They were now well east of where they had been and, from the distance on the map, still twenty-six miles from the coast. Too damn far. How would Magic react after the cutting today? One lucky Iranian bullet could stop his whole platoon dead in the water.
Nothing else happened until his two hours were up. Murdock called Ron Holt to take the next watch. He gave an acknowledgement on the Motorola, and Murdock headed back for his spot inside the brush.
Kat seemed to be sleeping.
He eased down, making as little noise as possible.
"You do this for a living," Kat said.
Murdock grinned. "Hell no, I do it for the amazing high it boots me to. I'm a thrill junkie, didn't you know? There's no war on, so what's a fighting man to do? I'm too chicken to start my own war."
Kat laughed. "Yeah, you say." She watched him in the full daylight now that filtered into the shaded areas under the thin canopy. "What are you going to do when you grow up?" she asked.
"I don't know, Kat. I might learn how to tear apart weapons of mass destruction just for the thrill of it. Why do you risk life and limb just to rip apart nukes?"
"I get this amazing high, like a thousand sexual climaxes all at once. I'm a thrill junkie." They both chuckled. "A thousand climaxes?" Murdock said.
"It was a figure of speech."
"Oh, good, otherwise I figure you must have exploded."
"You do have a good imagination, I like that."
"Careful, Dr. Garnet, we still could be expendable."
"Yeah, Murdock, but what a way to go. I figured I was doing mankind a favor by deactivating some nukes. But over here we just saved what I figure is at least a million lives. Iran would have dropped a bomb on some mid-sized Arab city, I'm sure. A million Arabs we saved. Now they're trying to kill us."
"Fortunes of war, Kat. And don't doubt it, this is a war. You ready for a nap? I sure am."
Kat grinned. "Does this mean I'm sleeping with you?"
Murdock laughed. "More like sleeping near me. Remember I still outrank you by date of commission."
"Good night, David."
"Good night, Chet, and you're too young to remember them," Murdock said.
"My dad's first name is Chet. He told me about them."
Murdock thought he'd just got to sleep when his Motorola clicked three times. That would be Doc. He eased away from the sleeping Kat and worked out of the brush, and down where Doc had emerged earlier. He saw Joe Douglas on watch, and crawled in where he saw Doc and Ken Ching.
"Hey, L-T. Ken's got Magic under again. I figure I'll use a tourniquet around his thigh above the wound to try to slow bleeding. I've got two pocket knives and my K-bar. First I'll use the wire probe from my kit, and see if I can find the damn bullet."
Chin held a three-inch hand mirror. He caught a beam of sunlight and bounced it directly on the wound. Doc took a six-inch-long piece of stiff spring steel wire, and gently probed it into the wound. It began bleeding.
He pushed the wire in farther and farther.
"Damn, four inches, and I don't feel a thing." He stopped. "There. I can feel it. Christ, I found the bullet. It's four inches in there." Doc wiped sweat off his forehead. He took the long-handled surgical pliers, which were slender and had an inch-long grasping head on them. He pressed the head of the tool into the wound. It bled more.
Ching soaked up the blood with a white T-shirt.
Doc sweated.
He pushed the forceps in deeper.
Blood spurted. Ching covered it.
"Another damn inch. Am I killing him? Damn, I've never dug into a body this way before."
"Do it, Doc, or he loses the leg," Murdock said.
Doc nodded, and eased the forceps in deeper, then deeper again.
"Touched it," he said, grinning. "Now if I can just get a grip on it." He opened the forceps head and probed more. When he tried to close the pliers, the head slipped off the bullet.
"Damn, missed it. Try again."
Ching used a second T-shirt to soak up the blood that kept running out of Magic's thigh.
Magic stirred in his hypnotic slumber, then relaxed.
Doc positioned the forceps again, opened them, and pressed forward more. When he closed them this time, he laughed softly.
"Got you, sucker!" He began withdrawing the instrument slowly, gripping it so hard his fingers turned white.
He had it halfway out, when a new spout of blood came out beside the forceps.
Ching covered it and nodded.
Doc pulled again, and then with a steady pressure brought the tool out of Magic's thigh, and the inch-long lead slug with it. He dropped both on the ground, put two 4-by-4 gauze pads over the wound, and pressed hard on them with his hand.
Ching slapped him on the back, then mopped Doc's forehead where the sweat ran into his eyes.
"Did it, you ersatz sawbones, you fucking did it." Ching slapped Doc again, and helped wipe up the blood.
"Good work, Doc," Murdock said. "We all owe you a big one. How about a case of your favorite beer?"
"I'll take it the first day we get back to the Grinder," Doc said. They cleaned up the rest of the blood. Doc wiped the wound clean and applied antiseptic around it, then the last of the antibiotic salve he had, and then covered the wound with two more 4-by-4 pads before he wrapped it securely with a heavy bandage.
"Now we let him go from the hypnotic state into a normal sleep, right?" Doc asked.
Ken nodded. "When he wakes up, he's gonna be yelling. Have your morphine shots ready. He should have an MRE, and then we'll put him back under. No reason he has to endure the pain. The hypnotic state is not harmful to him in any way. Be sure to tell him the damn slug is out of his leg. That will help him to get through the pain while he's eating the MRE."
Murdock shook hands with both Doc and Ching, then went back to talk to the lookout. He'd seen lightning three times, all to the north.
While the two looked to the north, they heard a plane coming.
"Bigger than a spotter," Douglas said.
Then they saw it over the hills in front of them. It leveled out at about three thousand feet, and to Murdock's surprise, twelve men tumbled out of the plane, and chutes opened.
"Now, this we didn't need," Murdock said. The men were low enough that they drifted little before dropping into a small valley just ahead.
"Twelve men," Douglas said. "We can take them out easily."
"Yes, if they don't know we're here. They didn't see us, that's for sure. Maybe they're just setting up a blocking position." He stared at the area directly ahead. This gully was one of several that opened into the small valley, It was no more than fifty feet across, and had sharp hills on both sides. A kind of elongated gorge.
From the north came more stabs of lightning, and this time they could hear the rumble of thunder.
Murdock hit the mike. "Everyone, we've just had twelve paratroopers land maybe a mile in front of us in that valley. We've got to stay awake and alert. Be ready to move at a moment's notice. Let's have a squad check. Ed." He waited while the Second Squad checked in. Then he listened as his seven men, and Kat, let him know they were awake.
"Listen up. More lightning, and lots of thunder to the north. We figure it's on this side of the mountain group that this gully fronts. Which means that most of these arroyos around here could be hip-deep in water in a half hour. The sides of our own little canyon here are not too steep to climb. Pick out a route, and a spot at least twenty feet above the floor here, where you are going to dash to when you get the word.
"Lam, I want you to move up the gorge here as far as you can and still maintain radio contact. Maybe five hundred yards. Watch for any flash floods coming our way. If the water is traveling even twenty miles an hour, it will move five hundred yards in a rush. If it comes, you be high on the ridge, and give us all the warning you can." He let the words soak in for a minute, then continued. "Douglas. I want you to go high on this ridge to our right, until you can see where those twelve Iranians landed, and tell me what they're doing. If it's a blocking force, they might be setting up a camp. We don't have to tell them that the rains are here, and that they just might be swimming before long. All of these gorges empty into that little valley, and it could develop a wall of water twenty feet high in a matter of minutes. Douglas, go now."