“We’re about half an hour to getting wet. We go out, get in our boats and wait for the freighter. One man will go up the side from each boat and they’ll use two drop lines for the rest of us. Any questions?”
“What if the old tub is so rusty that our magnets don’t hold?” Jaybird asked.
“Then the climber will detour to another area where the magnets will hold. The boats in the water will follow the climber wherever he goes.”
Then the big rotor cranked up, the engine howled, and they lifted gently off the ground.
Jaybird Sterling sat on the floor of the chopper beside Senior Chief Dobler. He leaned away a little so he wouldn’t touch the chief. He had been trying his best to avoid talking to the chief lately. Ever since he’d kissed the chief’s daughter, he had been so mixed up he could hardly breathe.
He shook his head remembering. Ke-reist, no girl had ever set him off the way she did. The soft little way she had of moving her hands when she talked. The easy-to-get-along-with conversations they had. Then that kiss in the stacks. He shook his head again. It had never happened that way before.
He didn’t know how old she was. She had to be seventeen at least. Hell, he could wait a year — if he could see her now and then. The library was the best bet. Yeah, first thing they got home, he was going to call her when he knew her dad would be at the BUD/S. Yeah. That would work.
What if when Helen was eighteen, Chief Dobler still objected to Jaybird seeing her? What then? Hell, he’d cross over that minefield when he came to it. Carefully, but he’d get across. Hell, he was a SEAL. That should count for something with her old man. Saving his ass a time or two under enemy fire would help. Yeah, and not fuck up between now and then. That was the big one.
Jaybird had played football and baseball in high school. He was good, but not good enough to get a scholarship anywhere. Like so many players, his folks couldn’t afford to send him to college. He didn’t want to go to some rinky-dink junior college or a state college, especially in Oregon where he grew up. So he cut out for the Navy when he was just over eighteen.
It took him three years to get into the SEALs, and he’d been slaving in Third Platoon now for another three years. Hey, there was almost nothing that would get him out of the SEALs.
The new guys to the unit kept asking him how he got his nickname. They knew it meant naked, as in naked as a jaybird. He had told so many different stories now that he hardly remembered how it actually happened.
His best story was that he had this dish down at the beach and it was late and nobody was around. They went skinny-dipping just before dark, and when they got back to shore, saw a group of twenty or so had parked right beside their clothes and towels, set up a volleyball net, and had a game going. Others had started a fire in a fire ring, and they all appeared to be settled in for the evening.
That left him and his girl both naked and getting cold. She cried and yelled at him to go get her clothes. He tried, but one of the men spotted him and chased him back into the water. After that they decided he should go back to the car for a blanket and use that to go get their clothes and towels.
Of course his keys were in his pants pocket on the blanket. Still, he said he could break in. He had a secret way. He ran up the cliff to the parking spot, and had almost succeeded in prying loose the driver’s side door when two cops grabbed him. Next thing he knew he was in the county lockup wearing jail clothes. The cops wouldn’t believe his story. They impounded the car. He had to call Murdock to come bail him out.
It was two weeks later before a package came for him with his clothes, his wallet, and his car keys. The girl who mailed the bundle back to him refused his phone calls and he never saw her again.
Jaybird grinned. That was one of the best ones. Yeah, those stories wouldn’t help any with the senior chief. He’d have to start toeing the line, doing everything right.
Damn it to hell, he wondered just how old Helen was.
The chopper’s radar picked up the freighter when they were five miles off, flying at a hundred feet over the dark waters of the Mediterranean. The Star of Asia had not changed course, and had slowed to seven knots. They were still well ahead of the freighter. The pilot reported that they would move up to within a mile of the craft, check the course again, and drop the SEALs off.
At the one-mile mark, Murdock went up and looked through the cockpit window. He could see the running lights of the freighter. It didn’t have the look of a ship trying to hide.
“Listen up,” the crew chief shouted. “In one minute the aft hatch will open. Then you’re on your own. Dump those big rubber boats out of my chopper and jump in after them. Good luck.”
The SEALs came to their feet, checked each other’s gear, then lined up with a squad on each side.
The aft hatch swung down, making a ramp.
The SEALs pushed the first raft out the door, then the second one. The bird had come to a complete stop, and hovered about fifteen feet over the water.
“Go, go, go,” Murdock bellowed. The two lines of SEALs ran forward and jumped off the end of the ramp. Two seconds later they were wet and clawing for the surface, their heavy combat load dragging them down.
It took them almost five minutes to get the IBSs righted, and for the SEALs to climb into them. Murdock made a vocal check to be sure all sixteen men were on board. The two boats were tied together with a twenty-foot cord.
“Directly to our rear you can see the lights from the freighter,” Murdock said. “The pilot checked with the plane overhead and we know this is the right ship, the Star of Asia, of Chinese registry. We’ll both stay on the same side, the way we practiced it. Keep the boats tied together and latch them onto the hull. As soon as we touch, I want the two climbers moving up with the pull cord attached. Everyone get out your Motorolas and let’s get on the net. Questions?”
There were none.
“We’re drifting off the ship’s course,” Lam said. “About a three-knot drift.”
“Start the engines,” Murdock said. “Let’s keep as close to that course as we can. The ship should be here in nine minutes.”
The SEALs shivered. They had done this a hundred times before, but they never became used to the cold. They had elected not to wear their wet suits. They wouldn’t be in the water long enough to justify them, and the suits would slow them down once they made it up the ropes to the deck.
The time dragged. Someone told a dirty joke. That triggered a dozen more.
Murdock hushed them after three minutes. “Coming up on us. Hold it down.”
Now they could see the ship better. They could make out the different-colored navigation lights standard on all vessels. Then a minute later they could hear the growl of the diesel engines inside the big ship, and the gentle hiss as the bow parted the waves.
The ship would miss them by forty yards.
“Let’s move up on her,” Murdock said. “Match her speed, then we edge in beside her amidships and latch on with our magnets. Go.”
The twelve-foot-long-by-six-foot-wide rubber boats moved closer to the ship, matched its speed, then angled toward the hull that soon towered over them. Murdock guessed it would be a forty-foot climb. This part they hadn’t practiced.
Ching perched on the edge of the IBS nearest the big hull and held the powerful magnet. It had a line tied to it and looped around a rope tie-down that circled the top edge of the small craft.
“Closer,” Ching whispered. The small boat edged in again, countering the soft wake of the large craft. Then Ching lunged to the side, planted the magnet on the side of the ship, and at once tugged the line tight, holding the IBS against the large freighter.