Keith Douglass - Seal Team Seven

"Aw, the Iranies are chicken-shit, Mobe," Dilmore replied. "They'll take one look at us and..."

"Pickax One, Pickax One" sounded over Dilmore's helmet phones. "This is Rolling Prairie. Deploy in attack formation, but hold your fire. Repeat, deploy for attack but do not fire."

Rolling Prairie was the call sign for II MEF's Tactical Command Team, buried away in the combat center aboard the Nassau.

"There they are," Mobely said. "I got the freighter and two... no, three warships. Looks like a destroyer has the freighter in tow."

"I see it, Mobe. Pick your targets. I'm gonna buzz the Maru."

The SuperCobra held its approach, now less than fifty feet above the water, its rotor blast raising a wind-lashed fog of spray in its wake. Ahead, the Japanese freighter Yuduki Maru was wallowing forward in moderate seas, a long length of heavy towing cable stretched from the fantail of the destroyer to the freighter's bow chocks. Red-white-and-green flags flew from the mastheads of both vessels.

"Hey, Skipper!" Mobely called. "The Maru's flying an Iranie flag!"

"I see it, Mobe." He put the SuperCobra into a gentle turn to port, circling the two vessels at a distance. So far there'd been no fire from either ship, though he could see armed men gathered on their decks. According to Prairie Fire's mission briefing, a team of Navy SEALs had managed to get on board the freighter and damage one of its screws, but had been forced to back off. How many Iranian soldiers were aboard? It looked like hundreds, though he didn't have time for an accurate count. Enough, certainly, to fight off a SEAL squad, and enough to make an airborne descent from helos, if not impossible, at least a very bloody business indeed.

"You getting all this, Mobe?"

"We're rolling, Skipper." The gunner/copilot was using a sophisticated camera mounted in the Cobra's chin turret to record the scene.

Damn. If the Iranians had raised their own flag over the Yuduki Maru, this could get real sticky, real fast. With that Iranian flag flying from her truck, the Japanese freighter was now, technically at least, Iranian property, and the American rescue mission could be construed as an invasion. Wryly wondering what the brass hats were going to make of this one, he opened a channel to Rolling Prairie and called in his report.

The other gunships began circling as well, while the troop-carrying Sea Stallions remained at a safe distance. After informing Nassau about the flags and tow cable, Dilmore was told to keep orbiting the freighter but to take no threatening action.

No threatening action? Add the SuperCobra's M197, a three-barreled, high-speed rotary cannon protruding from beneath its chin, to the rocket and minigun pods and TOW missiles slung from hardpoints to port and starboard, and you had one definitely threatening aircraft, even when it was squatting motionless on a flight deck. Circling its intended prey like some bristling, monster dragonfly, it was bound to make the people on those ships nervous.

The original plan, code-named Prairie Fire, called for the Marine helicopters to rush straight in, suppress any hostile fire from the freighter, and off-load the troops directly onto Yuduki Maru's forward deck. It was thought that the sudden, demoralizing appearance of the gunships, coupled with the casualties the Iranian forces had already suffered during the SEAL raid earlier in the week, would be enough to force their surrender.

The raid had been almost ready to go the day before when word had been received from the Pentagon that the Iranian warships Damavand, Sahand, and Alborz had joined the plutonium ship and were now providing close escort, together with a number of small patrol craft. Damavand, a World War II-era British destroyer transferred to Iran in the 1970s, now had the Yuduki Maru under tow.

Delayed for twenty-four hours while options were reviewed and orders rewritten, Prairie Fire had finally been launched despite the new intelligence, but their mission profile now called for them to approach cautiously, to report everything they saw, to hold fire until specifically ordered otherwise. What had begun as a terrorist incident on the high seas could rapidly escalate into a major military confrontation between Iran and the United States.

"Hey, Skipper?" Mobely called over the ICS. "We've got something screwy coming in on channel four."

"Let's hear it." He flipped the channel select knob on his console.

"...vessel Beluga! D-do not attack!" The voice was ragged with excitement, or more likely, Dilmore thought, with fear. "American forces, please, do not attack. This is Rudi Kohler, of the Greenpeace vessel Beluga. Soldiers and sailors of Revolutionary Iran, acting in the interest of world peace, have boarded the freighter Yuduki Maru, which was damaged several days ago in a terrorist incident, and have taken her in tow. This is a salvage and rescue operation as described under the international laws of the sea. The... the commander of the Iranian forces has asked me, as a representative of the organization Greenpeace International, to act as a neutral observer in this matter, to report what I see and hear to the world. American forces, please do not attack."

"Shit," Lieutenant Dilmore said, switching off. "A salvage operation! Who do they think they're kidding?"

"Pickax One, Pickax One, this is Rolling Prairie" sounded over Dilmore's helmet phones. "Hold fire, repeat, hold fire. This one's going up the chain. Confirm, over."

"Rolling Prairie, Pickax One," Dilmore replied. "Hold fire, roger." He dropped the helo into a shallow bank to starboard.

"What do you think, Skipper?" Mobely asked. "Was that message for real?"

"Hell, it sounded like he was reading from a prepared statement. I think the poor bastard had a gun to his head."

"Yeah. Who's this Kohler guy anyway?"

"I don't..."

"Ninety-nine aircraft, ninety-nine aircraft" sounded over the radio, interrupting.

"Uh-oh," Mobely said. The call sign "ninety-nine aircraft" was military shorthand for all aircraft aloft, and a general order to all of them probably meant an abort. "That was a little too fast for my liking."

"Quiet," Dilmore said. "I want to hear."

"Ninety-nine aircraft, scrub Prairie Fire. Repeat, scrub Prairie Fire and RTB."

RTB — Return to Base. The brass was calling off the attack before a single shot had been fired.

"Aw, shit!" Mobely said. "They're letting the bastards get away with fucking murder!"

"Maybe they know something about it we don't," Dilmore said. "Cominright to three-five-oh. Oops. What's that?"

"What's what?"

"Sailboat trailing the Iranians, six, maybe eight miles back."

"Hell, that's probably the Greenpeacers."

"Rog. Let's have a closer look, okay?"

"Fine. You explain digressing from the flight plan to the CO when we get back."

"No problems. Hang onto your lunch."

The Marine SuperCobra dropped until its skids were practically skimming the waves, angling south toward the two-masted schooner motoring northward with its sails furled. Several men in civilian clothes stood on the aft deck, one of them at the wheel. As the helicopter circled at a distance, the men waved.

"That's the Greenpeace bunch?" Mobely asked.

"That's them. Beluga."

"They look okay."

"Yeah. They could also have a guy with a machine gun pointed at 'em, hiding in that hatchway in the deck, telling 'em to smile and wave."

"Whatcha want to do?"

"Shit. We can't land. We can't attack a boat full of hostages, if that's what they are. I guess we wave back."

Circling once more, the SuperCobra then peeled off toward the west, following the other helos of Pickax back toward the U.S.S. Nassau.

Prairie Fire was, Dilmore thought, a total bust. The Iranians had just pulled a bit of legal chicanery that might let them get their hands on the plutonium, the operation had the blessing of some guy from Greenpeace, and Uncle Sam was going to come out of this with egg on his face... again.