“That’s a Roger, Sardine. We can do eighteen knots. Give us twenty minutes and we’ll be six miles more to the NNW.”
“Understand. Twenty minutes. We have heard no distress call from the Chinese. Nothing on the international hailing frequency or any SOS. You didn’t sink her, did you?”
“Not a chance. They are playing it cagey, as I would. See you in twenty.”
Later Murdock checked his watch. It was almost two hours before they saw the cruiser bear down on them. The SEALs had out light sticks so she wouldn’t run them down. They had made three more Mugger location checks. Now the small boats powered up, and moved to the fantail of the cruiser and tied up to lines.
Jaybird bleated in pain as he went up the rope ladder to the chopper landing pad. Lampedusa helped him up the last three rungs.
“We need a corpsman over here,” Lam called out.
“I’m fine,” Jaybird said.
“Yeah, I always carry you up a rope ladder,” Lam said, and kept Jaybird on the deck until two corpsmen hurried up. They talked to him a minute, helped him stand, and hustled him down to the ship’s sick bay.
“On the chopper,” Murdock bellowed. “We’ll leave the IBSs for seed. We might be back.”
The XO was there before they finished loading. Murdock waved at him. “Commander, one of the IBSs has a leak in one of the chambers,” said Murdock. “Can you have it repaired?”
The commander nodded, and Murdock stepped on board the chopper and the crew chief closed the hatch.
This time all of the SEALs slept on the two-and-a-half-hour ride back to Athens.
The last time Murdock checked, the cruiser’s radio had still not picked up any kind of distress call from the Chinese ship.
It was 0240 when Murdock and his charges, less Jaybird, stepped off the NATO bus in front of their quarters. Don Stroh came out of a sedan grinning.
“Shit a bucket full of cookies, you boys have done it again.”
“What?” Murdock said, jolting himself fully awake. “The cruiser didn’t hear any distress calls.”
“True, neither did anyone else in the Med. But our AWACS plane shows that the Star of Asia is now dead in the water, and has been for the past three hours. That old tub ain’t going nowhere. Now all she has to do is ask for assistance and we can board her and take over, get the damn warheads, and then tow her into port.”
“You wish. Her captain won’t allow a boarding party within ten miles. He’ll break out his big guns and challenge you.”
“Challenge the whole damn 14th Fleet task force now steaming within eighty miles of his position?”
“Hell, yes. What does he have to lose? He’s stopped, but he isn’t done. He’s within chopper distance of Athens and lots of places. Choppers can pack a dozen warheads a trip.”
“Oh, damn, I didn’t think of that. So we shoot down the choppers. It was an accident.”
“Hard sell on the international news scene. Hey, your problem. Our work is done. Now I’m trying to decide if I should get breakfast or a shower, or just drop into my bunk and sleep for twelve.”
“I’d suggest the bunk first. The brass has been up all night working on this. They have firm intel that the plane that left here with the warheads has landed in Afghanistan. If I’m any gauge of what comes next, it’s that the President and my boss will both want you and your men to get into Afghanistan and blow that nuclear warhead into tiny, tiny pieces that nobody can put back together again.”
“Not even Humpty-Dumpty?”
“Especially not him.”
The SEALs dragged themselves off the bus and grouped around Murdock.
“So, did we nail that bastard?” Ron Holt asked.
“We did. He’s dead in the water, not going anywhere. But he won’t put out a distress call. Which I can understand. He’s probably waiting for some kind of instructions from his furious friends in Beijing. Now, hit the sack. In seven hours we go see what the top dogs want us to go bark at next.”
“Seven hours? Damn generous of them. I just voted for the sack. I may not even take my shoes off.”
Murdock didn’t have time to. The moment he opened the door to his small two-man room he sensed somebody else was there.
“Well, its about time you got back. Afraid I dozed off there for a minute waiting for you.”
Murdock laughed. What else could happen today? He held out his hand to the middle-aged man who stood up from his bunk.
“Hi, Dad, how is everything back in D.C., and how in hell did you find me this time?”
16
Chen Takung was in the Combat Direction Center talking to the radar operators about a mysterious ship that had been appearing on and off the screens for the past two days.
“Sometimes it looks like an American cruiser,” the technician said. “Other times it fades away. Sir, if we could put up our top antennas, we could get a complete surface scan and a much better picture.”
“We can’t do that. Your job is to keep a log on this mystery ship,” Chen said. “I want a detailed record of when it appears and how far away it is.”
At that moment the 511-foot ship jolted to the left, pitching Chen against the radar operator, dumping both of them to the floor. They came up on their hands and knees. Then the next explosion smashed them to the left again, against the stools in front of the various screens.
The third detonation came, but this time Chen grabbed hold of the console base and rode out the leftward surge.
An alarm bell sounded as the ship heeled over to a ten-percent list to the left.
A speaker over Chen’s head began spitting out commands.
“Battle stations. Battle stations.”
“I want a damage report now,” an officer shouted into his microphone. “Where have we been hit? Damage control, come in, damage control.”
Chen surged to his feet and out of the combat center, and onto the bridge. The ship’s captain was already there.
“We’ve been hit at the waterline in section fourteen. That’s about a third of the way back from the bow. We’re taking on water and have sealed off three compartments.”
“The missiles are forward of that point?” Chen asked.
“Yes, they have not been harmed. We are attempting a complete damage assessment. We have cut our forward speed to three knots.”
The Chinese Navy captain stared hard at this civilian he had to take orders from. It rankled him, but he was Navy and would obey his orders. “Sir, I suggest that we fully extend two of our radar antenna so we can do a complete surface search. We need to know who is out there and who might have fired a torpedo or missile at us.”
“Denied. We don’t want to give away our real identity until we have to, if we indeed must at some point do that. It wasn’t a missile that hit us. It came in too low, so it had to be a torpedo or a mine of some kind. Weren’t there a lot of mines planted here in World War II and never recovered?”
“Yes, sir. A continuing drive to find and destroy them has been highly successful. Most of the usual shipping channels are now free of these mines. But a few break off now and then. Haven’t heard of any problems with them for six months.”
“Can you put a diver down to be sure it was a mine?”
“Yes, right away.”
“For just a moment Chen wondered if this was an attack by the same forces that had hassled the chopper transfer of the package from the freighter to the helicopter and then into the Athens airport. How could anyone know? He had silenced the only two men he had worked with at the source.
Chen went down to the rail over the damaged area and watched. The captain had sent down men on lines to assess the damage. One reported on a handheld radio.