Ferguson called him on it. “Well go ahead. Don’t break anything.”
“You, with me,” Rankin told one of the SEALs. They trotted back toward the fence, then crossed over toward the north side of the yard, crawling forward amid the stacks of equipment and materials. To get to the scaffold, they would have to cross about ten feet of well-lit ground; Rankin wasn’t so much worried about being seen as casting a shadow.
As he waited, sizing up the situation, the guard came around to the near side. Rankin saw him clearly — his eyes were focused, wary; he didn’t have the bored look most guys would have pulling a late-night shift in the middle of nowhere. It occurred to Rankin that either the Iranian was pretty dedicated or had been tipped off, or maybe both.
The sentry turned, his boots scratching against the concrete. Rankin realized belatedly that he could have rushed him — they were no more than eight feet apart, and it would have taken no more than a second and a half to take him. He’d been so fixated on the idea of climbing the scaffold that he’d missed a far easier chance.
“Next time he comes,” he told the SEAL. “When he swings around, I’m up, and I get him.”
Ferguson checked in with Conners and the rest of the SEALs, who were watching from the perimeter. They had the main guard post covered, along with the approach to the shipyard.
“Somebody’s on the ship,” Conners told him. He’d climbed atop the bus and could just barely make out the deck. “Up near the bow.”
“Just one person?”
“Hard to see, but it looked like one person, moving.”
Ferguson watched as the guards returned. “How we looking, Skip?” he asked Rankin over the com system.
When Rankin didn’t answer right away, Ferg feared that the SF soldier had already changed places with the guard and was going to do the act solo. But that wasn’t like Rankin — a second later he responded.
“I get him this round,” said Rankin. “Be patient.”
“Alien concept.” Ferguson slid forward on his knee as the guard on his side passed, positioning himself to cut the man down if he heard anything.
The sharp steel blade felt warm against Rankin’s thumb. He could hear the sentry’s footsteps as he approached. They seemed to take forever.
He’d practiced this sort of takedown a million times, but he’d never done it for real; there wasn’t much cause in real operations to sneak up on a man with a knife and slit his throat. Getting close enough to do that meant putting yourself at enormous risk, and it was almost always easier and smarter to use a gun and be done with it.
The scraping stopped. Rankin, hunched down in the shadow of a large pump, felt his lungs freeze.
Finally, the scraping resumed. Rankin could hear the feet twisting as the sentry turned and started to retrace his steps. One stride, two strides, three —
The SF man leapt up into the light, pushing air into his lungs, then clamping his mouth closed as he jumped out. The Iranian was farther than he’d thought — a step, another step — the man started to turn.
The knife caught the side of his neck first. Rankin’s left arm fished wildly, searching for the gun, his right hand pushing the knife along the sentry’s skin.
The gun fell to the ground. Rankin felt something heavy in his hands. He heard the Iranian cough, then gasp for air, whispering a prayer in Farsi as he died.
Quickly he pulled the man’s body to the side. He dropped the knife, unbuttoning his shirt — there was no bulletproof vest. Rankin pulled the shirt over his, hunched over — this wasn’t going to work. He grabbed the man’s beret and pulled it over his head, low, then took the AK.-47 he’d been holding and began walking, telling his lungs to breathe now, it was all right.
The guard approached the other warily, either because his timing was off or he’d heard something. Ferguson had anticipated this — he had the SEAL covering him toss a rock in the other direction, and in the half second it took for the sentry to swing around, he sprang. The stock of his MP-5 caught the man in front of the ear; he flew to the ground as if propelled by a cannon.
“Shit,” said Ferg, afraid he’d killed the bastard.
He rushed over, kicking the gun away and grabbing one of the plastic restraints from his belt. The sentry was out cold, though he seemed to be breathing. They hauled him over to the side, out of the light, behind a pair of tanks used for welding.
“You should’ve waited till I was closer,” said Rankin.
“Blood on your hands,” said Ferguson. “He give you problems?”
“Yeah.”
“All right.” Ferguson bit his lip; too late to worry about that now. “There’s a guy on the ship near the bow, according to Conners.”
He went toward the stern, where several lines hung down. They each took a rope, leaving the SEALs to cover the approach below.
Ferg pulled himself over the rail at the top, pausing to get an idea of what was nearby. The superstructure of the ship blocked off the view of the forward area.
A ship this size could hold tons and tons of waste. Blow the sucker up in LA harbor, New York, Boston — pick the symbolic target of your choice.
But his rad counter was still. If they were setting it up as a dirty bomb, either they hadn’t gotten very far, or the waste was still heavily shielded.
Rankin met him on the other side of the railing. “This way here is clear,” he told Ferguson, pointing to the starboard. “There are some large metal girders or something, like a base for a weapon or a crane or something, beyond the superstructure.”
Ferg leaned over the side and waved the SEALs up. One stayed at the rear of the deck near the ropes as the other three men moved forward around the side of the ship. The railing ended abruptly; Rankin took a step too close to the edge and nearly fell off.
Where an oil tanker would have a relatively clear deck forward of the superstructure at the rear of the ship, the Iranian vessel had what looked like a long metal house extending most of its length. While designed to carry ethylene — a colorless, flammable gas — the compartments were being completely renovated, and Ferguson could peer through the open end of the structure and see well into the interior. At the starboard side of the decking area closest to him sat what looked like an oversized rack of bottles, with a rack twisting down toward the hull; some of the mechanism was obscured by tarps.
“You know what that is?” Ferg asked the SEAL.
The SEAL — Petty Officer Sean Reid — studied it for a few seconds.
“Looks like they’re making it into a minelayer,” said Reid, craning his neck so he could see below. “The roof covers up the mechanism. They’ll line the mines up below, right there, they kind of squirt them out over around that spot — I can’t see because of the covers, but probably there’s like a hatch. Slide open.”
“What kind of mines?” asked Ferg.
“Well — mines.”
“You’re sure?”
“It looks like it, sir.”
The SEAL had a way of saying “sir” that implied it meant, “you dumb shit.”
Ferguson reached into his shirt pocket for the digital camera. Flipping it to the night-shot setting — it was a near-infrared view — he slid gingerly through the opening of the deck housing and walked forward on a wide piece of wood, apparently something the workmen had placed there, and took some pictures. Below was a large empty compartment with ropes and tools at the bottom.
All this way, just to find a minelayer. Slott was going to love hearing that.
So would Alston. Ah well, thought Ferg, give the folks back home something to gloat about.
He was just starting back when he heard a sound behind him. Before he could even curse, the light burp of AK-47 broke through the night. As he flattened himself against the board, both Rankin and the SEAL nearby opened
