"Ah, I told Admiral Winston I'd hold my breath until I turned blue," Coburn replied easily. "Besides, I'm still dive-rated. Just because I've got four stripes doesn't mean I'm senile. You need flag rank for that."
Mitchell laughed. "Sounds like even CO-MIDEASTFOR has trouble managing SEALS. Housebreaking you guys must be a bitch."
"Hey, if you want housebroken, send in the Marines. They can break anything if they put their minds to it."
"As a matter of fact, we're planning on doing just that little thing." Mitchell extended his hand again. "Good luck, Phil."
"Thanks, Admiral. See you in Bandar!"
Minutes later, Coburn was tucked into the passenger compartment of SDV #1. He was rigged out in the SEALs' new SCUBA Mark XV gear, an advanced underwater life-support system that used a computer to regulate the rebreather's gas mix. With the Mark XV, a SEAL could dive deeper and stay deep longer than he could with the old Drager LAR V system; he wore a full-face mask that allowed him to communicate by voice, either through an intercom jack or by radio, though the range of radio communications was sharply limited within the radio-wave-absorbing medium of the sea.
Seated next to Master Chief MacKenzie, and just ahead of HM2 Ellsworth and HT1 Garcia, Coburn plugged his breathing system into the boat's air supply, a measure that would extend the range of his own rebreather gear, then waited as water flooded the cramped compartment. It was dark, and the confines were downright claustrophobic. Coburn chuckled to himself as he thought of the ongoing budgetary war that continued to keep the Navy divided into separate, rival camps. Many years earlier, the submariners, seeking to expand their control over a portion of the Navy's appropriations, had managed to push through a rule with Congress that established that only they could build and operate "dry" submarines, underwater craft that provided a shirtsleeve environment for their operators. As a result, arms of the service that could use small, covert entry or reconnaissance craft arms like the SEALs and the Marines had to rely on "wet" submarines like the Mark VIII.
For that reason, SDV operations were sharply limited in range. The Mark VIII could manage about six knots on its electric batteries and had an endurance of six hours, so the SDVs had to be piggy-backed to within eighteen nautical miles of the target three hours in, three hours back with the further disadvantage that the SEALs aboard were going to be tired long before they even got there. That narrow-minded bean-counting was a typical example of the bureaucratic idiocy that plagued those military circles high enough in the Washington hierarchy to be contaminated by the politics of that town.
Usually in SEAL SDV missions, ferry duty fell to one of the few dry submarines equipped to carry SDVs in special hangars on their decks. Unfortunately, none of the subs so equipped had been available on such short notice, which meant that Austin had been tasked with carrying the SEALs in to a drop-off point eighteen miles south of Bandar Abbas. Austin's captain, Coburn thought, as well as the skippers of her escorting warships, must be sweating bullets about now, wondering if the Iranians were about to launch a preemptive strike against the task force. The Iranians had to figure that the American MEF was here for more than a show of force, that they weren't going to just stand by and watch while the Iranians rifled the Yuduki Maru of her cargo.
What was their response going to be? There was no way of telling. All the SEALs could do was plan it the best they could, then Charlie Mike.
A few yards away, MacKenzie stood on the steel deck grating and watched Coburn talking with the admiral. He'd learned that Coburn was joining the platoon only a few hours earlier, when the captain had met the team in a briefing room and explained the nature of the mission.
MacKenzie didn't like this twist, not one bit. Captain Coburn was a capable officer, but damn it, the guy was getting a bit old for this sort of thing. Coburn was fifty years old and had served in Nam. Three hours in a wet suit, breathing reprocessed air, was incredibly draining, especially for an old guy.
The chief protested, of course, and he'd been slapped down. Coburn had grinned to rob the rebuke of its sting and pointed out that if he, Coburn, was over the hill, Master Chief MacKenzie couldn't be far behind.
MacKenzie grimaced at the thought. He was forty-five... but at least he'd been active in the Teams' diving proficiency drills and PT over the years. When was the last time the Old Man had swum two miles, with fins, in seventy minutes? Or run fourteen miles in 110?
He decided he would stick close to Coburn throughout this mission... just in case.
2345 hours (Zulu +3)
Captured Boghammer patrol craft
Off Bandar Abbas
With her powerful engine barely ticking over, the Boghammer growled past the huge, gray bulks of a dozen Iranian military craft, most yard tenders and oilers, but a few heavily armed patrol boats as well. The sailors on the decks of those craft watched the sleek craft incuriously if at all; Boghammers were common enough in all parts of the harbor that it should not excite curiosity.
So far, the Iranian shipyard and naval facilities appeared quiet. No alarm had sounded, no heavily armed patrol boats were dashing about. Their most serious test had come as they'd approached a massive boom guarding the hundred-yard-wide opening to the shipyard's inner harbor. Half expecting to be turned aside without the necessary password or code, they'd motored slowly toward the boom, only to see the central section slide open for them, allowing them to pass inside. Guard towers rose on either side of the opening; the boom floated on the water's surface but was clearly the support for a heavy antisubmarine net. Guards patrolled everywhere, but none paid more attention to the Boghammer than a casual wave or salute.
Inside the harbor, most activity seemed lethargic. Except for a few armed guards in evidence ashore, the only men visible were lounging and talking on the decks of their ships. Most of the base was dark, save for patches of illumination cast by street lights along the waterfront.
The single area of intense activity appeared to be centered on the forward deck of the freighter Yuduki Maru, which had been drawn up, port side to, at a long pier close by the shipyard's dry-dock area and launching way. Tarpaulins had been stretched across the forward deck in an obvious attempt to block out surveillance by American spy satellites, and a construction crew could be seen by the flaring, actinic light of cutting torches hissing on the forward deck.
"Could be they're running into some computer trouble," Murdock said. All four of the SEALs were inside the Boghammer's pilothouse, peering out through the salt-encrusted windscreen at the activity on the huge freighter. "Without the right password, they're not going to get through the cargo hatches."
"So their only option is cutting their way through solid steel," Roselli said, standing at the boat's wheel. "That should take 'em a while, even with dockyard facilities."
"All night at least," Higgins said.
"That was the idea," Murdock said.
"What the hell is the new password, anyway?" Roselli wanted to know.
Murdock grinned. "'Jaybird." It was the only thing I could think of at the time."
"Ha! Well, they sure won't hit on that by trial and error. It must be giving them fits!"
"I just hope they don't think the Japanese crewmen are giving them the wrong information," Sterling said. "Things could go a bit hard on them."
"Shit, Jaybird, you want we should go in and give them the keys to the stuffs?" Roselli asked.
"I didn't say that."
"Anyway, they know we were up there on the bridge long enough to change the codes. They're probably just mad as hell they didn't get one of us to tell them what it was!"
Murdock leaned over, studying the armed men arrayed along Yuduki Maru's side. More soldiers were on the pier alongside, where workers were preparing to sway several bulky propane tanks up to the ship's deck in a cargo net. "What would you guys say... twelve armed guards on board?"