Yuduki Maru's two propeller shafts ran from the reduction gears connecting them with the turbines, vanishing through watertight seals and bearings into the shaft alleys in the aft hull. An explosive charge positioned over the shaft bearings would break or bend the propeller shafts, rendering them useless, irreparable anywhere short of a major dry-dock overhaul.
MacKenzie reached into one of his waterproof satchels, pulling out a cable-cutting charge, a U-shaped pouch containing a half kilo of C-6 plastic explosive, multiple detonators, and an electronic firing trigger with a keypad for entering any time, in seconds, from one to 9,999.
He was halfway to the shaft bearing when the Iranians burst through the engine room's port-side entryway.
"Cover!" Garcia shouted from his perch on the starboard side. His H&K spat flame, striking sparks and shrill pings from the open door, then slashing into the first Iranian soldier in line and toppling him over the platform railing and onto a generator housing below. The next Iranian got off one brief, wild burst from his AK before Garcia's enfilade fire sent him tumbling in a bloody heap down the steel ladder. A confused babble of Farsi, shouted orders and queries, sounded from the passageway beyond.
MacKenzie dove for cover, crouching behind a massive reduction gear housing alongside one of the throbbing turbines. "Six, this is One! It's going down now. Hard!"
"Copy, One. What's your sit?"
MacKenzie could hear the hammer of a heavy weapon in the background as Murdock spoke. "Not good! Not good!" MacKenzie shouted over the tactical channel. "We need backup, and we need it fast!" Another burst of AK fire sang through the engine room. Sooner or later, overwhelming Iranian forces would root them out of here, with gunfire, grenades, or gas.
And then it would be all over.
MacKenzie dropped an empty magazine, then slapped home a fresh one. A single burst of AK fire snapped from the door, wild again, the rounds shrieking off steel. He guessed, judging by the yells and shouting voices outside, that the Iranians must be getting ready to try a rush.
The original plan to blow Yuduki Maru's propeller shafts was out now. It would take minutes to plant the charges... and the SEALs now had only seconds. What the hell was going on up on the bridge?
2326 hours (Zulu +3)
Bridge
Freighter Yuduki Maru
"I hear 'em on the ladder," Ellsworth said. "They're coming up the companionway."
"Flash-bangs," Murdock said, reaching for his combat vest as Ellsworth nodded and did the same. The metallic thumpings on the stairway behind the bridge were louder now, punctuated by shrill voices. The two SEALs yanked the pins on their stun grenades, paused, then tossed them in perfect arcs through the bridge door and into the square pit of the companionway outside.
Seconds later, the darkened corridors lit with pulsing flashes of dazzling light reflected from white-painted bulkheads, and the ear-hammering blasts of multiple concussions. When his ears stopped ringing, Murdock could hear the low groans and cries of stunned, wounded men.
"Together," he told Doc, and together they broke from cover, racing to the companionway and thrusting their H&Ks over the railing. Two decks down, and scattered halfway up the steps, a tangle of khaki-clad bodies was writhing in the uncertain illumination of a fallen emergency lantern, Iranian troops, the blood streaming from noses, mouths, and ears looking garishly black in the yellow light. Murdock flicked his selector switch to semi-auto and began triggering round after aimed round into the helpless targets. Doc joined in the slaughter until, seconds later, there was no more movement.
"Stay here," he told Ellsworth. "Yell if any more come."
"Will do, Skipper."
Murdock ducked back onto the bridge, ducking again as more bullets slammed through the shattered bridge windows, tunneling into the overhead soundproofing, spilling more shards of glass across the deck of the bridge. He crouched in the shelter of the console, as the Type 62 machine guns thundered from both wings.
Clearly, Operation Sun Hammer had gone badly sour. The four Americans on the bridge had stopped the Iranian thrust through the superstructure, and they had the Iranians on the forward deck pinned down for the moment, but others would be on their way soon, and there simply weren't enough SEALs aboard to neutralize the entire enemy force.
He switched channels on his tactical radio. "Foreman, Foreman, this is Hammer One. Do you copy?"
Somewhere to the north, the orbiting E-3A Sentry aircraft picked up his words, passing them along to the anxiously waiting men in the bowels of the Pentagon.
"Hammer One, Foreman copies," came the reply a moment later.
"Sheet metal," Murdock said, using the code phrase meaning that Hammer had just tried driving a nail into steel instead of soft wood.
For a long moment, Murdock heard only static. Outside, the gunfire had died down, but he could still hear the Iranians calling to one another in the darkness.
He had just told the mission directors back in the Pentagon that the mission, as originally planned, could not be completed, and what he was waiting to hear now was the code phrase "Alfa Bravo," the order to abort.
But what, he wondered, should he do if he heard Charlie Mike, ordering him to continue? Long before sunup, he and his men would all be dead or prisoners, and beyond executing Kneecap, they wouldn't be able to accomplish a damned thing.
Shit. If they ordered the SEALs to stay, there was a damned good possibility that he was going to develop serious communications problems. He was supposed to have operational control on site, not the REMFs in Washington, but that wouldn't count for much if he ended up disobeying a direct order. Come on! Come on!
2328 hours (1528 hours Zulu -5)
Joint Special Operations Command Center
The Pentagon
"Damn it," General Bradley said, chewing at his cigar. "They can't just jump ship! We'll have video back in another minute. They can't pull out now!"
To Congressman Murdock, it sounded as though Bradley were more concerned about not being able to see what was going on... almost like a child told that he couldn't watch his favorite cartoon.
"Doesn't sound like we have much choice, General," Captain Mason replied. He gestured at the main viewing screen, which showed a test pattern at the moment. "Murdock is our man on the scene. He has to make the call, one way or the other. And we have to back him."
There, it had been said. His son was in charge of Sun Hammer. Congressman Murdock closed his eyes, riding out a tremor of fear that rippled up his spine. "In any case," Bainbridge said, "we have to give them our answer. Now."
Captain Granger laughed. "You gentlemen realize that there's not a lot we can do to enforce whatever order we give them? It really is their call."
"Tell them Alfa Bravo," Bainbridge said. His eyes glittered like ice in the phosphor light from the test pattern on the screen.
Mason picked up a telephone and began speaking into it rapidly.
As he was talking, another telephone on a console near the screen buzzed, and Carter picked it up. "Yeah... uh-huh." There was a pause. "Okay. We're ready." He kept the receiver in his hand, as he had before. "KH-twelve-five is coming over the horizon now," he told the others. "They're putting the feed through from NPIC now." Carter pronounced the acronym "en-pick," a word that stood for the National Photographic Interpretation Center, a joint CIA-NSA department located in Washington, D.C., that carried the responsibility for receiving and distributing all military satellite imagery.
The test pattern flickered out and was replaced by a slow-moving emptiness of rugged, black ripple patterns. It took Congressman Murdock a moment to recognize what he was looking at as the surface of the ocean. Under the control of unseen hands at some distant control center, the view slewed abruptly to one side, focusing once again on the Yuduki Maru. The angle was different this time, flatter, and from farther off. It was moving more quickly too, which meant, Murdock had been told, that the satellite shooting this was traveling in a lower, faster orbit.