Murdock moved cautiously on the pillow on his swivel chair. He'd have a sore butt for a month, maybe more. He was lucky at that. He'd made a hospital call that afternoon to Balboa and check on his two wounded men. Both had been detached from his command, but they were still his men. If they weren't being taken care of properly, there would be some serious shit flung around those clean hospital rooms, corridors, and offices.
Dewitt. The lieutenant and second in command of the platoon had come back from Lebanon with his left arm in a cast. A bad break. The medics had told him to take a two-week leave and rest up at home. Dewitt had said yes, sir, saluted the commander doctor, and reported back to duty the next day.
He was hurting. Doc Ellsworth checked on him twice a day with a shot of morphine ready. Dewitt was making it fine now with no training going on. Murdock didn't know how he'd fare during the tough training school he had worked out. It would be nasty and brutal. He had to integrate the new men and confirm Jaybird's leadership ability under tense and near-combat conditions.
"Oh, damn!" Murdock whispered as he shifted on the chair. Lacy pains darted up his thighs and buttocks, and he stared at the bottle of ibuprofen on his desk. He'd been gulping three at a time four times a day. The dope kept him civil most of the time.
Murdock looked down at the training schedule. It wasn't Hell Week exactly, but he did have a forty-eight-hour mission set up without sleep and with live firing out in the desert. Two canteens of water, no food, no rest, lots of double-timing, and a whole shit-pot full of beer cans to knock down at three hundred yards. The two-day Hell would come after some intensive day-long training exercises with definite objectives followed by evaluations and critiques. Jaybird would have a lot to do with these. The troops were due to report back today at nine. Jaybird would be in by eight. He hadn't taken any leave, wanting to get to understand all of his duties. He was a quick learner. He, in effect, would do a lot of the running of the platoon while they were in garrison.
Dewitt came in, groaned, and drew a cup of coffee. He sat down across from Murdock. "Platoon back today?" Murdock nodded. "We going to hit the training sched?"
"Like we were a brand-new class of BUD trainees. I still think you need that week's leave to see your parents up in Seattle."
Dewitt looked at him from deep-set eyes under his just renewed flattop haircut. "If the men do it, I do it, except maybe the cargo net climb."
"You won't do that cast any good smashing it around."
"It's my cast, and my arm. What's on for this morning?"
"Start out slow," Murdock said. "Figured we'd do a little log PT with cammies and life vests."
"Then a run with the logs?"
"An easy five-mile jaunt. You don't get to carry the log. You can do the run."
"Thanks, Boss." Dewitt looked out the window. "I got five more weeks on this cast. If anything pops in the world, you take me along even if for nothing more than to hold your goddamn fly open."
Murdock chuckled. "Nothing can pop. I've got a six-week training schedule worked out. Not even the CNO would mess up one of my schedules."
"I'll send him a fax so he's sure about your timetable."
The two grinned at each other. They had hit it off since the first day when Murdock was named to replace Lieutenant Vincent Cotter, who had been KIA in the Shuba airport raid in Iraq. Third Platoon had gone in to rescue a C-130 full of UN weapons inspectors that the Iraqis had surrounded and wouldn't let depart.
Dewitt hadn't been upset when a new man had been called in to take over the platoon that he could have inherited. They had both worked together like the well-oiled parts of an HK MP-5 sub-machine gun ever since.
Dewitt was a string-bean, six-one, not over a hundred and eighty pounds, and tough as Southern fired shoe leather. He came from Seattle, and served two years as an enlisted man before he got his appointment to Annapolis. A year after he graduated he applied for the SEALS and made the cut. That made him a Mustang, ring-knocker SEAL. He wasn't married and tended to like long-legged redheads, when he took the time. Being a SEAL didn't leave much time for social activities besides a few bars.
Dewitt rested his cast on the desk. "Yeah, I think Jaybird is going to make it as Platoon Chief. He's damn good with the men."
"He's coming along. Sure I can't write you a week's leave with an airline ticket for Seattle?"
"I wouldn't know what to do. Mom would love it, but I'd drive my dad nuts. He still carries mail for the Post Office."
"You can go fishing. Remember those big salmon you used to catch?
When do the chinooks and kings run up there? About now? Even find some of those big flounders you were telling me about."
"Out here we call them halibut. Not as many of them as there were. I've lost my enthusiasm for fishing. Much rather help get this outfit ready to fight again."
David, "Jaybird" Sterling banked into the office, dropped two notebooks on his desk in the outer section, and filled a coffee cup before he came to Murdock's room and leaned against the door.
It was 0800.
"Sir, I have the latest intel from the men," he said to Murdock. "Seems you've picked up a new nickname. It has something to do with the recent unpleasantness in Lebanon which shall be nameless."
Dewitt turned grinning. "This I've got to hear. They've been calling me Broken Wing."
Jaybird laughed. "True, L-T. That's not such a bad moniker. The guys are calling the commander Old Iron Ass in honor of all the shrapnel that wound up in his lower sections."
Dewitt laughed. Jaybird beamed. "It could be worse, sir. This way you could go down in history right next door to Old Ironsides."
"Not likely," Murdock growled.
"Good coffee," Jaybird said through his big smile.
"Don't change the subject," Murdock said. "We fall out at 0910 for training. You're in the mix, Jaybird. When the troops arrive get them into cammies, floppy hats, and issue each one a life vest. No weapons. Be a walk in the fucking park." He stared at them a minute, his growl showing on his face. "Now get out of here and let me finish my plans for a forty-eight-hour Hell Week."
They both left. Murdock popped three Motrins and washed them down with coffee.
Murdock had never wanted to be anything but Navy since he went on an Outward Bound trek the summer after his senior year in prep school. His family came from the wealthy enclave of Front Royal, Virginia in posh Royal County. His father was a longtime Congressman holding a key seat on the powerful House Military Affairs Committee. His dad wanted him to go to Harvard, then get into politics and some day run for the family seat in Congress.
Murdock wanted something more challenging, with more bite, and physically demanding. He wrangled an appointment to Annapolis, and four years later received his ring. A year later he applied for SEAL training, and worked his way through the six-month course right alongside the other SEAL candidates.
Officers get no preferred treatment in SEAL training. They do everything the other men do. It helps mold a strong bond between enlisted and officers, and has a way of breaking down the strict and traditional "officer country" psychology. When you're trusting your life to the SEAL behind you on an operation, it doesn't matter what insignia of rank he has on his collar. All that matters is that he can do his job.
Murdock had been in the SEALS for five years, including two years as a senior instructor at the BUD/S training base in Coronado. He was delighted when he took over Third Platoon about a year ago as platoon leader.
He was still single. He had met a girl, Susan, on the Outward Bound program in Colorado the summer before his last year at Exeter. Their relationship had grown and they had planned to be married. She was driving to his graduation at Annapolis when a teenager on cocaine hit her head-on three days before they were to be married. She died instantly.