Nothing. "Three," he snapped, identifying himself. "Clear. Moving."

A door in the superstructure four feet from the body opened onto a companionway with ladders leading up and down. Jaybird took the steps leading up, treading softly to the next deck... then continued beyond to the deck above that. The squad's meticulous studies of Hormuz's deck plans back in Little Creek were paying off. Jaybird knew precisely where this companionway led, and what lay beyond it. At his back, Nicholson followed him up, covering his advance up the ladder.

At the 0-3 deck, three levels above the main deck, the ladder ended at a passageway and a door leading forward. Jaybird was still halfway up the companionway when the door opened and a bearded man stepped through.

He was not wearing an army uniform, but a blue jacket over a striped T-shirt. He took two steps into the passageway and then saw Jaybird.

The SEAL's appearance — black-clad, with a dark bandana tight over his head and his face a horror of cold eyes staring from mingled green and black paint — bought Jaybird a full second of gape-mouthed silence. The Iranian's eyes widened, his mouth hung open...

And then Jaybird shot him, the reflex automatic, unthinking. Two coughs from his H&K drilled twin holes in the surprised Iranian's head, one above his left eye, the other through the bridge of his nose. The SEAL sprinted the last five steps, reaching the body scant seconds after it collapsed to the deck.

"Awn cheest?" a voice asked from beyond the half-closed door.

"Namedawnam," someone answered, and the door swung open. Another ship's officer took one step through...

Jaybird was on him in an instant, left hand grasping the man's naval jacket with his forearm rammed against the windpipe, right hand wielding the H&K, the long, heavy muzzle roughly jammed against the Iranian's forehead.

"Tasleem shaveed!" Jaybird barked. Those SEALs who didn't speak Farsi had memorized useful key phrases before the mission. "Surrender!"

The man's eyes bulged in terror. "Nazaneed! Nazaneed!"

Jaybird shoved the man back into the compartment from which he'd just emerged. It was the ship's bridge, a wide area beneath a low overhead cluttered with pipes and conduits. Two other officers were there, one at the wheel, the other leaning above the bridge radar scope. Jaybird pushed his prisoner to the deck, then gestured with black-faced menace with his submachine gun.

"Dahstahraw boland koneed!" he ordered. The bridge officers complied, raising their hands over their heads. Nicholson came in at Jaybird's back, checking the radio shack and the captain's day-room, both empty.

"This is Nickle," Nicholson said over his radio, returning to Jaybird's side. "Bridge secure. Three prisoners."

Jaybird moved to the opposite side of the bridge, keeping the prisoners covered as the other SEAL snapped several fast questions at the Iranian on the deck. That man was the oldest of the three and had the most gold braid on his cap and jacket — almost certainly Hormuz's captain. After a brief exchange, Nicholson looked across at Jaybird.

"He says there's a crew of fourteen aboard," Nicholson said. "Claims the ship's a merchantman in international waters, that they're carrying a shipment of copra, timber, and kapok from Madagascar to Bandar Abbas, and that we're pirates."

With deliberate slowness, Jaybird raised his subgun until it was aiming directly at the merchant captain's face, then gradually tracked the muzzle down the length of the man's body until it was aiming at his groin. He allowed himself a smile, bared teeth startlingly white behind the grease paint. With a dramatic flourish, he flexed his forefinger over the trigger. "Na! Na!" the captain cried, eyes wild and staring, sweat glistening on his forehead and in his beard. "Nazaneed! Kahesh meekonam! I speak! I speak!" Haltingly, in mingled bursts of Farsi and thickly accented English, the ship's captain admitted that there were ten soldiers aboard, members of a naval infantry brigade belonging to the Pasdaran, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. He knew of the Japanese plutonium ship, but insisted that none of the cargo had been transferred to the Hormuz. "Just soldier! Just soldier!" he insisted, looking from Jaybird to Nickle and back again. "We send soldier, other ship!"

"Chand ast sarbawz?" Nickle demanded. "How many soldiers?"

"Chehe!"

Nicholson blinked, then looked across at Jaybird. "Shit. He says forty."

"What, they put forty troops aboard the Yuduki Maru?" Jaybird licked his lips. "We thought they might have reinforced the terrorists over there," Nicholson said. "But forty soldiers is a fucking army!"

"Yeah," Jaybird said. "And our guys are walking into a trap!"

2318 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

They'd been aboard the Japanese ship for less than seven minutes, splitting up and padding with cat's-stealth silence along the vessel's alleys and walkways. One by one, the Iranian guards they encountered were eliminated, silently and efficiently. So far, there'd been no sign of either Japanese terrorists or the Yuduki Maru's original crew, but the ship seemed to be crawling with armed Iranian soldiers. The brown-fatigued soldiers were everywhere, lounging in small groups, standing lone watch in passageways, manning a pair of machine guns that had been mounted high up above the deck on the wings of the bridge. Crouching in the shadows on the ship's starboard side, MacKenzie and Higgins studied the forward deck from beneath a white-painted deck ladder. By the light spilling from the bridge some thirty feet above his head, MacKenzie could make out at least a dozen armed men lounging on the ship's long forward deck.

"Hammer Alfa-six," he whispered over his mike, using Murdock's op call sign. "This is Alfa-one. I'm starboard side, aft of the main deck. I've got twelve tangos in sight, and I can hear more of 'em moving around above me. What the hell's going down?"

"Wait one."

"Rog." Murdock sounded tense. He must have just encountered another Iranian guard.

Damn, how many troops had boarded the plutonium ship off the Hormuz? Half, at least, must be asleep below decks, probably in the new quarters constructed for Yuduki Maru's security contingent. Others were on watch throughout the vessel's interior. And there were still the original Japanese terrorists to consider. MacKenzie added up the likely numbers and arrived at a figure of between forty and fifty bad guys... not very good odds.

Still, the SEAL squad had the advantage of surprise, and they'd already whittled down the enemy strength somewhat. In Vietnam, he knew, it had been commonly claimed that five or ten SEALs could take on as many as two hundred enemy troops and expect to win, thanks to surprise, superior training, and superior technology.

He didn't savor challenging those kinds of odds here, however. Vietnam had been a different kind of war, with room for the SEAL teams to pick and choose their ambush sites, their battles, and their targets. Here, the SEALs were at a distinct disadvantage, hemmed in by the narrow confines of the ship.

And in Vietnam, they hadn't been worried about two tons of plutonium stored below decks either.

He glanced up, as though he could see through the overhead to the bridge wing thirty feet above his head. If someone could get to those machine guns, they might be able to command the deck below.

"Mac, Six. Looks like we've stepped into a nest of them." Murdock's voice in his headset was so low Mac had to strain to catch the words. There was a pause, and MacKenzie could almost hear the new lieutenant measuring the odds. "Okay, guys. This thing's too big not to give it a damned good try. Mac, you and your people get below to the engine room. Rest of you with me."

"Roger that. Moving." MacKenzie gestured to Higgins and started aft.