Keith Douglass - Seal Team Seven

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.

"C'mon, baby," Magic said softly. "Look at Poppa."

"I don't think it's a civvie," Nicholson said. "Look! I see a weapon."

"I see it," Magic said. The man was through, crouching on the wooden deck, and someone had just handed what looked like a G-3 assault rifle through the porthole. Still, it could be one of the civilian hostages, escaping with a captured rifle from the cabin where he'd been held captive. In the greens and grays of the starlight scope, it was difficult to determine whether or not he was wearing a uniform.

Suddenly he turned, his magnified face staring directly into Brown's scope, and the SEAL sniper had a clear look at his features. Definitely, he was not one of the civilians whose faces he'd memorized aboard the Nassau. Gently, almost lovingly, Brown caressed his MI's trigger. There was a single sharp report, and the upturned face in the nightscope exploded in a messy spray. "Kill," Nicholson said. "Good shot, Magic."

"Yeah, that's one down," Magic said. "Now where're the rest of the bastards?"

0002 hours (Zulu +3)

Greenpeace yacht Beluga

Indian Ocean, 230 miles southeast of Masirah

MacKenzie snapped off hand signals to Higgins and Ellsworth, then to Garcia and Roselli. You two, that way! You two, over here! Doc Ellsworth nodded as he crowded up against the bulkhead, his pistol in both hands, muzzle high. Luxury yacht or no, the Beluga's central passageway was claustrophobic, especially when occupied by half a dozen SEALs in full gear, with weapons and combat loadout vests, and movement was made no easier by the bodies of three Iranian soldiers and their weapons lying on the deck.

Beluga boasted a number of cabins and staterooms on this deck. The owner's cabin was a large area forward, but the door was open and Doc had pronounced it clear when the bow team had first come in. Four more cabins were aligned two by two on either side of the passageway leading aft to the galley, while a companionway forward dropped to the next deck down, leading to a forecastle cubby for the yacht's crew, storage spaces, and a small engine room.