As they continued loading their gear aboard the Boghammer, Murdock wasn't sure whether he'd just been complimented or not.

2115 hours (Zulu +3)

Boghammer patrol boat

Northeastern coast of Qeshm

"Damn," Sterling said as he leaped off the Beluga and onto the Boghammer's after well deck. "I really hate trading this sweet beauty for a stinkpot, skipper!"

"I like the bed-sheet navy too, Jaybird," Murdock replied, casting off the stern line. Beluga rested where she'd been run aground several hours earlier, in a shallow cove several miles from the village of Qeshm at the eastern tip of the island. "But you've gotta admit, she's one of a kind, while this Boghammer is going to be one among forty. And right now, we can't afford to stand out in the crowd!"

"Besides," Higgins said, grinning, "it's kind of nice to be in something that'll give us a bit of speed!"

"Roger that," Murdock said, casting a wary eye toward the darkening sky. An Iranian helicopter droned low over the water several miles to the south, but didn't appear interested in Qeshm. So far they'd been damned lucky. The Boghammer must have been sent out to investigate when the Beluga failed to respond to instructions over the radio; sooner or later, someone ashore was going to realize that the Boghammer had never reported back, and that the Beluga had failed to dock in Bandar Abbas, or wherever they'd been ordered to go. The military bureaucracy — any military bureaucracy — was slow and cumbersome enough that it would have trouble tracking down a covert team as small as four SEALs in one small boat, and the Iranian bureaucracy was considerably more disorganized than most. Still, Iranian aircraft were bound to spot the yacht sooner or later, and any determined search by patrol boats or helos would discover her resting place on Qeshm Island almost at once.

And if they figured out which Boghammer boat was missing...

Jaybird and Roselli had taken a step to further confuse the Iranians. The Boghammer had a hull number painted on both sides of her bow. It looked like the number 10, with a slanted "1" followed by a small "0," but Professor Higgins knew the Iranian numerals well enough to translate the number as 15, and he knew that, unlike Iranian script, their numerals were read left to right. He and Roselli took brushes and black and white paint found in a storage locker aboard Beluga, mixed up a gray that closely approximated the gray color scheme of the Boghammer, and, standing in waist-deep water, had carefully painted out each "0" on her hull. They'd then replaced the numeral with another black "1," transforming the Boghammer from number 15 to number 11.

The likeliest action by the Iranian port authorities once Boghammer 15 failed to report in, Murdock was guessing, would be to send out patrols looking for the missing craft. With luck, no one would notice that there were now two Boghammer 11s, especially at night and within the bustle and confusion of a major naval shipyard facility.

"Okay, Razor," Murdock called. "Let's get away from the scene of the crime. I don't want you guys to have to paint another fake number on our sides."

"You got that right, Skipper," Roselli called back as he eased the throttle forward, eliciting a deeper growl from the engine. "Scraping and painting's for the real Navy. I joined the SEALs so I wouldn't have to do that shit!"

Smoke fumed from the Boghammer's engine vents as her screw churned the water aft to white froth. Veering sharply away from the beach, they began moving into deeper water.

Murdock and Higgins turned to the task of testing out the connections on their HST-4 sat comm and the KY-57 encryption set, the "C-2" communications element that would let them stay in touch with both MEF and Washington. Before abandoning the Beluga, Higgins had transmitted a final set of intelligence data over the yacht's small sat-comm unit, including Murdock's impressions of the port facilities as seen through binoculars from Qeshm. The island provided an excellent OP, just eleven miles south of the port, but to get the detailed intelligence Deadly Weapon would need, the SEALs would have to get a lot closer than that. The transmission had been insurance against the possibility that the four SEALs would be killed or captured while trying to penetrate the Iranian port.

As darkness fell across the Gulf, the lights of Bandar Abbas gleamed like brilliant pearls on a necklace stretched across the northern horizon. Once clear of the beach, Roselli opened up the Boghammer's throttle, the knife-pointed prow came up out of the water above a boiling white streak of foam, and they jolted into the passage between Qeshm and the mainland at twenty-eight knots.

2130 hours (Zulu +3)

U.S.S. Austin

In the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz

The Austin, LPD 4, was a bulky, hybrid-looking vessel, half transport, half carrier, known officially as an Amphibious Transport, Dock. With a crew of four hundred and berthing facilities for nearly a thousand Marines, she was part of II MEF's assault transport contingent — the backbone of the Marine Expeditionary Force — which included the Nassau and the helicopter carrier Iwo Jima.

All together, II MEF comprised a Marine air-ground task force, or MAGTF, comprised of fifty ships and over 52,000 Navy and Marine personnel, the largest and most powerful of all Marine task forces. Under the overall command of FMFLANT-Fleet Marine Force Atlantic-II MEF drew its forces from the 2nd Marine Division, the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, and the 4th and 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigades. The force, which had been on maneuvers in the Med during the opening scenes of the Yuduki Maru drama, had transited the Suez Canal and passed south through the Red Sea, emerging in the Gulf of Aden south of the Arabian Peninsula. After the abortive attempt to reach the Yuduki Maru at sea, the task force had been routed into the Gulf of Oman, closely following the Iranian squadron, dogging their formation with helicopters, AV-8 Harriers, and F/A-18 Homers. They were massed now in international waters just outside the Strait of Hormuz, ready to strike with the entire, staggering might of a reinforced Marine division.

And the very tip of that titanic Army-Navy spear-point was now on Austin's well deck, preparing to get under way.

"Captain Coburn?"

Phillip Coburn straightened up from the bundle of equipment he'd been checking. "Here!"

A commander in Navy khakis approached him across the crowded, metal grating of the deck. "Commander DiAmato, Sir," the officer said, saluting. "They said to pass this on to you."

DiAmato handed him a sheaf of papers. Awkward in his black gear, wet suit, and full rebreather rig, Coburn accepted it and started reading. It was an intelligence update, the latest condensation of data from satellites, reconnaissance aircraft... and from the SEALs already in the approaches to Bandar Abbas.

Metal clanged and gonged in the cavernous space around him and echoed with shouts and the whine of overhead hoists. Austin's well deck was completely enclosed, a vast, echoing cave of gray-painted metal, overhead pipes, and a central well that could be flooded in order to facilitate the launch of various vehicles and small craft. Normally, this was where Marine KMS or the odd-looking, tracked LVTs were loaded before letting them swim out through the huge doors set into the transport's stern. This time, however, the well deck was occupied by several craft that made even the boxy LVTs look ordinary.

Three were Mark VIII SDVs. "SDV" stood for Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, but SEALs referred to the contraption as a "bus." Each was twenty-one feet long, with a beam and draft of just over four feet, and looked like a blunt, overfed torpedo. Hatches in the side gave access to the interior; two SDV crewmen, a pilot and a navigator, manned a cramped compartment forward, while four more SEALs could snuggle in aft, squeezed in side by side.