Seal Team Seven #20: Attack Mode (34 page)

matter of getting the land back to looking something like it had before. Lam found another soft spot nearby and pushed fresh sand and rocks and dirt across fifty feet and dropped it all into the hole. They were now only three feet below the surface of the rest of the desert. The depression couldn’t stand. Lam kept working the soft areas and pushing the material.

The Motorolas came on. “Murdock, we’ve got company. Looks like a convoy of three two-ton trucks and a jeep out front. If you hear some shooting back here, it’s probably us.”

Lieutenant (j.g.) Gardner let the convoy get a thousand yards from the main gate, then he opened fire. The three Bull Pups jolted rounds into two of the trucks, stopping them and starting one on fire. The second salvo of 20mm rounds hit the jeep and the last truck in line, which was pinned behind the burning one.

Two dozen men tumbled out of the trucks and scurried into the desert land on both sides of the road. Gardner realized that at some point it had turned from night into day.

“Air bursts,” Gardner said, and the three twenties lasered in on the scattered troops and pounded two rounds each that exploded in the air twenty feet over the cowering Iranian soldiers. Half of them never stood again. The men were advancing slowly on the camp, but then they stopped and turned and began to jog back the way they had come. They soon were out of range of the Bull Pups.

“Murdock, looks like we have no more problems up here. Maybe ten of them are still alive and heading for the highway.”

“Okay, we’re still working here. You have another truck?”

“Roger.”

“Get it warmed up and put the women in it and the three scientists and get them driving for the highway. Molly can handle the driver duties. Now all we have to do is figure out how to get out of this clambake without getting a couple hundred bullet holes in our collective skins.”

Murdock watched Lam on the forklift. He was getting good at it. They had to re-chain the push board twice, but they were within a foot or so of making the land level again. The forklift had also acted as a light but effective way to compact the dirt and rocks as they went.

“Bradford, you still have that SATCOM?”

“Glued to my back as my glorious leader specified.”

“Good. Get its ass up here. We need to do some talking.”

They set up the SATCOM satellite operating radio and angled it to the bird in the sky. Murdock got Stroh on the CIA man’s personal frequency on the second try.

“We’re about wrapped up here. We have a whole pot full of angry Iranian soldiers with guns between us and the wet. What would you suggest?”

“Your mission is successful?”

“The 239 is out of enemy hands and we hope lost forever.”

“Good. I owe you two or three. Remember those times we left you inside enemy territory and couldn’t get a chopper in to you? Well, now we’re gonna bail you out. We’re going hard and quick on this. We can get a chopper into your GPS coordinates. We’ll run in four F-18s to fly cover for you. Get your GPS wound up and give me those coordinates. Take the most time to get the chopper in to you. We’ll check the distance. We have a destroyer forty miles off Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. If you’re no more than a hundred miles into Iran, we can grab you with a chopper with no sweat and get back to the destroyer’s pad.”

“Love the sound of that, Stroh. I may let you come fishing with us again as soon as the yellowtail come in. Now, here are our GPS coordinates. Be sure you take these down exactly.”

He read off the series of numbers.

There was some dead air, then Stroh came back on. “Hell, you’re only seventy-five miles from the water. Are you ready to move?”

“Been ready for twenty, thirty seconds.”

“The bird will be off the destroyer in ten minutes. Then he has a hundred-and-fifteen-mile trip to find you. Show him your spots with a red flare. He should be there in about forty-four minutes from now. The eighteens will take care of any Iranian air that gets curious. See you later on today.”

“Thanks, big buddy. You want us to bring out Izzy? He’s probably blown here as an agent.”

“Yes, bring him out. He’s earned a rest.”

Izzy heard the talk and came over.

“I’m going out?”

“Right on a wing and a prayer with us.”

“Murdock, about inside there, all that plutonium. I mean …” Izzy shook his head. “I just freaked out. I know what that devil stuff can do. I lost a friend to radiation poisoning. It’s no fun.”

“Izzy, you got us here. You did your job. Nobody is saying a word to anybody about the time in the building. Forget it.”

Murdock shook hands with the Iranian and then watched Lam do the last load of sand and gravel. He came off the fill and parked the forklift. Then he went back with some cut brush and began wiping out the tracks left by the forklift. Four or five more SEALs cut short brush and worked on the same project. Then they worked over the truck tracks until they couldn’t be seen.

Ten minutes later they tied heavy brush bundles on ropes and dragged them on the tire tracks as the trucks and the forklift drove in a roundabout way back to the mostly destroyed camp.

Murdock found Gardner and looked at his stopwatch. “In exactly eighteen minutes we should be visited by a chopper from a destroyer just off the coast. Four F-18s will argue with any Iranian fighters who try to do any harm to us.”

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Murdock. I wondered how we were going to get out of here with those two highways bound to be filled with troops before long.”

“The girls and the three radiation guys got off in their truck?”

“They did, and Molly says anytime you’re in Tehran, you should look her up. She says she owes you a week of all-nighters.”

“True, she does. Trouble is we just might not make it to Tehran for some time.”

The SH-60 hugged the ground as it came toward them. It was no more than twenty-five feet off the brush and sand as it raced across the desert at 207mph, defying any radar trying to find it. The pilot must have seen the burned-out camp. He lifted up, checked the red flare Jaybird threw, and settled down in a blinding storm of dust and sand. The SEALs waited for most of it to blow away, then charged on board the bird. Murdock counted noses, including Izzy, and the chopper lifted off, heading back for the Strait of Hormuz but by a different route. When they hit the wet, they turned southwest, and less than an hour later they landed in Al Fujayrah, Oman, where the whole operation had begun less than twenty-four-hours before.

NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE

The men in Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, were restless. It had been a full week that they had been back from the South Pacific by way of Iran, and they didn’t have a new assignment. They knew that always meant more and tougher training.

Murdock and Gardner sat in the tiny office of Third and went over a new training schedule.

“How are our cripples coming along?” Murdock asked.

Gardner looked at a clipboard he usually carried. He flipped over two sheets of paper and put his finger on the page.

“Yeah, Ching is back to active. He had an in-and-out in his thigh, but it missed the bone and he’s recuperated well. He’ll be hurting on a ten-mile, but he’ll make it. He’s tough.

“Jefferson took two rounds to his right shoulder and is still in Balboa Hospital. The doctors there said he should recover fully, but it will take two months before he’s ready for SEAL workouts. Sadler is still in Balboa as well, and his situation is rougher. He took a round through his back and out his chest. Could have killed him. Missed vital organs by millimeters. They got all the lead out of him, but he’s scheduled for another month at Balboa before he goes home. Then they say it will be two more months before he can tell if he’s fit for SEAL work.

“Howard had two rounds, now we learn, in his right leg. Nothing serious. In-and-outs, and no bones touched.
He’s back to active, but he’ll be hurting on the O course and on anything in a swim of over five.”

“Temp replacements or permanent?” Murdock asked.

Gardner twisted his mouth and rubbed his jaw. “Damn, hard call. Sadler is an important cog in our machine. But we stand the chance he won’t make it back. In the meantime we have a three- or four-month gap. We’ve got to plug in a man. I’d say to go First Platoon of Seventh and grab their senior chief as a repo on a temp basis that could go permanent if we like him and if Senior Chief Sadler can’t get back.”

“Jefferson?”

“He’s out for two months. Yes, we need a temp in there. We could get a call and I don’t want to go out a man short.”

“You know the senior chief at First. See if the master chief can request him. Then ask the Scotsman for three volunteers we can look at to plug up Jefferson’s spot.”

“Will do, Skipper.” He turned to the phone. Murdock went back to his after-action report, which wasn’t done yet. So much had happened in those few days.

When the last training hike was over, Ching limped over to his locker and got into his civvies. He had been thinking about what Kwan Tung had done to him less than three weeks ago. The police had found his burned car, and the insurance company had paid off while he was gone. Now he had a different car, not a new one but good enough. There was no arrest warrant out for him that he had been able to discover. Now it was time to pay back Kwan Tung for the beating he had taken and how they had tried to frame him for the murder of the girl who had been slashed and stabbed and thrown in the backseat of his car. Only the cleansing of fire had saved him from a murder charge.

Now for Kwan Tung and his entrenched tong. He ran the largest and only Chinese tong in San Diego. Others tried to start but were cut down ruthlessly by Tung. Ching had thought many times about how to punish Kwan Tung
for what he had done—the humiliation, the beating, the try at framing him for murder. The retribution had to be just right, not too severe. He wouldn’t burn down the restaurant. That would punish the people who worked there as well. It had to be pointed, humiliating if possible, painful, and costly to the old millionaire. But exactly what?

He drove his three-year-old Ford Expedition across the bridge and into downtown San Diego. One drive past Tung’s place, the Friendly Dragon restaurant, didn’t bring any ideas. He parked up the block, where he could see the place, and studied it.

Now with his aging problems, the old Chinese had moved into an apartment in back of the restaurant on the third floor. Ching had heard it was beautifully decorated in Old China style. A strike there would unnerve the old man. Yes. He drove on to his apartment, had a delivered pizza and a beer for his dinner and a short nap. At midnight he dressed in a black T-shirt with long sleeves, black pants, and black running shoes. He took only two weapons with him: a Colt .45 with a stub silencer in his waistband, for huge emergencies, and a slender knife in a scabbard on his left forearm, outside the T-shirt and easy to get.

His first probe might just be a recon. He’d play it by ear. The old Chinese was going to hurt; he was going to know that it was Ching who hurt him, and he was going to be so confused and worried that he would never try to harm Ching again. That was the plan.

He parked two blocks away and watched the night. Not much moved on this side street. It was just after 0100. He went up the alley behind the restaurant, keeping to the shadows. Partway up he found two men sleeping on cardboard next to a building, with cardboard folded over them. Their shoes were off and probably cradled in their arms so no one would steal them. A homeless person once told Ching that at night his biggest worry was losing his shoes.

The third story of the Friendly Dragon showed ahead. Ching went up an access ladder to the roof of a one-story
building next to the restaurant, and then worked up a grating and a vent pipe to gain the roof of the two-story section of the Dragon. He went over the edge of the roof and lay absolutely still. Nothing moved in front of him. He saw the windows of the third floor. Two were lighted. Two were dark. He didn’t know where the tong leader’s rooms were. Ching lay there for five minutes, checking out the rooftop, the vents, the one door on the third floor that opened on a small patio built over the second-floor roof. A variety of plants and two small trees grew there.

Just before Ching moved, he saw a figure come away from the plants and begin a search of the rooftop. He figured Tung would have some security out. The man carried no obvious weapon, but Ching figured he had at least a pistol. Ching inched his way forward; then when the guard looked the other way, Ching rolled twice to the protection of a roof vent. It shielded him completely. Lights coming from the third-floor windows and from the downtown glow left the rooftop in half-light. The guard vanished across the forty-foot-wide roof, then came along the side of the closer area. Ching edged around the four-foot-square vent, keeping it between him and the guard.

Once the man came close enough, Ching would take him down. He wouldn’t kill him. The man was doing his job. Ching waited.

It was another five minutes before the slow-moving guard came into the right position. Ching had the heavy .45 in his right hand, and when the guard turned to check to the side, Ching attacked. He took three running steps and dove at the man’s waist, bringing him down with a good tackle. Ching swung up the .45 and slammed it into the guard’s head as the two bodies fell to the black tar rooftop. The guard gave a sigh and passed out. Ching used plastic riot cuffs and tied his hands and ankles, then put a no-harm gag across his mouth and tied it in back of his head. He pulled the guard behind the vent and slipped across the roof without a sound, to the first lighted window.

Inside he could see half of a living room, with one long
couch, a small desk, a large-screen TV, and several other chairs. Kwan Tung, in a formal Chinese robe, sat in a recliner chair. In the next chair sat a young man of maybe twenty. They were snacking on a tray of food and each had a drink in a tall glass. Ching had not come with a plan. Now one started to form in his mind. It would be a blow that Kwan Tung could never recover from. He would have to sell his business here and move somewhere, change his name, try to avoid any tie with San Diego.