They had lost the blacktopped road, and now they found few others. They were mostly dirt and gravel tracks that had no traffic this time of night. For more than two hours of hiking they saw only one motor vehicle, an old farm truck of questionable vintage parked beside a weather-worn farmhouse.
Murdock stopped the men. “Lam, you hear anything?” he asked on the radio.
“Yeah, for the past five minutes. We’re moving right toward the sounds. I’d say about four heavy trucks on a road ahead somewhere.”
“Military?”
“My guess. Who else would be out this time of night with four heavy trucks in the country?”
“We’re still heading east and a little north. Any sign of the coast?”
“Nada.”
“Figures. Let’s move up until we can see what those trucks are hauling.”
“Hey, Skipper, the trucks stopped. Dead ahead, maybe two miles.”
“Exploding that bomb was a signpost pointing directly at us, but it had to be done,” Murdock said. “We live with it.”
“Want me to move out and see what those trucks are?” Lam asked.
“Yeah, Lam. Go. Double-time it and let’s see what this is all about. We’ll come along at the usual pace.”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
Kat moved up beside Murdock. “At least this is easier than last time.”
“So far. We’re not out of this one yet. Then what about finding those other missiles? Say China grabbed them or bought them. They sold this one to Libya. Maybe they sold another one to Iraq and one to Iran and one to Afghanistan. Are we going to have to chase down all of them?”
“Never thought of it that way,” Kat said. “I figured that if China was the buyer from some lowlife in Ukraine, they would keep most of the warheads for themselves. They could chop out the nukes and dump the missiles in the Mediterranean and make it a lot easier to get the bombs back home. Fly them even.”
“Now you’re getting me worried,” Murdock said. “Thanks a lot. So we either have to take down that Chinese freighter or find out who the Chinese sold the other missiles to.”
“We’ll have some help on that one.” She took a deep breath, and Murdock looked over at her. “At least I haven’t had to kill anybody on this mission.”
“Not yet,” Murdock said. “You’re not quite recovered from that walk in Iran, are you?”
She looked at him and shook her head. “No, I don’t think I will ever forget it, forget how I felt right afterwards.”
“You did what you had to do, what we had trained you to do, and it worked. Saving my life was a bonus — for me.”
She flashed him a smile. “That was what helped me get through the first month or so.”
Murdock’s radio earpiece came on with a whisper.
“Skip, I’m here and I don’t believe it. They are Army trucks and six or eight soldiers. They seem to be in charge of more than a hundred civilians. All have some kind of a firearm, an old rifle, a pistol, a carbine. Looks like a home guard of some kind. They have spread out in a line of skirmishers maybe a half mile wide.”
“So, we go around them,” Murdock said.
“Not that easy, Skip. There’s a bluff on one side here and on the other side a good-sized village. The valley we’re in now funnels in here. Nowhere to go around.”
“Are they moving forward or in place?”
“They seem to be just sitting here, waiting. A blocking force. Do we have to shoot up a bunch of civilians? I mean, Skip, these are old men and boys, and I’m sure I’ve seen a dozen or so women in the group, all with guns.”
“Hold there and we’ll be up to you soon and figure it out. Any trees around there?”
“Yeah, some on the bluff and around the town. Not much in between.”
“Roger. We’re moving.”
Kat shivered. “Civilians up there? Murdock, I don’t like the sound of this. Are we going to have to shoot our way through them? Old men and boys and women?”
“Not if there’s another way. Come on, Kat. Stay hard for me here. We’re going to need you.”
Five minutes later Murdock and DeWitt crawled the last fifty feet on hands and knees to a small rise. Ahead of them, less than half a mile, they could see three Army trucks and a line of people. Both officers used binoculars.
“Civilians, all right,” DeWitt said. “In a good blocking position.”
Lam lay in the sand beside them. “Since we talked, another truck came, a civilian one, and dumped out twenty more old men and boys with weapons, then headed back to the village.”
“The soldiers, are they spread out to command the troops?” DeWitt asked.
“That’s what it looked like.”
“Diversion,” Murdock said. He turned his binoculars, and then used night-vision goggles and checked the bluff to the left.
“Yeah. We’ll have three of our Bull Pups put airbursts over those trees on the end of the bluff. Four rounds per gun and keep the muzzle flashes hidden so the people out front won’t know where the rounds came from. That could pull a bunch of the civilians and soldiers out of the line and moving that way to reinforce.”
“Might work,” Lam said.
“Ed, get back to the men and put those rounds into that bluff. Then bring the rest of the people up here.”
Four minutes later, Murdock heard the first explosion over the bluff and saw the rounds going off. He could hear chatter below as the civilians and their Army trainers talked it over. One section of the line directly in front of the SEALs swung to the left, moving toward the bluff. Another section of the line jogged in the same direction.
Murdock grinned as the rest of the SEALs ran up beside them.
“We have everyone?” Murdock asked. The men checked in on the radio network.
“All present,” Ed said.
“Let’s move down there through that gap,” Murdock said. “Everyone with suppressors put them on. We don’t want to let them know we’re here if we don’t have to. Move out.”
They jogged forward in a line twenty yards wide, ignoring the five-yard rule this time. Murdock was slightly ahead, and as they came to the spot where the Libyans had been, he checked the area carefully. He spotted the trucks and a driver leaning against the fender. Murdock lifted his submachine gun and put three rounds into the man, who cried out and fell to the ground.
Just to Murdock’s right another figure lifted up and fired a shot. It missed Murdock. Before he could swing his weapon around, he heard the pffhitts of three rounds from a sub gun, and the Libyan shooter spun around and sprawled on the ground in the faint moonlight.
Murdock looked to his right and saw Kat lower her weapon. In the moonlight her face showed as a mask of tension and terror. He grabbed her by one arm and they ran forward.
“God, did you see that?” Kat asked, her voice raspy, and she sounded almost in tears. “Did you see that? The shooter back there was a woman. That woman tried to shoot you, Murdock. So I killed her. I shot her three times and she looked up at me. I’ll never forget that expression of anger, and pain, and terror. I just reacted. I saw her shoot at you and I didn’t know it was a woman and I fired. Oh, God, I never wanted to kill anybody else. Damn you, Murdock!”
“Good, yeah, my fault. Now let’s move our asses or one of us is going to get hurt out here in the dark.”
The SEALs charged on through the spot, and were a quarter of a mile away before the civilian army realized it had been tricked and began working forward after the SEALs.
It was no contest. Murdock told Lam to head the SEALs due north. The Mediterranean had to be up there somewhere.
Murdock kept watching Kat. She stayed up with them. She looked angry, yet resigned. It was another traumatic shock for her, but she’d come through it. He checked with Lam on the Motorola, but there was no sign or indication they were any closer to the water than they had been two hours ago.
He checked his watch. It was 0220. They had another four hours, maybe five to dawn. Was there time
enough to get to the water and be picked up?
The SEALs jogged again. They had systematically lightened their drag bags when the need for the equipment was gone. After they found out the missile was in the warehouse, not the ship, they’d dumped the heavyweight limpet mines they had for the ship. Later they’d dropped the extra explosives and gear they had brought in case they had to open a missile. Now they were down to their combat vests, usual personal weapons, and regular issue of TNAZ.
Twenty minutes later they came over a small rise and saw a road ahead with moving traffic.
Murdock sniffed and grinned. “I can smell salt air. Can’t be far now.”
They moved down to the road and ran across it when there was no traffic, and just beyond some dunes they could hear the light surf of the Mediterranean slapping the Libyan shore. They could see no troops or transport for troops up or down the beach.
“Holt, crank up that SATCOM, let’s do some Navy business.”
It took three tries to contact the Pegasus offshore. The boat had just arrived on station. The time was 0315.
“What’s your position, SEALs?”
“We have no idea. No road signs. Wait a minute. Ed may have a Mugger.”
He did, and they used the locator device to talk to four satellites and give them their location by coordinates. Ron sent the coordinates to the Pegasus.
“How did you get twenty miles down the coast from Tripoli, SEALs? We’ll be off your location in ten minutes. How far out will you come?”
“Ten minutes’ worth, or enough for a half mile,” Murdock said.
The SEALs stowed their Motorolas in their waterproof pockets, slung their weapons over their backs, and walked into the Mediterranean.
Murdock tied his buddy cord to Kat. She looked up and took a deep breath. “Murdock, we’ve got to stop meeting this way. Every time that I’m around you I wind up killing somebody. I don’t like this one bit.”
“Let’s go for a swim and forget about it. I promise you won’t even have to fire your weapon again.” Murdock frowned when he looked away. He sincerely hoped that he was right.
9
USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, CV 69
In the Mediterranean Sea, Off Libya
Jaybird, Dobler, DeWitt, and Murdock sat around a small table in the SEALs’ assembly room on the carrier staring at Don Stroh.
“You saying that Chinese freighter is a floating garage sale for nuclear warheads?” Murdock asked, the first to get his voice after Don Stroh’s quick briefing.
“We’re not sure, but we’ve had the old scow under AWACS scrutiny the past three days. There have been helicopter landings on the Chinese freighter twice. The choppers moved to land sites where there were international airports.”
“Our best guess is that the Chinese are stripping the nuke warheads out of the missiles and selling them on the open market?” DeWitt asked.
“Possibly. They are easy to move. You could have carried one for ten or fifteen miles in that APC, you told me.”
“So we take out the freighter before they distribute any more nukes around the world,” Dobler said.
“That’s been our recommendation to the President and my chief,” Stroh said. “We’re also trying to track those choppers and what they did with their cargo. We’ve got one of them tied down as to who picked it up and where it was left and the route the plane took that picked it up. We’re working on the second one.”
“Where’s the ship now?” Murdock asked.
“That’s another curious development. The ship is wandering around the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. One chopper went to the boat and then back to Athens. Sometimes the ship is making only five knots.”
“Waiting for more customers,” Murdock said. “My bet is that the brass will decide to take out the ship next, then try to find any of the warheads that are still missing. How far are we from the freighter?”
“Too far, almost eight hundred miles,” Stroh said. “We have a cruiser in the Athens harbor now. It can be pushed out toward the freighter to give you a platform to work from in case we go after the Chinese ship next.”
Jaybird scowled. “Most cruisers carry a Seahawk chopper. It’s smaller than the Sea Knight and can haul only twelve men. We need sixteen. We’d have to use a Sea Knight and squeeze it on the cruiser. It should fit. The Sea Knight’s rotor blades are only fifty-one feet in diameter. The Seahawk’s blades are two feet longer, so the larger bird should be able to land and take off from the cruiser.”
Stroh looked at Jaybird with surprise.
“Jaybird remembers those kind of things,” DeWitt said. “Now, when can we get some word about this new mission?”
“When I hear, I’ll call you. I don’t know how the Navy will put this through channels, but it should get here eventually. In the field we’ll go with the first word we get and let channels catch up with us. Okay, troops?”
The four SEALs nodded. They had been on board the carrier only an hour, and hadn’t eaten, showered, or slept yet. They were headed in that direction when Stroh nailed them.
“I’ll get clearance for a Sea Knight on board the Cowpens, CG 63, in Athens if this one goes down the way we think it will. Now, why don’t you guys get some food and some shuteye. I might be calling you before you know it. The chief is hot on this one. Nobody in Washington wants these warheads charging around the world like loose cannons.”
It was only a little after 0830, but Murdock and DeWitt both ordered up steak dinners at the dirty-shirt mess.
Later they found Kat sitting in the wardroom, staring at her hands and sipping coffee. She nodded a grim welcome.
Murdock and DeWitt watched her a moment without speaking. She looked up and set her mouth in a firm, hard line. “I’m so damn mad that I could spit,” she said. Her eyes were furious brown holes hidden by lowered brows.
“I don’t think I’m going to do this anymore,” she went on. “I just might call the President and tell him to get another player. I’m used up.”
“Kat, I’m no shrink, but I’ve sent more than one of my men to take a few sessions with the psychos. If you don’t want that, how about a talk with the chaplain.”
She looked up at Murdock and nodded, her brows raised in surprise.
“Yes, now why didn’t I think of that? I can’t get that woman’s furious expression out of my head. She knew she was dying and she looked right through me. I shivered then, and I’m shivering right now remembering it.
“I killed her, Murdock. I shot her three times and she died right there in that field. How can I ever accept the idea that it is all right for me to kill someone when I’m wearing this uniform? Even when I’m on a mission to save hundreds of thousands of lives? It doesn’t make sense to me. How do I get in touch with the chaplain?”
Captain Ira Ralston, senior chaplain on the carrier had learned years ago that being a Navy chaplain was a lot more than holding services and listening to complaints. He found himself to be father confessor for the Catholics, and oftentimes psychiatrist in uniform for many of the Protestants and Jews. He had been listening to this young lieutenant for a half hour now, and knew more about her and her life than he wanted to.
“So, how can I justify killing another human being?” she concluded.
“You simply reacted to the situation. You responded as you had been trained to do. You also fired in an attempt to save the life of a teammate. Those are all good and worthwhile motives. I’ve talked to a lot of men in combat. They say that they are always reacting before they can think. In a split second your mind must order your body to do something, in this case to aim and fire to protect another member of the team.
“Kat, you were in a combat situation. You’ve been there before, you told me, and you’ve killed before. This is no different. The fact that the victim was a woman is a coincidence. It more than likely would have been a man with the ratio of men to women in the defense force.
“This all goes way back in man’s development to the cave man when he
fought huge ferocious beasts. He did it for food and to survive.
“Today some of us have to do the same thing. We fight to survive. Now we often call it ‘him or me.’ In the heat of battle, even if it lasts only a few seconds, the basic primal urge of fight to survive surfaces. If it’s a confrontation with another person, then it all comes down to who kills who. It’s him or me who will live. We always strive our best to be sure that it’s the me who survives and not the him.”
Captain Ralston watched the young lieutenant. He knew about her civilian status and the temporary rank for convenience. She looked up at him, but didn’t say anything.
“How did you handle this when you came out of Iran?” he asked.
“Not well. I cried a lot. I took a month off work and tried to get myself settled down. I kept having a dream when I relived the whole damn thing. Then I went into denial, and that almost worked. One day I woke up and realized that I had to face it, confront the fact that I had killed four or five men in Iran. Yes, part of it was a him-or-me syndrome. I never sought any professional help. I can see now that I should have.”
He waited. She looked at him, then at the bulkhead, then back at him. “So?”
“Did you throw up after the incident?”
She smiled. It was the first smile he had seen from her. “Incident? I kill a woman and you call it an incident?”
“Yes. Those warheads that you destroyed could have killed up to a half million each. That would be four and a half million lives that you saved in the world. The loss of one woman’s life against four and a half million makes it a ridiculously small incident.”
“Oh. I never thought of it that way before.” The smile came again. “All right, let’s summarize: I didn’t throw up after the… incident. I have not gone on any crying jags since that time, now almost five hours ago. I feel fairly well adjusted, but I think that I can now grieve for the woman I killed, without ruining my life. I’m ready to move on. Also, I want to call the President and resign from this special assignment and ask him to send me home.”
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