"And keep your primary ready. This'll get hot damned quick."

"Yes, Sir." Higgins took the papers and descended back into the cool darkness of Beluga's below-deck spaces.

Murdock glanced up at Roselli. "You hear all that, Razor? We may have company soon."

Roselli patted the captured G-3 rifle. "Ready to rock and roll, Skipper."

Raising his binoculars again, Murdock swept the harbor. Motion on the water to one side of the freighter caught his attention. "Uh-oh," he said, focusing on the blurry white mustache of a high-speed wake. It looked like a speedboat was coming toward them bow-on, racing out from the naval facility. "Okay, you pirates. Just make sure your powder's dry and your cutlasses are within reach. That company's about to pay us a visit."

In minutes, the Iranian craft was close enough that Murdock could easily make out its details. During the Tanker War in the Gulf during the early 1980s, the Western press had consistently called these fast little attack craft "speedboats," implying that the grenade and rocket attacks on the oil tankers of various nations were being carried out by men in outboard-motor pleasure craft.

That sleek, low shape was no pleasure craft, Murdock knew. It was a long, low, dagger-lean "Boghammer Boat," one of some forty high-speed military patrol craft acquired by Iran from Sweden for naval operations in the Gulf. Though not originally armed, they could carry as many as ten or twelve commandoes, armed with machine guns, RPGs, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers. As he studied the group of three Iranians standing in the Boghammer's enclosed pilothouse, he could see at least two pairs of raised binoculars staring back at him.

He hoped none of those men knew Aghasi personally, for the camo paint on his upper lip didn't do much to change the differences in height, weight, or age between Murdock and the Iranian.

It only had to get them close enough.

"Keep her steady," Murdock told Sterling. The Boghammer cut past Beluga's bow, then whipped past the starboard side, throwing up a choppy, froth-edged surge of dirty water as it slowed. Engine growling, the Iranian patrol boat slipped down Beluga's starboard side, crossed astern, and began moving up the port side from aft. Murdock counted eight men aboard, two of them officers, all armed. An American-made M-60 machine gun had been raised on a makeshift mount in the well deck forward of the deckhouse. One of the soldiers nervously fingered the blunt-snouted tube of an RPG-7, a Russian-made weapon almost certainly captured in years past from the Iraqis. Most Iranian military hardware was still American-issue, weapons and gear left over from the days of the Shah.

One of the officers was standing on the Boghammer's afterdeck, a loud-hailer in his hand. Raising it to his lips, he elicited a piercing yowl of feedback, then began calling to Beluga's crew across the narrowing stretch of water.

"What's he saying, Skipper?" Jaybird asked.

"Haven't the faintest idea," Murdock replied. For answer, he raised an arm and waved the Boghammer closer.

At Murdock's command, Jaybird throttled back, bringing the yacht to a near-idle. The Iranian speedboat drifted closer, then closer still. One man stood on the bow, ready to leap across with a line. Another lineman stood aft, while the officer with the loud-hailer took up a position amidships.

"Higgins? Roselli?" Murdock asked, not taking his eyes off the Iranians. "You both ready to go?"

"Sure are, Skipper," Higgins answered from the shadows in Beluga's open companionway.

"Just say the word, Skipper," Roselli added. He was standing by the mainmast now, holding the G-3 in a casually relaxed and non-threatening pose. From the corner of his eye, Murdock could see Jaybird's H&K, tucked safely out of sight below Beluga's port-side gunwale. His own H&K was lying on the deck at his feet.

"Roselli," he said, a stage whisper through smiling, clenched teeth. "You've got the MG forward. Stand ready."

"Az kodawm vawhed hastid?" the Iranian officer demanded, lowering the loud-hailer. He sounded angry, and his dark eyes flashed as he waved it at Murdock. "Kaf kardam!"

Smiling, Murdock shook his head, then gestured for the officer to come on board. Glowering, the Iranian stepped onto the Boghammer's gunwale.

"Now!" Murdock yelled, dropping to the deck, scooping up his H&K, and rolling back to his knees as he brought the weapon to his shoulder. By the mainmast, Roselli whipped the G-3 into firing position and triggered a short, full-auto burst that chopped into the Iranian behind the machine gun and punched him back against the Boghammer's pilothouse windscreen. Murdock sent three rounds slashing into the officer, who tried to complete his leap to the Beluga's afterdeck, faltered, then tumbled into the water between the two boats. Sterling put the Beluga's wheel hard over, sending the larger yacht smashing into the Boghammer's side with a grinding crash.

Murdock shifted targets smoothly, cutting down an Iranian soldier holding a G-3 rifle, then another whose weapon was still slung over his back. Higgins emerged from Beluga's companionway, firing into the Boghammer's pilothouse, while Sterling, armed now, advanced to Beluga's gunwale, firing down into the patrol boat's after well deck.

Murdock estimated that five seconds passed between the first shot and the last. He and Roselli scrambled aboard the Boghammer to bring it under control, checking the bodies sprawled from bow to transom for signs of life. Two badly wounded and unconscious men were dispatched with single shots through their heads. The SEALs were in no position to tend to prisoners.

"Can you run it, Chief?" Murdock asked Roselli as he studied the simple controls in the pilothouse.

"Aw, shit, Lieutenant. I could run this blindfolded. Throttle, gearshift, and wheel... that's all there fuckin' is to it!"

"Good man. I want you to go over this boat with a magnifying glass, okay? Find and fix anything we broke in that firefight."

"Right, Skipper."

Returning to the afterdeck, Murdock crossed back to the Beluga, where Sterling was finishing tying off a stern line, securing the Boghammer to the yacht. "Jaybird!"

"Yeah, Skipper?"

Murdock put one hand on Sterling's sweat-slick shoulder, and with the other pointed west across the water toward the rugged coast of Qeshm. "Looks to me like we might have a beach over there at the foot of those hills. Think this tub has the oomph to haul herself and the speedboat into the shallows?"

"Sure thing, Skipper."

"Do it. If she's too sluggish, Roselli can help from the Boghammer. Higgins!"

"Yessir!"

"You 'n me just got assigned the grunt detail. Let's start hauling our gear over to the Boghammer."

"Aye, aye, Skipper. You get in the 'Hammer and I'll start passing to you, okay?"

"Affirmative."

In the blazing, late-afternoon heat, the two men began moving all of the SEAL weapons and equipment to the smaller boat.

"Looks to me like you've got this thing pretty well thought out," Higgins said, passing a SEAL rebreather across Beluga's rail to Murdock.

"Nah," Murdock replied, taking the SCUBA and stowing it in the Boghammer's aft well deck. "I'm making it all up as we go along."

"Yeah," Higgins said. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

Murdock decided to take a chance. "So? How do I stack up so far against Lieutenant Cotter?"

Higgins reached for a bundle of swim fins, masks, and weight belts. "Well, I'll tell you, Sir. The L-T'd have had this thing scoped out a week in advance, everything planned down to the last detail. He wasn't one to make it up on the fly, know what I mean?"

"Yup." Murdock suppressed a flash of irritation. He had asked for the comparison.

"But I'll tell you what," Higgins continued. "Whatever plan he'd have come up with, I guarantee you it wouldn't've been this much fun!"