Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (20 page)

The lieutenant grinned and made a radio call to his CO.

Ten minutes later two jeeps drove up and the SEALs were taken to the same quarters they had used when they were on the base before. A redheaded sergeant poked his head in the door.

“Gentlemen, Base Commander General Menuhin offers his congratulations to you on your successful mission. He says that you’re to relax here and clean up. A special chow call will be held for you in an hour at the mess hall three buildings down. He says a Don Stroh is on his way here from the American cruiser off the coast. He should arrive within an hour. Oh, he also said that the students you rescued are all well and will be kept here overnight. In the morning they will be met by an embassy officer who will issue them passports and arrange transportation
home. You take care now.” He popped a salute, did a quick about face, and went out the door.

Jaybird looked at the other SEALs. They were all watching him. “Since when did I get command here?” he asked. “So, let’s wash up and go get some chow. We can’t change clothes, that’s for sure. At least we can brush off the grime. Wonder if they’ll have any steaks for us.”

Two hours later Don Stroh arrived, ordered them new cammies from the Israelis, and left them cleaning weapons and flaking out. He checked on Murdock in the hospital. He had come out of the operating room and recovery room and lay in a bed with his heavily bandaged left shoulder on a pillow. He watched a soccer game on a portable TV.

“How did they get the TV stations broadcasting so quickly?” Stroh asked.

“Yeah, and good morning to you, too, Don Stroh. Thanks for asking. No, I didn’t get hit bad. I’ll be up and back in uniform in two days. Nice of you to be concerned about my little scratch.”

“Okay, okay. I talked to the medics. Just don’t do any pull-ups for a while. Now. How did they get the TV stations back on the air so fast? I thought the whole broadcast system was fried into next Thursday.”

“They are still destroyed and they aren’t broadcasting. I hear one radio station has jury-rigged a broadcast setup. No TV. This is a portable flown in from Tel Aviv and a tape through a VCR. You see the kids?”

“Yeah. Looks like everyone made it through the ordeal fine except Monica. She’s still mixed up and does a lot of crying. There’s one girl who seems to be the leader and is holding them all together. Oh, yes, she gave me this to give to you.” Stroh held out Murdock’s. 38 hideout.

“You better give it to Jaybird to hold.”

They looked at each other for a few seconds and Stroh glanced away. “Sorry about that chopper getting shot down. At least we got the bird in to you. No high and dry this time.”

“We were hung out to dry, but not by the good guys.
The bad guys did it to us. You hear how we got into the Israeli lines?”

“I did. The kids were talking about it. Bright of that girl.”

“Her name is Kathy. She’s the daughter of a U.S. senator from Idaho.”

“The connection.”

“One of them.” He paused. Hell, it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “When are we going home?”

“You’re not enjoying the Israeli hospitality?”

“I can’t even get CNN. How can I find out how the war is going?”

“Right now things are looking better. The Israelis have put enough planes in the air the shoot down or chase back most of the Syrian fighters, giving them control of the air. So they blast the Syrian tanks, bomb and strafe the convoys coming down from Syria with supplies. All the time the Israelis are trucking more and more troops and rushing tanks and trucks up into the dead zone.”

“They calling Haifa the dead zone?”

“More correctly, the electronic dead zone.”

“That damn pulse bomb sure shot Haifa back into the Stone Age, didn’t it?”

“Until they trucked and flew in enough radios. I bet every base in the southern half of Israel is working with one or two radios. The rest were stripped out and flown north.” Stroh watched Murdock and Murdock began to fidget.

“So why the long stare?”

“Just trying to figure out how far I can trust you. Oh, you might be interested. As soon as you went into the war zone, the CNO had the rest of your platoon into a plane to fly in. They should be here sometime tonight.”

“So you want the JG to take over the platoon?”

“What I’m trying to figure. Just a scratch in the shoulder, you said. Yeah, I saw the pictures. You won’t be able to lift your arm over your shoulder for two weeks.”

“Want to bet? I had a friend who had a rotator cuff operation. Made a three-inch slice in his upper arm, went in, and stapled a couple of tendons back together where
he’d tore them apart. It was an outpatient procedure. In that morning at five A.M. They did the operation and booted him out about seven. Gave him this potent pain medication and told him to take it before the pain hit him. He waited. Never did take the damn pills. Not much pain at all.”

“Was that you, Murdock?”

“No, a baseball player I know. It ruined his overhand fastball, and he never pitched again, but the arm didn’t hurt him either.”

“Two weeks.”

“Two days. I’m getting out of here in two days. Just don’t schedule any missions for us before then. Why did the CNO think we needed the rest of the platoon?”

“He said you usually worked best as a unit. Now the rest of your guys might come in handy.”

“You mean we have some more missions coming up?”

“Must be, or the CNO would have sent the six of you home rather than sending the rest of the platoon over here.”

Murdock threw off the sheet and swung his feet out to the floor as he sat up. He felt just a little woozy for a moment, then he grinned at Stroh. “Been waiting for you to get here so you can get me the set of clean cammies they put in the little closet over there. Now, Stroh. Bring me my pants. I’m getting out of here.”

A nurse came in just as Murdock finished buttoning his cammie shirt. Her eyes jolted wide open.

“Commander, you are supposed to be in bed.”

“Thank you, Captain. But I’ve had enough bed rest. There are some small tasks I have to take care of. You tell the doctors that I’ll be back in once a day for them to look me over.”

She stood back and chuckled. “You damn Americans. I’ll never understand you. But we love you. If you go straight down this corridor, there’s an exit that will put you in the parking lot. Did you find all of your things?”

She took the Bull Pup out of the closet, his combat vest, and a plastic sack that had been filled with the ammunition and goods from the vest. “This must all be
yours. Could your friend here help you carry it?”

Stroh had talked someone out of a jeep and he drove Murdock and his gear to the building where the SEALs had flaked out on their bunks.

“Well, look who decided to join the party,” Jaybird said.

“About time,” Murdock said. “A ship without a rudder … Anybody else wounded on that little hike?”

Nobody responded.

“Good. Yeah I’m not a hundred percent yet, but I can outhike any of you government-issue types. Stroh said anything about what he has working for us next?”

“Nary a word, Commander,” Lam said.

“So who has the training schedule? You guys think you were going to sit on your big fat asses all day?”

“I gave them the rest of the day off, Murdock,” Stroh said. “You work for me, so I’m your boss, so I said they should take it easy and eat four times a day.”

“Oh, yeah, let’s make him our CO.” Fernandez said.

“Five will get you fifty our glorious leader didn’t have a medical okay to leave the hospital,” Bradford said. He looked around. “No takers?”

“That’s a sucker bet,” Jaybird said. “We all know this guy.”

Stroh’s beeper sounded and he looked at his cell phone. He frowned. “Gentlemen, I need to get to a radio and talk to someone on the cruiser. I’ll be back if I find out anything important.”

“Make it after chow,” Rafii said. “I could use another square meal with seconds.”

Don Stroh was back in the SEAL quarters less than an hour later. “Nothing tonight. Might not be anything at all, but you need to know about it. We have a carrier steaming toward us. She’s still about six hundred miles away. There is a report coming out of a marina here in Haifa that a hundred-foot luxury yacht is overdue. She was scheduled to dock this morning and has not been heard from. This is understandable since her radio could have been fried in the pulse. If so, she not only is without communications, she is without any steering ability, since most modern
yachts have electronic steering and computer-controlled instruments and navigation.”

“So, she’s bobbing round out there on the Mediterranean,” Jaybird said. “Must be fifty or more boats in the same fix. Won’t the Israeli Navy power out there and rescue everyone?”

“That will take time. This boat is slightly more important than many of the others. The U.S. vice president, his wife and two daughters, and the ambassador to Israel are on board. The Navy is launching a search. The two choppers from the
Shiloh
have been searching now for two hours. Their range is limited and so far they haven’t found a thing. There is a huge chunk of water out there to check. The pulse reached out fifty miles on land, so it will go that far over the water. That means there is a half circle out there fifty miles in three directions from Haifa, north, south, and due west. That’s one hell of a big playpen to search.”

“The fourteens off the carrier can reach the area, but they won’t have a lot of time to search until they get short on juice,” Lam said.

“Refuel them in the air,” Fernandez said.

“So what if they find the yacht and it has drifted sixty miles off the coast?” Jaybird asked.

“Easy chopper run for the sixty,” Rafii said. “We fly out, take a swim and see what we can do to help. Why not winch up the vice president and get him back to the cruiser?”

“Can’t do that because the SH-60 doesn’t have a winch,” Jaybird said.

“The vice president?” Murdock asked Stroh. “Doesn’t he have Secret Service protection?”

“Sure and plenty of it. And radios and backups and backups for them. But they all must have been fried. The Secret Service can’t do anything out there.” Stroh put his hands in his pockets, walked the length of the room, and came back. His expression now was grim and his eyes flashed.

“There is one other factor. My boss says we have heard
that Syria knows the veep is out there and that they have a good idea where he’s at. They are preparing to send out high-speed patrol boats to snatch the vice president off the yacht and hold him for ransom.”

Murdock looked at the CIA man. “What the hell is the vice president doing on a private yacht with no real protection? A couple of Ingrams isn’t worth shit against a gunboat with fifty-caliber machine guns and probably some twenty-millimeter cannons. What the hell were those people thinking about?”

“Friendly waters, and a two-day cruise. It was supposed to be on some good fishing grounds and the veep is a nut about fishing. Anyway it was a birthday present to him by the ambassador. How do you say no? Enough of this. How do we find him and get to him before the Syrians do, and how do we rescue him?”

Jaybird rubbed his nose, then scowled and looked at the wall.

“Damn big ocean out there. What assets do we have? Any AWACS unit in the area?”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Stroh said. “Might be a land-based AWACS close by. If not, the carrier should have a Hawkeye. They can scan a two-hundred-mile circle and should be able to find a big ship like a hundred-foot yacht. I’ll see how far away the carrier is. Yeah, good idea. Let me get to my SATCOM that works. New one I brought from the cruiser.” Stroh took off running for the door to get to his quarters.

The SEALs shook their heads and thought about the problem.

“Fucking big lot of water out there, that Mediterranean Sea,” Bradford said. “Our best hope is to find the yacht first.”

“The carrier can send out fourteens and eighteens in a search pattern, but a half circle fifty miles in radius is a sweet mother bunch of water to look at,” Jaybird said.

“The cruiser should steam off Lebanon watching for any Syrian patrol boats heading for the open sea,” Murdock said. “That might cut off the attempt by the Syrians.”

“Could, if they aren’t already twenty miles to sea,” Fernandez said. “The cruiser could put up their two sixties and scout for the patrol boat and the yacht at the same time.”

“How long has it been since the pulse hit?” Rafii asked.

“This is the third day of the war,” Murdock said. “So it’s the third day the yacht has had no power, no steering, no refrigeration. Food might be getting scarce.”

“Drifting,” Lance said. “How much current is there off shore here and which way does it go?”

“No idea,” Jaybird said. “We’ll have to ask the Israelis.”

The door popped open and Senior Chief Petty Officer Sadler stepped into the room. “Yeah, this must be the place,” he said, dropping his gear. “Hear you guys been loafing around over here in the sunshine while we been working our tails off on the O course.”

The rest of the SEALs from Third Platoon streamed into the large room and began claiming bunks. Lieutenant (j.g.) Gardner came in last, showing a slight limp. He saw Murdock and frowned at the bandage.

“You go and get yourself shot up on a little walk in the park like that?” he asked.

“Just a scratch, JG. Where did you get the limp?”

“Been kicking ass so long on the O course and the hikes we’ve been taking, then yesterday I damn near busted it on Howard’s hard butt.” He sat down beside Murdock. “We got anything cooking?”

Murdock told him about the veep.

“Sounds like that guy. Good time Charlie. When I run for office, things gonna be different.”

“Yeah. I can see a plank in your platform,” Jaybird called. “Golf and fencing lessons for every seventh-grader in the country.”

“Golden idea, I was concentrating on mahjong and bridge lessons, but I’ll have my campaign committee check that out.”

“You guys get fed recently? Any sleep needed?”

“We’re ready to go with five minutes to get our combat vests up to snuff,” Gardner said. “How are we for ammo on the twenties?”