"Odds are fair, though, that nobody will notice even if they're awake. The rifles are subsonic and suppressed. The only thing anyone's going to hear is the strike, and that's an unusual enough sound that they're unlikely to know what it is. Or where it's coming from."
"Now get some sleep," Fulton finished. "Big day tomorrow."
D-1 Minisub Namu, mouth of Bandar Qassim harbor.
Enroute, they'd surfaced and popped the hatch half a dozen times to get their location with a hand-held GPS. In no case had they stayed up more than as long as it took to pop the hatch and get a reading. But the last previous check they'd made had had them within five kilometers of the target and a small fraction of that of where they should have been on their predetermined course.
The sub was tiny, as such things go, and, though quiet on its own, not particularly well insulated from outside noise. Thus, when the small orca-painted conning tower, or sail, broke the surface Eeyore could hear the water rushing off and around the boat, even as he saw the line of the surface recede in his port.
"Dead slow, Simmons," he ordered.
"Aye, slow," the boat's driver echoed.
The tower had a clear vision port wrapped around the forward half of it, just where tower met deck. Ordinarily, with a two-man crew, Antoniewicz would have had the port just in front of him. As was, with Morales taking up space, he had to scrunch.
The opening to the harbor was there, about a half a mile off and almost dead ahead. The little difference from dead ahead was not, in Antoniewicz's judgment, worth resubmerging for. It will do. Most of the city behind it was darkened, without the ambient glow one normally associated with built up areas of that size. My compliments to the chauffeur.
They weren't submariners, really. The formal commands and sequence of events weren't a big deal. In fact, the former SEALs thought it was all a bit silly.
Instead, with a mixture of relief-after all, Simmons could have misnavigated-and satisfaction, Eeyore said, "It's almost dead ahead. Good job. Bring us up past deck level. Morales, you ready?"
"To get out of this fucking can? You couldn't imagine how ready, Eeyore. My fucking back is killing me."
"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Antoniewicz said as he stood up and stretched his own back. He didn't take long over the stretch, though. As they'd rehearsed it dozens of times on the Merciful's deck, he scrambled out the hatch, keeping low, to the deck ahead of the tower. There he sat down and spun on his butt until he was facing aft again, away from the port. By that time Morales was standing in the hatch well, ready to begin passing over the munitions and equipment.
First out was a pod of limpet mines, with an attached strap. Eeyore took the mine pod and hung it, over the side and half in the water, by hooking the strap over a small stanchion. Another mine pod followed, then the third and fourth.
After that came masks with underwater night vision attachments. These were more or less normal, if wide view, masks, with a single, waterproof, image intensifier that could be rotated to either eye. Then followed fins, Phoebus Bio-fins, which did not come cheap. The real advantage to those were that they were so efficient that the user used up much less oxygen, thereby increasing dive time.
The fins were followed by snorkels, fairly light weight-belts with waterproof GPS clipped on, harnesses, rapidly inflatable vests, and rebreathers. Last came two of the underwater useable assault rifles, the Russian APS's.
Simmons stayed inside, still lying prone, with his face to the other clear vision port, to help keep the boat balanced and on an even keel.
While Antoniewicz was donning his equipment, trying to keep the latter from going over the side, Morales turned and slithered out the hatch, to the aft deck, and into the water. From there he swam with easy, effortless strokes to the forward deck and bellied up on it, before swiveling as Eeyore had, to face aft.
In a rehearsed sequence, Antoniewicz lifted the equipment overhead and slightly back to where Morales could grab it and don it. Well after the last piece was gone, after a wait that seemed interminable, but was certainly no more than eight minutes, Morales tapped Eeyore on the shoulder and announced, "Ready."
"Go," said Eeyore, as he eased himself into the water to port and Morales did the same to starboard. Unsurprisingly, the water was quite warm.
Simmons, lying below, felt the boat surge once the weight of the two divers was lifted from it. He swiveled a bezel on his-of course-Rolex, then eased himself back and back some more until he was able to squat under the tower. From there he stood and took a look over the bow at the sea. Already there was no sign of his comrades, which was better than the alternative. Turning around, Simmons took hold of the hatch and, ducking back into Namu, closed and dogged it behind him. He then carefully squatted before resuming his pilot's position.
Moments later, a very odd looking, orca-painted minisub slipped beneath the waves to wait for the prearranged time to rise again.
D-1, MV Merciful
"Chin says the boat that was heading toward him and the landing craft never showed. And he can't hear a trace of it on sonar either. Course, the Bastard's sonar is not, shall we say, of the best. Still . . . " Boxer looked mildly puzzled for only a moment before announcing, "We intercepted some radio traffic. The other one told him they had a firm fix on us. I think that they're going to try to get together to double team us."
"'Think?' Is that a guess?" Stauer asked.
"An educated guess. Still, yes, I could be wrong."
Stauer turned his attention to the ship's skipper. "Recommendations, Ed?"
"Start to take 'em out now, one at a time."
"That will cost time," Boxer observed. "One, we had time for, within the schedule. I don't know about two, though."
"Yeah," Kosciusko agreed, "It'll cost us time. But having one of them show up when we've got seven or eight armored vehicles and a hundred men in the LCM's could cost us the landing and the mission. Then, too, some of what we lose we'll pick up by shaving off the time Chin and the LCM will need to get to us."
Stauer was nothing if not decisive. "Fuck it; do it. If we have to burn out the engines racing to the landing site then . . . well . . . that's our employer's problem."
"Not even his, really," Boxer said. "We could always scuttle the ship and let the insurance company worry about it."
Stauer thought about that for maybe two seconds before agreeing, "True. What do we owe those assholes, after all?"
"Bring her about," Kosciusko ordered. A stream of orders followed. "Spotters forward. Mrs. Liu"-the chief gantry operator- "to the gantry control. Deck crew hook up an empty container, a forty footer if one's available. Set speed for eighteen knots and I'll buy a case of beer for the engine crew if they can squeeze out twenty." The constant slight vibration one could feel through the deck suddenly became less slight as the engines below strained to put on maximum speed.
CHAPTER FORTY
Corsairs against corsairs;
there is nothing to win but empty casks.
-Italian Proverb
D-1, Yacht One Born Every Minute, off the coast of Ophir
The pirates had kept the yacht's original name because it just seemed to fit so well, once it had been explained to them.