"Aye, sir!"

As the gig pulled alongside and the men in it started to climb up the ladder that had been lowered, all of the crewmen on the tanker suddenly raised their weapons and took aim.Kemal Dervis, a.s.signed by Al Hazmi to take over this last ship, peeked out from under the brim of the officer's hat he'd taken off the tanker crewman he'd shot dead.

When he saw the tanker's crew all armed and ready, he spoke briefly into a radio he held in his hand. "Al Hazmi, it is a trap! They are . . ."

His transmission was interrupted by the captain yelling through a loudspeaker.

"Drop your weapons and hold up your hands or we will fire!"

Dervis whipped out the Uzi submachine gun he had hidden under his coat, and fired off a burst at the crewmen above.

One of the crewmen yelled and grabbed at his face, which exploded in a spray of blood.

The others began to fire down into the boat without hesitation. Dervis went down in the first hail of bullets, as did two of his men.

The three men lying in the boat with blood-soaked bandages over their heads sat up and began to fire a.s.sault rifles they had under the sheets.

Just as the last of the men in the gig were gunned 66.down, the Magna Marine patrol boat Hazmi kept next to the freighter came roaring out of the smoke and haze. The twenty-seven-foot-long boat was loaded with men, all of whom were firing automatic weapons at the tanker.

Two men at the rear of the boat aimed grenade launchers as the boat sped past the tanker, and fired. The fragmentation grenades exploded in a hail of shrapnel, killing over half of the men defending the ship.

As the boat circled, a man stood up holding a Stinger missile launcher to his shoulder, while another held a loudspeaker to his mouth.

"Captain, surrender your ship or I will blow it out of the water!"

Schmidt, from his position on the bridge, could clearly see the missile launcher aimed at his ship.

"Captain, you must surrender," Hans pleaded. "Most of our men are already dead, and that missile will sink the ship!"

"d.a.m.n your eyes, Hans, I will not give up my ship!" Schmidt roared back, his eyes still glued to the binoculars.

Hans, sweat pouring off his brow, took a deep breath. He had to save the rest of the men, no matter the cost.

He pulled his pistol out of its holster and stuck it in the captain's back. "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't let you get the rest of the men killed just to save your command."

Schmidt turned, his eyes blazing. "You d.a.m.ned traitor! I'll see you hanged for this!"Al Hazmi stood on the bridge, his eyes dark with anger as he faced Captain Schmidt. "Are you the one who gave orders to shoot my men?" he asked, his voice harsh.

Schmidt glared at Hans, standing next to him, for a 67.67.moment, and then he answered, his voice firm. "Yes, and I would have killed the whole lot of you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were it not for this turncoat!"

Hazmi pulled a pistol from his holster and shot the captain in the face without another word. Schmidt's head snapped back, blood and brains spraying all over Hans's uniform.

As Hans gasped in terror and disbelief, Hazmi said to him in a conversational voice, "You are now in command of your men. Have them dump this piece of camel dung overboard and then get to work repairing the damage to your vessel. If they do a good job, I may let them live."

Just then, the radio crackled to life. "Vessel Grosse Hund, come in Grosse Hund"

Hazmi rested his hand on the handle of his pistol. "Captain, I suggest you answer that call, and be careful what you say or you will join the previous captain in h.e.l.l."

Hans keyed the microphone. "Grosse Hund here."

"This is the port officer at Bushehr in Iran. What is the status of the disabled freighter you called about two hours ago?"

"Tell them it was a minor engine failure that has been repaired. There is no further cause for alarm," Hazmi dictated to the terrified Hans.

Hans did as he was told, and after the port officer signed off, Hazmi shoved him roughly toward the door to the bridge. "Now, get your men to work, or the fish will have more food before the day is out," Hazmi growled.

68 It took almost a day and a half for all of the Scouts and Buddy's team to be checked out on the heavy equipment they were learning to operate. After that was done, they took to the roads in a mile-long convoy headed south by southwest.

Buddy's team was loaded in the back of a deuce and a half truck, while the Scouts were divided up in other trucks and tanks and a.s.sault vehicles.

As they bounced along Highway 27 South, Coop asked Buddy where they were headed. He had to speak very loudly to be heard over the whine of the truck's big engine.

"Our final destination is what used to be the Big Bend National Park in the days before the big bang. But on the way, we're gonna stop off and do some training in the Gla.s.s Mountains near Alpine."

"Hey, a national park, huh?" Coop said, grinning. "That don't sound too bad."Buddy laughed. "It may not sound too bad, but the Big Bend National Park is the last place G.o.d made. It's right in the middle of the Chisos Mountains and is the roughest, driest, nastiest country this side of Mexico."

"I've heard the rattlesnakes are so thick there, you have to shout to be heard over the rattling," Jersey said with 69.69.a malevolent glare at Coop. She still hadn't forgotten his comment about her lack of femininity earlier.

Coop's face blanched. "Is that true?" he asked Buddy.

Buddy shook his head, his face serious. "Naw, not at all. I'm told the snakes there are nothing to worry about. . . now the bears, wolves, and cougars are something else again."

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Coop moaned.

"That's not the worst of it," Jersey added. "I hear they're gonna train us to live off the land like the Scouts do-learn to eat lizards and snakes and bugs and stuff."

"You've got to be kidding me," Coop said.

"Those MREs you're always complaining about starting to sound better to you now?" Buddy asked, knowing of Coop's reputation as a chowhound.

"I've never complained about Meals, Ready to Eat," Coop protested.

"Yeah, but we could tell you didn't like 'em 'cause you never ate more than two or three at a time," Hammer observed wryly.

Coop turned his head. "Now don't you go getting on my case too," he said. "Guys are supposed to hang together."

Hammer leaned back and held up his hands. "Hey, just stating a fact, Coop, just tellin' it like it is."

The convoy stopped near the city of Alpine, and when Buddy and the Scout commander, Major Jackson Bean, found that the Gla.s.s Mountains were covered with pine trees and other evergreen varieties, they agreed the area wasn't suitable for the type of training their men needed.

"If we end up doing an intrusion into the Middle East, especially the mountainous regions of Afghanistan or the like, we're gonna need something a little more forbidding 70.to train on," Bean said, staring at the peaks covered with a thick layer of pines.

"Then it sounds like we need to go further south, to the Chisos Mountains," Buddy said.The convoy was loaded up again, and they moved toward the Big Bend area just north of the Texas-Mexican border.

"Buddy," Beth said, peering at a topographical map of the region, "It says here the highest peak in the Chisos is Emory Peak at 7825 feet."

He nodded. "That's right, and from what I've been told, that's roughly comparable to the ones we may be facing in the Middle East."

"I thought that area was relatively flat," Corrie said.

"Much of it is, especially the oil field regions," Buddy said. "But since we don't know where we'll be needed, or even //we'll have to go, headquarters figures we oughta cover all the bases."

After about an hour on the road, Coop leaned down, took off one of his combat boots, and held it up in front of his face.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Coop?" Jersey asked.

"I'm so hungry, I'm trying to decide if I can eat this boot without cooking it."

Buddy laughed. "Okay, hint taken. I'll radio Major Bean and see if we can pull over long enough to cook some chow."

Coop leaned over and looked at the map Beth was holding. "I see we're coming up on the town of Marathon," he said with a hopeful gleam in his eye. "Maybe they'll have a restaurant there."

"Yeah," Jersey said scornfully. "Maybe you can get a buffalo burger or something."

"Buffalo? Can you really eat buffalo?"

71."My ancestors thought it quite a delicacy," Harley Reno said, licking his lips.

"Compared to what?" Coop asked. "Dog?"

Harley grinned. "Don't knock eating dog, Coop, unless you've tried it."

Coop grimaced. "I think I've just lost my appet.i.te." "That'll be the day!" Jersey said, causing the entire team to laugh.

That night, after they'd set up camp at the base of Emory Peak, Buddy and Major Bean issued night-vision goggles to all the troops and had them fit their weapons with the new Raptor night-vision weapon sights.

"If we do make an incursion, most of our fighting will probably be at night, so we want you to get used to coordinating your team movements in the dark. We've sent out some of the Scouts to set up targets so as you move up the mountain, you'll have something to shoot at besides each other.""Uh, Buddy," Coop asked, raising his hand, "do snakes come out at night?"

"Only the poisonous ones," Jersey volunteered.

"Coop," Buddy said, "if you see a snake, you have my permission to shoot it."

"Hey, if you get bitten, we can practice cutting the wound open and sucking out the poison," Harley said.

"Unless you get bitten on the b.u.t.t," Jersey said. "In that case, you're gonna die!"

After three days and nights doing intensive night and day training exercises, Major Bean met with Buddy to evaluate the troopers' progress.

72.They were in his command tent when Corrie stepped to the door. "Buddy, Major Bean, I've got Ben on the SOHFRAD calling for you."

"Come on in and put it on speaker-mode," Major Bean said.

Moments later, Ben's voice was heard. "How's the training going?" he asked.

"Fine, General," Bean answered. "I think the men are about ready for anything now."

"That's good, because we've got some worrisome intel from across the pond."

"Is it that Smeyth fellow again?" Buddy asked.

"Yes. He says there's been some trouble in the Persian Gulf he wants to brief us on personally. He's on his way now, but from the tone, I think you'd better round the guys up and head on back. When you get here, I'll give you a sitrep and we'll decide what we need to do."

"Roger that, Ben," Buddy said.

73 ELEVEN.

While the C-130 transport plane was on the way to pick them up, Buddy and Major Bean had the troops use the heavy equipment they'd been training on to enlarge and flatten the civilian landing strip just outside the small town of Castolon in the Big Bend area.

"It doesn't have to be perfect," Buddy told the Scouts a.s.signed to drive the big tractors and graders. "Those big C-130 birds can land on just about anything, if it's long enough."

"Shouldn't be a problem, sir," Sergeant Rutledge answered, staring out at the long expanse of caliche and sand, which comprised most of the ground in the area. "Main thing we have to do is plow down some of those mesquite trees and cactus patches."

"Good," Buddy said, glancing at his wrist.w.a.tch, " 'cause the bird'll be here in three hours."

As Rutledge promised, the field was ready by the allotted time, and theC-130 transport landed without any problem. The troops and equipment were loaded aboard and less than an hour and a half after landing, the plane took off again, headed back to Ben's headquarters in Louisiana.

74.Abdullah El Farrar scheduled all of the tankers his men had taken over to dock at four o'clock in the morning, local time. He knew that was the time the guards and troops protecting the ports would be at their least alert- just over halfway through their watches. Various excuses had been radioed to the port authorities to explain the changes in the tankers'

schedules. Most tankers had merely claimed engine trouble of different kinds, occurrences not uncommon in the aging tanker fleets.

The port at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia was darkened and appeared almost deserted. Normal port activities weren't scheduled to begin for another couple of hours.

Al Hazmi himself was in command of the tanker as it made its way slowly into the shallow waters of the port. The men manning the tugboats that helped pull the big ship gently into the docks were barely awake, having been rousted from their beds to work just hours after they'd gotten to sleep.

The tanker docks were some little ways offsh.o.r.e, almost a quarter mile, since the tankers that used the facilities were much too large to berth at the regular docks.

As soon as the tanker was tied down, the radio crackled to life. It was the harbormaster calling.

"Captain," he said, "would you come to the harbormaster's office, please. We need to go over some paperwork before we load your oil."

"Certainly," Al Hazmi answered, putting on a thick German accent. "My men have been at sea for some time, and I will bring them in to sh.o.r.e so they can have a few hours' liberty."

The harbormaster grunted. "They won't see much at this hour. Most of the shops and markets are still closed."

75.75."That's all right," Hazmi said agreeably. "Most of them just want to feel firm ground under their feet for a change."

"We do have plenty of that," the master said with a short laugh.

"Will there be any problem with security?" Hazmi asked. "I wouldn't want my men detained for lack of appropriate doc.u.mentation."

"Don't worry about that," the master replied. "Most of the U.N. soldiers are asleep, and I'll alert the two men on duty that you'll be coming ash.o.r.e. They won't bother you."

Hazmi smiled. "That's good to know."

As soon as he got off the radio, Hazmi inspected his men, who were linedup ready to take the port by storm. They'd all been issued night-vision goggles and carried Uzis with silencers attached. Hazmi wanted the a.s.sault to be as quiet as possible, because they still had quite a ways to go before they got to the oil fields themselves and he didn't want to alert the U.N. forces that anything was amiss.

His men filed into the tanker's large tender and made their way toward the dock area at a sedate pace so as not to arouse suspicion. As they pulled into the dock and made the tender fast, Hazmi, wearing a captain's uniform with a pistol concealed under his coat, walked nonchalantly toward the guard post at the end of the pier with two of his men following.

When he got to the small booth, two guards emerged. One was yawning widely and the other had a cup of coffee in his hand. Neither had his weapon at the ready.