“Two down here, Cap,” Franklin said.
“Get back to the hosing down,” Murdock said. “We’re running behind schedule. How is Fernandez?”
“Not good. He took two rounds, one in the high chest, one in the shoulder. Mahanani got the bleeding stopped, but Fernandez is moving slow. Nothing vital. Mahanani is worried about the top of his lung getting hit.”
As they spoke, Murdock saw his men turning on the hoses again. All of the tops were off the boxes. The millions of dollars of cocaine rapidly turned into worthless soup on the hold’s floor.
Murdock put Lam on deck as a lookout. He checked his watch. It was nearing 2200. He had hoped they could be out of there and moving toward the dock warehouse and the ether by this time.
He found DeWitt. “How much longer here?”
“Half hour at the most. We’re on the last boxes now.”
“Rush it any way you can. How about Fernandez? Use two men to help him up to the rail across from the one you came in. Send any line you have with him. We don’t want him jumping in the water. I’m going to check on top. Any chance those four clowns we offed had a radio?”
“Don’t know. I’ll have somebody check the bodies. Fernandez is on his way. He’s bitching, so he might not be as badly hurt as it looks like.”
Murdock was halfway to the open deck when his earpiece spoke.
“Cap, looks like we have visitors. Two army trucks. Troops getting out of them.”
“Roger that. Dobler and Jaybird. Get out of that ship and into the bay. Come over to the south side of this freighter and wait. Bring all of our drag bags with you.”
“Aye, Cap. Will do.” It was Dobler.
Murdock ran up the last ladder and slid to the deck so he could see over the rail. Looked like two squads of infantry, fourteen men, maybe sixteen. One squad approached each of the two freighters. They went to ground near the gangplank. What were they waiting for?
“Ed, get your guys out of there, now. Come up the far side if you can. Go over the side and pick up the drag bags. Any line? Can you get Fernandez down gently? Time for us to split. Visitors look like security guards, not anxious to get into a fight. Let’s move, now. Everyone over the far side and into the wet.”
“Yes, we have line. We’ll rappel Fernandez down. We’re moving.”
They all still had on their full wet suits, with rebreathers and fins tied around their necks. The SEALS hung on the rail and dropped into the water twenty feet below.
Dobler and Jaybird waited for them at the side of the ship. The rest of the SEALs dropped in and moved underwater at the side of the ship, touching each other to stay together. Murdock and Dobler waited for Fernandez to be let down. He grinned at them, but there was pain in his dark eyes.
“Can you swim, Fernandez?”
“Think so, Cap. Might not keep up. Hurts like hell. One-arm swim time.”
Murdock put Harry Ronson on Fernandez to buddy him and help him keep up. They would try to match their swim speed to the best that Fernandez could do.
Ed indicated by signs he was on his way with a man to get their drag bags on the other side of the freighter. He was back seven minutes later. Murdock had everyone surface along the side of the freighter, and he swam along, counting wet suit hoods. All sixteen accounted for.
Murdock signaled down, and the seals tied as buddies went to fifteen feet and swam around the freighters. Their intel said the ethyl was in one of a pair of old warehouses on the docks near an unused pier no more than five hundred yards from the freighters. Murdock hoped that they were right. Fernandez worried him. The chest shot could be bad. He could go sour and die as he tried to swim.
After enough strokes to cover 500 yards, Murdock surfaced with his tied-on buddy, Holt, for a sneak and peak. He barely let his face break the surface and looked around. They were thirty yards off the dock, a wooden affair that stilted ten feet into the water.
Around Murdock more SEALs broke the surface. He counted. Seven pairs of heads showing.
Where were Fernandez and Ronson? It had to be them. He waited two minutes by his watch, then another minute. To his relief, he saw two more heads surface slowly. Ronson’s rebreather tube came out of his mouth. “Cap?” he whispered. Murdock was halfway there.
“Need to get Fernandez to shore pronto. He’s hurting.”
Murdock helped pull Fernandez along as they swam to shore under the overhead of the dock. They eased down on the rocky shoreline, and Fernandez took off his mouthpiece and goggles and shook his head.
“Gonna be a long night, Cap. Don’t think I can hold up my end of the fight.”
“You rest right here. This one should be a cakewalk. Just a little bonfire to start. Then we take an easy run down the channel and out to sea. Have you back on the Jefferson before you know it.” Murdock found Quinley along the line of SEALs.
“Watch Fernandez. Stay with him. Get him some morphine and pain pills from Mahanani. Time for us to be moving up.”
They left their rebreathers and fins on the rocky slope just over the water and took out of the drag bags what they needed. More TNAZ and C-4 and extra ammo. The alert around the ship might have triggered more troops to come to the area.
Murdock went to the side of the pier and up to the top. He watched the first warehouse for five minutes. There appeared to be no roving guards. He couldn’t be sure about fixed guard posts. Lam had come up with him and said he’d take a quick look around the place and see what he could find.
Lam moved a dozen feet toward the building. He was still thirty feet away from it when a siren went off, floodlights billowed on his side of the building, painting the whole scene as light as day. Lam surged back over the rocks beside the pier and out of sight.
The SEALs had taken out their Motorolas from waterproof pouches as soon as they landed. Now Murdock hit his lip mike.
“Snipers, get the hell up here. We have some fucking floodlights to shoot out. Looks like the party is starting.”
22
Murdock watched the warehouse area with the floodlights blazing. They had snapped on when Lam broke some beam or tromped on a movement or vibration sensor. These drug cartels could afford the best in protection. But what about personnel?
Bill Bradford slid in beside Murdock with his H&K PSGI sniper rifle with a suppressor. He began taking out the lights with the deadly cough of the NATO round.
Murdock worked on two close lights and snuffed them with his silenced MP-5 on single shot.
On the other side of Murdock, Jaybird began taking out lights with his MP-5. Two Colt Commander carbines came on line, and within two minutes, all the lights on their side of the building were shot out. When the firing stopped, Murdock and Lam listened to the silence. A dog barked far off. Some kind of a night bird shrieked as it dove on a mouse. They heard no trucks, no alarms. No men running. The siren had cut off when the first floodlight smashed.
Murdock used the radio. “DeWitt. Get your squad up here and take the front of the building facing the water. Alpha, let’s get the side in the dark and test the back. Go inside if you can, DeWitt, and see what our situation is. Let me hear. Go.”
Murdock’s squad boiled over the small berm and darted across the blacktop to the side of the now-dark building. They paused but could hear no opposition. The back of the building had not been lit up. Or had it and all the lights went out due to a short when the others were shot out? Probably. Murdock and his men charged around it to the dark far side and then to the front.
“Cap, we’re inside,” DeWitt said on the Motorola. “This is the place. Maybe two hundred barrels of ether in here. No interior guards.”