Seal Team Seven (13 page)

Holt began performing push-ups at the rate of one per second. Some of the other SEALs began counting cadence. “One! And two! And three! And four!”

“C'mon, Holt, no cheating! All the way down!”

“I'm goin' all the way down!”

“I don't think she's heavy enough!”

“Yeah, why don't you try it with a telephone pole?”

“Or Big Mac!”

“Screw you, Razor!” Holt called out.

“An' twelve! An' thirteen! An' fourteen!”

Another quiet Friday night at Sarnelli's, MacKenzie thought, wrapping his big hands around his glass of Bombay gin. Sarnelli's, a little bar and restaurant on Little Creek Road in east Norfolk, had long been a popular watering hole for naval personnel, but since the creation of Team Seven it had become virtually a private domain, SEAL territory, and all others enter at your own risk.

“He's gettin' tired. Look at his face!”

“Aw, he's just gettin' warmed up!”

“. . . twenty! An' twenty-one! An' twenty-two!”

Actually, MacKenzie reflected, it
was
rather quiet tonight, and that worried him. There were only seven SEALs in the whole place, counting him, all wearing civvies and none of them even bothering with the handful of Marines and Navy personnel already there when they arrived. Outwardly the boys were as rambunctious as usual, and as determined to get drunk, but there was a hard edge to their laughter, a bitterness to their jokes and banter that typified what MacKenzie had been noticing all week.

The platoon's morale was way the hell down. Lately, good-natured hazing or kidding was more likely to be taken as an insult, and there'd been a number of fights during the past few days. In a booth over in one corner, Doc Ellsworth was ignoring the push-up contest. He'd picked up two pretty SEALettes, a blonde and a redhead, and was demonstrating his famous double-beer-drinking trick, holding two open bottles of Budweiser upended in his mouth at once, no hands, and chugging the contents down in a steady series of gulps. The girls, a couple of military groupies MacKenzie had seen hanging out at Sarnelli's with his boys before, watched wide-eyed. The rest of the SEALs were clustered around Holt and Lucy.

“Forty-three! Forty-four! Forty-five!”

Doc spit out the two empty bottles, then leaned across his table. “Aw, shit, guys!” he called. “Wouldn't it be better if Lucy was underneath him while he was doing that?”

“Yeah Doc's right! Hey Holt, you dumb ass! You got it backward! The girl's s'posed to be
under
you!”

“Fifty-two! Fifty-three! Fifty-four!”

“Wait! Wait!” Garcia shouted. “I'll fix it!” The SEAL positioned himself, then dove head-first toward the two people on the floor, landing on top of Lucy, who squealed and wiggled beneath him. Holt
oofed
and staggered a bit under the impact, then continued pumping away.

“Sixty! Sixty-one! Sixty-two!”

“Hey, it's a Lucy sandwich!” Nicholson called. “Sarnelli's house specialty! Looks real good!”

Roselli laughed as Garcia kissed Lucy on the cheek. “Looks like fun, anyway. Can anybody play?”

“What the fuck's goin' on back there?” Holt demanded from the bottom of the pile, though he never missed a beat. “Garcia! Get your ass off of there! That ain't in the bet!”

“Yeah, get the fuck out of there, Garcia!” Miguel Fernandez shouted, his dark face flushing darker as he advanced on the unlikely, heaving trio. “I got money riding on Ron and you're screwin' up the bet!”

“That ain't all that's riding on Ron,” Roselli said, snickering.

Fernandez grabbed Garcia by his waistband and hauled him off Lucy bodily. She gave a loud scream and almost fell off Holt.

“Put me down, you pussy!” Garcia bellowed.

“Who's a pussy, you piss-balled, penny-pricked little son of a bitch?” In an instant, the atmosphere had transformed from camaraderie to vicious, flaring anger. Fernandez launched a swift right hook that connected with the side of Garcia's head and sent him tumbling across a table.

“Knock it off, you two!” MacKenzie bellowed, moving toward the two antagonists. On the floor, Holt kept doing his push-ups with Lucy still clinging to his back.

Garcia scrambled up off the floor and came back, fists clenched, but when he threw a punch it was only a feint. His foot came up instead, slamming into Fernandez's side.

MacKenzie suddenly stepped between them, reaching out with two long arms and snagging both combatants by their collars. “I said knock it off, shitheads!” He didn't raise his voice, but the cold deadliness behind the words somehow penetrated the two SEALs' blind anger. “I don't give a shit, but the L-T wouldn't like to see you two kill each other. You boys read me?”

“Mac,” Garcia said, panting. “That bastard—”

“Stow it, Boomer! Chill out!”

“Chief—”

“You too, Rattler. I said the L-T wouldn't like it!”

That stopped them cold. MacKenzie could feel the fight drain out of both men.

“Now shake hands.”

They shook . . . then embraced, hugging each other warmly. MacKenzie stepped back, nodded approvingly, then turned to face the bar again.

“Aw, now ain't that sweet,” he heard from the front of the restaurant. “The SEALies're hugging.”

“Must be springtime,” another voice said, a bass, gravelly rumble. “Mating season fer fuckin' SEALs.”

“You boys listen to your momma there and be nice to each other!”

The SEALs went dead quiet at the intrusion. A dozen strangers had entered the bar, and now they were closing slowly around the tight-knit group. They too wore civilian clothes, but the close-trimmed hair above their ears, “whitewalls” in military parlance, gave them away.

Marines. Marines out on liberty and cruising for trouble, from the look of them.

“You SEALies're making too damned much noise,” one of the Marines growled. He was drill-sergeant lean, recruiting-poster handsome, and had the cold look of a competent killing machine.

“Yeah,” a second man chorused. “A man can't hear hisself think.” This one stood six-two and must have weighed two-fifty, all of it workout honed, chiseled, and sweat-polished slabs of muscle. When he lunged his blond head forward and scowled, he forcibly reminded MacKenzie of that wrestler guy on TV . . . what was his name? Hulk Hogan, yeah.

“Shouldn't be a problem for you shit-for-brains jarheads then,” Fernandez said, his argument with Garcia forgotten now. “Seein' as how you guys can't think anyhow.”

“Ooh,” the first Marine said, shaking his hand as though he'd burned it. “We got us a wise-ass tough-guy SEAL here, men. I think maybe we'd better housebreak it, don't you guys?”

“Hey, no fighting in here!” a bartender called from behind the bar. “Take it outside before I call the SPs!”

“Aw, this won't take that long, Pops,” another Marine said. “We just gonna do a little after-hours moppin' up for you here.”

“Yeah, no fuckin' Navy puke SEAL alive can take on the Marines,” the big guy said. He curled his forearm up, flexing it, and muscles popped and rippled impressively from wrist to bull-massive neck.

“So you grunts figure you're better'n SEALs, huh?” Roselli demanded, stepping closer. There was a nasty glint in his eye.

The big Marine apparently didn't see that glint or else was too drunk to care. “Fuck! All you SEALs are pussies! Right, guys?”

“Right on, Fred!” There was a chorus of assent, but Fred probably never heard it. Roselli had turned slightly, his hands had blurred, and then the Marine was hurtling through the air upside down, touching down neatly and briefly in a big bowl of popcorn on the bar, then somersaulting behind the bar with a shattering crash and a sudden snow flurry of snack food. Lucy screamed and scrambled to get off Holt before another flying body landed on her. The two SEALettes with Ellsworth shrieked and ducked under the table, while other Sarnelli's patrons ran for cover. A second Marine slammed face-first into a decorative wooden pillar, clung to it lovingly a moment, then slid limply to the deck.

Sipping his gin, MacKenzie briefly considered the tactics of the situation. Clearly, it was his duty as senior man present to break up the fight before someone got hurt or Sarnelli's suffered any more wear and tear to the crockery. The men of Third Platoon looked to him for leadership, and to set a good example. He was, in fact, a father figure for these younger boys, and he took his position in that regard quite seriously.

Picking up his glass, he turned and leaned against the bar, watching approvingly as Nicholson dropped into a perfect Hwrang-do defensive stance, lightly touched a charging bull-Marine, then stepped aside as the Marine hurtled past and collided noisily with a chair. MacKenzie had been worried about the platoon's morale, but as he thought about it, maybe what the boys needed most was a good fight. He winced as Holt, risen now from the barroom floor like a fury from Hell, seized two leathernecks and slammed them together, head to head. Yeah, something to get the adrenaline flowing, something to remind them of how good it was to work together.

Fernandez and Garcia were back to back now, covering each other as they took on separate frontal assaults. Good . . .
good
! A Marine brought a chair down on Boomer, smashing him to the floor. Fernandez whirled, leaped, and brought the assailant down with a slashing kick to the face.

A Marine grabbed Doc Ellsworth in a bear hug. “Watch it, fella,” Doc said. “I'm a non-combatant.” Suddenly the Marine's face turned purple and he crumpled to the deck at Doc's feet, gasping for breath. Doc fastidiously brushed himself off, looked down at his writhing victim, and said, “If that pain persists or if you notice any blood in your urine, come see me during sick call tomorrow.”

Holt slammed into the bar next to MacKenzie. “Damn it, Big Mac, ain't you gonna help?”

“I am helping,” MacKenzie replied. He took a sip, then lowered his glass. “I'm not putting you all on report for fighting. Oh-oh, watch it there.”

A few feet away a Marine grabbed Fernandez from behind and was trying to hit him with a bottle. Holt roared, the sound startling enough that the Marine dropped the bottle just as Holt lunged forward, tackling both men and driving them to the deck.

And suddenly, it was very, very quiet in Sarnelli's.

“Clear!” Boomer called, standing astride a limp Marine.

“Clear!” Holt said.

“Clear!” “Clear!” “Clear here!” “And clear!” The other SEALs chimed in from various parts of the bar, and MacKenzie did a quick head count. Six SEALs, still on their feet. Counting him, seven. Twelve Marines down.
Very
down.

MacKenzie sighed, then reached down and turned the head of one unconscious Marine so he wouldn't drown in a puddle of spilled liquor on the deck. Straightening up again, he reached for the wallet in his hip pocket. “Awfully sorry for the mess, Pete,” he said, handing a fifty and five tens across the counter to the owner. “That cover things?”

Sarnelli glanced around the room. The actual breakage wasn't bad. The men had been surprisingly restrained this time. Only the Marines had stooped to throwing furniture around.

“That'll be fine, Mac. Thanks. Better scoot, though. The boys called the SPs when it started getting rough.”

“On our way. Thanks.” He gathered his SEALs with a glance. “C'mon, you heroes. E & E, on the double.”

“Aw, Chief,” Doc said. He was already back in his booth with his arms around the two girls. “I was just getting to the good part!”

“Move your ass, Doc. Unless you want to spend your liberty in the brig. Move it! Hop 'n' pop!”

“Prowl 'n' growl!”

“Shoot 'n' loot!”

It was more of a victorious saunter out of the bar than a retreat. They scrambled into the pair of cars they'd come in and roared back onto Virginia Creek Drive before the wailing sirens drew close.

The new lieutenant was supposed to show up tomorrow, MacKenzie thought as they raced east toward Little Creek. Maybe that was excuse enough to go ahead and make tonight a
real
celebration. In Lieutenant Cotter's memory, of course. Because it was one sure-fire definite affirmative that the new guy, whoever he was, would never be able to take the L-T's place.

“C'mon, guys,” he yelled over the roar of Doc's Chevy. They were in the lead. “Let's reconnoiter. Left at the light!”

“Now you're talkin', Boss!” Roselli called from the back seat. “Hell, I thought you'd lost it for a minute there!”

The Chevy turned sharply, and Holt's car followed.

It was going to be a long night for the citizens of Norfolk's east side.

“Lieutenant Murdock reporting for duty, sir.”

“At ease, Lieutenant. Hand 'em over.”

Murdock handed his sheaf of transfer and travel orders and his personnel record folder across the desk to the lean, bronzed captain sitting there.

“Okay . . . Murdock,” the captain said, leafing through the first few pages. “I'm Captain Coburn, commanding officer of SEAL Seven. Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He indicated a battered gray-painted metal chair nearby. “Grab a seat. Drop anchor.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Coffee?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

Coburn leaned back in his chair, studying Murdock with a critical eye. “So, Lieutenant. How much do you know about SEAL Seven?”