Gold Squad had approached Hormuz according to plan, with a length of lightweight wire rope snagging the vessel's prow and drawing the two CRRCs together roughly amidships. Now they were aboard, facing an unknown number of Iranian troops, possibly army, possibly navshurawn, as their marines were called. "Hammer Bravo," Lieutenant DeWitt's voice whispered over his radio headset. "Go!"
That was the signal for the Hormuz assault team to move out. Holding his H&K shoulder-high and probing the darkness to his front, Jaybird moved with cautious, toe-first steps, flowing like a shadow against the rust streaks and flaking paint of the tanker's superstructure. Thirty steps forward took him to a safety-roped monkey-walk and the top of a ladder. Below was the Hormuz's well deck, picturesquely called no-man's-land aboard a merchantman because its low freeboard shipped water in heavy weather. The area was cluttered with carelessly piled hills of hempen rope, rusty cable, a sloppily stowed derrick, and cargo pallets and crates. Hatches in the deck were propped open, revealing shafts of oily light from below; to his right, the railed walkway ran across the front of the ship's superstructure. A soldier in fatigues and a helmet leaned against the railing, staring across the well deck, his AKM slung muzzle-down across his back.
"Hammer Bravo-six, this is Bravo-three," he whispered into his lip mike, drawing back behind the corner of the superstructure. "One tango, 0-1 deck forward."
"Take him down," came the answer.
"Rog."
Bracing the H&K high, Jaybird took a deep breath, then swung sharply around the corner of the superstructure, drawing down on the target's center of mass and squeezing the trigger simultaneously.
He'd deliberately set the weapon for semi-automatic fire; the sound-suppressed weapon hissed and spat with each tug of the trigger, slamming round after round into the Iranian, who staggered back a step, reached for his assault rifle, then collapsed onto the deck. His helmet hit the superstructure with a metallic clunk. Jaybird held his position, scanning left and right, watching for some reaction to the sudden sound.
Nothing. "Three," he snapped, identifying himself. "Clear. Moving."
A door in the superstructure four feet from the body opened onto a companionway with ladders leading up and down. Jaybird took the steps leading up, treading softly to the next deck... then continued beyond to the deck above that. The squad's meticulous studies of Hormuz's deck plans back in Little Creek were paying off. Jaybird knew precisely where this companionway led, and what lay beyond it. At his back, Nicholson followed him up, covering his advance up the ladder.
At the 0-3 deck, three levels above the main deck, the ladder ended at a passageway and a door leading forward. Jaybird was still halfway up the companionway when the door opened and a bearded man stepped through.
He was not wearing an army uniform, but a blue jacket over a striped T-shirt. He took two steps into the passageway and then saw Jaybird.
The SEAL's appearance black-clad, with a dark bandana tight over his head and his face a horror of cold eyes staring from mingled green and black paint bought Jaybird a full second of gape-mouthed silence. The Iranian's eyes widened, his mouth hung open...
And then Jaybird shot him, the reflex automatic, unthinking. Two coughs from his H&K drilled twin holes in the surprised Iranian's head, one above his left eye, the other through the bridge of his nose. The SEAL sprinted the last five steps, reaching the body scant seconds after it collapsed to the deck.
"Awn cheest?" a voice asked from beyond the half-closed door.
"Namedawnam," someone answered, and the door swung open. Another ship's officer took one step through...
Jaybird was on him in an instant, left hand grasping the man's naval jacket with his forearm rammed against the windpipe, right hand wielding the H&K, the long, heavy muzzle roughly jammed against the Iranian's forehead.
"Tasleem shaveed!" Jaybird barked. Those SEALs who didn't speak Farsi had memorized useful key phrases before the mission. "Surrender!"
The man's eyes bulged in terror. "Nazaneed! Nazaneed!"
Jaybird shoved the man back into the compartment from which he'd just emerged. It was the ship's bridge, a wide area beneath a low overhead cluttered with pipes and conduits. Two other officers were there, one at the wheel, the other leaning above the bridge radar scope. Jaybird pushed his prisoner to the deck, then gestured with black-faced menace with his submachine gun.
"Dahstahraw boland koneed!" he ordered. The bridge officers complied, raising their hands over their heads. Nicholson came in at Jaybird's back, checking the radio shack and the captain's day-room, both empty.
"This is Nickle," Nicholson said over his radio, returning to Jaybird's side. "Bridge secure. Three prisoners."
Jaybird moved to the opposite side of the bridge, keeping the prisoners covered as the other SEAL snapped several fast questions at the Iranian on the deck. That man was the oldest of the three and had the most gold braid on his cap and jacket almost certainly Hormuz's captain. After a brief exchange, Nicholson looked across at Jaybird.
"He says there's a crew of fourteen aboard," Nicholson said. "Claims the ship's a merchantman in international waters, that they're carrying a shipment of copra, timber, and kapok from Madagascar to Bandar Abbas, and that we're pirates."
With deliberate slowness, Jaybird raised his subgun until it was aiming directly at the merchant captain's face, then gradually tracked the muzzle down the length of the man's body until it was aiming at his groin. He allowed himself a smile, bared teeth startlingly white behind the grease paint. With a dramatic flourish, he flexed his forefinger over the trigger. "Na! Na!" the captain cried, eyes wild and staring, sweat glistening on his forehead and in his beard. "Nazaneed! Kahesh meekonam! I speak! I speak!" Haltingly, in mingled bursts of Farsi and thickly accented English, the ship's captain admitted that there were ten soldiers aboard, members of a naval infantry brigade belonging to the Pasdaran, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. He knew of the Japanese plutonium ship, but insisted that none of the cargo had been transferred to the Hormuz. "Just soldier! Just soldier!" he insisted, looking from Jaybird to Nickle and back again. "We send soldier, other ship!"
"Chand ast sarbawz?" Nickle demanded. "How many soldiers?"
"Chehe!"
Nicholson blinked, then looked across at Jaybird. "Shit. He says forty."
"What, they put forty troops aboard the Yuduki Maru?" Jaybird licked his lips. "We thought they might have reinforced the terrorists over there," Nicholson said. "But forty soldiers is a fucking army!"
"Yeah," Jaybird said. "And our guys are walking into a trap!"
2318 hours (Zulu +3)
Freighter Yuduki Maru
They'd been aboard the Japanese ship for less than seven minutes, splitting up and padding with cat's-stealth silence along the vessel's alleys and walkways. One by one, the Iranian guards they encountered were eliminated, silently and efficiently. So far, there'd been no sign of either Japanese terrorists or the Yuduki Maru's original crew, but the ship seemed to be crawling with armed Iranian soldiers. The brown-fatigued soldiers were everywhere, lounging in small groups, standing lone watch in passageways, manning a pair of machine guns that had been mounted high up above the deck on the wings of the bridge. Crouching in the shadows on the ship's starboard side, MacKenzie and Higgins studied the forward deck from beneath a white-painted deck ladder. By the light spilling from the bridge some thirty feet above his head, MacKenzie could make out at least a dozen armed men lounging on the ship's long forward deck.