Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (6 page)

A short time later he sliced down the freeway through El Cajon and made a straight run to the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge.

Then he was home. He put his Harley in the underground storage, wedging it into the individual unit each condo had down there. It was out of sight and safe. Now all he had to do was get three hours of sleep and report for duty first thing in the morning.

The next morning Lam had the TV set turned to the local news station and listened as he tried to eat breakfast. All he could think about was the surprised look in the old man’s eyes when Woodward had slugged him and knocked him down. Then the story came on the local TV news.

“East County sheriff’s deputies found an elderly man in his wide open small store above Descanso on Highway 79 late last night after a tip came in. The man had been severely beaten and his store robbed. He was conscious for a short time after police arrived and told them that four bikers in black leather jackets had got drunk in his store and knocked him down and then kicked him.

“By the time paramedics arrived on the scene, the elderly store owner had died of his injuries. Police are searching for the four bikers. They have no other descriptions.”

Lam closed his eyes. What the hell could he do now? Technically he was part of the group, he was just as guilty of murder in the eyes of the law as Woodward was.

“Oh, damn,” Lam said. He looked at the clock. It was time for him to get out his Harley and ride the two miles to work at SEAL Team Seven. He had to go in. He had to act like nothing had happened last night. Nothing at all.

At the parking lot outside the Quarterdeck, he rolled his Hog directly in front of two cars, almost hiding it from
a casual view from Silver Strand Boulevard. He waved at the master chief on his way across the Quarterdeck and then eased into Platoon Three and got into his cammies.

In the platoon office, Murdock and Gardner did one last check on the training schedule and made some changes. The phone rang just before 0800 and Murdock picked it up on the second chime.

“Yes sir, this is Platoon Three of the Seventh.”

“You guys finally get awake out there? Hell, it’s almost lunchtime back here.” It was the familiar voice of Don Stroh, their control from the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Should we be talking?” Murdock asked.

“Oh, hell yes. The CNO told me not to worry about what your ringbanger commander out there told you. He and your captain are outranked all over the place. The CNO will send down an assignment through channels, and we’ll see how quickly it gets there. Here’s the word. You have a special assignment straight from the CNO and my boss. You will be leaving tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred in the small business jet for a trip to Washington, D.C. You will take only five men with you. You are to include any Arabic and Farsi speakers, and other men who can pick up a language quickly.”

“Arabic? We have two.”

“You will have a week of training here, then you’ll receive your special assignment.”

“I’ll bet we won’t be going to Switzerland. Six men. That will take some thought. Can you tell me anything more?”

“Not a word. Your Navy orders will be even less specific. I’ll see you tomorrow in Virginia.”

“That’s it?”

“Afraid so. My dance card is all filled up. Best I can do. How’s the fishing?”

“You missed the albacore again. Two fish per pole out on the overnight boat. Plus yellow fin, a few Dorado, and some yellowtail. Best fishing here in ten years.”

“Thanks for that. Oh, they want you to come naked. No duffel, no bags, no extra cammies, no weapons or
combat gear. Just your bodies and your minds. See you tomorrow.”

Murdock hung up and looked at Gardner. “JG, I and five men will be flying out tomorrow morning. You’ll have the con here. I don’t know what the mission is or how long it might last. All I know is that we will have a week’s training in Virginia.”

“CIA?”

“Good guess. He wants our Arabic and Farsi speakers. That’s Rafii and I and who else?”

“I saw in the personnel files that Bradford speaks Italian and some Arabic,” Gardner said. “He would pick up Arabic quickly.”

“Yes. And Fernandez. With his Spanish, Arabic would be easy.”

“For operational efficiency I want Jaybird and Lam,” Murdock said. “That makes six. Ask the senior chief to have the master chief cut orders for us and to have those five men meet me here in ten minutes.”

Gardner nodded and left.

Murdock stared at the phone. You train and train and wait and wait, and then it all happens overnight. Arabic. So they would be inserted into some Arab country. That wasn’t hard to figure out, but which one and why?

They had a minimum training day, doing a twelve-mile hike in full gear and ammo loads, and then went through the kill house. Lieutenant (j.g.) Gardner turned in the best kill ratio with a 92 percent.

“You trying to show off, JG?” Jaybird cracked. “Hell, nobody’s ever got a ninety in this league. We’ve seen some eighties but they were mostly luck.”

“Hey, small man with a big mouth,” Senior Chief Sadler barked. “Let’s show a little respect for a good shooter. You ever shoot that good, I’ll shine your shoes for a week.”

Jaybird grinned. “Sir, Lieutenant sir. I was just kidding. Congratulations on a fine shoot.”

Lam did the poorest he’d ever done on the targets. He had a 53 percent kill score. “Hell, anybody can have an off day,” he said.

“Not when it’s for real,” Murdock said. “That is not when it’s for real and you still want to live.”

Lam kept to himself. It wasn’t unusual. He didn’t know what else to do. He hadn’t given the police the men’s names. He figured he could do that in a later call. Now he was going to be out of the country for a while. What the hell should he do, phone the WETIP tonight? He wasn’t sure.

A Navy van met the SEALs in the parking lot at 0730 the next morning.

“Feel naked,” Jaybird said.

“Hell, you are naked,” Lam jabbed. They all stepped into the van and ten minutes later were at the North Island Naval Air Station looking at one of the small business jets that the military often used for VIPs and select senior officers or groups that needed to move in a rush, like the SEALs. They had flown in this aircraft before.

It was the Gulfstream II, the VC-11. Made by Grumman, it carried a crew of three and could seat nineteen passengers. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce RBI63-25 Spey Mk 511-8 turbofan engines. It cruised at 25,000 feet at 581 mph, and had a top ceiling of 43,000 feet. On one tank of jet fuel it could cover 3,712 miles. Originally built as a civilian executive jet, it held first-class-size aircraft seats, a galley, and electronic provisions for laptop computers and other communications equipment.

The crew chief today was a Coast Guard first class petty officer who met them at the door. She had on her class A uniform and smiled.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I know you had breakfast, but if anyone is still hungry, we’ll have a snack in two hours and then a hot lunch at eleven-hundred. Our flying time today will be about five hours and twenty-seven minutes if the pilots can hook onto the right jet stream. As you know, the jet stream always flows from west to east, sometimes up to a hundred miles an hour. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Are there any questions?”

“Yeah, are you married?” Jaybird asked.

“That wasn’t a question, SEAL, that was an over-powering desire by a poor lost soul who desperately needs
to be mothered and protected. Any questions about our flight?”

“Two points scored for a takedown by the lady, and zero points for Jaybird,” Lam said. Everyone laughed, including the crew chief. She vanished back into the front of the plane.

The trip went so quickly Murdock didn’t have time to think much about where they were going. Transcontinental flight always amazed him. In early days it would take a horseback rider a hundred and fifty days to go from coast to coast if he could find horses that could walk steadily for twenty miles a day. A mach two interceptor, like the F-14, could do the run in less than two hours traveling at 1,544 mph. Amazing.

They landed at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where they rolled up to the transient aircraft terminal and were met by a closed van. A civilian drove and another sat in the front seat beside him with an Ingram submachine gun held casually in one hand. The gunman stepped out as the steps came down on the plane and Murdock went down them.

“Commander Murdock and five SEALs?” the gunman asked.

“Right,” Murdock said and the man stepped to the side and opened the van sliding door and motioned them inside. There were seats for twelve and no windows. The man closed the door, stepped into the front seat, and the rig moved away from the plane at once.

“Feels like I’m in a cave,” Jaybird said.

“You can look for girls later,” Lam said.

They drove for almost an hour, and Murdock figured they were not taking the shortest route to their objective. He could see a little out the windshield. He recognized one building that they had passed twice. Then they were in a rural area and the only thing Murdock could think of was “The Farm,” the historic country estate where CIA agents were given most of their training.

After another fifteen minutes they came to a stop at a steel gate. Two guards hustled out of a stone sentry box, checked the outside of the rig, then opened the door and
looked inside. The uniformed guard nodded at the SEALs, talked with the driver a minute, then the steel gate rolled back and they drove through.

The rig came to a stop and the front-seat man opened the sliding door. “We’re here,” he said and the SEALs stepped out of the van into a pleasant country setting with two rambling buildings that looked more like town houses than dormitories. Don Stroh came out the door of the nearest building and waved.

“Right over here, men. Welcome to The Farm. You won’t see much of it while you’re here, but this is it. Right this way to your quarters. Murdock, you’ll bunk with the men as usual. First on the schedule is wardrobe as we movie people say. You’ll have two new sets of clothes, all slightly worn, all authentic Syrian civilian. You will wear them while you’re here. Yes, gents, our target for tonight is Syria. So let’s get cracking. We’ll go from your dorm to costuming, then I.D. and then dinner. Right after that we have a three-hour session set for your introduction to the Arabic language and to the culture, and specifically to everything that is Syrian.” He looked at Murdock. “Is the fishing really that good on the overnight boats?”

“Better. A month ago they were taking up to four albacore per pole. You missed it again.”

They walked over to the barracks, a small building with just eight bunks, designed for small groups. They had no gear to leave there, so Stroh took them to the costuming specialists. Two of the four women were Arabs.

“These will be working-class civilian clothes, absolutely authentic and made in Syria,” one of the women said. Her dark eyes surveyed the six men for a moment, then she said something in Arabic to the other woman, who left and came back with a rack of clothes on rolling wheels.

It took an hour to outfit the men with a set of clothes, and then to put together a second set for backup. They took the extra clothes to their barracks packed in Syrian small suitcases that looked as if they were made of cardboard. They were.

“Remember not to sit on the luggage,” Lam said.

Dinner was in a mess hall with a serving line and trays with real dishes. The food was surprisingly good.

“Not your usual mess hall chow,” Bradford said. He’d been back for seconds on the stuffed pork chops.

Stroh had eaten with them and now led them to another nearby building that held a classroom. A dark-skinned Arab-looking man stood in front of the class dressed much like they were-unremarkable pants and shirt and light jacket. The colors of all the clothes were muted in black and dark browns, with a few dark blues.

“Good evening, gentlemen. My name is Marwan Jablah. I lived in Syria for thirty years before I came to this country, thank God. I’m a naturalized citizen and am proud to work for the CIA. No, I am not a spy, but I teach many men and women how to be spies and how to fade into the crowd in any Syrian city. This is almost the last thing I’ll say in English. This is total immersion; you’ll be over your head in the Arabic language. You learn it fast or you don’t go to the bathroom, or eat or sleep. Now, which of you speak Arabic?”

Murdock and Rafii held up their hands.

He spoke in Arabic then: “Don’t help the others. Make them learn the words, the mannerisms. They might be in a situation where they can be killed if they don’t know Arabic.”

Bradford followed some of it. Fernandez frowned trying to get some meaning from the words. Lam and Jaybird scowled, not understanding a word or inflection.

After three minutes of talking to them in Arabic, the instructor handed out booklets.

“Now, let’s get to work. First some basics. Vocabulary, words. This booklet gives you two hundred words you’ll need. I’ll go over the pronunciation of the words with you. Then you’ll have an hour to learn the words and how to say them. Concentrate. Arabic will be as important to you where you’re going as the bullets in your weapons. First page, follow me closely. I’ll say the word and you read what it means. Then we’ll say the word five times.”

Murdock relaxed. The man knew what he was doing. Total immersion was the best way to learn a language,
but first you had to have some of the basics, and a grounding of vocabulary. That’s what they were getting.

The training session lasted for four hours, with a tenminute break in the middle. By the time the men made it back to their quarters, they were groggy and stuffed with Arabic.

“We’ll speak Arabic in our quarters as well,” Murdock said when they were inside. “If we don’t know a word, we’ll ask Ollie. He’s our walking Arabic/English dictionary.”

“Is this language training gonna be worth it?” Jaybird asked.

“If it saves your neck in some Syrian alley, it will be worth it. If nothing else, we’ll have four more men in the platoon who speak Arabic. Knowing the world today, I can’t think of anything that will help us out more in the future.”