondered if the ancient vessel's owners had really spent much effort making her seaworthy. The old, low-slung tanker wallowed in the worsening seas, and each swell threatened to break over the exposed quarterdeck and swamp her.