Seal Team Seven 01 - Seal Team Seven

by Keith Douglass

  Together, they fell through the night until the luminous dials of their wrist altimeters read five hundred feet. Then they pulled their rip-cords; Murdock could hear the pops and cracks of the other chutes around him an instant before his own parasail deployed, yanking him upright with a sensation that felt like he was heading straight back into the star-strewn sky.

  His chute clear, he released his rucksack, letting it dangle at the end of its tether. Hauling on his risers, he guided the parasail into a gentle turn against the wind, killing his forward momentum. He could see the submarine now, a long, black shadow against the luminous sea.

  He prepared for the landing, loosening the left side of his reserve chute, donning his swim fins, and readying his quick release by turning it to the unlocked position and removing the safety clip. One hundred feet above the water, he steadied his chute with his face into the wind and put his fingers over his Capewell Releases, which secured the parachute straps to his harness at his shoulders.

  Moments later, he splashed into the water, pressing the left-side Capewell Release and releasing the chute before he was fully submerged. Underwater, he released the second Capewell, then hit the quick-release box to free the leg straps. The harness fell away, leaving him free in the ocean.

  The Santa Fe rose like a black steel cliff from the sea, less than fifty yards away. Pushing his rucksack before him like a swim board, Murdock headed toward the sub. Around him, he heard the gentle splashes of other members of the unit. Third Platoon, SEAL Seven, had arrived.

  Sunday, 22 May

  2220 hours (Zulu +3) U.S.S. Santa Fe North of the Seychelles islands

  For nearly eight hours after the SEALs had been plucked from the water off the coast of Somalia, the Los Angeles attack sub Santa Fe had been running south at her maximum speed of better than thirty-five knots. Her goal was a place on the charts, a featureless spot in the ocean where, if Yuduki Maru continued on her steady, northward course, submarine and freighter would meet.

  The SEALs spent most of that time in the Santa Fe's torpedo room, which had been vacated by the regular crew. The space was cramped to the point of claustrophobia, and the passage was monotonous. Santa Fe's crew seemed to draw apart from the visitors, recognizing them as fellow professionals but unwilling to cross the wall of reserve that separated one group from the other. Submarine crews, like SEALS, were well known for their silence around people not their own.

  For the last several hours of the passage, Murdock and DeWitt were guests of the Captain in the control room. Commander George Halleck was a lean, taciturn man, all creases and sharp edges. It was well past sunset on Sunday, though the only indication of day or night beyond the sub's steel bulkheads was the fact that the compartment was red-lit, a measure that preserved the officers' night vision against the need to use the periscopes or to surface.

  "We have sonar contact with your target, gentlemen," Halleck said. The three of them, plus Lieutenant Commander Ed Bagley, the boat's Executive Officer, were leaning over the control room's plot table, where a back-lit chart of the area rested under transparent plastic. The Santa Fe's skipper tapped the end of a south-to-north line with his grease pencil. "About here. Course unchanged, still zero-one-two. Speed eighteen knots."

  "They're making it easy for us," the boat's XO said with a grin. He was taller than the Captain, and heavier, with thick eyeglasses that gave him an owlishly unmartial appearance.

  "How far?" Murdock asked.

  "Approximately thirty miles," Halleck replied. "Exact range can't be determined by passive sonar, of course, but my best people have their ears on, and they're pretty sure of the number."

  Passive sonar--listening for the engine noise of the target--was preferable to the more accurate and informative active sonar, because it didn't give away the sub's presence.

  "Has anybody else tried approaching them?" DeWitt wanted to know.

  "About the time we were fishing you boys out of the water," Bagley said, "they skirted within thirty nautical miles of the Seychelles Islands. Half the Seychellan navy turned out--three patrol boats, actually--but they didn't come closer than a couple of miles and no shots were fired. It was more like an escort than an attempt to stop them."

  "There's also this," the Captain said, handing Murdock a black-and-white photograph. "That was transmitted to us by satellite an hour ago. The time stamp says it happened about an hour before that."

  "Still after sunset," Murdock observed.

  "Affirmative."

  The "photograph" had actually been taken in radar, so details like hull numbers and slender masts were not visible and the water, daylight-bright, had the look of wrinkled metal. Still, the shot showed a remarkably detailed image of a ship, smaller than Yuduki Maru and riding lower in the water. Something like a white bed sheet had been stretched above her deck. "That's Hormuz," Murdock said.

  "So the Iranians rendezvoused with them?" DeWitt added.

  "Actually, we don't know that for sure. If they did rendezvous, it was at a point where we had no satellite coverage, and our AWACS radar simply didn't have the resolution to be certain. They at least came very close, certainly within a mile or two. Hormuz is now five miles off Yuduki Maru's starboard beam, traveling parallel to her course but quickly falling behind. She can only make nine or ten knots, top speed."

  "I guess that confirms the Iranian connection, though, doesn't it, Lieutenant?" DeWitt said.

  "I damn well guess it does." Murdock tapped the sheet in the photograph. "What's this? A tarp?"

  "Probably," Halleck said, rubbing his chin. "A tarp or canvas rigged as an awning. Whatever they're doing, they don't want our satellites or recon planes to get a good look."

  "The question, then, is whether they used that hole in our satellite coverage to transfer part of Yuduki Maru's cargo to the Hormuz."

  "Or if they moved soldiers from the Hormuz to the Yuduki Maru," DeWitt pointed out. "We'll have to assume both," Murdock decided. "It'll be Plan Alfa." In their planning sessions, they'd allowed for the possibility that Hormuz might rendezvous with the plutonium freighter before the SEALs could deploy. Plan Bravo would have sent Blue Squad aboard the Yuduki Maru, with Gold Squad waiting in their CRRCs as a backup. Alfa called for Blue to take the Japanese ship while Gold Squad boarded the Iranian Hormuz. It meant there would be no immediate backup for either team once they boarded the ships. The Fourth Platoon was now deploying to Masirah, just in case something went wrong in Third Platoon's assault.

  Murdock suppressed the thought, and the surge of adrenaline that accompanied it. If something went wrong, the mission would be in the hands of Lieutenant Mancuso and Fourth Platoon.

  It also meant that, in all likelihood, he and his teammates would be dead.

  "We have one other joker in the deck," Halleck said. "Sonar has picked up another contact pacing the Yuduki Maru. It may be submerged."

  "The Iranian Kilo."

  "Looks that way. The sonar profile looks like a conventional sub. Stealthy, no reactor coolant pump noise or anything like that. She may be trailing the plutonium ship by another four or five miles."

  "Have they heard us?"

  "Not so far as we can tell. There's been no change in her course or speed since we picked her up."

  "How big a problem is she for you, Captain?"

  Halleck grimaced, then shrugged. "For us, not much. The big danger is whether she's there as escort, or as insurance."

  "What do you mean, Captain?" DeWitt asked.

  "He means that if we board the Yuduki Maru and take down the tangos before she reaches port, the Iranians might decide to put a fish into her."

  "That's about the size of it," Bagley said. "Washington would have the devil of a time proving the ship hadn't been blown up by us, on purpose or by accident."

  "And we get blamed for contaminating half the African coast," DeWitt said. "Cute."

  "Will you be able to take her out?" Murdock asked.

  "We won't, no," Halleck replied. "Not without letting th
ose people aboard the freighter know we're out here. But the Newport News is already getting into position. They'll take care of the Kilo when you go aboard."

  "Good." Murdock nodded. "How much longer to drop-off?"

  Halleck consulted the large clock mounted on the bulkhead at the forward end of the control room. "I'd say another twenty minutes to get into position. We'll keep running ahead of them then, and you can leave any time after that."

  "Can't be too much longer, or the separation between Hormuz and the Yuduki Maru will become too great. We'd better get ready to swim then. If you'll excuse us, Captain?"

  "Of course."

  The platoon had been preparing for their swim for the past several hours, going over their rebreather apparatus, weapons, and other gear with the loving care and attention that had long been the hallmark of the SEALS. Each man was wearing a black wet suit and SCUBA gear, and his face had been completely blackened with waterproof paint. Weapons had been sealed, and explosive charges and detonators were stored in waterproof pouches. While they didn't want to sink either of the target ships, the theory was that if they couldn't capture them, the SEALs might at least slow them by damaging some critical piece of machinery.

  That, at least, was the idea. The gap between theory and practice, however, was often turned into a yawning abyss by Murphy's Law. All the SEALs could do was try to be prepared for anything that might go wrong ... and stay flexible enough to meet the problems they simply could not anticipate.

  There are several ways to egress a submarine. Simplest would have been for Halleck to bring the Santa Fe up until just the top of her sail was above water, with the SEALs going out through the sail cockpit. Yuduki Maru had radar, however, and it was possible that even so small a target as that would be picked up at a range of less than ten miles, so the platoon egressed, as planned, through the after lockout compartment.

  Because of the positioning of their water intakes, modern submarines cannot rest on the bottom as their World War II predecessors could. Besides, the ocean here was deep; they were over the Somali Basin, which plunged to better than five thousand meters--over three miles straight down. The Santa Fe, now traveling north some eight miles ahead of the Yuduki Maru and about ten miles ahead of the Hormuz, slowed to a crawl, maintaining just speed enough to maintain way, her conning tower scraping along just beneath the surface.

  Two by two, because the chamber was too small for more, the men of SEAL Seven, Third Platoon, began locking out of the escape trunk. Murdock was last out, giving each man's gear a final check before he climbed the ladder into the narrow cylinder that was a floodable extension of the sub's pressure hull. He went out with MacKenzie, squeezing into the chamber opposite the big Texan and using the intercom, called a 31-MC, to alert the sub's crew that they were ready to go. Turning a valve flooded the chamber; when the water was above the side door, they pushed it open, emerging in a recess in the Santa Fe's afterdeck. The other twelve men had already broken out the gear that had been stored there after their paradrop; four Combat Rubber Raiding Craft from the C-130's pallet canister had been rolled up, lashed together, and stowed in the deck compartment between the sub's outer and pressure hulls, along with the boat's engines and other necessary gear.

  They worked swiftly and surely, in an almost total, inky darkness penetrated only incompletely by the small lights the men carried. Both the Santa Fe and the SEALs were still moving slowly forward, and the water pressure as the current boiled aft past the sail was like a stiff wind. Air bubbles tinkled and burbled in the darkness as they rose from SCUBA regulators. SCUBA gear was being used for this mission rather than rebreathers because the final approach would be on the surface, rather than underwater, and there would be no danger of the bubbles giving away the divers' positions.

  In moments, the CRRCs were freed and inflated from pressure bottles, rising to the surface accompanied by their retinue of frogmen. Their lights were extinguished as they rode the rubber rafts toward the surface. In minutes, the four rafts were bobbing on a gentle swell on the surface. Stars peeped from among scattered clouds overhead. The horizon, visible only where the stars ended, was empty.

  The SEALs rolled aboard their CRRCs and began unshipping the engines and securing their gear. SCUBA tanks, masks, and flippers were removed and stowed. Flak jackets and combat harnesses went on over wet-suit tops; radio headsets were slipped into place and plugged into belt Motorola units. They wore the SEALs' usual mix of headgear floppy boonie hats, woolen balaclavas, or a dark green scarf folded into a triangle and worn over the head like a bandana. Under their swim fins, they wore thick-soled, rubber-cleated boots, specially designed footwear for climbing slippery steel. No words were spoken during the entire process, and radio silence was strictly observed save for the brief clicks of the necessary radio checks; each movement, each act had been practiced countless times by every man in the team. A hand signal, barely visible in the night, a thumbs-up, and the two sets of rafts began drawing apart, propelled by silenced engines that gave off little noise above a soft purr. The plan called for them to split into two groups of two, Murdock's group heading due South to intercept the Yuduki Maru, DeWitt's squad bearing to the southeast to close with the more distant Hormuz.

  The Blue Squad rafts traveled side by side at twelve knots, meeting and breasting each swell. Murdock cradled a hand-held radar unit, intermittently sending out a pulse to check on the Yuduki Maru's position. The signal, deliberately tailored to mimic that put out by aircraft search radars, would probably not be picked up at all by the freighter; if it was, it would be dismissed as another of the aircraft that had been prowling the skies around the hijacked plutonium ship for the past several days.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Yuduki Maru remained steadily on course. Soon, the SEALs could actually see her, bow-on, her bridge brilliantly illuminated and with running lights to port and starboard, at her prow and at her masthead. Evidently, the hijackers were doing nothing to hide her presence. It was almost as though they were daring the SEALs to attack.

  The lights provided the SEALs with one tremendous advantage, however. Guards on her deck would ruin their night vision every time they looked inboard; the SEALS, black-faced, in black garb, aboard black CRRCs, were all but invisible on the black water. The chances that shipboard guards would notice the approach of the SEAL boats were sharply reduced.

  Three hundred yards from the Yuduki Maru's bow, the two CRRCs began to separate. MacKenzie, Garcia, and Higgins in one boat steered for the freighter's starboard side. Murdock, Roselli, Brown, and Ellsworth made for the port. Stretched between the two rafts was a two-football-field length of light-weight, slender, but very strong wire rope; the CRRCs drew apart until they were two hundred yards apart and the cable was stretched taut between them. The range to the plutonium ship closed, more gradually now as the cable's drag slowed the CRRCs. The swell was growing worse, sending the rubber boats up each gentle but irresistibly passing mound of water, then sending them sliding man-deep into the trough that followed.

  The Yuduki Maru loomed out of the night, her bow wake a ghostly white mustache shining in the darkness, her hull a black cliff towering over the rafts, her superstructure a bulky white castle riding the sky above the aft third of the ship. The freighter passed squarely between the two CRRCs, the throb of its engines booming out of the silence of the night.

  Murdock killed the CRRC's engine as the wire rope snagged against the huge ship's bow. With a jerk, the rubber boat's course was reversed; the SEALs clung to handholds set into the gunwales as the Yuduki Maru began dragging them relentlessly forward at eighteen knots, a sleigh ride that carried them up and down the ocean swell with enough velocity to send a cascade of spray over the CRRC's bow. Inexorably, the raft was swung toward the freighter's side. The SEALs were ready as the rubber side thumped heavily against the ship's massive steel cliff, fending off the big ship with gloved hands. Brown secured the raft in place with a limpet magnet and a length of strong line. Wake and ocean swell combined
to send the CRRC bobbing up and down at the Yuduki Maru's side. Swiftly, Ellsworth dropped a hydrophone cable over the side; Roselli was already extending a long, telescoping aluminum pole with a hook on the end.

  Fully extended, the climbing pole reached thirty feet, high enough that Roselli, supported upright by the others in the boat, was able to snag a deck stanchion with the rubberized tip.

  "Solid," Roselli said, giving the pole a hard, downward tug. The rise and fall of the raft at the ship's side threatened to knock both SEAL and extension pole into the sea, but he hung on, riding the motion with practiced skill. The Yuduki Maru's stern was only twenty yards astern, and the turning of her twin screws filled the air with a deep-throated throbbing.

  Murdock nodded, then reached for the trigger for the hydrophone. This was a compact, battery-powered device designed to transmit data via a burst of high-frequency sound. Swiftly, he punched in a code group, three numbers that, transmitted through the water to the submerged Santa Fe, indicated that the SEALs had made contact with the Yuduki Maru and were going aboard.

  On the other side of the freighter, MacKenzie and his people ought to be going through the same motions, but Murdock and the SEALs in his CRRC would operate as though they were alone. With the message transmitted and their gear ready, Murdock slapped Roselli twice on the shoulder and jabbed his thumb skyward. The chief nodded, then set one rubber-cleated sole against the Yuduki Maru's hull, took a boost as the CRRC rose sharply beneath him with the next wave, and started walking up the ship's side, pulling his way along the climbing pole as though it were a rope and the sheer, steel-plated side of the freighter were simply a glossy black wall of rock.