He realized they were almost at the back door of a small farmhouse and buildings. Kat had gathered her chute, and stood there looking down at a man sprawled on the ground. Even in the dim moonlight Murdock could see the man’s penis outside his black trousers.
Kat had trouble to keep from laughing. She motioned to the man, then to the small outhouse, and giggled.
“He came out and stood there, legs spread taking a piss. I couldn’t miss him. My boots whacked hard into his head. Did I kill him?”
Murdock looked at the man, then knelt down and touched his throat for the carotid artery. He stood.
“He’ll live, but we better get out of here. Run, lady, run.” They rushed ahead toward where they saw the others picking up their chutes in a field of newly mown hay.
“He isn’t dead, just knocked out,” Murdock told Kat. “Nobody will believe him when he tells his story tomorrow.”
Just ahead they found another plowed field, and with the two entrenching tools they carried they dug out furrows, lined the chutes into them, and covered them up. Ten minutes later they were ready.
DeWitt had sent out Miguel Fernandez as scout as soon as they landed. He came jogging back as they finished digging.
“We’ve got a secondary road of some kind half a klick over here to the right. Not much traffic, but some. Damascus has to be north of us and a little to the east.”
“Let’s hit the road and see what we can find out from the next neighborly truck driver,” DeWitt said. They moved out. Bravo Squad had its usual line of march. Fernandez out a hundred yards in front as scout, DeWitt next, with his radio man, Ostercamp, behind him with the SATCOM. Then came Franklin and Khai, who both could speak Arabic, followed by Mahanani, Canzoneri, Jefferson, Kat, and Murdock bringing up the rear.
They had landed in a small valley that had a water source of some kind to grow the crops. The surrounding hills were barren and desertlike, Murdock remembered from watching them as he came down.
They moved over another fence, then through a ditch, and went to ground as Franklin waited at the side of the road. Time was the important factor now. It was 1920, which left them roughly eight hours to complete their mission or find someplace to hide out during the day.
Franklin carried an MP-5 submachine gun. He waved two cars by in the glare of headlights. Then a small loaded truck went by. He stopped the next truck, holding the weapon in front of him but standing at the side of the road. He wasn’t going to risk getting run down by a wild-eyed Syrian driver.
The truck stopped, and Franklin talked to the driver a moment, then ordered him out of the cab. It was a stake truck with canvas over the top, and would hold the whole squad.
“How far to the next town?” Franklin asked in Arabic.
“Five kilometers,” the driver answered.
“How far to Damascus?”
“Fifty kilometers.”
“You live around here?”
“Yes, next village.”
Franklin put three silenced rounds from the sub gun through the man’s heart. The Syrian farmer jolted off the roadway into the ditch. Franklin hurried after him, took off his hat and light jacket, and then went back to the truck.
Bravo Squad and guests were already inside, with DeWitt and Khai in the front seat.
“Can you drive this thing?” DeWitt asked Franklin.
“Can a duck fly?” He started the engine, pushed it into gear, and began backing up. The SEALs cheered. He ground the gears, found first, and moved forward.
They crept through the village at a modest pace, found nothing to hinder them, and gunned the rig to a faster speed once past the lights.
“Fuel?” DeWitt asked.
Khai stared at the small panel of instruments. “One gauge, but I’m not sure if it says almost full or almost empty.” He pointed at it.
“Almost full,” Franklin said.
In the back of the truck, Kat moved next to Murdock. He had just cut a hole in the front of the canvas top so they could push the machine gun out and fire in case of trouble.
“Murdock,” she said softly. “About the driver?”
“Yes, an innocent man. But we couldn’t leave a witness to run to the Army about a group of ten who hijacked his truck. He’s a victim of war. His death could help save the lives of ten thousand people if Syria dropped that warhead on Haifa, Israel, say. I know when you look at it another way, it’s shocking. But we’re protecting our own backsides this way as well. We let him live, all ten of us could die before morning.”
“I know, I know. I just had to hear you say it. Now, I’m all SEAL again.” He reached down and squeezed her hand. She clung to it. In the dark nobody could see.
Two miles out of the village the land changed back to desert. Wind whipped sand across the highway, and in places small dunes had built up a foot of sand on the ancient blacktop. They kept driving. For twenty miles they saw no lights anywhere in the surrounding area.
“Not a good place to run out of gas,” Franklin said. “Hope to hell I’m reading that gauge right.” Two autos passed them, whipping along at what Franklin said had to be seventy-five miles per hour. He kept the truck at a respectable fifty-five, and hoped the engine didn’t blow up.
They came over a small rise and lights billowed ahead of them. The lights were situated well off the road, brilliantly illuminating some kind of facility.
“Limestone quarry,” Franklin said. “They use a lot of limestone in buildings in some of their cities. We should be hitting more traffic now. They must have a rail line down here to move the stone to the north.”
“Checkpoint ahead,” DeWitt said. “Looks like just one man beside a jeep. He’ll be on the driver’s side.” As they moved toward the checkpoint, they were sandwiched in between large closed truck trailers, moving slowly and evidently loaded.
The man at the checkpoint noted the truck in front of them, talked to the driver a moment, and made a note on the paper on his clipboard and waved him by.
The sentry had a revolver on a belt around his waist and the cap of an Army man. He only glanced at the farm truck, and waved it on through without a second look.
Everyone in the truck relaxed, and the people in back stayed low and out of sight until they were well down the road.
“Somebody from the quarry checking the goods coming out,” Khai said.
Ahead they came to a wider, better road with signs. They could turn left or right. Khai studied the signs and when the truck was at the junction, he pointed to the left.
“Swings around and keeps going north,” Khai said. “The sign says twenty-six kilometers to Damascus.”
“Yeah, and that’s probably the outskirts of the place,” Franklin said. “How we going to find anybody in that big city?”
“We ask questions,” DeWitt said. “When we get to the town, stop at the first little group of stores you see. You take the address inside, Franklin, and get directions to the street. Should work out well.”
Five miles from Damascus, the traffic began to back up. Murdock looked out over the cab and saw the problem. He leaned under the canvas and yelled to Khai.
“There’s a roadblock ahead. A real one. Looks like they’re checking cars and trucks and cargo. How about a side street?”
They turned right at the next street, and a block down found a Syrian Army jeep parked sideways across the street. Two soldiers with rifles stood in front of the jeep.
“I see them,” Murdock said. “I’ll take the one on my side. Ed, you take the other one. We pull up and stop and they will come one on each side. We do them and push the jeep out of the way and drive on through. No chance for radio use. Got it?” DeWitt had a silenced MP-5. In back, Murdock grabbed a suppressed MP-5 and held it close to the hole in the canvas top over the hood. The rig came to a stop ten yards in front of the jeep, where one of the soldiers held up his hand. Then the Syrian soldiers began walking toward the truck.