She heard running footsteps. As they dragged her off the sidewalk, she was just able to turn her head. Expecting to see still more assailants, she was momentarily relieved, then horrified, to see Klaus Dengler running toward her, an H&K pistol already drawn from his shoulder holster.
Gunfire erupted from at least two different directions — the muffled, hissing chirps of sound-suppressed shots — and Dengler stumbled, took another three steps, then collapsed facedown onto the pavement.
“Klaus! No!” Even stunned, Inge could still twist and struggle in her captor’s grasp. God, they’d shot down Klaus!
Shock warred with shock. Somehow, she found the strength to scream again, louder, and someone clamped a leather-gloved hand over her mouth. “None of that, Miss Schmidt,” he said in her ear. “Be a good girl and come with us and you will not be harmed. I am sorry about your friend, but… fortunes of war, yes?”
With a squeal of tires, a van careened around the corner, pulling up on the street opposite the parking lot, and her captors half dragged, half walked her across the road. Her eyes widened in terror. It was the same panel truck Blake had noticed the other night, the same vehicle that had carried the two “utilities men” to the attack in the parking lot. Desperate now, more desperate than she’d ever been in her life. She lashed out in a karate sidekick against one of the men holding her.
Her target yelped, then cursed; one of the others hit her again from behind, then propelled her forward, facedown onto a rug on the floor of the van. Someone else, a woman, she thought, was ready with handcuffs, securely locking her wrists together behind her back.
“You bastards—”
“Quiet, bitch.” A hand roughly yanked her hair, hard, forcing her head up and back. A wad of something — a roll of gauze, she thought — was jammed into her mouth. She tried to spit it out, but they were wrapping tape around her head and over the gauze, effectively gagging her. One of the men tossed her handbag in after her. Doors slammed. The van’s engine gunned, and she felt the lurch of acceleration, followed by a right turn at the next intersection down the street.
A man kneeled beside her, rummaging through her handbag, then extracting the pistol she carried there. “Ah!” he said, smiling. “You were planning perhaps on using this on us?” Several of the others laughed.
The one who’d yanked her hair settled his weight across her buttocks, straddling her hips. Still tugging her hair back as he reached down over her shoulder, he fumbled with the front of her blouse, tearing buttons free, then reached his hand in and slipped it under her bra. Her skin crawled as he squeezed her breast, and she screamed into the gag, twisting back and forth, trying to throw her tormentor off.
“Johann!” The woman’s voice snapped. “None of that!”
The hand lingered, then pinched her painfully before sliding out from under her clothing. “Shit, Felda,” the man said. “I wasn’t hurting her… ”
“Ulrich said no rough stuff,” the man with her handbag said. “Leave her alone!”
Abruptly, the weight on her buttocks lifted and was gone. A blanket was dropped on top of her, smothering her in darkness.
In blackness, then, Inge sensed the van racing down the street. She tried to roll over, but someone dropped his legs heavily across her back, pinning her to the floor.
She was pretty sure from the turns she was sensing that they were headed toward the Autobahn, probably heading north.
Not that the knowledge helped her even the tiniest bit.
Murdock stood with Colonel Wentworth next to an HMMWV, the ubiquitous “hum-vee” of the NATO forces. They appeared to be standing on the main drag of a small town, with narrow streets and neat two- and three-story buildings. Wentworth held a stopwatch in one hand. Sergeant Major Dunn was with them, pressing the earphone of a headset speaker to his ear as he monitored the radio net.
The mock battle was already very nearly over. Murdock heard another muffled three-round burst… then one more… and then Dunn, still listening to the radio net, announced, “Exercise complete.”
Wentworth’s thumb snicked the button on his stopwatch, and he peered at the final time with a skeptical stare. “Two-twenty-one,” he said. “Slow… damned slow!”
Dunn, meanwhile, changed channels on his radio and spoke into his pencil mike. “All right, Freddy. Send ’em on through!”
Two more hummers drove up a few minutes later, both crowded with men. As the vehicles creaked to a stop and the doors banged open, Murdock immediately recognized the passengers spilling from them and onto the street.
A young U.S. Navy lieutenant j.g. with a SEAL’s Budweiser on dress whites totally at odds with Murdock’s green fatigues snapped to attention and saluted crisply. “Good morning, Lieutenant! Gold Platoon reporting for duty!”
“Two Eyes,” Murdock said slowly, watching as seven enlisted sailors spilled into a rough line along the street. “What the hell is this?”
The j.g. was Ed DeWitt, known as “Two Eyes” for his position as “2IC,” the platoon’s second-in-command. “I guess Washington decided you couldn’t handle the SAS all by yourself, Skipper,” he said, grinning. He handed a bulky manila envelope to Murdock. “They sent us over to help you out.”
Dubiously, Murdock accepted the envelope, unwound the length of twine sealing the flap, and glanced briefly at the thick sheaf of orders inside. The cover sheet on top told him what he needed to know. Stripped of its Navyese jargon and bureaucratic circumlocutions, it informed him that NAVSPECWARGRU-2—that was the Navy’s Special Warfare Group stationed at Norfolk — had been placed on alert pending the possible unfolding of a terrorist scenario somewhere in northern Europe. First Platoon, SEAL Seven, was directed to continue with its current mission — meaning the exchange training program with the SAS at Dorset — but to maintain an alert readiness state in anticipation of further orders. To this end, First Platoon’s Gold Squad was being transferred from Norfolk to Dorset. Operational equipment and expendables would be arriving on a MACV flight at Lakenheath by late tomorrow.
There was no word as to what the terrorist scenario might be, but Murdock was certain that the intelligence reports filtering back both from the interrogation of the Korean woman at Lakenheath and from the BKA in Wiesbaden must have gotten someone back in CONUS pretty damned well stirred up.
And about time too. Too often, especially lately, the White House had been totally adrift when it came to reacting to developments overseas. Maybe this time someone back there had finally read an intel brief on smuggled nukes and been scared enough to forget about apple-polishing, ass-kissing, and sound bites on the evening news.
Maybe.
Murdock tucked the packet of orders under his arm and let his gaze run down the line of men. Gunner’s Mate First Class Miguel “Rattler” Fernandez, Gold Squad’s big-muscled 60-gunner. Radioman First Class Ron “Bearcat” Holt. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ben “Kos” Kosciuszko. Torpedoman’s Mate Second Class Eric Nicholson, variously called Red for his hair color, or “Nickel” for his last name. Mineman Second Class “Scotty” Frazier.
The seventh member of Gold Squad technically was Jaybird Sterling, but Murdock had shifted him at least temporarily to Blue Squad the week before. On paper, Third Platoon consisted of two officers and twelve enlisted men, but they’d suffered some casualties in recent missions; “Doc” Ellsworth was still recovering from a sprained ankle he’d gotten during a HAHO drop into Yugoslav Macedonia the month before, while “Boomer” Garcia had been taken off the active list after being shot through the lung. A new man sent out to replace Boomer, “Nick the Greek” Papagos, was now on TAD to Athens in the wake of the Macedonian op, all of which had left Third Platoon’s Blue Squad two men short. Murdock had transferred Sterling to even out the two squads at six men apiece.