Each move they made was slow and deliberate; the bottom, obscured in drifting silt, was a tangled, potential deathtrap of concrete blocks, discarded truck tires, broken glass, empty packing crates, and slime-covered railroad ties, jumbled together in a kind of chaotic obstacle course. They'd taken up a bottom watch position, the four of them within touching distance, resting back-to-back so that they could see in all directions. There was little to see. They were underneath the wooden pier, close to one of the massive, algae-shaggy pilings that descended from the dim glow at the surface into the tarry muck of the bottom, and visibility was effectively zero.
In fact, while swaddled in his wet suit and dive gear, the only sense Murdock still had was hearing, and he was focusing all of his attention on the sounds echoing through the black water around him. The heavy-equipment noises from the Yuduki Maru's deck had ceased, but loud thumps and bumps continued to transmit themselves through the water at irregular intervals, and occasionally he could hear the creak and pop of wood shifting as men moved on the pier directly above his head.
And then he heard another sound... one that made him reach back and urgently tap the other SEALS. It was a metallic, tinkling noise, a bubbling that came in short bursts of noise, followed by silence.
The SEALs' rebreathers were silent, giving off no air bubbles. What they were hearing was almost certainly a SCUBA rig... no, two rigs, judging from the one-two, pause, one-two rhythm of the noise. Iranian divers... and they were coming toward the SEALS.
0115 hours (Zulu +3)
Inside the Bandar Abbas shipyard harbor
Coburn didn't realize that he was in trouble until the thought struck him, with all of the impact of religious revelation, that he'd somehow forgotten what the mission was.
He'd been swimming steadily ahead through the silt-laden water, checking his wrist compass occasionally to maintain the assigned heading of three-two-zero degrees, but mostly relying on the dimly sensed shadows of the other SEALs around him. He was working harder than he'd expected. His muscles were still up to the task the SEALs had set for themselves, but Coburn found he was having to fight for air as he swam harder and harder, trying to keep up. The effort was much like that of Hell Week, a demanding test of stamina and willpower as the recruit's reserves were drained completely, then challenged by yet another seemingly impossible task.
He was thinking about Hell Week when he realized that he'd lost sight of the other divers. That in itself was not surprising, the silt in the water had been growing steadily thicker as the team moved deeper into the harbor, until the water was so murky that his dive buddy could have been six feet away and remained invisible. The shock came when he stopped to think about what to do next and realized that he didn't know why he was here. A training mission? Yes, that must be it... though he had the nagging feeling that this operation was far more important then the usual SEAL qualification dive. He shook his head, trying to clear it. How could he forget what he was doing in the middle of an exercise? There was a reason for that, but he couldn't remember what it was.
His head hurt, the pain throbbing with his accelerated heartbeat, and he was having trouble clearing his ears. The full mask squeezed uncomfortably against the borders of his face. His thinking felt... muddy, somehow. And God! He was feeling so tired, so sleepy.
0115 hours (Zulu +3)
Beneath the freighter Yuduki Maru
Bandar Abbas shipyard
Murdock strained to catch the tinkling gurgle of the enemy's SCUBA rigs. Had the SEALs been discovered already? There was no way to tell. Possibly the Iranians had picked up the telltale pings of the sonar homer, though the high-frequency device had been designed to avoid the usual sound channels used by conventional sonar ears. More likely, it was a routine patrol, checking the Yuduki Maru's bottom for mines or listening devices, or sweeping the area for any signs of enemy frogman activity. The bad guys had to be a bit nervous after that first attempt to take the freighter back by seaborne assault.
Silently, Murdock spoke to the others with touch and shadow-shrouded gesture: Roselli and Higgins, go that way... Jaybird, come with me. Splitting into two teams of two, the SEALs circled left and right. It was always difficult to tell the source of underwater sounds, but the SCUBA bubble noise was sharp enough that the SEALs could localize it to the general direction of the shore. Most likely, the enemy divers had gone in near Yuduki Maru's bow and were approaching now along her bottom. Murdock drew his Mark II Navy knife and sensed Jaybird doing the same.
The sounds were closer now and sharper. That way. Moving out from under the pier, Murdock scraped along inches beneath the steel ceiling of the freighter's keel, trying to localize what he was now certain were the noises from two SCUBA regulators. They needed to be careful in their identification, since it was quite possible that the two SEAL teams could blunder into one another by mistake. Shadows moved a few feet in front of him, materializing out of the drifting silt.
Yes! Those were no SEALS, not with dark gray wet suits and the bulky, steel cylinders of air tanks strapped to their backs. Evidently, they were checking Yuduki Maru's bottom, for one swam close to the hull, dragging his hand across the surface, while the other hung a few feet back. Both carried bangsticks, meter-long rods tipped with shotgun shells, weapons designed to kill sharks but equally effective against men.
Murdock touched Jaybird to make sure he saw, then lunged forward with three hard kicks to his fins. Exploding out of the muck beneath the ship, he collided with the lead Iranian frogman, left hand blocking the other's bangstick hand, knife hand spearing for the throat. Jaybird hit the second diver an instant later, rolling him over and carrying him toward the bottom.
Bubbles angrily hissed and gurgled in the water. Murdock's knife slashed the rubber of the Iranian's hood, then penetrated to the flesh below. Blood, ink-black in the almost nonexistent light formed an expanding cloud about both men. The bangstick slipped from the man's fingers, though he continued struggling in Murdock's grasp. Gradually, those struggles died away... and then the frogman floated limp and unresisting in the water, just as Roselli and Higgins loomed out of the shadows from astern, knives at the ready.
Murdock glanced up. Jaybird had killed his man as well, slitting the man's throat like an expert.
Turning the bodies over, the SEALs closed the regulator valves shut, stopping the flow of air from the tanks. Men on the pier following the divers' progress by their tell-tale bubbles on the surface might wonder at having lost the bubbles... but they would wonder a lot more if the rhythmic bubble patterns turned to two steady streams that no longer moved. The SEALs had just purchased a little more time while the people on the surface assumed that their divers had moved beneath the ship... ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps. After that...
Damn, where were the guys off the SDVs?
0116 hours (Zulu +3)
Inside the Bandar Abbas shipyard harbor
Coburn's breaths were coming in short, panting rasps now. The pain in his head was almost unendurable, and he had to stifle an urge to yawn inside his mask.
Damn this Hell Week shit. Push a guy until he's so damned tired he doesn't know whether he's coming or going, until he's about to fall asleep on his feet. Maybe it's time to ring the fucking bell, to get out now while the getting's still good.
Compass heading... what was his heading? Holding the wrist compass up before his mask, he tried to focus on the numbers. Two-three-zero... he needed a heading of two-three-zero. Damn! He was way off course! The next marker in the exercise was that way! How much time had he lost?