All was quiet, but Kurebayashi was ill at ease. He'd been thinking a lot lately of the black-garbed commandos who'd risen from the sea and so nearly overturned Yoake. He was fairly sure that they'd been American SEALs — though both the U.S. Marines and the Army Special Forces used SCUBA equipment when necessary. The SEALs had a well-deserved reputation throughout the world's freedom-fighter underground as ruthless, efficient, and implacably deadly foes.

He didn't believe for a moment that the Americans were going to let Ohtori and the Iranians walk away with two tons of plutonium. If they were going to try again to stop the theft, it would have to be now, before Yuduki Maru's steel-lined vaults were breached, before the plutonium could be scattered to waiting terrorist cells around the world.

Kurebayashi felt a small chill down his spine at the thought. "If you agree, I will inspect our sentries," he told Takeda.

"Of course, Tetsuosan."

He bowed again, then left the Ohtori leader on the bridge wing. According to the schedule, Hotsumi and Masahiko were on duty on the fantail, while Seito stood guard over Yuduki Maru's crew, locked away now in the aft crew's quarters. Throughout the voyage north to Bandar Abbas, the Ohtori gunmen had maintained their own watch independently of the Iranians. These Pasdaran were too lax, too ill-disciplined to maintain a proper military watch. And there was a very great deal at stake.

0040 hours (Zulu +3)

Bandar Abbas shipyard

Roselli had guided the Boghammer across the harbor, approaching at last a deserted pier in a remote and poorly lit part of the waterfront. There, they'd shut down the engine and tied the patrol boat to a ramshackle bollard. One by one then, with the others standing watch, they'd donned their black gear and SCUBAs, tested them, and checked once more their weapons and equipment. At 0015 hours precisely, they'd rolled over the side of the Boghammer, moving stealthily in the shadows beneath the rickety pier, donned fins and face masks, and slipped beneath the ink-black surface of the water with scarcely a ripple to mark their passing.

It was a two-hundred-meter swim from the pier where they'd left the Boghammer to the dockside construction area where Yuduki Maru had been moored. They navigated by compass and by counting the strokes of their swim fins.

Halfway across, Murdock could hear sounds transmitted through the water from the target, the clank of steel on steel, the thump of something heavy being dropped. Sound propagates through water much more efficiently than it does in air, and far faster. It felt as though they must be nearly on top of their target.

They continued swimming. As the noises grew louder, Murdock cautiously moved to the surface until the upper half of his head broke the water, rising just enough to give him a frog's-eye view of the target. Yuduki Maru's stern rose like a black wall against the glare of lights on the dock side. The dazzling flare of a cutting torch shone like a brilliant star.

Submerging again, Murdock had waited until the other three SEALs moved close enough that he could signal by touch. They were dead on course, and only about thirty meters short of their target.

Moments later, they'd swum up against the slime-slick bottom of the Yuduki Maru, where she rode at her moorings in twenty-one feet of water. Reaching into a pocket of his loadout vest, Murdock extracted a small metallic case the size of a pack of cigarettes, nudged the transmit switch with his gloved thumb, then positioned the device against the freighter's hull.

The homer was part of the specialized VBSS loadout, originally brought along against the possibility that they would need to mark the Beluga for a second boarding attempt. He heard nothing when he turned it on, of course; the highfrequency chirps emitted by the device were well above the human auditory range.

But someone equipped with the right equipment would be able to pick up the signals, and home on them. Murdock and the other SEALs allowed themselves to sink to the muck of the ill-defined harbor bottom, and waited. SEALs were very, very good at waiting.

0052 hours (Zulu +3)

SDV #1

Outside the Bandar Abbas shipyard

With a dwindling whine of its electric motor, the lead Mark VIII SDV settled gently to the muddy bottom, closely followed by the other two. Moving carefully in the cramped darkness, MacKenzie switched on his own rebreather, then disconnected the life-support line that had been feeding him off the bus's bottled air.

The long three-hour run north from the drop-off point had been routine. There'd been a few tense moments as they cruised past the island of Larak, a few miles east of Qeshm. The SDV's pilot had reported over the plug-in intercom that sonar had detected a rotary-wing aircraft hovering overhead, and moments later, they'd heard the telltale throb of approaching propellers. An Iranian patrol boat was passing overhead.

There was no telling what the helicopter had seen — or even if it had seen anything at all in the darkness. All three SDVs had powered down until they were only barely making way, traveling in near-perfect silence; the patrol boat had passed close overhead, circled a time or two, then headed off toward the west.

With sonar reporting the area clear again, the three SEAL minisubs had continued on their way. The Mark VIII featured a sophisticated Doppler Navigation System, or DNS, that allowed pinpoint navigation even in waters as foul and choked with mud as those of the Gulf. It also mounted an OAS, or Obstacle-Avoidance Sonar subsystem, allowing the subs to keep track of one another and to avoid obstacles — sunken hulks, coral heads, or the structural pylons of Gulf drilling rigs — even when the water was almost completely opaque.

At 0041 hours, the SDV's pilot had alerted the passengers over the intercom: A high-frequency sonar signal had been picked up on the predicted bearing. MacKenzie had allowed himself to relax a little at the news. Murdock and the others were okay. They'd penetrated the harbor, located the Yuduki Maru, and planted the sonar homer. Now it was up to the rest of Third Platoon.

MacKenzie dragged the passenger compartment hatch back, then carefully extricated himself from the grounded bus. He had to operate almost entirely by feel; it was past midnight, and even at high noon, the visibility in the silty waters of the Gulf was never more than a few feet. A shimmering glow suffused from the surface overhead, creating a kind of ceiling to the watery world. There were floodlights up there, MacKenzie decided, illuminating the surface of the water at the harbor entrance. By that glow he could just make out the vague shadow of a net hanging vertically in the water above him.

The luminous dial of his depth gauge showed a depth of forty feet, well within the safe working range for Mark XV SCUBA gear. Carefully, he moved aft along the side of the SDV and opened the hatch to the cargo compartment. Other divers appeared in the water around him. Together, they broke out a small sled, a raft stretched across two small pontoons, to which their equipment and heavy weapons had been lashed. It took a moment to valve air from the sled's ballast tanks until it assumed neutral buoyancy. Then Holt and Frazier assumed positions to either side of it and began guiding it with gentle, flippered kicks toward the net. The other SEALs followed.

MacKenzie marked the net with two red-glowing chemical lights, their glow too dim to reach the surface but bright enough here to let the SEALs see what they were doing. Brown, Kosciuszko, and Fernandez produced cable cutters, and together they went to work on the submarine net.

In moments, they'd cut a six-foot gap through the net, marking the opening with the chemical lights. Leaving the three SDVs parked by the net, the twelve SEALs one by one slipped through the opening and into the inner harbor.