“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
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?”