When the last man hit the beach, Murdock counted. Yeah, all there. He unzipped the waterproof pouch and pulled out his Motorola radio.
“Swimmers calling Pegasus. Swimmers in the wet looking for Pegasus.”
He repeated the call two minutes later but had no response.
The SEALs went back in the water. Murdock stayed at the front, and what he guessed were two miles on downstream, he went ashore with the men and tried the radio again. This time he had a response.
“Yes, swimmers, glad you’re coming. Pegasus here. We’ve run into a bit of a problem. Some assholes onshore with a machine gun and a searchlight have got us at a standstill on the far bank. They can’t get their light over this far. If you read this, you’re no more than three miles upstream.”
“Pegasus, our meat. We’ll move down and check out your buddies with the searchlight. Makes them easy to find. Hang tough.”
Murdock put the radio away. “You guys heard him. We’ve got some work to do downstream. Let’s move.”
Back in the water, they swam with a faster stroke now to help the current.
Sometime later, they rounded a curve in the river and could see a searchlight ahead, probing the water and then moving toward the far shore. The river here was too wide to let the searchlight beam hit the far shore. The far side of the river had trees growing down right to the water. Murdock wondered if the Pegasus was under the screen of branches.
Murdock waved the SEALs onshore. They cleared the water out of their weapons, charged them, and made ready to fight. Lam led out the Third Platoon. Murdock figured they were about 500 yards from the light. He wasn’t sure if it was on a boat or on the shore. If it was mounted on a boat, surely they would be on the water moving their light so they could pick up the enemy boat.
The SEALs moved for five minutes along the shore, then Lam went down, and the SEALs followed. Murdock slid into the grass beside his scout.
“Not more than fifty yards, Skip. Looks like a shore setup. A searchlight, small generator, a vehicle, and a fifty-caliber MG. How do we play it?”
Murdock waved the rest of the platoon up. He told them what they had ahead. “Alpha Squad will move up and take them down. Bravo, cover our rear. Let’s go.”
Murdock and his seven men worked forward, cautiously watching for security. He guessed there would be none. They had their weapons fitted with the suppressors and ready to fire.
Lam edged around a tree. Two men on the searchlight sat waiting in the glow of two bare bulbs. One man on the machine gun and a loader leaned against the small truck the MG was mounted on. Two more men sat against the rig, evidently eating.
Murdock brought the men up in a rough line of skirmishers. They were forty yards from the truck. Silently, Murdock assigned the targets to the men. As usual, they would open fire when his own MG pounded out three rounds.
One of the Iraqi men moved.
Murdock waited. The Arab soldier relieved himself in the darkness, then went back to the searchlight. Murdock sighted in on him, pushed off the safety on the subgun, and spat out three rounds.
At once the other silenced weapons spoke. The searchlight went out first as three rounds hit it and the glass shattered. The two men on the machine gun went down next, with rounds in their chests and head. One man, who had been eating, came up on his knees and reached for his weapon before two 7.62 NATO rounds slammed into his chest, mashing his heart into a froth of bubbles and spurting blood.
The other man who was eating lifted his spoon and turned toward his buddy before he slammed sideways with four rounds in his chest and side that punctured his heart and both lungs. The other man on the searchlight never got off his chair. He took three rounds and slumped over, one hand clawing at the light before he died.
The firing stopped. Then the door of the truck opened and a man came out, diving and rolling. He got almost to the cover of a huge tree before two rounds caught up with him and rolled him into instant communication with Allah.
They waited two minutes. Murdock waved the squad forward. “Make sure,” he said. He heard seven silenced rounds as the Iraqis received the classic coup de grace in the back of the head.
Murdock had out his Motorola. “Pegasus, come on to where the searchlight is and pick us up. We need a ride home. This bit of Iraqi soil is solidly in our hands. The bad guys are no longer with us.”
“Hey, SEALs, thanks. That’s a roger. We’ve moving.”
They could hear the soft growl of the big engines as the Pegasus came out from a screen of trees. In its black coat of paint, the low, sleek boat slid upstream against the current until it was halfway across the river. It turned with the current and slanted in to the shore where the searchlight still stood, now blank-eyed and dark.
The craft eased up within a dozen feet of the shore, and two SEALs grabbed the stern and pulled it in closer and held it. The other men stepped into the craft and moved into the covered cabin on the eighty-two-foot-long speedster.
Murdock was the last man on board. He looked at the ensign and smiled. “Nice to have you come fetch us,” Murdock said. “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”
The ensign frowned in the half-light from the ship. “I beg your pardon, Commander?”
“Let’s go home, sailor. I’m hungry and could use a huge steak dinner with all the trimmings.”
The ensign nodded, and the boat moved down the river at fifteen knots. Murdock found the ensign. “I thought this tub would do forty-five knots.”
The ensign grinned. “Sure as hell will, Commander, but not in the dark on a damned river I’ve never seen before. Then there are floating logs and trees in here and who the hell knows what else. We’ll make fifteen, maybe twenty knots and be glad of it.”
Murdock nodded. “Right. You’re the skipper. Even fifteen knots is a shitpot better than swimming forty miles. You hit any other problems coming up?”
“Just that one searchlight and the fifty caliber. We even took one hit but above the waterline. They didn’t know where we were, so they covered the whole tree-lined shore. We were lucky.”
Suddenly Murdock was tired. He looked around. Half of the SEALs were asleep already. He waved at the ensign, settled down, and closed his eyes. For a moment he thought of Ardith Manchester, his beautiful lady back in Washington, D.C. He wondered what she was doing today, or tonight, whichever it was back there. Probably at work. He smiled. She would know about this run into Iraq before twenty-four hours were up. She and her dad should be working for the CIA.
He smiled just remembering that wonderful smile she had, the way she walked, how great she was at making small talk and figuring out his exact mood. She should have been a shrink. No, a lawyer was good or bad enough. He hadn’t decided yet. The last thing he remembered was her glorious smile when she met him at the door of his Coronado condo. Yes, some things were worth fighting for.
Murdock came awake from a nudge on his shoulder.
“Sir, we’ve got some trouble. Looks like a river patrol boat coming upstream with a searchlight.”
Murdock came awake at once. “How far away?”
“Half mile.”
“You have machine guns on here?”
“Yes, a 12.7mm and a grenade launcher.”
“Can you fire forward?”
“Yes. Get it ready. Bradford,” Murdock shouted. The big guy came awake at once and lifted the McMillan .50-caliber sniping rifle.
“Yes, sir. Where do you want it?”
“Forward, patrol boat coming. Give it ten rounds.”
Bradford found a place to shoot over the top of the low cabin and zeroed in on the oncoming boat. His first round was short, his second close. His third ripped into the patrol boat. The next three put it dead in the water.