Seal Team Seven #20: Attack Mode (17 page)

“Two slugs in your shoulder is a damn scratch?”

“Hell, one went on through.”

Murdock got on his carrier radio and asked the ship to call the head man on the atoll and see if they had a doctor who could come out for two patients. They did and said he’d be there within twenty minutes.

“Turn on some lights in that hold and get a count on how many crates of plut are still there,” Don Stroh said. “We need to know how many we’re trying to track down. Right now I want to talk to a man named Keanae.”

They put Keanae on the radio.

“Don Stroh here.”

“What the hell you doing out here in the glorious South Pacific?”

“Trying to save your worthless ass. What happened to your SATCOM radio?”

“At the last minute they wouldn’t let me bring it. Said it would blow my cover.”

“How bad is the shoulder?”

“Got a doctor on the way. I figured I’d be dead by now. Must be this new kind of bullet the bad guys were using.”

“We’ve got two choppers on the way to you now. Have you in sick bay here within a half hour. You hang in there.”

Out of the original crew of twenty-four, there were eighteen left. Murdock talked with the ranking officer, Chief Mate Stillman.

“They shot the captain when they took over, then one after another our men were shot down in cold blood. We didn’t give them any cause. They dumped the bodies
overboard. I hear we have new screws coming from Majuro. We could be ready to get underway in two days.”

“You’ll need some fuel. Majuro can help you there. I’d bet you’ll have new orders to get you back to San Diego.”

“God, I hope so. Oh, we’ll need some kind of portable radio. Shigahara shot up our whole setup. I know for sure that this is my last run on one of these plut carriers. I’ve had enough.”

The team came up from the second hold. Jaybird gave the report. “Quite a hole in the crates down there, Commander. Near as we can tell there are twenty of them missing. We count eighty crates in that second hold.”

“I know where ten of them are,” Murdock said. “Eight we captured and are on the carrier. Two more are on that plane headed east. We’ve got our work lined up for us to find those others, and before they get too far away. There could be ten bottles of plut on those three small boats that left here this afternoon. We have to nail them fast before they get where they’re going, and damn well before they tie up with any more aircraft. If that happens, there’s no way in hell that we can contain them.”

The island doctor came on board ten minutes after Murdock made the call. He shook his head at the wounds on Jefferson and Keanae.

“That slug should have come out of there two days ago, young man,” the doctor said. “You’re lucky you’re alive.” The doctor was in his fifties and had retired to the island from Majuro. His usual day was spent sitting in the sun, playing with two grandchildren and fishing in the lagoon. He was overweight, bald, and wore a full beard. There was a sly twinkle in his eye. Murdock decided he was a native of one of the islands, ethnically a Micronesian.

“I hear you’ve got a load of pure plutonium 239 on board,” the medic said. “That’s weapons grade. Worth a few billion dollars on the terrorist open market. Glad I’m not forty anymore or I might have made a try for some.” He watched Murdock, whom he had met when he first boarded. “Commander, you know about that fourth boat, don’t you?”

“The crew said there was one loaded.”

“It’s still down by the airport. Near a little break in the reef. I heard they saw the planes shot up and they rammed the boat right up on the sand. Tore the bottom out of her but they got her beached. Amazing what a backhoe can lift, let alone bury in just a few minutes.”

Murdock stared hard at the doctor. “Yep. Figured you might want to take a look. Use my boat down at the ladder there.”

Murdock pointed at four SEALs, and they grabbed fresh rounds from other SEALs to fill up their ammo
quota and ran for the rope ladder over the side of the freighter.

“These assholes think they can bury the stuff and come back and get it when we’ve forgotten all about it?” Jaybird asked.

Murdock’s face was grim. “Don’t know, but that sure sounds like it could be their plan. Two men, the doctor said? We get to shore, grab a car, and roar down to that airstrip. Can’t be more than a mile or two away.”

Lam took over the ten-foot powerboat and gunned the engine, then took them into the lagoon through the wide channel. Somebody had done some good dynamite work on the opening, Murdock decided. They hit the dock and a man came down to meet them. He squinted at them in the dim lights on the dock.

“Steal the doc’s boat?” he asked. He was a native, with smooth brown skin and dark hair. He was grinning.

“Doc said we could find a car here. We need to get down to the airport fast.”

“Me do that,” the man said. “Pickup, Ford pickup, you bet.”

In back of the dock’s small building stood a four-year-old pickup. The SEALs jumped in and the man headed down the atoll.

“Drive without your lights on,” Murdock said. “We’d like to surprise these guys.”

“Me Manjili,” he said “I can do that. Do everything for the doc and the mayor. You know we got mayor here?”

“Good,” Murdock said. He had the front-seat spot and watched the Witch’s Wild Ride–type driving that Manjili did. He would do great in New York City traffic. “How far to the airport?”

“Mile and one quarter, near enough,” Manjili said. “You have guns. Them other guys with the boats had guns.”

“We’re the good guys,” Murdock said. “United States Navy.”

“Navy, good. We like U.S. Navy.”

The pickup wound down the narrow road, swung
around a line of trees, and they were at the airport. The first thing Murdock saw were the three shot-up twin-engine transports. They looked like they could have hauled twenty of the plutonium crates each. Not now.

“Where did the boat beach itself?” Murdock asked.

“Dumb shits, wreck good boat,” Manjili said.

“Down other end runway.”

They drove that way, and Murdock asked the man to stop when he could see the end of the hard-surfaced strip. Brush and trees shielded the beach from their location.

“We’ll go on foot from here,” he told the driver. The five SEALs spread out ten yards apart as they ran for the line of brush and trees. Murdock was in the middle, with Lam and Jaybird on his left and Canzoneri and Rafii on his right. He had grabbed the four men closest to him as he hurried off the ship.

Lam ran out front as usual, scouting. He worked silently through the trees and brush. They all had their radios on. Lam bellied down the last five yards and looked out from behind two trees. Thirty yards ahead and half that much to the south he saw a brightly lighted area with a backhoe working at digging a hole in the sandy, coral-spotted soil.

“Got them, Cap. Two men and one on the backhoe. The hoe man looks like a local; the other two are not. One has a beard; the other’s clean. Can’t hear what they’re saying.”

The rest of the SEALs moved up. Murdock saw the three crates of plutonium stacked neatly to one side, in the splash of the set-up floodlight. The arm of the backhoe vanished into the hole and came up with the bucket filled with sand and dripping water. “I want the bearded one alive,” Murdock said.

“I’ve got the other one,” Jaybird said.

“Don’t shoot at the backhoe man,” Murdock warned. “I’ll shoot the bearded guy’s legs out from under him. Jaybird, sight in. We’ll go on three.”

“Ready,” Jaybird said.

“Ready here. One, two, three.” Both men fired, then
they were all on their feet charging forward, all weapons pointing at the three men in the light around the backhoe. Jaybird’s three rounds had all caught the clean-shaven man in the chest and drove him backward into the pile of dirt from the hole.

Murdock’s bearded target took at least two rounds in his legs, and he fell to one side, swearing in Arabic. He grabbed an Ingram submachine gun and swung it around at the SEALs. All five of them fired when the man brought up the sub gun. Before he could shoot, three rounds hit him in the chest and neck and he went down, dead before he sprawled on the dirt.

The man on the backhoe stood in the seat and held up both hands.

“I’m just working man, you betcha,” he said. He was slender, brown-skinned, and wore a San Diego Padres baseball cap. The SEALs continued their charge to the hole, checked both men, and then waved the operator down.

“Did they pay you to bring down the crates and dig the hole?” Murdock asked.

“Oh yes, pay in advance. My rule with strangers. You strangers, too?”

“No, we’re friends,” Murdock said. “Do you know what’s inside those crates?”

“No, man. Just do what they pay me to do. Not a lot of work on island.”

Rafii and Canzoneri searched the two bodies. The bearded one had a small leather bag on a long strap slung over his shoulder. Canzoneri opened the flap on the bag and looked inside.

“Goooooooood dammmmmmmn. We’re fucking pirates and we just found the buried treasure.” He jerked the strap off the dead Arab’s shoulder and took the bag to Murdock.

“Check this out, Cap,” Canzoneri said.

The others crowded around. Murdock lifted out a stack of bills. He riffled through it. “All hundreds. Looks like these boys were well financed. How much did these two
pay you to get the crates off the boat and dig the hole?” Murdock asked the local man.

“Two hundred dollar. They argued, but I said I get backhoe all salt wet and have to oil everything and dry and cause sombitch bunch trouble. They pay.”

“Fair enough. I’ll give you another two hundred to fill in that hole, and then carry those crates one at a time back to the dock and load them on a boat. Can you do that?”

“Can do, mister boss man. Yeah, can do.”

“Get to it.” Murdock scowled. It was getting late. Those three boats had been on the open sea for two or three hours by now, maybe more. His watch showed it was just after midnight.

Murdock touched his Motorola. “Gardner, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, Cap. You find the boat?”

“We did and three crates of your favorite breakfast cereal. We’re moving them back to the dock. Take us about an hour, I’d figure, we’ll make three trips. See if you can get us a boat at the dock big enough to bring the crates out to the freighter for loading.”

“Can do. I’ll let you know what I find.”

Lam ran back through the trees and found the pickup truck driver in the brush.

“Damn good show,” he said. “You maybe want ride back to town?”

“We do and we have two more silent passengers for you,” Lam said. “You’ll have to get your chief of police to check them out. They might have identification and they might not. Can you drive down near the backhoe?”

Two hours later they had dropped off the two dead men at the small office of the atoll’s police department. Murdock had taken off the bodies the only identification they had, which he figured was false. The policeman was a local, with a shaved head and the softest eyes Murdock had ever seen. He smiled when he saw the two dead men.

“Been hoping somebody would dispatch these guys. Absolute assholes. Demanded whatever they wanted. Oh, they paid, but they treated us like shit. Yeah, they’ll never
be missed. No problem. We’ll bury them and send a note about a couple of dead men dropped off a freighter going by.” He grinned again. “Don’t suppose they have any I.D. on them?”

“None to speak of,” Murdock said. He handed the chief a hundred-dollar bill. “Here’s burial money. Save the county the cost.”

The chief took the cash and smiled. “You men have a good journey, wherever you’re going.”

The SEALs kept the bag of cash, after paying the back-hoe man his two hundred.

“We gonna split up the finders keepers money?” Jaybird asked.

“Sure, we are,” Canzoneri said. “Didn’t I hear a story about you guys had five hundred thousand fucking dollars in a duffel bag dragging it over half the world? You didn’t keep that.”

“This is still in the bank wrappers,” Murdock said. “A hundred bills to a stack. That’s ten thousand dollars. There are fifteen wraps of bills in that bag, which translates out to a hundred and fifty thousand smackaroos. We can dream about keeping it, but that’s about as close as we come.”

“Don Stroh will grab it as soon as we hit the ship,” Jaybird said. “You watch and see.”

They stood by as the backhoe man eased the three crates into a sixty-foot fishing boat that had a wide rear deck. They tied them down, and the boat wallowed a little as it eased out of the lagoon and through the surf to the big freighter. Murdock and his crew followed in the doctor’s boat.

The doctor was on the bridge, talking navigation with the chief mate. Murdock waited a respectable time and then spoke to the doctor. “Did my two men get patched up, Doctor?”

“Yep. I did a little temporary work on them, and then a big bird landed with a pair of Navy doctors and the prettiest nurse I’ve seen in years. They checked over your two men and that CIA guy and hustled them on board the
chopper and flew them back to the carrier, where they have a whole damn hospital.”

He shook the dregs out of his pipe and sucked on it a couple of times. “Course I guess you’d need a whole damn hospital with five thousand people on board. I can’t hardly believe that. A ship big enough for five thousand people to live on it. I hear it’s got a gym, a store, a post office, probably even a boxing ring. Five thousand people. Been a long, long time since I’ve even seen that many people. Course there are over thirty thousand in Majuro, but that’s a whole island over there. Too many people—why I left.”

Murdock’s second call was on Don Stroh, who hadn’t gone back with the doctors. He found Murdock before Murdock found him.

“I hear you’re a rich man,” Stroh said.

“Only until I see you and get an official U.S. CIA receipt.”

“A receipt? We don’t give no damn receipts.”

“You will on this one. I want it in writing off a computer printout from your CIA office, and I want everything all legal and straight so I don’t get my ass in a wringer.”

“No, the expression is ‘tit in a wringer.’ ”