Keith Douglass - Seal Team Seven

Two of the side-by-side cabins on this deck were open; one was filled with radio and computer equipment, including the electronic gear necessary for establishing a satellite communications link. Another room, empty when the SEALs broke in, had been occupied by the Iranians. The last two, opposite one another, were closed and locked from the inside. As MacKenzie gave silent, hand-sign directions, Doc and the Professor took up positions alongside the cabin door to port, while Garcia and Roselli took the cabin to starboard. Seconds before, Nicholson had radioed the VBSS team about the kill outside, warning them that at least one more tango probably occupied the starboard cabin.

Garcia and the Professor were both equipped as assault breachers, with shotguns instead of H&Ks. Standing to the sides of their respective doors, they took aim, then fired, the twin booms of the shotguns ear-splitting in the confined space below decks. The cabin doors were lightweight, hollow-core barriers designed for privacy and nothing more. One-ounce slugs smashed locking mechanisms and plywood, then punched through carpeting and fiberglass decks as the doors disintegrated into splinters and whirling sheets of wooden paneling.

On the starboard side, Roselli lunged through the door a blink behind the shotgun blast, his Smith & Wesson gripped in both hands, the aiming laser sweeping across the darkened room like a jewel-bright rapier. On the far bulkhead, a porthole had been opened; an Iranian stood there, a G-3 assault rifle aimed at the door.

The shotgun blast and the spray of splinters and wood chips had forced him to turn his head, and he was a split second late in firing — fortunately for Roselli, since the SEAL otherwise would have been dead as soon as he burst through the opening. Roselli tracked his pistol, the laser painting an unsteady line across the Iranian's chest. In the same, confused instant, one of the two other figures in the cabin, a big, lanky man in a lightweight safari jacket suddenly bolted toward the door.

Roselli held his fire as the hostage lurched between him and the soldier. The soldier fired an instant later, triggering a full-auto burst toward the door; the volley had been aimed at Roselli, but the bullets slammed into the bulkhead, the overhead, and the hostage's back. Roselli triggered three quick shots as the stricken hostage crumpled to the deck, slamming the Iranian back against the porthole.

On the other side of the passageway, Doc plunged into the stateroom through the storm of splinters loosed by Higgins's shotgun blast. A single Iranian soldier stood there, hiding behind a tall, attractive blond woman in a T-shirt and blue slacks. He had his left arm tight across her throat, gripping her so tightly that her scream was a silent, desperate gape as her hands clawed at his forearm; his right hand pressed the muzzle of a Colt .45 pistol against the side of her head.

"Aslehetawnra beeandawzeed!" he screamed, and the panic was evident in the harsh raggedness of his words. "Goosh koneed va elaw meezanam!"

Ellsworth wasn't sure what the man had said. He didn't speak Farsi, and the few phrases he'd memorized for this op were brief and strictly utilitarian. He suspected, though, that the Iranian had just rattled off a couple of those memorized phrases, things like "Drop your weapons," and "obey or I'll shoot." Strictly Wild West gunslinger stuff.

"Take it easy, fella," he said, his eyes glancing about the tiny compartment. Two more women were clinging to each other on the cabin's single bed. "Nobody's gonna hurt you! Azyatee beh shomaw nameerasad!"

The expression on the visible part of the Iranian's face went from desperation to blank puzzlement. The pistol in his hand didn't waver, but a fraction more of his head was visible now behind the woman's blond mane. Doc was holding his Smith & Wesson at waist level, a deliberately nonthreatening stance, but the laser was painting the wild straggle of the Iranian's hair. He dipped the muzzle a fraction of a degree, and the red dot of the laser aim-point slid onto the guy's face. The Iranian flinched, probably from the dazzle of the laser, and pulled farther behind the woman. Doc let the laser dot drift onto her hair, which sparkled under the beam's caress. "Tasleem shaveed!" Doc told him. "Surrender!"

"Eli?"

Doc squeezed the trigger. His pistol chuffed, punching the round effortlessly through the woman's hair and into the Iranian's left eye. The soldier spun backward and fell across the bed alongside the other two women. The blonde stood motionless on the deck, eyes squeezed shut, screaming now as loud as she was able.

"Shit," Doc said. "I didn't think my accent was that bad!"

The blonde stopped screaming, opened her eyes, then screamed again as soon as she'd had a good look at her rescuer.

"It's okay," he said, raising his voice. "It's okay! We're Americans!"

"Americans!" One of the women on the bed sprang forward, grabbing his arm. "Thank you, God! Americans!" The other two women followed an instant later, and Ellsworth found himself surrounded. "Port cabin clear," he reported over his radio as the women crowded closer. "One tango down."

"One tango down, starboard cabin," Roselli added on the same channel. "And one hostage down too. Doc? We need you over here!"

"On my way, Razor." He had to roughly disentangle himself from the women to get out of the compartment. "Okay! Okay! Take it easy, ladies! We'll have you out of here soon."

He could hear the thunder of the Huey outside edging closer to the yacht.

0008 hours (Zulu +3)

Greenpeace yacht Beluga

Indian Ocean, 230 miles southeast of Masirah

"Prairie Home, Bedsheet," Murdock called. Leaving the prisoner under guard, he'd emerged onto Beluga's well deck and was standing again in the night, speaking via satellite link with the command center aboard Nassau. "Prairie Home, Bedsheet. Come in, Prairie Home."

He waited out the silence, listening to static. The Huey circled through the night, keeping watch against the appearance of Iranian patrol boats or other unpleasant surprises. Close by, Jaybird, who'd once professed to Murdock his experience with sailing vessels, had taken over the helm, while MacKenzie, Higgins, Roselli, and Fernandez mounted guard on Beluga's upper deck.

Except for the muffled clatter of the helo, the night was quiet now. The nearest Iranian vessels, some three miles ahead now, seemed oblivious to the activity aboard the Greenpeace yacht. The continual fly-bys and perimeter intrusions throughout the past hours had paid off; the Huey was certainly registering on the Iranian warships' radar, but they'd apparently chosen to ignore it.

They would, no doubt, continue to ignore it, at least until Beluga showed some sign of trouble, an abrupt change of course, for example, or a rendezvous with an American ship.

"Bedsheet, this is Prairie Home," a voice crackled at last in his earplug speaker. "Authenticate Hotel, Alfa, one-niner-one."

"Prairie Home, roger. I authenticate: Victor, India, one-one-three.

"Roger, Bedsheet. Go ahead."

"Prairie Home, objective secured, repeat, objective secured. We have fourteen tangos down, that's one-four tangos down, one tango captured, all accounted for. We have one hostage dead during the takedown, one missing."

Murdock tried to dismiss the sour, dark burning inside he'd felt since he'd learned of Paul Brandeis's death minutes before, but it wouldn't go. The SEAL assault had gone down with stunning ferocity, speed, and precision. Forty seconds after Murdock had first opened fire on the Beluga's helmsman, all but one of the Iranians had been dead, with no casualties among the SEALS. Of the hostages aboard, all three women, Rudi Kohler, and four of Kohler's employees found locked in the crew's cubby below dec were safe.