The mock battle was already very nearly over. Murdock heard another muffled three-round burst… then one more… and then Dunn, still listening to the radio net, announced, “Exercise complete.”
Wentworth’s thumb snicked the button on his stopwatch, and he peered at the final time with a skeptical stare. “Two-twenty-one,” he said. “Slow… damned slow!”
Dunn, meanwhile, changed channels on his radio and spoke into his pencil mike. “All right, Freddy. Send ’em on through!”
Two more hummers drove up a few minutes later, both crowded with men. As the vehicles creaked to a stop and the doors banged open, Murdock immediately recognized the passengers spilling from them and onto the street.
A young U.S. Navy lieutenant j.g. with a SEAL’s Budweiser on dress whites totally at odds with Murdock’s green fatigues snapped to attention and saluted crisply. “Good morning, Lieutenant! Gold Platoon reporting for duty!”
“Two Eyes,” Murdock said slowly, watching as seven enlisted sailors spilled into a rough line along the street. “What the hell is this?”
The j.g. was Ed DeWitt, known as “Two Eyes” for his position as “2IC,” the platoon’s second-in-command. “I guess Washington decided you couldn’t handle the SAS all by yourself, Skipper,” he said, grinning. He handed a bulky manila envelope to Murdock. “They sent us over to help you out.”
Dubiously, Murdock accepted the envelope, unwound the length of twine sealing the flap, and glanced briefly at the thick sheaf of orders inside. The cover sheet on top told him what he needed to know. Stripped of its Navyese jargon and bureaucratic circumlocutions, it informed him that NAVSPECWARGRU-2—that was the Navy’s Special Warfare Group stationed at Norfolk — had been placed on alert pending the possible unfolding of a terrorist scenario somewhere in northern Europe. First Platoon, SEAL Seven, was directed to continue with its current mission — meaning the exchange training program with the SAS at Dorset — but to maintain an alert readiness state in anticipation of further orders. To this end, First Platoon’s Gold Squad was being transferred from Norfolk to Dorset. Operational equipment and expendables would be arriving on a MACV flight at Lakenheath by late tomorrow.
There was no word as to what the terrorist scenario might be, but Murdock was certain that the intelligence reports filtering back both from the interrogation of the Korean woman at Lakenheath and from the BKA in Wiesbaden must have gotten someone back in CONUS pretty damned well stirred up.
And about time too. Too often, especially lately, the White House had been totally adrift when it came to reacting to developments overseas. Maybe this time someone back there had finally read an intel brief on smuggled nukes and been scared enough to forget about apple-polishing, ass-kissing, and sound bites on the evening news.
Maybe.
Murdock tucked the packet of orders under his arm and let his gaze run down the line of men. Gunner’s Mate First Class Miguel “Rattler” Fernandez, Gold Squad’s big-muscled 60-gunner. Radioman First Class Ron “Bearcat” Holt. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ben “Kos” Kosciuszko. Torpedoman’s Mate Second Class Eric Nicholson, variously called Red for his hair color, or “Nickel” for his last name. Mineman Second Class “Scotty” Frazier.
The seventh member of Gold Squad technically was Jaybird Sterling, but Murdock had shifted him at least temporarily to Blue Squad the week before. On paper, Third Platoon consisted of two officers and twelve enlisted men, but they’d suffered some casualties in recent missions; “Doc” Ellsworth was still recovering from a sprained ankle he’d gotten during a HAHO drop into Yugoslav Macedonia the month before, while “Boomer” Garcia had been taken off the active list after being shot through the lung. A new man sent out to replace Boomer, “Nick the Greek” Papagos, was now on TAD to Athens in the wake of the Macedonian op, all of which had left Third Platoon’s Blue Squad two men short. Murdock had transferred Sterling to even out the two squads at six men apiece.
Only now, apparently, there was another newbie, a face in the line of SEALs that Murdock didn’t recognize. “What’s your name, sailor?”
“Mineman Second Class Greg Johnson, sir,” the man snapped back. He had a powerful, muscular build, as did most SEALs, but he looked so young and had his hair shaved so close that Murdock was put in mind more of a high school linebacker than a Navy SPECWAR expert. “The guys all call me Skeeter.”
“You’re Ellsworth’s replacement?”
“I guess so, sir. They, uh, they didn’t really tell me anything. They just told me to pack my gear and go. Sir.”
Murdock looked him up and down. Johnson seemed to be an unlikely replacement for the wild and often unpredictable HM2 Ellsworth… stiff and formal, the yes-sir polish of a raw FNG still as sharply evident as a fresh coat of paint. Murdock noticed that Johnson alone of all the men there was not wearing a Budweiser pinned to his shirt. “How long since Coronado?” he asked.
“Three months, sir. They sent me to Fort Benning to learn parachuting out of BUD/S, then back to California for SDV school. After that, it was straight to Virginia Beach.”
Murdock nodded. Graduates of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school at Coronado, California, were put on a six-month probationary period, followed by a session with a review board before they could pin on their SEAL insignia. Training alone — even the rigors of Hell Week — did not make a SEAL. He wondered how the kid would fit in with the rest of the team.
“Bus driver, huh?” Murdock said, referring to the SEALs’ swimmer delivery vehicles, or SDVs.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be filling some pretty big shoes, son,” Murdock told him.
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Good. You can start by dropping at least every other ‘sir.’ It makes me feel old.” He looked up at the rest of the squad. “Well, gentlemen, all I can say is, welcome to England.”
“Great to be here, L-T,” Kos said pleasantly. “When do we get to kill something?”
“Yeah,” Holt added. “We’re ready to prowl and growl!”
“Loot and shoot!” Rattler exclaimed.
“Yeah, well let’s just belay the ‘loot and shoot’ stuff,” Murdock told them. “The British are our allies. At least so far. Colonel Wentworth, do you think your people can find barracks space for eight more shooters?”
“I think we should be able to accommodate you, Lieutenant,” Wentworth said. “I’m beginning to wonder about you chaps, though. Haven’t had this many Yanks running around underfoot since D-Day.”
“If I were you, Colonel,” Murdock told him, “I’d place every bar, pub, and brothel in a fifty-kilometer radius of this base on full alert. I’m not entirely sure whether to compare this bunch to D-Day… or the Blitz.”
* * *
Three hours later, Murdock was sitting on a folding metal chair in First Troop’s ready room, going over the stack of paperwork from Norfolk sheet by mind-numbing sheet. So far, his orders were typically vague, and as nearly as he could distill them, required only that he keep himself and his men in a state of readiness and take no direct action unless said action was specifically directed by CO-NAVSPECWARGRU-2, which was to say Admiral Bainbridge.
A British Army orderly stuck his head into the room. “Lieutenant Murdock, sir?”
“That’s me.”
“Telephone for you, sir. Main desk. Overseas call.”
“I’m coming.”
He wondered who the caller might be. Washington? He doubted that they would be moving quite that fast. The platoon’s combat gear and other equipment hadn’t even arrived yet.
He picked up the phone and punched the blinking, white-lit button. “Lieutenant Murdock.”
“Blake?” a familiar, accented voice said. “This is Lieutenant Hopke.”
“Yes, Werner! What can I do for you?”
“I… I fear I have some bad news, Blake. There has been another incident. Inge has been kidnapped.”
“Shit! When? How did it happen?”
“This morning. In
front of her apartment.”
“Didn’t you guys have security on her?”
The voice on the other end of the line sounded tired. “Ja, Blake. We did. He was shot down in the street.”
“Who did it?” As if he didn’t know. Anger flared white and hot deep within Murdock’s mind. Somehow, he kept his voice calm. “Have they made any kind of contact with the authorities.”
“We have heard nothing, but we must assume it was the same group that made the attempt on Friday. I probably should say nothing more. This is supposed to be a secure line, but…”
“Understood.” The fact that the Red Army Faction, or the People’s Revolution or whatever else they were calling themselves these days, had been keeping a close watch on Inge Schmidt suggested that the BKA’s security might have been compromised in other ways as well. Informants within the organization, taps on the telephones… modern terrorist organizations were often as well provided for in the intelligence department as were the military units tasked with hunting them down.
Sometimes, Murdock thought, the opposition’s intel was a hell of a lot better than what the SEALs had available.
Inge… kidnapped by terrorists? After thanking Hopke and telling him to keep him informed on every development, Murdock hung up the phone, his mind racing. The only possible motive the RAF had for such an act was their need for intelligence. With a terrible, burning clarity, Murdock could see the step-by-step reasoning that must have led the terrorist leadership to issue the orders to grab her. Unidentified Americans — members of the U.S. military, no less — were consulting with the BKA and their Komissar computer. That suggested an interest in possible terrorist activities.
Item: Murdock and MacKenzie had gone to Wiesbaden in the first place to check up on what Komissar had in its files about the two North Koreans Chun and Pak.
Item: Chun had been captured in the company of RAF and Irish Provo terrorists, involved in something called the “People’s Revolution.” She’d had traces of radioactivity on her clothing and skin that suggested that she’d recently been close to something nasty… like the plutonium in a poorly shielded nuclear warhead.
Item: While there was nothing definite, there were hints and rumors about that a major terrorist group was planning something big… and soon. A nuclear warhead would certainly qualify as “something big” in anybody’s book.
Item: Inge had been kidnapped, probably by the same organization, probably to find out what she knew about American interest or involvement in European terrorist ops. The fact that they’d kidnapped her now suggested that the “something big” on his list must be going down damned soon, or they wouldn’t have risked tipping their hand to the BKA or the SAS.
He thought about what Inge must be going through right now, and his neatly ordered chain of logic dissolved. Colonel Wentworth and British intelligence might disdain torture as a means for getting information out of a captive, but Murdock knew that the opposition held no such compunctions.
God, Inge… it was my fault. If you hadn’t been seen spending time with me…
That kind of circular and self-destructive thinking would get him exactly nowhere. As he walked back to the SAS ready room, he concentrated on replacing the guilt and the fear with a cold, diamond-hard lust for the PRF bastards who’d orchestrated this.
One thing he was certain of. Whether the final orders ever came through from Washington or not… Murdock was going to find the people responsible for kidnapping Inge Schmidt.
And then he was going to kill them… if he had to force-feed them their own basement nuke one gram of plutonium at a time.
11
Tuesday, May 1
0115 hours
U.S. oil tanker Noramo Pride
The North Sea
“Captain? They’re asking to talk to you.”
Captain Dennis M. Scott swiveled in his vinyl-backed chair, his face stage-lit by the eerie green glow of the radar screen on the bridge console a few feet away. Greg Pelso, his radio officer, had emerged from the dim-lit recesses of the aft bridge space. He sounded both excited and worried.
Scott grunted. “Kathy? How far out now?”
“About ten miles, Captain,” Kathy Moskowiec, the ship’s third mate, announced from the bridge radar console. “Bearing one-nine-five. Closing at one-twenty.”
“Anything else close by?”
“Nothing new. That fishing boat’s still in our wake, about three miles back. Rico Gallant and Perth Amboy are to the north and north-northwest, eight miles, and I’ve got returns from the Viking and Ann production centers to the southwest. The rest is sea clutter.”
“Very well.” Behind them, just ninety miles astern, lay the eastern entrance to the English Channel, and one of the busiest waterways in the world, but if it wasn’t for the ship’s radar, it would be easy to look out those enormous, slanted wheelhouse windows and imagine that the tanker was completely alone in all that vast, black ocean.
It was pitch black out, a raw, moonless night with an overcast sky and five-foot seas that managed to make themselves felt even aboard so large and massive a vessel as the Noramo Pride. Earlier, it had been raining, with gusts of wind approaching thirty knots. Now, however, it was simply raw, wet, and blustery… in short, a typical mid-spring night on the North Sea.
Though not a supertanker, the Pride was a true monster, 883 feet long, 138 feet abeam, and massing some 120,000 deadweight tons. From keel to main deck she measured sixty-eight feet, and when fully loaded, her thirteen cargo tanks could carry some 35.5 million gallons of crude oil. Her crew numbered twenty-four. Moments before, they’d received a radioed message for assistance from a military helicopter a few miles to the south, a Royal Dutch Marine Luchtvaardienst flight out of de Kooij. Now it was up to Scott to make the decision about what they would — or could — do about it.
Scott slid out of the captain’s chair and followed Pelso back to the Noramo Pride’s radio shack, a small area across from the chart room made cramped by the consoles and electronic gear arrayed across three of the bulkheads. Reaching up to his face, he eased his glasses off his nose and rubbed his eyes. He still felt groggy and not entirely awake. Until twenty minutes ago he’d been asleep — his bridge watch had ended at 2200 hours — but they’d called him when the distress message had come through.
Pelso picked up a microphone and held it close to his mouth. “Royal Netherlands Flight Three-one, this is the Noramo Pride,” he said, holding down the transmit key. “Do you read me, over?”
“Noramo Pride, this is Flight Three-one!” came from the speakers mounted high on the bulkhead. The voice, speaking English with a thick, north European accent, was tight and carried a note of urgency; behind it, Scott could hear the hiss of static and the dull, rapidly throbbing boom that meant the speaker was aboard a helicopter. “We copy. Go ahead.”
“Three-one, I have the captain here.” Pelso handed the mike to Scott.
“Royal Netherlands Flight Three-one, this is Captain Scott. What is the exact nature of your emergency?”
“Ah, Captain. We’re getting some very severe high-frequency vibration here. Probably means some trouble associated with the engine, a defective clutch, perhaps, or a bad bearing. We need to set down someplace, and quickly! I formally request permission to land on your deck. Over.”
“Flight Three-one, the Noramo Pride is an oil tanker, not an aircraft carrier. Trying to land a helicopter aboard, a malfunctioning helicopter—”
“Captain,” the voice interrupted. “This is an emergency or I would not have made the request. We have no warning lights showing. The engine is not overheating and there is no indication of fire on board. But I cannot possibly make it back to shore. I need a place to touch down, and your ship is the only choice available. I have fifteen passengers on board this aircraft. Do you have any idea how long they’ll survive if I have to set down in the sea? Over!”
“I read you, Three-one. Wait one.”
Scott thought hard for several seconds,
trying to banish the grogginess and see the situation straight. For obvious reason, oil tanker skippers were hesitant about letting any potential fire hazard approach their mammoth charges… and hazard in that context didn’t just mean a fire, but any possible source of a spark. That most certainly included turning rotors or possibly faulty engines. Still, tankers often received supplies, mail, or changes of personnel at sea via helicopter, and if the pilot was any good there shouldn’t be a major problem having them touch down. Besides, there was a moral obligation. All vessels were required to go to the aid of any other party in distress at sea.
That helo pilot was very right about one thing. The water temperature in this part of the North Sea right now was something like forty degrees… frigid enough to kill an unprotected man in scant minutes, and in the middle of the night, it would be impossible to find everyone in time. Men were going to die if that helicopter ditched at sea.
At the same time, Scott was responsible for the safety of his immense charge and her crew.
Fortunately, the Noramo Pride was riding empty at the moment, her only cargo some ten and a half million gallons of ballast sea water, pumped aboard to hold the tanker deep and steady in the rough seas. There was always the danger of explosive gases trapped in her below-deck spaces, of course, but the ship possessed a state-of-the-art inert gas system, which pumped exhaust gases from the ship’s engine into the empty tankage spaces below her forward deck, replacing the oxygen there so that explosive or inflammable gases couldn’t ignite. It ought to be safe enough. If the pilot seemed to be having difficulties during the approach, Scott could always request that he ditch in the sea nearby while the tanker’s crew stood by in lifeboats, ready to haul them out of the water.
In this heavy a sea, the rescue operation alone would put Scott’s own people at serious risk. It would be a lot simpler and safer all the way around to let that Dutch helicopter set down on his forward deck.
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