Instantly, a dazzling pinpoint of ruby light appeared on the side of the sentry's head. Riding out the up-and-down bump of the CRRC beneath him, Murdock squeezed the handgun's trigger and the weapon coughed, a harsh sound masked by the growl of the yacht's own engine.

In the same moment, a second dot of light winked into existence on the forehead of the man at the helm. Garcia fired an instant after Murdock; both Iranians were dead instantly, and Murdock was clambering out of the CRRC and onto Beluga's well deck a scant second or two behind the two bullets. The double thump-and-clatter of the falling bodies, the metallic crack of the G-3 rifle hitting the polished wooden deck, seemed impossibly loud in the near-silence of the night. Murdock took two long steps to Beluga's now-untended wheel and grabbed it before the yacht could swing about into the wind. He kept the brilliant pinpoint of his Smith & Wesson's laser playing next to the companionway set into the yacht's deckhouse forward, holding his breath as he waited for alarmed Iranian soldiers to come boiling out onto the deck.

Nothing. Garcia came across the rail, his pistol in his right hand, a line from the CRRC clutched in his left. With a quick movement, he secured the boat by lashing the line to a cleat. As he finished the task, Roselli scrambled up into the yacht at his side.

Forward, the second sentry was already sprawled lifeless by the mast, as Mac, Doc, and the Professor came aboard over the bow.

"Prairie Home," Murdock whispered into his microphone, "this is Bedsheet. We're aboard and tucked in." They'd made it, clearing the upper deck of guards in mere seconds, and with no indication that the alarm had been given below.

"Awn cheest!" a voice cried from below decks. "Ali! Bepaweed!"

And then Murdock knew that his first assessment had been just a little premature.

Saturday, 28 May

0001 hours (Zulu +3)

Greenpeace yacht Beluga

Indian Ocean, 230 miles southeast of Masirah

"Ali!" Colonel Aghasi called again, and again there was no answer from the sergeant on guard on Beluga's well deck. Thoroughly alarmed now, he drew his pistol, a big, black Colt .45 automatic, and started toward the deckhouse companionway. "You men," he snapped at the five Pasdaran soldiers in the lounge. "With me, quickly!"

The soldiers were picking up their assault rifles when the commandos burst into the compartment.

The first two crashed through the aft companionway, figures scarcely human in black garb that completely obscured their features. Ruler-straight, needle-slender streaks of ruby light whipped about in the semi-darkness of the lounge and galley, and each time they brushed one of Aghasi's men there was a short, ringing chuff of sound. One after another, the Pasdaran infantrymen jerked wildly with a bullet's impact, arms and legs flailing as they spun, twisted, or pitched back off their feet. There were four left... then three... two...

A thunderous explosion sounded from forward, followed closely by the stink of burnt plastique. One of the men in the passageway screamed, then collapsed into the galley, just as Corporal Mahmood Fesharaki lunged through the door into the women's cabin. Two more nightmare apparitions appeared at the forward end of the passageway, dropping down into the yacht through a forward deck hatch blasted away by an explosive charge.

Chance spared Aghasi's life; he was lunging forward, the .45 in his right hand coming up, when the side of an Iranian soldier's head exploded a meter away in a fine mist of blood and pieces of skull. Something — a fragment of bullet or bone — struck Aghasi squarely on the inside of his wrist with the solid jolt of a hammer blow. His fingers went dead as the pain of a splintered bone lanced up his arm, and the pistol spun from his hand as though propelled by a kick. At the same instant, Aghasi's face and torso were painted by a grisly splash of blood and brain. Clutching his shattered wrist, he went to his knees as the last of the Iranian troops in the aft lounge died.

Then he was smashed down by a stunning blow to the back of his head. Blinking up from the deck, he saw one of the invaders looming over him, the night-vision goggles over his eyes giving him the glittering, black-chitin look of some monster insect. The long, heavy snout of a silenced automatic pistol swung toward him, and suddenly he was half blinded by the other-worldly dazzle of a laser tracking up his face.

"Don't... shoot!" Aghasi gasped in English, trying to squint past the laser's light. "Please!.."

"Harakat nakoneed!" the nightmare figure rasped in passable Farsi. The gaping muzzle of the sound-suppressed pistol, the ruby sparkle of the laser sight, did not waver. "Don't move!"

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his wrist, Aghasi managed a jerky nod. "Absolutely, sir," he replied, still in English. "I would not dream of moving."

A woman screamed nearby, and Aghasi squeezed his eyes shut, certain that the sound would make the invader kill him anyway. He felt a hot wetness spreading across his groin and realized with a burst of sickened shame that he'd just lost control and emptied his bladder. He could sense the commando's finger tightening on the pistol's trigger.

0002 hours (Zulu +3)

Greenpeace yacht Beluga

Indian Ocean, 230 miles southeast of Masirah

Murdock, the Smith & Wesson gripped firmly in both hands, held the red aim-point of laser light centered squarely on the prisoner's forehead. Garcia and Roselli squeezed past at his back. "Galley clear!" Roselli called. From the corridor leading to the sleeping compartments forward, MacKenzie answered with, "Passageway clear!"

Turning his full attention to the prisoner at his feet, Murdock revealed his teeth, a terrifying mimicry of a smile, he knew, from his paint-blackened, insect-eyed face. "Rawst begueed, he growled, before shifting to English. "Tell the truth! How many men with you?"

"Four and — ah, fourteen," the man admitted. He was wearing olive-drab fatigues, but the gold device on his collar was the rank insignia for an Iranian Pasdaran colonel. A lucky catch, if he could be made to cooperate. "Fourteen, plus myself! You've already some of..."

"Mac!" Murdock said, speaking into the slender microphone wired against his cheek. "We have fifteen tangos aboard total." Reaching up with one hand, he slid the starlight goggles up on his face, then glanced about the room. "I have five tangos down here, and one prisoner."

"Three tangos down here," MacKenzie replied. With three more dead on the upper deck, that made the total twelve. Which left three unaccounted for.

He changed channels on his Motorola. "Backup, Backup, this is Bedsheet," he called. "We have three tangos loose."

0002 hours (Zulu +3)

UH-1 helicopter

Indian Ocean, 230 miles southeast of Masirah

"No sweat," Magic Brown said, squinting into the eyepiece of his night sight.

"Bedsheet, Backup, we copy that," Nicholson murmured into his microphone. "Magic's got one of 'em lined up now."

They were aboard a UH-1 helicopter off the Nassau, hovering 150 yards off Beluga's bow, at an altitude of eighty feet. The helo's right door panel had been slid back, and the two men were crouched behind an improvised firing platform on the cargo deck. Nicholson was serving as spotter with a hand-held nightscope, while Brown took aim through the scope mounted on his MIAI, a match-quality M-14 upgraded for use as a SEAL-sniper primary weapon.

From this almost-stationary vantage point, Magic could see almost all of the Beluga's deck, including the still, sprawled form of the dead guard beside the foremast, and two more in the well deck aft. He could see the three CRRCs, two empty and tied alongside, the third occupied by Gold Squad and maintaining an overmatch position astern of the yacht. On Beluga's starboard side, a live man's head and shoulders were protruding from a porthole. Evidently, he was trying to escape to the upper deck. The port was a tight fit, but a determined wiggle freed both arms, and then he was hauling himself through. The two airborne SEALs had been watching him intently for several seconds.