First Team

by Larry Bond

  “Yeah.” Rankin said it like it was a dare.

  Ferguson called him on it. “Well go ahead. Don’t break anything.”

  “You, with me,” Rankin told one of the SEALs. They trotted back toward the fence, then crossed over toward the north side of the yard, crawling forward amid the stacks of equipment and materials. To get to the scaffold, they would have to cross about ten feet of well-lit ground; Rankin wasn’t so much worried about being seen as casting a shadow.

  As he waited, sizing up the situation, the guard came around to the near side. Rankin saw him clearly—his eyes were focused, wary; he didn’t have the bored look most guys would have pulling a late-night shift in the middle of nowhere. It occurred to Rankin that either the Iranian was pretty dedicated or had been tipped off, or maybe both.

  The sentry turned, his boots scratching against the concrete. Rankin realized belatedly that he could have rushed him—they were no more than eight feet apart, and it would have taken no more than a second and a half to take him. He’d been so fixated on the idea of climbing the scaffold that he’d missed a far easier chance.

  “Next time he comes,” he told the SEAL. “When he swings around, I’m up, and I get him.”

  Ferguson checked in with Conners and the rest of the SEALs, who were watching from the perimeter. They had the main guard post covered, along with the approach to the shipyard.

  “Somebody’s on the ship,” Conners told him. He’d climbed atop the bus and could just barely make out the deck. “Up near the bow.”

  “Just one person?”

  “Hard to see, but it looked like one person, moving.”

  Ferguson watched as the guards returned. “How we looking, Skip?” he asked Rankin over the com system.

  When Rankin didn’t answer right away, Ferg feared that the SF soldier had already changed places with the guard and was going to do the act solo. But that wasn’t like Rankin—a second later he responded.

  “I get him this round,” said Rankin. “Be patient.”

  “Alien concept.” Ferguson slid forward on his knee as the guard on his side passed, positioning himself to cut the man down if he heard anything.

  The sharp steel blade felt warm against Rankin’s thumb. He could hear the sentry’s footsteps as he approached. They seemed to take forever.

  He’d practiced this sort of takedown a million times, but he’d never done it for real; there wasn’t much cause in real operations to sneak up on a man with a knife and slit his throat. Getting close enough to do that meant putting yourself at enormous risk, and it was almost always easier and smarter to use a gun and be done with it.

  The scraping stopped. Rankin, hunched down in the shadow of a large pump, felt his lungs freeze.

  Finally, the scraping resumed. Rankin could hear the feet twisting as the sentry turned and started to retrace his steps. One stride, two strides, three—

  The SF man leapt up into the light, pushing air into his lungs, then clamping his mouth closed as he jumped out. The Iranian was farther than he’d thought—a step, another step—the man started to turn.

  The knife caught the side of his neck first. Rankin’s left arm fished wildly, searching for the gun, his right hand pushing the knife along the sentry’s skin.

  The gun fell to the ground. Rankin felt something heavy in his hands. He heard the Iranian cough, then gasp for air, whispering a prayer in Farsi as he died.

  Quickly he pulled the man’s body to the side. He dropped the knife, unbuttoning his shirt—there was no bulletproof vest. Rankin pulled the shirt over his, hunched over—this wasn’t going to work. He grabbed the man’s beret and pulled it over his head, low, then took the AK-47 he’d been holding and began walking, telling his lungs to breathe now, it was all right.

  The guard approached the other warily, either because his timing was off or he’d heard something. Ferguson had anticipated this—he had the SEAL covering him toss a rock in the other direction, and in the half second it took for the sentry to swing around, he sprang. The stock of his MP-5 caught the man in front of the ear; he flew to the ground as if propelled by a cannon.

  “Shit,” said Ferg, afraid he’d killed the bastard.

  He rushed over, kicking the gun away and grabbing one of the plastic restraints from his belt. The sentry was out cold, though he seemed to be breathing. They hauled him over to the side, out of the light, behind a pair of tanks used for welding.

  “You should’ve waited till I was closer,” said Rankin.

  “Blood on your hands,” said Ferguson. “He give you problems?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right.” Ferguson bit his lip; too late to worry about that now. “There’s a guy on the ship near the bow, according to Conners.”

  He went toward the stem, where several lines hung down. They each took a rope, leaving the SEALs to cover the approach below.

  Ferg pulled himself over the rail at the top, pausing to get an idea of what was nearby. The superstructure of the ship blocked off the view of the forward area.

  A ship this size could hold tons and tons of waste. Blow the sucker up in LA harbor, New York, Boston—pick the symbolic target of your choice.

  But his rad counter was still. If they were setting it up as a dirty bomb, either they hadn’t gotten very far, or the waste was still heavily shielded.

  Rankin met him on the other side of the railing. “This way here is clear,” he told Ferguson, pointing to the starboard. “There are some large metal girders or something, like a base for a weapon or a crane or something, beyond the superstructure.”

  Ferg leaned over the side and waved the SEALs up. One stayed at the rear of the deck near the ropes as the other three men moved forward around the side of the ship. The railing ended abruptly; Rankin took a step too close to the edge and nearly fell off.

  Where an oil tanker would have a relatively clear deck forward of the superstructure at the rear of the ship, the Iranian vessel had what looked like a long metal house extending most of its length. While designed to carry ethylene—a colorless, flammable gas—the compartments were being completely renovated, and Ferguson could peer through the open end of the structure and see well into the interior. At the starboard side of the decking area closest to him sat what looked like an oversized rack of bottles, with a rack twisting down toward the hull; some of the mechanism was obscured by tarps.

  “You know what that is?” Ferg asked the SEAL.

  The SEAL—Petty Officer Sean Reid—studied it for a few seconds.

  “Looks like they’re making it into a minelayer,” said Reid, craning his neck so he could see below. “The roof covers up the mechanism. They’ll line the mines up below, right there, they kind of squirt them out over around that spot—I can’t see because of the covers, but probably there’s like a hatch. Slide open.”

  “What kind of mines?” asked Ferg.

  “Well—mines.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It looks like it, sir.”

  The SEAL had a way of saying “sir” that implied it meant, “you dumb shit.”

  Ferguson reached into his shirt pocket for the digital camera. Flipping it to the night-shot setting—it was a near-infrared view—he slid gingerly through the opening of the deck housing and walked forward on a wide piece of wood, apparently something the workmen had placed there, and took some pictures. Below was a large empty compartment with ropes and tools at the bottom.

  All this way, just to find a minelayer. Slott was going to love hearing that.

  So would Alston. Ah well, thought Ferg, give the folks back home something to gloat about.

  He was just starting back when he heard a sound behind him. Before he could even curse, the light burp of AK-47 broke through the night. As he flattened himself against the board, both Rankin and the SEAL nearby opened up on the Iranian watchman, who was firing from the front of the ship.

  “So much for the subtle approach,” said Ferg, half-crawling and half-jumping to the solid deckin
g near the superstructure.

  The three Americans moved swiftly to the stern, where the other SEAL waved them forward. Gunfire erupted near the main entrance to the dry dock; above the crackle of automatic rounds came two sharp snaps, the report of Remington 700 sniper rifles being fired—a pair of SEAL marksmen had found their targets.

  “Left, left,” shouted Rankin, as more gunfire broke out behind them. Following his own instructions, he pivoted, gun on hip, shooting through the clip as two Iranians ran into the semicircle of light.

  “Enough of this shit,” said Ferguson, standing and icing the spotlights with his submachine gun.

  They were about halfway to the fence when a heavy machine gun opened up from the warehouse yard. Its bullets crashed through the lot, throwing a hail of cement shrapnel before them.

  Then another gun picked up the job, its bullets closer.

  “Not going that way,” said Ferguson.

  “Then how are we getting out of here?” said Rankin.

  Ferguson looked back at the ship. The other guard posts were on the city side, near the road.

  “We swim for it,” said Ferguson. “You guys up for it?” he asked the SEALs.

  “Uh, we can make it,” said Reid.

  “Okay. Because I figure that’s going to be the easy way out.” He pushed up the com system’s mike bud as more gunfire flared, this time over near the highway that ran to the east. “Conners, what the hell are you guys doing out there?”

  “We just stopped a truck from coming in.”

  “Good. More reinforcements coming?”

  “Maybe. A lot of shit moving north of you,” said Conners. “What about those machine guns?”

  “They’re a pain in the ass. Look, we’re going to go out by the water.”

  “You sure?” asked Conners.

  “That way you guys can just slip south rather than trying to hold the fort against the entire Iranian Army, such as it is. Listen, they’re working the ship up as a minelayer. Not quite what we were looking for, but they’ll want to know back in Washington.”

  “You’re not going to tell them yourself?” asked Conners.

  “I’ll tell’em, Dad. Don’t fret.” The machine guns began firing again—this time considerably closer. “We’re outta here, boys.”

  Rankin took point, running along the dock area toward the water. As he passed a set of large wooden boxes, he saw an Iranian duck behind cover up near the bow. He waited to fire, closing the gap. Rankin was less than five feet from him when the man leaned out from around a portable generator to see what was going on. The bullets from the American’s Uzi slapped through his skull, tossing blood and bits of bone away like drops of rain brushing dust from a windowsill. Rankin kicked the body over, frowning when he saw the man hadn’t been armed. He swung around quickly, then continued forward. A shadow loomed down from the forecastle of the ship; Rankin threw himself onto his back and emptied his clip in its direction. As he rolled back over and started to reload, the figure reappeared, raising a rifle.

  The burst that took down the Iranian sounded like a quick drumroll on a metal garbage can top. Rankin looked up to see Ferguson running forward, the SEALs trailing behind.

  “Don’t mention it,” Ferg yelled through the com set.

  A five-foot chain-link fence sat at the end of the cement area; beyond it was a level jetty of rocks. Misjudging his height in the dark, Ferguson tore the seat of his pants on the top of the fence, and the scrape burned like a bullet wound.

  Rocks jutted toward the water in a sawed-off W pattern at the base of the fence. The lights of the city to the north shone faintly on the water, making it the color of newspaper that had faded in the sunlight. Ferguson pulled off his boots but left his socks on, waiting at the edge of the jetty as the others caught up.

  “That way,” said Reid, pointing toward the water. “They’ll bring up the raft and meet us. They’ll have the gear.”

  “Shit,” said Rankin.

  “If you need help, holler,” said Reid.

  “I can fuckin’ swim,” said Rankin. “My gun’s going to get screwed up.”

  “Don’t be a sissy, Skippy,” said Ferguson, slipping into the water. “Pop’ll buy us new toys when we get home.”

  Rankin cursed as he jumped into the water behind the CIA officer. It was shallow—barely reaching his knees. It was also cold; he started to shiver as he waded out behind them, his Uzi strapped to his back.

  About fifty yards from shore, Ferguson started to feel tired. He stopped for a moment, treading water, hoping that the burn in his shoulders would dissipate. The current pulled him north, in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go; he started stroking again, kicking harder and putting his head and shoulder against the low run of waves the way a running back might try and wedge himself into a line. Reid stroked about five yards beyond him, guided toward the rendezvous point by his waterproof GPS device. A set of low buoys lay in the distance ahead.

  “How we doing?” Ferg asked, as Reid stopped to let the others catch up.

  “Got a ways to go,” he told him. “You all right?”

  “Not a problem for me,” said Ferg.

  “I’m fine,” snapped Rankin on the left.

  “Let’s go then,” said Reid.

  “If I wanted to do all this swimming, I would have joined the fuckin’ Navy,” said Rankin.

  The SEAL team leader tried to talk Conners out of going on the raft; he wanted him to go back to the ASDS.

  “We may have to swim from the channel up there, and that’s a long swim,” the leader of the SEAL team said. But Conners refused; he thought he’d be more useful with them. Not only did his com system connect directly with the rest of the team, but he had the sat phone in case they got stranded ashore. Besides, he wasn’t about to swim out to the rendezvous alone, and it seemed to him the team couldn’t spare even a single man to play shepherd.

  MC didn’t argue, mostly because there wasn’t time. As they set the raft in the water, the team members took up a post and oar without a word passing between them. Conners put his knee on the inflated gunwale, doing his best to copy the man at the port bow ahead of him as they stroked into the black-pearl darkness. There wasn’t a special SEAL stroke per se, yet the men had a certain quiet rhythm that propelled the raft forward quickly. Perhaps it came from hours and hours of practice in the cold and dark, or maybe it was injected during BUD/S somehow, the basic underwater demolition /SEALs training camp where recruits to the program were made or, more often, broken. Conners could only admire the teamwork and do his best not to screw it up.

  They paddled for a good five minutes, then on some silent signal stopped—a vessel was making its way down the coastline, a pair of searchlights splaying out toward the shore.

  “Patrol boat,” the master chief told Conners as the craft cut its speed and the lights stopped moving toward them. It cut across their path. “It’s a little north of our guys. James, Fu—meet them.”

  The two SEALs slipped into the water, pulling on masks and fins and taking extra Draeger gear for the others with them. The LAR V Draeger diving gear was a self-contained, “closed-circuit” breathing apparatus. The green oxygen tank held pure oxygen. As the diver exhaled, his breath recirculated through a special filter that took out carbon dioxide. One of the system’s major advantages was the lack of telltale oxygen bubbles as the diver swam. It was also extremely lightweight, though its size was one limit on its endurance.

  A minute after the SEALs had disembarked, MC raised his hand forward. He and the other SEAL began paddling, pushing the boat toward the open water. The patrol boat, meanwhile, circled north. Its searchlights swung together.

  “Tommy,” said the team leader.

  The man at the starboard bow slid back into the well of the tiny boat, pulling gear from one of the waterproof bags. A heavy machine gun on the Iranian patrol boat began to fire. Tommy rose, and there was a sharp crack—one of the lights went dark. The SEAL steadied his sniper rifle and fired
again, but the second light stayed lit. It swung in their direction as the patrol craft’s engines revved.

  “You owe the team a case,” laughed MC.

  The gun cracked again, and the second light went out. A half second later, the low, sharp rap and fizz of a grenade canister leaving a launcher filled Conners’s ears. A heavy machine gun on the patrol boat began firing.

  “You owe a case, too,” snickered Tommy from the front, as the grenade exploded well aft of the charging patrol boat. The grenade launcher whapped again, and this time it found its target, exploding on the forward deck of the Iranian vessel, where its shrapnel killed one of the machine gunners.

  That didn’t stop it. Conners heard a shriek and instinctually ducked; a second later the rubber raft pitched hard to the starboard, nearly throwing him into the water. He knew the shell—fired from a 76 mm cannon—had missed, but there was more gunfire and more explosions, and the thick shadow of the patrol craft kept coming toward them.

  “Into the water,” said MC. Before Conners could push himself over the side he found himself submerged. He struggled for his breathing gear, lungs starting to burst He bit water, then something hard; a giant fist grabbed him around the chest and spun him around. Something punched him in his face, and he felt his legs starting to spasm. His age and relative inexperience in the water had caught up with him, and he realized that MC hadn’t been overprotective.

  Screw that, he thought, pushing back to the surface.

  “Breathe,” said a voice as he cleared his head. The SEAL team leader was treading water a few inches away. Conners grabbed the Draeger mouthpiece and shoved it between his teeth.

  “You swim OK for a soldier,” said MC when he gave it back.

  “For a geezer, you mean.”

  MC—who was probably about his age—laughed. “Come on. We got work to do.”

  “I’m right behind you,” said Conners.

  When the shooting began, Ferg dived, stroking hard in the direction where Reid had been. Adrenaline sped through his veins; he broke water as a fresh string of bullets crossed just to his right, more like bees dive-bombing an enemy than hard and vicious pieces of lead smacking into the water.