Only now, apparently, there was another newbie, a face in the line of SEALs that Murdock didn’t recognize. “What’s your name, sailor?”
“Mineman Second Class Greg Johnson, sir,” the man snapped back. He had a powerful, muscular build, as did most SEALs, but he looked so young and had his hair shaved so close that Murdock was put in mind more of a high school linebacker than a Navy SPECWAR expert. “The guys all call me Skeeter.”
“You’re Ellsworth’s replacement?”
“I guess so, sir. They, uh, they didn’t really tell me anything. They just told me to pack my gear and go. Sir.”
Murdock looked him up and down. Johnson seemed to be an unlikely replacement for the wild and often unpredictable HM2 Ellsworth… stiff and formal, the yes-sir polish of a raw FNG still as sharply evident as a fresh coat of paint. Murdock noticed that Johnson alone of all the men there was not wearing a Budweiser pinned to his shirt. “How long since Coronado?” he asked.
“Three months, sir. They sent me to Fort Benning to learn parachuting out of BUD/S, then back to California for SDV school. After that, it was straight to Virginia Beach.”
Murdock nodded. Graduates of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school at Coronado, California, were put on a six-month probationary period, followed by a session with a review board before they could pin on their SEAL insignia. Training alone — even the rigors of Hell Week — did not make a SEAL. He wondered how the kid would fit in with the rest of the team.
“Bus driver, huh?” Murdock said, referring to the SEALs’ swimmer delivery vehicles, or SDVs.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be filling some pretty big shoes, son,” Murdock told him.
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Good. You can start by dropping at least every other ‘sir.’ It makes me feel old.” He looked up at the rest of the squad. “Well, gentlemen, all I can say is, welcome to England.”
“Great to be here, L-T,” Kos said pleasantly. “When do we get to kill something?”
“Yeah,” Holt added. “We’re ready to prowl and growl!”
“Loot and shoot!” Rattler exclaimed.
“Yeah, well let’s just belay the ‘loot and shoot’ stuff,” Murdock told them. “The British are our allies. At least so far. Colonel Wentworth, do you think your people can find barracks space for eight more shooters?”
“I think we should be able to accommodate you, Lieutenant,” Wentworth said. “I’m beginning to wonder about you chaps, though. Haven’t had this many Yanks running around underfoot since D-Day.”
“If I were you, Colonel,” Murdock told him, “I’d place every bar, pub, and brothel in a fifty-kilometer radius of this base on full alert. I’m not entirely sure whether to compare this bunch to D-Day… or the Blitz.”
Three hours later, Murdock was sitting on a folding metal chair in First Troop’s ready room, going over the stack of paperwork from Norfolk sheet by mind-numbing sheet. So far, his orders were typically vague, and as nearly as he could distill them, required only that he keep himself and his men in a state of readiness and take no direct action unless said action was specifically directed by CO-NAVSPECWARGRU-2, which was to say Admiral Bainbridge.
A British Army orderly stuck his head into the room. “Lieutenant Murdock, sir?”
“That’s me.”
“Telephone for you, sir. Main desk. Overseas call.”
“I’m coming.”
He wondered who the caller might be. Washington? He doubted that they would be moving quite that fast. The platoon’s combat gear and other equipment hadn’t even arrived yet.
He picked up the phone and punched the blinking, white-lit button. “Lieutenant Murdock.”
“Blake?” a familiar, accented voice said. “This is Lieutenant Hopke.”
“Yes, Werner! What can I do for you?”
“I… I fear I have some bad news, Blake. There has been another incident. Inge has been kidnapped.”
“Shit! When? How did it happen?”
“This morning. In front of her apartment.”
“Didn’t you guys have security on her?”
The voice on the other end of the line sounded tired. “Ja, Blake. We did. He was shot down in the street.”
“Who did it?” As if he didn’t know. Anger flared white and hot deep within Murdock’s mind. Somehow, he kept his voice calm. “Have they made any kind of contact with the authorities.”
“We have heard nothing, but we must assume it was the same group that made the attempt on Friday. I probably should say nothing more. This is supposed to be a secure line, but…”
“Understood.” The fact that the Red Army Faction, or the People’s Revolution or whatever else they were calling themselves these days, had been keeping a close watch on Inge Schmidt suggested that the BKA’s security might have been compromised in other ways as well. Informants within the organization, taps on the telephones… modern terrorist organizations were often as well provided for in the intelligence department as were the military units tasked with hunting them down.
Sometimes, Murdock thought, the opposition’s intel was a hell of a lot better than what the SEALs had available.
Inge… kidnapped by terrorists? After thanking Hopke and telling him to keep him informed on every development, Murdock hung up the phone, his mind racing. The only possible motive the RAF had for such an act was their need for intelligence. With a terrible, burning clarity, Murdock could see the step-by-step reasoning that must have led the terrorist leadership to issue the orders to grab her. Unidentified Americans — members of the U.S. military, no less — were consulting with the BKA and their Komissar computer. That suggested an interest in possible terrorist activities.
Item: Murdock and MacKenzie had gone to Wiesbaden in the first place to check up on what Komissar had in its files about the two North Koreans Chun and Pak.
Item: Chun had been captured in the company of RAF and Irish Provo terrorists, involved in something called the “People’s Revolution.” She’d had traces of radioactivity on her clothing and skin that suggested that she’d recently been close to something nasty… like the plutonium in a poorly shielded nuclear warhead.
Item: While there was nothing definite, there were hints and rumors about that a major terrorist group was planning something big… and soon. A nuclear warhead would certainly qualify as “something big” in anybody’s book.
Item: Inge had been kidnapped, probably by the same organization, probably to find out what she knew about American interest or involvement in European terrorist ops. The fact that they’d kidnapped her now suggested that the “something big” on his list must be going down damned soon, or they wouldn’t have risked tipping their hand to the BKA or the SAS.
He thought about what Inge must be going through right now, and his neatly ordered chain of logic dissolved. Colonel Wentworth and British intelligence might disdain torture as a means for getting information out of a captive, but Murdock knew that the opposition held no such compunctions.
God, Inge… it was my fault. If you hadn’t been seen spending time with me…
That kind of circular and self-destructive thinking would get him exactly nowhere. As he walked back to the SAS ready room, he concentrated on replacing the guilt and the fear with a cold, diamond-hard lust for the PRF bastards who’d orchestrated this.