They went down the stairs and out to the front of the house. Half a dozen soldiers lay on the ground where they had been tied up after capture. They would live. Jaybird ran up waving his arms. “Found a truck at the side of the barracks. Old, but it runs. Might beat walking.”
Murdock had watched Cullhagen walk down the stairs and then out of the house. There was no chance that he could do seven miles even without a rifle.
“Can we all get inside?” DeWitt asked.
“It’s a flatbed with stakes on the sides and back. Room for everyone.”
“Get it over here,” Murdock said. “We run into the patrols this way and any blocking force, we use the EAR on them so they don’t warn anyone ahead we’re coming. Let’s do it.”
Ten minutes later they left the front gate. They had to nudge the toppled personnel carrier out of the way, then rolled down the gravel road. The old truck would do thirty miles an hour top speed. That was five times what they could do walking.
A mile down the road they saw lights and slowed. The two men with the EAR weapons aimed them over the top of the cab and waited. It was a blocking force of troops, about fifty, Murdock decided. Two vehicles lit up the sides of the road. Two men stood in the road waving for them to stop. At two hundred yards, the pair of EAR weapons fired. The effect was immediate. Almost all of the men in the roadway collapsed unconscious. The EARs fired again ten seconds later, one at each side of the road. Most of the rest of the surprised soldiers went down unconscious. Half a dozen men survived the effects of the enhanced audio and ran into the desert.
At the block itself, the truck stopped, SEALs jumped out, and dragged enough unconscious soldiers out of the way so the truck could drive through without crushing anyone.
“One of our more humane days,” Murdock told Cullhagen. “Don’t count on that happening too often.”
The CIA man was fascinated by the EAR weapon. “Heard we had something like that on the shelf. Didn’t know it was operational.”
“It isn’t yet, but we snagged a few for field testing,” Murdock said. “Works damn well for silent attacks.”
Once in the truck, Mahanani heard about DeWitt’s shot arm, and peeled up his shirt sleeve and checked it. “An in-and-out, j.g. No big deal. Might slow down your left-handed drinking, but that’s about all.” He sterilized the areas with alcohol wipe pads, then put some medication on the two wounds, and wrapped them securely to stop any more bleeding. “Good as new, j.g., but no Purple Heart, since we were never here and this mission never happened.”
Five minutes later, a pair of headlights showed down the road coming at them. They let it come, and crouched down in the truck bed, hoping not to attract the attention of those in the oncoming rig. It turned out to be a sedan that slammed past them at maximum speed and continued on without backward glance from the driver.
Jaybird turned the rig right when they came to the paved road along the beach, and a half mile down he turned toward the coast. It was less than two hundred yards away.
“Let’s find our little bunch of trees and get out of here,” Murdock said. Lampedusa found the right trees, and the rubber boats were still there.
“Good,” DeWitt told Cullhagen. “You won’t have to swim out.”
Cullhagen was showing signs of exhaustion. “No sleep or food or water for three days,” he said. The SEALs gave him water, then some of their emergency food bars.
“So damn hungry I can’t even taste them,” he said.
Ten minutes later the rubber ducks were in the water and the SEALs and Cullhagen loaded on board. The storm was over, and the Mediterranean Sea looked like a big pond, it was so calm. The time was almost 0400. Two hours of darkness left if they were lucky.
Murdock made a call with the Motorola, but got no response. He kept trying as they motored slowly due north. The submarine was supposed to be on the surface from 0400 to 0600. When they were a mile offshore, the sub answered on a Motorola the SEALs had left on board. The sub was waiting. Murdock stood high in the IBS and waved three light sticks. His radio spoke again.
“Floaters, I have your signal. Red light sticks. You’re dead ahead and we’ll make contact.”
“Oh, yeah,” Vinnie Van Dyke said. “A whole fucking mission and we didn’t even get wet.”
Twenty minutes later they made a safe transfer to the sub, collapsed the IBS craft as far as they would go, and pushed them into the boat. Once inside the submarine, Cullhagen asked for an encrypted radio and sent a message to Washington.
The SEALs found bunks and sacked out. Murdock didn’t sleep much. He still had to integrate totally two new men in the platoon into the operation. That would take some doing.
3
Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock leaned back in his chair in his office in Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, and played it over in his mind again. Yes, it should work. He needed a good test for his new men in the squad. They had performed well in the mission to Libya, but that had been fairly routine. There had been no real test for either Luke Howard or the new Senior Chief Timothy Sadler.
The training exercise he had in mind would help glue the new men into the squad, and help Sadler begin to earn the respect and loyalty of all the men in the platoon.
It was 0630, and Murdock was the only man in the platoon area. He liked it that way. It would give him time to sort things out without any interruptions.
By 0730 Murdock had his desk cleaned up, his after-action report on the Libya affair finished on the computer and e-mailed to Master Chief MacKenzie, who would download it and print up the number of copies needed for distribution.
Senior Chief Sadler came in and showed surprise.
“Sorry, sir, just can’t get used to you being in so early. In my other platoon I was always the first one across the quarterdeck. My PL usually wandered in about 0900.”
“Old habit, Senior Chief. This way I get my desk cleaned for the day’s training. I have a new routine for us for today. Give you a chance to work the men and get to know them a little better.”
“Good, Commander. I’ve needed that. Taking me a while to get settled in here. Some of your men have been together for three years?”
“Going on that, Sadler. We’re a combat outfit. We get a lot of action and the men tend to build strong bonds when they’re saving each other’s skins. Sometimes they think one of them should be Senior Chief, but they don’t have the rate, so it can’t happen. Coffee?”
They both had cups, and the Senior Chief looked up. “Commander, what’s the training sked for today?”
“In the field. We’ll go out east on Highway Eight a little past Boulevard, where we have a handshake arrangement with a landowner. We can do some live firing up in his hills as long as we pick up our brass and don’t start any fires. Some rugged hills up in there that make good training grounds, and a lot closer than going all the way out to Niland and the desert site there.”
“Live firing?”
“You bet, and some tricky work that will take some concentration by all the troops. I’ll brief you on the way up. First call is for 0800 as usual. The six-by will be here by that time, and all we have to do is pick up our ammo, equipment, and gear and we’ll be off. I want you to final-check each man before we leave. Oh, I hope you’re working on names. I want you to know each man’s name and be able to identify him from looking at the back of his head.”
“Working on that, sir. Have our squad down, but not all of Bravo.”
Later Murdock watched as Sadler checked out the equipment on each of the thirteen other EM SEALs. He caught a few minor problems and smoothed over the corrections. Murdock had never doubted Sadler’s ability as a SEAL. He had interviewed four men before he picked Sadler for the top spot here. But as with any new man, the personalities had to mix just right for the top man to be the true EM leader of the platoon. So far Sadler was looking good.