There, it had been said. His son was in charge of Sun Hammer. Congressman Murdock closed his eyes, riding out a tremor of fear that rippled up his spine. "In any case," Bainbridge said, "we have to give them our answer. Now."
Captain Granger laughed. "You gentlemen realize that there's not a lot we can do to enforce whatever order we give them? It really is their call."
"Tell them Alfa Bravo," Bainbridge said. His eyes glittered like ice in the phosphor light from the test pattern on the screen.
Mason picked up a telephone and began speaking into it rapidly.
As he was talking, another telephone on a console near the screen buzzed, and Carter picked it up. "Yeah... uh-huh." There was a pause. "Okay. We're ready." He kept the receiver in his hand, as he had before. "KH-twelve-five is coming over the horizon now," he told the others. "They're putting the feed through from NPIC now." Carter pronounced the acronym "en-pick," a word that stood for the National Photographic Interpretation Center, a joint CIA-NSA department located in Washington, D.C., that carried the responsibility for receiving and distributing all military satellite imagery.
The test pattern flickered out and was replaced by a slow-moving emptiness of rugged, black ripple patterns. It took Congressman Murdock a moment to recognize what he was looking at as the surface of the ocean. Under the control of unseen hands at some distant control center, the view slewed abruptly to one side, focusing once again on the Yuduki Maru. The angle was different this time, flatter, and from farther off. It was moving more quickly too, which meant, Murdock had been told, that the satellite shooting this was traveling in a lower, faster orbit.
Again, the Yuduki Maru was illuminated in soft-glowing greens and whites, an oblique view that picked out the flashes of gunfire on her long, forward deck in sharp pinpricks of light. It seemed strange to see the shots flickering in absolute silence.
"That's it," Bradley said, pointing. "A firefight. God, how are they going to get out of that?"
"What about the other group?" Murdock asked. "The ones on the Hormuz?"
"Normally," Mason said, "they would have been the backup to the strike on the plutonium ship. But they have their hands full with their own prisoners. The helos are still inbound. Another thirty minutes before they arrive at least." He shook his head. "I don't see that Hammer One has a choice. They have to get out."
"If," Bainbridge said quietly, "the Iranians let them."
2329 hours (Zulu +3)
Bridge
Freighter Yuduki Maru
"Hammer One, Foreman. Alfa Bravo. Repeat, Alfa Bravo. Confirm."
"Foreman, Hammer One confirms Alfa Bravo, Alfa Bravo. Out." Murdock cut the channel. "That's it, people!" he yelled to the others on the bridge. "We're outa here!" Switching to the tactical frequency, he patched through to MacKenzie again. "Hammer One-one, this is Six. One-one, Six! Get out of there, Mac! We've got an abort and we're going over the side!"
2329 hours (Zulu +3)
Engine room
Freighter Yuduki Maru
"Roger that, Six. One copies." MacKenzie signaled Higgins and Garcia with a vigorous pumping of his fist. "Right, boys and girls! Time to get out of Dodge!"
Damn. With the Iranians pressing them, they'd not had time or opportunity to plant the charges that would cripple the Japanese freighter. Still, he might manage to salvage a portion of Kneecap at least. Murdock hadn't given any orders about that one way or the other, or even asked how far along they were planting their charges.
That left things pretty much up to MacKenzie. Rising from cover behind a reduction gear housing, he loosed a long, full-auto burst at the open door, forcing the Iranian troops at the port-side doorway to duck for cover. Higgins took the opportunity afforded by MacKenzie's covering fire to bolt for the starboard-side ladder and scramble up the rungs to where Garcia was crouched astride the watertight door's combing.
"Cover me!" MacKenzie shouted.
From his perch on the railed, overhead platform, Higgins responded with a three-round burst that sparked and sang off the doorway opposite his position. MacKenzie pulled out the timer on his satchel charge, stabbed the numeral nine twice, punched the start button, then tucked the canvas bag into the pistoning motion of a starboard reduction gear housing. He now had about a minute and a half.
"Moving!" he yelled, and with the word he was racing down a narrow passage between the hulking mountains of painted steel.
At the base of the ladder, he paused long enough to stoop next to the four Japanese enginemen who were still lying facedown on the deck next to the aft bulkhead. Swiftly, he used his diver's knife to slice through the plastic restraints on their wrists. Pointing fiercely at the center door, he shouted one of his few words of Japanese: "Isoge! Hurry!"
The crewmen needed no further encouragement. Scrambling to their feet, they dove for the passageway leading to Yuduki Maru's boiler room. Lying flat on the deck, they probably would have been safe from the detonation of half a kilo of plastic explosives, but bits of metal and broken machinery would make a devastating shrapnel. Worse, MacKenzie had no idea what the Iranians might do to their hostages when they found them tied up and abandoned by the Navy SEALS, but a distinct possibility would be a mindless venting of their anger on helpless, trussed-up civilians. This way, at least, they would have a chance.
"God damn it, Mac," Garcia yelled from overhead. "Move your ass!"
MacKenzie swarmed up the engine-room ladder, joining the other two SEALS. By his watch, only seconds remained of the minute and a half on the timer.
"Go!" he snapped. "Go! Go!"
After dogging the watertight door shut, they raced down the passageway outside, retracing their steps. They were ten feet from the door when a loud crack echoed off steel bulkheads behind them, accompanied by the metallic clang of hurtling fragments. Instantly he felt a strange new sensation, an uncomfortable, uneven shudder transmitted through the deck plating.
"Feels like you rigged up the works real good, Mac," Garcia said.
"Yeah, but we only knocked out one screw." They stopped in the passageway next to the Japanese crewman they'd caught and tied earlier. As Garcia and MacKenzie watched the corridor approaches, Higgins cut the man free, speaking quietly to him in Japanese.
MacKenzie opened his tactical channel. "Hammer Six, Hammer Six! This is One."
"Six. Go ahead."
"Okay, Lieutenant. The bad guys are back in Echo Romeo, in force. We managed half a Kneecap before we split."
"Copy that, Mac. How badly is she hurt?"
"Can't say for sure, Lieutenant. But my guess is her port shaft is bent to hell."
"Rog. I can feel the cavitation up here. Okay, Mac. Good work. Make your way topside for E&E. Hold the boarding zone for three minutes. If we're not there by then, you're on your own."
E&E Escape and Evasion. MacKenzie scowled at that sour thought. The mission had gone bad, a real clusterfuck. They would have to run...
"Yessir. Copy that." He glanced back at Higgins, who was helping the Japanese crewman to his feet. "Uh, Lieutenant? We have one of the hostages here."
"Good," Murdock's voice replied. "Bring him along if you can."
"That's what I was thinking." Questioning the Japanese crewman could reveal useful details about Yuduki Maru's hijackers and might, possibly, give them a second shot at the freighter.
"Let's get the hell out of here," he growled at the others. Together, they started up another ladder toward the main deck.
2331 hours (Zulu +3)
Bridge
Freighter Yuduki Maru
Murdock looked at the terrified Japanese crewman still lying on the deck, hands bound behind him and his back dusted with broken glass. Blood streaked his forehead where he'd been cut by a flying shard. Murdock didn't want the SEAL force burdened by rescued hostages, but he also doubted that the terrorists or Iranians aboard would be lenient with anyone who had helped the U.S. intruders. Mac had one hostage already. Good enough. He would bring another.