First Team [First Team 01] Page 18

  “Oh we ain’t going to hurt you,” Ferg told him. “We ain’t even going to tell the mullahs on you. Where’s my fuckin’ gun?”

  As the man babbled in Farsi for his life, Ferguson noticed a metal cabinet against the wall. He went to it, pulled at the door; when he saw it was locked he blew off the handle with a bullet from the Beretta. The thin metal mechanism shattered, and the doors slapped open.

  His Glock was on the top shelf, along with his rad counters and the small plastic container with his synthetic thyroid pills, which was what he had really wanted to retrieve.

  “Are you fuckin’ comin’ or what?” demanded Rankin from the hallway.

  “On my way,” said Ferguson, gulping the pill he had missed.

  ~ * ~

  A

  bus, Conners?” asked Ferguson.

  “The train was busy.”

  “Kinda feels like we’re going home after the big track meet,” said Ferguson. “And we lost or something.”

  “I wouldn’t call the mission a smashing success,” said Rankin.

  “It ain’t over till it’s over,” said Ferguson. No matter what the circumstance was, Ferg thought, Rankin could be counted on to have a stick up his ass.

  Generally sideways.

  “So, Ferg, you star in any of their movies?” Conners asked.

  “I wanted to, but there was a language problem,” Ferguson told him.

  “What are we going to do now?” Keveh asked.

  “Well you and your buddy can either be evacked to the U.S. or just go home.”

  “People saw us.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Ferg told him. “Come back with us. The SEALs’ll take care of you. Right, MC?”

  “Sure,” said the SEAL team leader.

  “We’ll stay,” said Keveh.

  “You sure, buddy?”

  Keveh nodded.

  “Good. All right, Skip and I’ll go check the ship out.”

  “What about me, Ferg?” asked Conners.

  “You hang back with the bell-bottom boys, Dad. You look tired.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Nah, you do. MC, I’ll take two of your guys for backup. That cool?”

  “We’ll all go with you.”

  “Too many people,” said Ferg. “Dad and I already figured it out. We need you to stay on the perimeter so you can cut off anybody that comes up from that barracks at the north. If we’re quiet, we’re in and out.”

  “What if you’re not quiet?” asked MC.

  “Then we’re in and out a little faster, and you guys get some action,” said Ferg. “We’ll try for quiet. Worst case we go out on the water side.”

  “What about yourself?” said Conners. “You’re not tired?”

  “I never get tired.”

  “You on amphetamines?” asked Rankin.

  “I’m high on life, Skippy.”

  “I just saved your ass,” said Rankin.

  “And I’m glad you did.”

  “Show a little respect.”

  “I respect you, Skip. I just don’t want to sleep with you.”

  “I don’t get you, Ferguson. I don’t get you at all.”

  “The day you get me, Rankin,” said Ferg, “is the day I hang it up.” He smiled at him. “But thanks for saving my ass anyway.”

  ~ * ~

  12

  BANDAR ‘ABBÃS, IRAN

  They cut the fence and went in, skirting around a set of floodlights to reach the side of one of the warehouse buildings. Ferg’s sensor was clean, and both buildings were empty.

  The ship was a little better guarded. Two sentries walked a line that swung across the rail access; they had decent lighting and a clear field of vision beyond a pair of shacks and assorted machinery sheds about fifty feet from the hull. The lights strung around the yard cast a pale yellow haze over everything, but was strong enough that they didn’t need their NODs.

  “Good place for a crossbow,” said Ferg, sizing it up.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t have one,” said Rankin.

  “They don’t even talk to each other when they pass,” said Ferg.

  “Maybe they don’t like each other.”

  The men wore berets and couldn’t see each other until they were about ten feet apart. In fact, they hardly glanced toward each other. Rankin and Ferguson agreed that if one were eliminated, they could sneak up behind the other and attack as he walked toward the intersection of their rounds.

  “You think we have enough time to take one, grab his uniform, then meet his partner in the middle?” Ferg asked.

  Rankin studied them, using a small pair of folding binoculars—personal equipment, like the Uzi he favored. “Not the whole uniform. But you’d just need the shirt maybe. Have to be the guy on the left.”

  ‘Why?

  “Other guy’s too short. Shirt’ll never fit.” Rankin watched them walk. He guessed that they would be tired and more than a little bored; guard duty sucked no matter where you did it. “When he gets to that rope at the far end there, see by the ship? I could climb up on that scaffold and jump.”

  “He’d see you.”

  “Not if I come off the top of the scaffold.”

  “That’s twenty feet,” said Ferg.

  “Yeah.” Rankin said it like it was a dare.

  Ferguson called him on it. “Well go ahead. Don’t break anything.”

  “You, with me,” Rankin told one of the SEALs. They trotted back toward the fence, then crossed over toward the north side of the yard, crawling forward amid the stacks of equipment and materials. To get to the scaffold, they would have to cross about ten feet of well-lit ground; Rankin wasn’t so much worried about being seen as casting a shadow.

  As he waited, sizing up the situation, the guard came around to the near side. Rankin saw him clearly—his eyes were focused, wary; he didn’t have the bored look most guys would have pulling a late-night shift in the middle of nowhere. It occurred to Rankin that either the Iranian was pretty dedicated or had been tipped off, or maybe both.

  The sentry turned, his boots scratching against the concrete. Rankin realized belatedly that he could have rushed him—they were no more than eight feet apart, and it would have taken no more than a second and a half to take him. He’d been so fixated on the idea of climbing the scaffold that he’d missed a far easier chance.

  “Next time he comes,” he told the SEAL. “When he swings around, I’m up, and I get him.”

  ~ * ~

  F

  erguson checked in with Conners and the rest of the SEALs, who were watching from the perimeter. They had the main guard post covered, along with the approach to the shipyard.

  “Somebody’s on the ship,” Conners told him. He’d climbed atop the bus and could just barely make out the deck. “Up near the bow.”

  “Just one person?”

  “Hard to see, but it looked like one person, moving.”

  Ferguson watched as the guards returned. “How we looking, Skip?” he asked Rankin over the com system.

  When Rankin didn’t answer right away, Ferg feared that the SF soldier had already changed places with the guard and was going to do the act solo. But that wasn’t like Rankin—a second later he responded.

  “I get him this round,” said Rankin. “Be patient.”

  “Alien concept.” Ferguson slid forward on his knee as the guard on his side passed, positioning himself to cut the man down if he heard anything.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he sharp steel blade felt warm against Rankin’s thumb. He could hear the sentry’s footsteps as he approached. They seemed to take forever.

  He’d practiced this sort of takedown a million times, but he’d never done it for real; there wasn’t much cause in real operations to sneak up on a man with a knife and slit his throat. Getting close enough to do that meant putting yourself at enormous risk, and it was almost always easier and smarter to use a gun and be done with it.

  The scraping stopped. Rankin, hunched dow
n in the shadow of a large pump, felt his lungs freeze.

  Finally, the scraping resumed. Rankin could hear the feet twisting as the sentry turned and started to retrace his steps. One stride, two strides, three—

  The SF man leapt up into the light, pushing air into his lungs, then clamping his mouth closed as he jumped out. The Iranian was farther than he’d thought—a step, another step—the man started to turn.

  The knife caught the side of his neck first. Rankin’s left arm fished wildly, searching for the gun, his right hand pushing the knife along the sentry’s skin.

  The gun fell to the ground. Rankin felt something heavy in his hands. He heard the Iranian cough, then gasp for air, whispering a prayer in Farsi as he died.

  Quickly he pulled the man’s body to the side. He dropped the knife, unbuttoning his shirt—there was no bulletproof vest. Rankin pulled the shirt over his, hunched over—this wasn’t going to work. He grabbed the man’s beret and pulled it over his head, low, then took the AK.-47 he’d been holding and began walking, telling his lungs to breathe now, it was all right.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he guard approached the other warily, either because his timing was off or he’d heard something. Ferguson had anticipated this—he had the SEAL covering him toss a rock in the other direction, and in the half second it took for the sentry to swing around, he sprang. The stock of his MP-5 caught the man in front of the ear; he flew to the ground as if propelled by a cannon.

  “Shit,” said Ferg, afraid he’d killed the bastard.

  He rushed over, kicking the gun away and grabbing one of the plastic restraints from his belt. The sentry was out cold, though he seemed to be breathing. They hauled him over to the side, out of the light, behind a pair of tanks used for welding.

  “You should’ve waited till I was closer,” said Rankin.

  “Blood on your hands,” said Ferguson. “He give you problems?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right.” Ferguson bit his lip; too late to worry about that now. “There’s a guy on the ship near the bow, according to Conners.”

  He went toward the stern, where several lines hung down. They each took a rope, leaving the SEALs to cover the approach below.

  Ferg pulled himself over the rail at the top, pausing to get an idea of what was nearby. The superstructure of the ship blocked off the view of the forward area.

  A ship this size could hold tons and tons of waste. Blow the sucker up in LA harbor, New York, Boston—pick the symbolic target of your choice.

  But his rad counter was still. If they were setting it up as a dirty bomb, either they hadn’t gotten very far, or the waste was still heavily shielded.

  Rankin met him on the other side of the railing. “This way here is clear,” he told Ferguson, pointing to the starboard. “There are some large metal girders or something, like a base for a weapon or a crane or something, beyond the superstructure.”

  Ferg leaned over the side and waved the SEALs up. One stayed at the rear of the deck near the ropes as the other three men moved forward around the side of the ship. The railing ended abruptly; Rankin took a step too close to the edge and nearly fell off.

  Where an oil tanker would have a relatively clear deck forward of the superstructure at the rear of the ship, the Iranian vessel had what looked like a long metal house extending most of its length. While designed to carry ethylene—a colorless, flammable gas—the compartments were being completely renovated, and Ferguson could peer through the open end of the structure and see well into the interior. At the starboard side of the decking area closest to him sat what looked like an oversized rack of bottles, with a rack twisting down toward the hull; some of the mechanism was obscured by tarps.

  “You know what that is?” Ferg asked the SEAL.

  The SEAL—Petty Officer Sean Reid—studied it for a few seconds.

  “Looks like they’re making it into a minelayer,” said Reid, craning his neck so he could see below. “The roof covers up the mechanism. They’ll line the mines up below, right there, they kind of squirt them out over around that spot—I can’t see because of the covers, but probably there’s like a hatch. Slide open.”

  “What kind of mines?” asked Ferg.

  “Well—mines.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It looks like it, sir.”

  The SEAL had a way of saying “sir” that implied it meant, “you dumb shit.”

  Ferguson reached into his shirt pocket for the digital camera. Flipping it to the night-shot setting—it was a near-infrared view—he slid gingerly through the opening of the deck housing and walked forward on a wide piece of wood, apparently something the workmen had placed there, and took some pictures. Below was a large empty compartment with ropes and tools at the bottom.

  All this way, just to find a minelayer. Slott was going to love hearing that.

  So would Alston. Ah well, thought Ferg, give the folks back home something to gloat about.

  He was just starting back when he heard a sound behind him. Before he could even curse, the light burp of AK-47 broke through the night. As he flattened himself against the board, both Rankin and the SEAL nearby opened up on the Iranian watchman, who was firing from the front of the ship.

  “So much for the subtle approach,” said Ferg, half-crawling and half-jumping to the solid decking near the superstructure.

  The three Americans moved swiftly to the stern, where the other SEAL waved them forward. Gunfire erupted near the main entrance to the dry dock; above the crackle of automatic rounds came two sharp snaps, the report of Remington 700 sniper rifles being fired—a pair of SEAL marksmen had found their targets.

  “Left, left,” shouted Rankin, as more gunfire broke out behind them. Following his own instructions, he pivoted, gun on hip, shooting through the clip as two Iranians ran into the semicircle of light.

  “Enough of this shit,” said Ferguson, standing and icing the spotlights with his submachine gun.

  They were about halfway to the fence when a heavy machine gun opened up from the warehouse yard. Its bullets crashed through the lot, throwing a hail of cement shrapnel before them.

  Then another gun picked up the job, its bullets closer.

  “Not going that way,” said Ferguson.

  “Then how are we getting out of here?” said Rankin.

  Ferguson looked back at the ship. The other guard posts were on the city side, near the road.

  “We swim for it,” said Ferguson. “You guys up for it?” he asked the SEALs.

  “Uh, we can make it,” said Reid.

  “Okay. Because I figure that’s going to be the easy way out.” He pushed up the com system’s mike bud as more gunfire flared, this time over near the highway that ran to the east. “Conners, what the hell are you guys doing out there?”

  “We just stopped a truck from coming in.”

  “Good. More reinforcements coming?”

  “Maybe. A lot of shit moving north of you,” said Conners. “What about those machine guns?”

  “They’re a pain in the ass. Look, we’re going to go out by the water.”

  “You sure?” asked Conners.

  “That way you guys can just slip south rather than trying to hold the fort against the entire Iranian Army, such as it is. Listen, they’re working the ship up as a minelayer. Not quite what we were looking for, but they’ll want to know back in Washington.”

  “You’re not going to tell them yourself?” asked Conners.

  “I’ll tell ‘em, Dad. Don’t fret.” The machine guns began firing again—this time considerably closer. “We’re outta here, boys.”

  ~ * ~

  R

  ankin took point, running along the dock area toward the water. As he passed a set of large wooden boxes, he saw an Iranian duck behind cover up near the bow. He waited to fire, closing the gap. Rankin was less than five feet from him when the man leaned out from around a portable generator to see what was going on. The bullets from the Amer
ican’s Uzi slapped through his skull, tossing blood and bits of bone away like drops of rain brushing dust from a windowsill. Rankin kicked the body over, frowning when he saw the man hadn’t been armed. He swung around quickly, then continued forward. A shadow loomed down from the forecastle of the ship; Rankin threw himself onto his back and emptied his clip in its direction. As he rolled back over and started to reload, the figure reappeared, raising a rifle.