The Pegasus crashing along at forty knots presented the SEALs with a slam-bang ride. There wasn’t that much rush. Murdock asked the Coxswain if he could cut the speed to thirty knots. It would take an hour longer, but at thirty, they could get some sleep.
Murdock didn’t sleep. He kept going over in his mind what had happened and how he could have done it differently. Getting two men wounded so badly on a mission meant something went sour. He didn’t know if it was his fault, the luck of the draw, or the original planning. He’d have a long talk with De Witt, Dobler, and Jaybird tomorrow and see what they could decide.
It took the Pegasus almost four hours to reach the big carrier. They tied up at the lower hatch, and the SEALs climbed the ladder into the bowels of the ship.
Murdock took Ching to sick bay to have his gunshot and his head graze looked at. They treated them both, then said they would keep him for twenty-four hours for observation, watching for any infection. Murdock asked about Bradford. The doctor who treated him was still on duty.
“Bradford, yes, the SEAL. He’s out of danger. Halfway into a bad case of peritonitis, but we nipped it. We stitched up his large intestine and did some repair work in that area. He’ll need at least two weeks in the hospital here or Stateside. You’re homeported in San Diego. So it would be Balboa Naval Hospital. He’s coming along fine. Still in recovery and sedated.”
“What about DeWitt?”
“A nasty one. Much worse than it looked. Glad you didn’t let him swim out those two miles he kept mumbling about. That really ticked him off. Said if everyone died that it was his fault. Near as we can figure, the round that hit him shattered on the clavicle. Tore up lots of tissue up in there, put one small hole in the top of his lung. Lucky it didn’t collapse on him. Some internal bleeding. He’s going to be black and blue up in there for a week or two. One shard we found by X-ray an inch from his heart. That would have been bad.”
“How long is he grounded?”
“Two weeks at least. Then light duty for another month. You better take his trident away from him for a while. In two months he should be as good as new.”
Murdock found his way back to his quarters and rolled into his bunk. When he looked at his watch, he was surprised that it was 0530. Yeah, when you’re having fun.
He turned over and slept.
The damned Iranians had captured him and were banging a bucket they had clamped over his head. The banging was done with an old saber, and he couldn’t stand it. Then a door opened and a new voice sounded in the racket.
“What the hell, Murdock, you gonna sleep to noon?”
Murdock made the Iranians go away, but when he buried his head under the pillow, the other voice came through loud and agitated.
“Murdock, you gonna sleep all fucking morning?
Oh, god, he wasn’t dreaming. He’d just gone to sleep. He moved the pillow and stared out of bleary eyes at Don Stroh, who stood just inside the compartment door.
“Murdock, get your ass in gear. Something big just came down. The U.S. is officially in the fracas with Iraq. Not officially, by Congress, but we are “aiding and helping defend an ally in any way that we can.” In short, Syria begged us to help slow down Saddam the fuck Hussein before he overruns Damascus. We might just as well be at war. And the CIA, the War Department, and State all have a fantastic new assignment for you and your boys.”
“We’re shot to hell; we can’t do it.”
“Sure you can. Simple, really. You get awake, have a shower and then about a gallon of coffee, and I’ll let you in on your next job. It’s a pisser, I mean something the U.S. has wanted to do for years, but had no guts. Now you and your guys are gonna do it.”
Murdock stood and headed for the male officer’s showers just down the companionway.
“No way, Stroh, I’m serious. Look at my medical report. Half of my outfit is shot up, four in the hospital right now. No damn way are we going to take on another assignment.”
24
Don Stroh followed Murdock down the companionway toward the showers.
“How many men do you have who can walk and talk?”
“Twelve, but four of them have been put on light duty by the medics, which brings us down to eight. Not a good number. Regs require us to have at least a dozen men for any mission.”
“Regs my ass. You make up your own regs. Listen to this assignment after breakfast, then see what you decide.”
“This would be a volunteer mission, right, Stroh? A highly dangerous, combat-filled operation that could very well get every man in the platoon killed.”
“Hell, Murdock most of the missions you go on fit that description. What the hell you so pissed about?”
Murdock stopped at the shower room door. He turned, and his face was flushed and angry. He touched Stroh’s chest with his index finger.
“What? You have to ask? I just got half of my squad shot up on this deployment. One is busted up so badly that he can’t stay in the SEALs. Another one was on the brink of dying before the medics worked him over. My best friend, Ed DeWitt, almost bought the farm out there on that rotten chunk of Iranian soil. If that isn’t enough, I have four more men with bullet holes or shrapnel in them, and they are hurting by the bucketful. What I have to figure out is why this all happened and what I should have done that I didn’t do. Or maybe what I did that I should not have. When it comes down to the final analysis, it’s my fault that those men were wounded. My fault, no one else’s. Now, do you have any other dumb questions, Stroh?”
Murdock waited a beat, then pushed into the shower room and let a small cloud of steam come out. Stroh took a breath and went to the wardroom for another cup of coffee.
Almost an hour later, Murdock walked into the wardroom and sat down across from Stroh.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I shot off my mouth at you. I shouldn’t have, and I apologize. But who else can I yell at, the admiral?”
Stroh nodded until he looked like one of those little dolls some people have on their dashboards.
“Please don’t yell at the admiral. I’m your guy to bellow at. Sorry I came up with the next assignment before you had settled the last one in your mind. My fault.”
They both worked on coffee. Neither one said a word for five minutes. At last, Stroh chuckled.
“Okay, inscrutable one. I give. I’ll talk first. There really is another situation that we should go over.”
“The proposed mission?”
“Right.” Stroh looked at Murdock critically, as if trying to figure out what his reaction was going to be. When Murdock looked at him to see if he was going to continue, Stroh said two words:
“Nerve gas.”
“Nerve…” Murdock scowled. “You’ve got to be joking. My men have no training in handling nerve gas.”
“You did rather well with it in China as I remember.”
“That was on a limited scale, and it all was underground.”
“You think Saddam is going to have his ace-in-the-hole weapon sitting in a tent out in the desert someplace?”
“From what I hear about him, he might put it in his sons-in-laws’ graves.”
“We know where it is, what it is, and how to destroy it without killing off half the population of the Middle East.”
“Good, so you do it.”
Stroh went on as if he didn’t hear Murdock’s comment. “We know where it is, and the word from inside the high command at Iraq’s GHQ is that Saddam will use it if the war goes badly for him. Our job: Get to the goods and destroy them and the delivery vehicles before the war goes so badly that he lashes out with the missiles aimed at six national capitals, as well as Tel Aviv and Haifa, Israel.”