The team’s next set of steps had all been worked out and rehearsed again and again back at Dorset. Satellite photos provided to the British government by the American Defense Intelligence Agency had shown the general layout of the platform area, and Wentworth had shared those maps with the SEALs as soon as they’d reached his desk. As Murdock bobbed in the sea beneath the platform, he used each lift provided by a passing wave to check the actual layout with what he’d memorized off the satellite maps.
Nothing, apparently, had moved in the past few hours. The tanker Noramo Pride was still moored east of the platform, about a mile off. A red-and-white-painted anchor tug outwardly identical to the Horizon was moored close beside one of the four main supports beneath Bouddica Alpha. That would be the Celtic Maiden, assigned as Bouddica’s safety boat. Not far from the Maiden was an aging fishing boat, dilapidated and rust-streaked, looking very much out of place alongside so much twenty-first-century hardware. Murdock had heard nothing about that craft’s identity, but her presence here meant trouble. Either she’d been used by the terrorists in their takeover of the original tanker, or she was an honest fishing vessel, somehow swept up in the drama unfolding over the North Sea. Either way, there were probably tangos aboard, and they would have to be neutralized.
The sheer number of large and complex targets here was daunting. Bouddicas Alpha and Bravo alone represented a small city, with thousands of niches, corners, and hidey-holes for the bad guys. Same for the Noramo Pride, an enormous vessel that could have any number of people aboard. And both the Celtic Maiden and the old fishing trawler would have to be considered too.
Clearly, the assault was far beyond the capability of SEAL Seven’s Third Platoon. Most of the op would have to be in the hands of the SAS and — Murdock had been pleased to learn just before their departure that morning — the GSG9. The Germans, evidently, had decided to pitch in to protect their North Sea interests by sending a squad of GSG9 troopers. Murdock hadn’t seen them, but he’d heard that Lieutenant Hopke was with them.
Knowing Hopke’s feelings for Inge Schmidt, feelings shared by Murdock himself, he somehow wasn’t surprised.
They would all be welcome on this one. The single disadvantage in a multi-unit op, of course, was the fact that so many elite teams could end up getting in each others’ way, literally tripping over one another, even opening fire on one another, once they’d broken into the confused tangle of a firefight inside the objective.
After verifying that the various ships were still where the satellite data had originally placed them, Murdock signaled to the others. Roselli, MacKenzie, and Johnson all began unbuckling their diving rigs and pulling their equipment off. While Jaybird Sterling and Murdock stood — or rather swam — watch, the other three shucked themselves down to combat blacks and load-bearing harnesses, with their weapons and other combat gear still sealed in black, waterproof pouches fastened to their backs. Their rebreathers and other swim gear, along with Murdock’s and Sterling’s weapons bags, were attached to a floatation bladder that Sterling inflated with a small CO2 bottle equipped with a pull ring. The bladder’s buoyancy had been calculated to keep the bundled gear adrift just beneath the surface. Any curious eyes that glimpsed the tarp-covered bundle would assume that it was a piece of flotsam bumping against Bravo’s structural supports.
With the gear safely afloat and lashed to a piling, it was time to begin climbing the platform. Roselli was the best climber in the group. He looked at Murdock and Murdock nodded vigorously. God, it would be good to get out of this cold! Roselli groped upward for another cross support just within arm’s reach, grabbed it in one gloved hand, and chinned himself up. A moment later, his rubber-suited legs slid clear of the water, and he began his nerve-wracking climb.
Murdock ran his gloved hand over the piling beside him. Damn… that was ice! Not a solid layer, but a slickness of frozen vapor. Roselli must be part mountain goat to be pulling this off.
A surge of icy water caught Murdock from behind, raising him several feet along the piling, slamming him forward, then dropping away beneath him as he clung precariously to his slippery handhold. A moment later, the water returned, the current whirling him about and breaking his grip.
MacKenzie reached out with one strong hand and grabbed Murdock’s arm, hauling him back. “Easy, L-T,” he said, just loud enough to be heard above the surge and hiss of the waves.
Murdock spat salt water, then gulped in a lungful of cold air. “Thanks, Mac. Let’s link up.”
Each of the four men held fast to the framework with one arm, and with the other snagged hold of the load-bearing harness of the man on his left. Together, they clung to one another and the piling, as wave after ice-cold wave of seawater cascaded about them.
Blinking though the salt, Murdock stared up at Roselli, now a tiny black shape half lost among the black, crisscrossing beams and support struts of the derrick platform. Murdock knew a sharp thrill of fear. If he slipped on that ice-slicked perch now, lost his grip, and fell, he could easily break his back or neck in the fall or hit the water so hard he’d lose consciousness and drown before the others could reach him. Murdock watched the twisting, upward-inching shape, willing him to go on…
Roselli vanished forty feet overhead, a telephone pole’s height above the surging, angry water. For a breathless moment, the four SEALs clung to each other, waiting, and then something came spilling toward them from the derrick platform above, something that unraveled as it fell, then jerked to a halt, dangling free, its end swinging about in the wind.
A caving ladder. MacKenzie, closest and with the longest reach of any of the men still in the water, reached up and out and snagged the end as it swung past just overhead. Carefully, he released his hold on Murdock and the piling, letting his full weight drag down on the ladder and pull it taut. Johnson gave a final check to his gear bag, making certain the snaps and fittings were all secure, then swung up onto the caving ladder’s rungs and began swiftly climbing up out of the water.
With Roselli on the platform and Johnson on his way up, it was time for Murdock and Jaybird to pull a small reconnaissance of their own. Murdock locked eyes with the other SEAL, nodded twice, then pulled his face mask back down and settled it in place. A last look around to get his bearings, and then he ducked beneath the surface again, striking out toward the north.
Toward the moored anchor tug Celtic Maiden.
The distance was only about four hundred feet, but it was tough going nonetheless without flippers, even without the added weight of the weapon bags and ammo they’d been carrying. After hours of forced inactivity inside the bus, Murdock was already beginning to feel the effects of exhaustion and exposure.
But he particularly wanted to check out the Celtic Maiden’s strange cargo. The sat photos from Washington had not included any analysis, and Murdock doubted that the folks at the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington — NPIC, for short — had advanced any solid guesses yet. Murdock had studied an enlargement of the stern of the Celtic Maiden for quite a while early that morning, however, and was disturbed by what he’d seen there. Something was resting on the Maiden’s fantail, an elongated, vaguely torpedo-like shape swaddled in canvas.