"That's right," Coburn said eagerly. "Like I said, twenty-four hours. All you have to ship are my boys."

"Draw up your plan, Phil. Have it on my desk tomorrow morning."

"Aye, aye, Captain!" He looked as delighted as a kid at Christmas.

Mason sighed. He just wished that he could be going along.

Friday, 20 May

1330 hours (Zulu -5)

NAVSPECWARGRU-Two Training Center

Little Creek, Virginia

Lieutenant Murdock stood with the men of Blue Squad, Third Platoon. "Okay, people," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. "Hit it again. Four-man entry, door center, buttonhook."

They were standing outside the NSWG building variously called the "fun house" and the "killing house," part of the SEALS' Little Creek training facilities. They were tired, all of them, and their faces were coated with greasepaint and gunpowder. Their bodies seemed bent beneath the weight of their gear, combat blacks and full harness, Kevlar vests, safety helmets, and tactical radios. Murdock had been running the platoon since daybreak, literally and figuratively. Gunfire banged and crackled in the distance — First Platoon practicing on the outdoor firing range. It had been a long day already, and it would not be ending at five o'clock.

"First four up," Murdock continued. "Let's have Roselli, Garcia, Higgins, and Brown."

"Aw, man, Lieutenant," Brown said. "I'm a sniper, not a God damned door kicker."

"You heard the lieutenant," MacKenzie said softly. There was no threat or anger in his voice, but the men complied immediately, filing into place beside the fun house South wall, where a couple of construction ratings were hammering the wooden framework of another practice door into place.

The subtleties of MacKenzie's line had not escaped Murdock. He'd noted that the men, when they referred to Cotter, called him "L-T," while Murdock was still "the lieutenant." The distinction spoke volumes of the gulf between him and his men.

Or am I just being paranoid? Murdock wondered. He'd not yet worked up the courage to actually discuss the situation with MacKenzie.

He was in a hell of a tough position. In the SEAL Teams especially, the differences between enlisted and officer were almost nonexistent. The men followed the officer not so much because of his rank, but because they knew he'd been through everything they'd been through, Hell Week included, and that he was as good a man as they were. He had to earn their respect, not demand it as a right.

There was an almost overwhelming tendency for new lieutenants joining a platoon to try winning that respect by familiarity, by being "one of the guys," but that approach was dead wrong from the start. The platoon's survival could hinge on whether or not the unit had one absolute leader; he had to be obeyed instantly, without argument or discussion. "Respect" in this context did not mean "like."

He'd held inspection on Sunday, as promised, and been pleased to see the barracks had been cleaned up, as ordered. He'd also noted the fading bruises on the faces of Holt and Roselli but refrained from commenting on them. Keeping order in the ranks was MacKenzie's job, and Murdock had already decided to let the master chief keep running the platoon his own way. If any serious deficiencies cropped up, well, that would be the time to pounce. Not now...

He knew they didn't like him, and after five days he still felt like he was wrestling with Cotter's ghost. But if he drilled them hard enough, by God, the respect would come. If it didn't, they'd never survive as a team.

The workers had finished with the door and stepped back out of the way. The killing house, constructed of plywood, Kevlar, and concrete blocks, was designed to allow rapid reconfiguration for any desired room layout, with or without windows, with one or multiple doors in any location, with or without interior partitions. Except for Higgins, who was carrying a shotgun, all of the men carried Beretta 92M pistols loaded with Glaser safety slugs, frangible rounds that would not punch through walls and kill someone half a mile away... or ricochet from concrete and kill someone in the room.

Safety rounds or not, SEALs took their training with deadly seriousness. Men had died in this exercise. MacKenzie had told them all about the time he'd actually seen a kid shot and killed in the fun house when the guy behind him tripped going through the door.

"Right," Murdock said. He held up his clipboard and read the notes he'd scrawled there. "The situation is three suspected terrorists and at least one hostage. Nothing known about position or disposition. Go in, take 'em down, and try not to shoot the hostages or each other. Ready?"

There were some murmured assents.

"I said, 'Ready?'"

"Hoo yah!" The old SEAL battle cry seemed to draw the tired men together, to focus them. But God, Murdock thought, they're still operating at the ragged edge. Are they going to be ready in time?

He'd learned about Operation Sun Hammer only that morning, when he'd first seen the wall-sized blueprints and detailed scale models of the Yuduki Maru that the team would be using for their briefings. He was at once excited by the prospect, and scared. Was the platoon ready so soon after Cotter's death? Could it be made ready? He still didn't know.

The four men took their positions, careful to stay outside the possible fire zone through the door. Roselli was to the left of the door, with Higgins and the shotgun next to him and a step out from the wall. Brown and Garcia were to the right, squeezed up against the wall with Brown in the lead.

Room entries provided a special tactical challenge for a small assault team. Only one or, at the most, two men could go through a door at a time, and while they were in the doorway they were trapped in what was known as the "fatal funnel," where gunmen inside had a clear shot at them while they were still processing what their eyes and ears told them as they burst through the door. Their decisions had to be both immediate and correct. A misstep or a momentary hesitation could result in two men getting tangled up in the doorway or tripping over an unexpected piece of furniture. A bad call could get a hostage killed or give the bad guys time to open fire. Room entries were carefully choreographed, with different dances for different situations, and each was rehearsed time after time after time, until the decision-making and the movements were all automatic.

Murdock checked the men's positions, nodded, then said, "See you inside." Opening the plywood door, which was centered in the south wall of the structure, he stepped into the killing house.

The dummies had already been positioned by the range captains. Each was a fairly lifelike mannequin similar to those in a department store, though all showed signs of wear and tear and roughly patched bullet holes. The sitting figures slumped with the peculiar lifelessness of propped-up store dummies; the standing figures, suspended on thin wires from the rafters overhead, swayed a little with the air currents in the room. The lighting had been arranged so that it would be in the assault team's eyes, and it cast larger-than-life shadows against the bare, chipped walls.

A male mannequin in civilian clothes sat on a battered sofa directly opposite the door, his wrists handcuffed behind him. At his back, standing behind the sofa, was a female figure, also in civilian clothes and distinguishable as a terrorist only by the automatic pistol taped to her hand and resting inconspicuously on the sofa's back. To the right, near the northeast corner, were two standing figures, a woman in jeans and sweater, her hands fastened behind her back, and a man holding an AK-47 behind her, positioned in such a way that he was partly blocked by the hostage from the vantage point of someone coming through the door. A third terrorist, wearing army fatigues, hung from the ceiling in the southeast corner; and finally, by the west wall, a single uniformed male terrorist sat slumped behind a card table, an AK propped up next to him.