Picking up his glass, he turned and leaned against the bar, watching approvingly as Nicholson dropped into a perfect Hwrang-do defensive stance, lightly touched a charging bullMarine, then stepped aside as the Marine hurtled past and collided noisily with a chair. MacKenzie had been worried about the platoon's morale, but as he thought about it, maybe what the boys needed most was a good fight. He winced as Holt, risen now from the bar-room floor like a fury from Hell, seized two leathernecks and slammed them together, head to head. Yeah, something to get the adrenaline flowing, something to remind them of how good it was to work together.

Fernandez and Garcia were back to back now, covering each other as they took on separate frontal assaults. Good... good! A Marine brought a chair down on Boomer, smashing him to the floor. Fernandez whirled, leaped, and brought the assailant down with a slashing kick to the face.

A Marine grabbed Doc Ellsworth in a bear hug. "Watch it, fella," Doc said. "I'm a non-combatant." Suddenly the Marine's face turned purple and he crumpled to the deck at Doc's feet, gasping for breath. Doc fastidiously brushed himself off, looked down at his writhing victim, and said, "If that pain persists or if you notice any blood in your urine, come see me during sick call tomorrow."

Holt slammed into the bar next to MacKenzie. "Damn it, Big Mac, ain't you gonna help?"

"I am helping," MacKenzie replied. He took a sip, then lowered his glass. "I'm not putting you all on report for fighting. Oh-oh, watch it there."

A few feet away a Marine grabbed Fernandez from behind and was trying to hit him with a bottle. Holt roared, the sound startling enough that the Marine dropped the bottle just as Holt lunged forward, tackling both men and driving them to the deck.

And suddenly, it was very, very quiet in Samelli's.

"Clear!" Boomer called, standing astride a limp Marine.

"Clear!" Holt said.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

"Clear here!"

"And clear!" The other SEALs chimed in from various parts of the bar, and MacKenzie did a quick head count. Six SEALS, still on their feet. Counting him, seven. Twelve Marines down. Very down.

MacKenzie sighed, then reached down and turned the head of one unconscious Marine so he wouldn't drown in a puddle of spilled liquor on the deck. Straightening up again, he reached for the wallet in his hip pocket. "Awfully sorry for the mess, Pete," he said, handing a fifty and five tens across the counter to the owner. "That cover things?"

Samelli glanced around the room. The actual breakage wasn't bad. The men had been surprisingly restrained this time. Only the Marines had stooped to throwing furniture around.

"That'll be fine, Mac. Thanks. Better scoot, though. The boys called the SPs when it started getting rough."

"On our way. He gathered his SEALs with a glance. "C'mon, you heroes. E & E, on the double."

"Aw, Chief," Doc said. He was already back in his booth with his arms around the two girls. "I was just getting to the good part!"

"Move your ass, Doc. Unless you want to spend your liberty in the brig. Move it! Hop 'n' pop!"

"Prowl 'n' growl!"

"Shoot 'n' loot!"

It was more of a victorious saunter out of the bar than a retreat. They scrambled into the pair of cars they'd come in and roared back onto Virginia Creek Drive before the wailing sirens drew close.

The new lieutenant was supposed to show up tomorrow, MacKenzie thought as they raced east toward Little Creek. Maybe that was excuse enough to go ahead and make tonight a real celebration. In Lieutenant Cotter's memory, of course. Because it was one sure-fire definite affirmative that the new guy, whoever he was, would never be able to take the L-T's place. "C'mon, guys," he yelled over the roar of Doc's Chevy. They were in the lead. "Let's reconnoiter. Left at the light."

"Now you're talkin', Boss!" Roselli called from the back seat. "Hell, I thought you'd lost it for a minute there!"

The Chevy turned sharply, and Holt's car followed.

It was going to be a long night for the citizens of Norfolk's east side.

Saturday, 14 May

0900 hours (Zulu -5)

Headquarters, SEAL Team Seven

Little Creek, Virginia

"Lieutenant Murdock reporting for duty, sir."

"At ease, Lieutenant. Hand 'em over."

Murdock handed his sheaf of transfer and travel orders and his personnel record folder across the desk to the lean, bronzed captain sitting there.

"Okay... Murdock," the captain said, leafing through the first few pages. "I'm Captain Coburn, commanding officer of SEAL Seven. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, sir."

He indicated a battered gray-painted metal chair nearby. "Grab a seat. Drop anchor."

"Thank you, sir."

"Coffee?"

"No, thank you, sir."

Coburn leaned back in his chair, studying Murdock with a critical eye. "So, Lieutenant. How much do you know about SEAL Seven?"

"Not all that much, sir. I tried to look up its history before I left Coronado, but there's not much to be found."

"Figures. Some of that is the usual SEAL secrecy, of course. SEALs don't say nothing to nobody when they don't have to, and they say even less to people who aren't in the Teams. But SEAL Seven is new, and it's a new idea. A lot of the people you'll be meeting around here are plank owners, including myself."

Plank owners — personnel aboard for the first cruise of a new ship, or who'd been in on the mustering of a new command. It was a special distinction, one worn with quite a bit of pride. Of course, the SEALs had expanded a lot during the eighties, from two Teams to seven, and with new Special Warfare bases appearing from Japan to Puerto Rico to Scotland, so there were plenty of plank owners still about. But from what Murdock had gathered so far, SEAL Seven was brand-new, only recently brought on-line.

"SEAL Seven has been operational now for about six months," Coburn said, confirming Murdock's thoughts. "It was created as our first rapid-deployment SEAL combat team."

"I thought all SEAL Teams were expected to be rapid-deployment, sir."

Coburn's mouth twisted in a wry grin. "They're supposed to be, and they are. Still, the logistical tail tends to slow things down quite a bit. That's where the Army's Delta Force has been running into trouble, as I'm sure you know. All the super-sophisticated sci-fi hardware in the world won't help you when you can't deploy to a trouble spot halfway around the globe in less than forty-eight hours. Tell me what you know about SEAL Six."

Murdock blinked at the sudden shift in the topic. "Um, organized in 1980 as the Navy's response to the hostage crisis in Iran. Put together by a guy named Marcinko. Something of a nonconformist, if what I've read is true."

"That doesn't say the half of it. Go on."

"He conceived of SEAL Six as a special anti-terrorist unit. Go anywhere, do anything. Dress as civilians and blend in with the local population. Hit the terrs on their own home turf. They took part in the Achille Lauro incident, didn't they?"

"That's affirmative. One of the men in your platoon used to be with SEAL Six, and he was at Sigonella when it all went down. MacKenzie, a master chief. He'll be able to tell you some stories."

"I should imagine."

"Okay, you know the basic layout of the SEALS, the Teams' TO as it was developed in the eighties. Two Navy Special Warfare Groups, Group One on the West Coast, Group Two headquartered here at Little Creek. Teams One, Three, and Five at Coronado. Teams Two, Four, and Eight here. And SEAL Six is still located across the way at Dam Neck, but they answer directly to the Joint Chiefs.

"While we've tried to keep the SEALs flexible overall, a certain amount of specialization has crept in over the years. Units grow larger, acquire more equipment. They become more difficult to move on short notice. SEAL Two, for instance, runs Navy Special Warfare Unit Number Two out of an advance SEAL deployment base at Machrihanish, in Scotland. They do a lot of training with people like the SAS and GSG-9, and if something goes down in northern Europe or the North Sea, they're the ones who'll go. SEAL Four works with Special Warfare Unit Three, down at Roosey Roads, in Puerto Rico. They handle things that come up in the Caribbean.