"Could be they're running into some computer trouble," Murdock said. All four of the SEALs were inside the Boghammer's pilothouse, peering out through the salt-encrusted windscreen at the activity on the huge freighter. "Without the right password, they're not going to get through the cargo hatches."

"So their only option is cutting their way through solid steel," Roselli said, standing at the boat's wheel. "That should take 'em a while, even with dockyard facilities."

"All night at least," Higgins said.

"That was the idea," Murdock said.

"What the hell is the new password, anyway?" Roselli wanted to know.

Murdock grinned. "'Jaybird." It was the only thing I could think of at the time."

"Ha! Well, they sure won't hit on that by trial and error. It must be giving them fits!"

"I just hope they don't think the Japanese crewmen are giving them the wrong information," Sterling said. "Things could go a bit hard on them."

"Shit, Jaybird, you want we should go in and give them the keys to the stuffs?" Roselli asked.

"I didn't say that."

"Anyway, they know we were up there on the bridge long enough to change the codes. They're probably just mad as hell they didn't get one of us to tell them what it was!"

Murdock leaned over, studying the armed men arrayed along Yuduki Maru's side. More soldiers were on the pier alongside, where workers were preparing to sway several bulky propane tanks up to the ship's deck in a cargo net. "What would you guys say... twelve armed guards on board?"

"About that," Roselli agreed. "Twelve in sight anyway. And another fifteen or twenty on the dock. Ramazani probably has every Pasdaran soldier he feels he can trust in this burg sitting on top of his prize."

"And they're positioning that hammerhead crane over there to off-load the stuff," Sterling added. "If we're gonna do something, we'd better do it damned fast."

Higgins glanced at his watch. "Patience, son. The SDVs ought to be here in another hour."

"If they stuck to sched," Roselli added. "Hey, Sterling?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you get the name Jaybird?"

The SEAL trainee groaned and the other SEALs laughed. With her engine set just one notch above idle, the Boghammer cruised slowly and ever deeper into the Iranian harbor.

Monday, 30 May

0005 hours (Zulu +3)

Freighter Yuduki Maru

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Tetsuo Kurebayashi had been unable to sleep. Despite the years of self-discipline and self-denial, despite the rigors of his Ohtori commando training, the excitement, the overwhelming sense of fulfillment of a mission accomplished blended with the heady anticipation of another mission about to begin, left him wide awake.

Besides, it was noisy within the steel confines of the hijacked freighter. A small army had come aboard as soon as they'd been safely tied up to the dock, and the Iranian construction personnel were now hard at work, attempting to cut through the reinforced steel containment walls that surrounded Yuduki Maru's precious cargo.

Dressing, he'd gone up to the vessel's bridge. Iranian soldiers had finished removing the machine guns ruined by the American commandos but had not replaced them. Instead, grim-looking Iranian Pasdaran stood guard with automatic weapons. The compartment still showed the signs of battle — the soundproofing tiles overhead shredded by hundreds of bullet holes, the teletype printers and several consoles smoke-stained and pocked by stray rounds, most of the glass in the large, slanted bridge windows missing. A brown stain on the tile deck marked where an Iranian soldier had died.

Glancing around once, Kurebayashi stepped through the door and onto the open starboard wing of the bridge.

Isamu Takeda was already there, leaning against the railing. "A, Isamusama," Kurebayashi said, startled. "Sumimasen!"

"Please, Tetsuosan," the Ohtori leader replied, also speaking Japanese to maintain a sense of privacy from the nearby Iranian troops. "Join me."

"Hai, Isamusama!" Kurebayashi gave the requisite, respectful bow, raising his eyes no higher than the collar of Takeda's limey-style blouse. "You honor me."

"We have come a long way from the streets of Sasebo, neh?"

Clearly, Takeda was in a reflective mood. Kurebayashi grunted an assent, joining his leader against the wing railing. It had been a long time, almost fifteen years, since they'd met one another in the rock-throwing riots staged to protest the American military presence in the home islands. That had been at the very beginning, when Ohtori was first being born from the fallen ideals and promise of the Japanese Red Army.

It had taken that long to find a weapon suitable for bringing the American imperialists to their knees.

"The general tells me it will take a little time yet to reach our goal," Takeda said. He nodded toward the activity on Yuduki Maru's deck. The flare of cutting torches cast monstrous, flickering shadows across the steel.

"After waiting this long," Kurebayashi said, "I suppose we can wait a few hours more. The arrangements are made for our share?"

"Yes. It will be flown to Bangkok tomorrow night, then placed aboard a ship to be smuggled into Yokohama." He smiled easily. "It will be most poetic, don't you think? The Western devils brought down by the demon they first unleashed upon our people seven sevens of years ago."

"Hai, Isamusama! It is justice, and partial payment as well."

"I know how you feel about working with the Iranians, Tetsuosan," Takeda went on. "But it is proper naniwabushi, neh?"

In Japan, the practice called naniwabushi, meaning to get on such close personal terms with someone that he was obligated to generosity, was basic to any good businessman's repertoire. Terrorism too was a business, sometimes even a profitable one, certainly one to be pursued with the dedication and attention to detail of any corporate endeavor. By planning the capture of the Yuduki Maru, by penetrating the security measures put in place by the freighter's owners and actually executing the takeover, Ohtori had placed a tremendous obligation upon Ramazani and the other plotters within Iran's military. As payment, Ramazani had promised Ohtori two hundred kilos of plutonium — one tenth of the cargo locked away in the freighter's hold. This mission, Operation Yoake, had yet one final act to unfold, one that would find consummation at Yokosuka some three months hence.

Yokosuka, just twenty-eight miles south across Tokyo Bay from the Japanese capital, once one of Imperial Japan's first naval bases, had for five decades been the largest U.S. Navy shore facility in the Far East, covering five hundred acres and including the headquarters for COMFLEACT, the Commander of Fleet Activities, which oversaw the logistics and maintenance for all U.S. Navy forces in the western Pacific. Just a few kilos of highly radioactive plutonium, dispersed by a remotely detonated car bomb, would be more than enough to render the entire area uninhabitable for the next several centuries. And that would be only the beginning. Two hundred kilos would provide blast-scattered death enough for many car bombs, many places around the world. The blast that had shaken the World Trade Center in New York City over a year ago would be utterly forgotten, a mere shadow of the horror, blood, and lingering death that was to follow.

It would be... what was the American term? Payback. Yes, it would be payback indeed for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To drive that particular point home, the attack was planned for the sixth of August, some sixty-eight days hence.

Kurebayashi looked away from the dazzle of the torches and work lights, staring instead at the black water slowly rising and falling along Yuduki Maru's starboard side. Turning and leaning over the railing to peer into the darkness aft, he saw one of the sleek Iranian patrol boats motor slowly past the freighter's stern, at the very edge of the illumination spread by the work lights ashore.