Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (21 page)

“Low on the laser-aimed. We can get all the regular HE twenty we need, but no airbursts with them.”

“We brought ten rounds for each of our five twenties.”

Stroh came slanting in the door. Murdock didn’t remember ever seeing him move so fast. He grinned as he skidded to a stop in front of Murdock.

“Oh, Gardner. Welcome to Israel, JG. Checked with the CO on the
John C. Stennis CVN 74.
She’s about fifty miles north of Haifa and ten miles off the coast. She had her Hawkeye in the air directing her CAP, and now she’s searching the rest of the fifty-mile radius off Haifa. The original report was that there are more than thirty ships in the general area. They will need to be checked out. Freighters, a few military craft, the
Shiloh
, and a whole shit pot full of fishing ships. She can tell the size of most of them, but not all. They will have Tomcats check out the ones they can before dark. We only have about a half hour of daylight left.”

“Are they watching for patrol boats leaving Lebanon?” Jaybird asked.

“Yes, they certainly are. They had one preliminary report that two patrol craft in the eighty-foot range left port there, but they lost them in some strange interference. They’re wondering if it’s a hangover from the pulse.”

“Could be,” Murdock said. “But it doesn’t seem reasonable after two and a half days.”

“So, we’re in dry dock until they find the yacht,” Mahanani said.

Mediterranean Sea

Eighty miles off Haifa, Israel

Vice President Arthur Harrington Milrose stared out to sea. He’d been doing that for three days and found nothing
to encourage him. They were dead in the water and drifting but he didn’t know which direction and how fast. Were they heading away from Israel or toward her? All of their electronic gear was fried into mush and they had no steering, so their perfectly operating diesel engines were useless.

He stretched his long legs across the deck and watched the U.S. ambassador to Israel talking with the captain of the pleasure craft. The
Inspiration
out of Haifa was 112 feet long, beautifully appointed and a true luxury yacht, with eight cabins, a wonderfully designed and decorated salon, and all the conveniences and luxuries of the rich and ill informed. But what good were gold-fitted bathrooms when the dead electric motors wouldn’t flush the toilet?

He would gather the passengers together again just before sunset for a pep talk. This two-day cruise with the chance for some good fishing had turned into a disaster. The vice president of the United States was nearly six-feet four-inches and had been an outstanding tight end at the Air Force Academy. He was still in good condition and worked at it with tennis, handball, and marathons just for the fun of it. He was forty-two years old and had three kids in college and a beautiful and talented wife. Whatever had happened onboard this floating vacation stumped him. He had no idea what occurred to make all of the electronics on the yacht go out at precisely the same second. How could it happen? Computers, electric clocks, the whole electronic navigation and steering system trashed beyond repair.

Somewhere in the back of his memory he remembered something about the EMP, the electromagnetic pulse principle, but that was associated with nuclear bombs. Had Israel been hit with nuclear weapons? He didn’t know. His two Secret Service men kept test firing their weapons just to be sure they still worked. Twice a day they tested the Ingrams, and each time they worked fine.

Ambassador James Epstein slid into the deck chair beside the vice president and looked over the stern at the calm water.

“So damn peaceful here I wonder if we’re still on the right planet,” Epstein said. “Maybe when our electronics went out we were zapped into another dimension, another universe somewhere, and our electronics conflicted with their electronics in a kind of antimatter showdown.” Epstein was fifty-five, twenty pounds overweight, almost bald, with fringes of graying hair. He had a large nose between piercing brown eyes and a sharp mind that had powered him into a fortune in the stock market before he retired just before the big downer of 1999. He had flushed himself out of the market with more than a billion and a half solid gold dollars.

“You’ve been reading too much science fiction,” Vice President Milrose said. “Whatever it is, probably half the U.S. Navy is hunting us right now. I’m surprised they haven’t found us yet. Our job is to keep the guests from shooting each other, and be sure the crew feeds us from the stores of canned goods. The propane stoves still work. We can do without refrigeration and air-conditioning. How is Franklin getting along?”

“He’s still mad as hell that his VCR doesn’t work. I told you we should have left him in Haifa. He’s a clod and a clown. He thinks he’s somebody just because he has a few million.”

“Remember that a batch of those few million made it into our campaign coffers in the election a year ago,” Milrose said.

“Yeah, there’s that. His wife still down?”

“Yes, not sure what her trouble is. Partly her heart, but there’s something else. My Millicent is a nurse and it has her puzzled. My wife can usually diagnose a patient as well as a doctor, but not this time.”

“Nobody has gone overboard, so we should have ten passengers and a crew of five. The captain said we were drifting south and out of the normal shipping lanes. It could be weeks before a ship finds us.”

“What about the AWACS spotter planes, that fly up at forty thousand feet and search two or three hundred miles at a time? Why can’t they find us?”

“Those are land-based planes,” Epstein said. “I don’t know if we have any in the area.”

“Does Israel have any?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been on the job for two months.”

“You think Franklin is going to settle down?”

“He worries me. I also wonder where the goddamned U.S. Navy is. Why haven’t they found us?”

“First somebody would have to report us overdue at Haifa,” the vice president said. “That could take a day. Then who knows, maybe there was a nuke dropped on Haifa and they can’t be worried about sixteen people on some rich guy’s yacht.”

A man came up from the cabin. He wore only swim trunks and carried flippers and snorkel gear. He was in his fifties, suntanned, with a flat belly and a firm upper body. His red hair was shorter than the usual business cut. He frowned at the two men in the lounge chairs.

“Damn couch potatoes. I’m going swimming.”

“Franklin, we’re drifting. You might not be able to get back to the boat.”

“Hell, I do the La Jolla Rough Water swim every year. No sweat.”

“No, Franklin. Don’t get in the water.” Vice President Milrose barked the words in his best National Guard command voice.

Franklin laughed. “Hell, big assed veep, you think you can order me around? Stick it up your ass, hot shot.”

“Franklin, you’re drunk. If you go over the rail you could drown.”

“Yeah, and if the vice president had wings, he’d fly.”

Before either of the men could grab him, Franklin took two steps forward and dove into the Mediterranean four feet below the luxury yacht’s stern rail.

“Man overboard,” Ambassador Epstein bellowed. Two crewmen appeared on the stern of the ship within seconds. Right behind them were the two Secret Service men with their Ingrams out and up.

“Bill, he said he was going swimming,” Milrose said to the taller tanned crewman.

Crewman Bill nodded, ripped off his shirt, and kicked out of his shoes, as he watched the man overboard, who was treading water as he put on his snorkel mask and air pipe. “Get the trail line out, Wally,” Bill said, then dove cleanly into the Mediterranean.

Wally threw into the water a coil of rope that had one end tied to the ship’s rail. It stretched out floating in the water until it trailed two hundred feet behind. Bill came up from his dive almost at once and stroked quickly toward Franklin, who had drifted twenty feet behind the boat. Franklin finished putting on and adjusting his face mask. The two Secret Service men put down their weapons and watched.

Bill swam up to Franklin, who looked at him surprised. “I want to swim alone,” he shouted.

“You’re getting back on board,” Bill said. “Too dangerous out here without any power on the boat.”

“Eat shit, sailor.”

Bill slammed his fist into Franklin’s jaw, spinning the face mask off with its snorkel tube and dumping Franklin backward into the water. At once he sank below the Mediterranean. Bill grabbed him and jerked him to the surface, put his arm across Franklin’s chest in a lifesaving towing position, and swam fifteen yards to the side, where he found the trailing safety rope that floated in the water and stretched out ahead now thirty yards to the yacht. Bill grabbed the line and shouted. “Pull away.”

Wally knelt at the rail, grabbed the line, and pulled the pair foot by foot back toward the ship. Vice President Milrose knelt on the deck beside Wally and took turns pulling in the rope until the two men in the water touched the stern.

“Hold them right there,” Wally said, then rushed away and came back with a folding aluminum ladder he anchored on the rail and let down until it went a foot into the water. Wally went two steps down and grabbed the hands of the still unconscious Franklin and hoisted him upward. Milrose and Epstein leaned over the deck and caught Franklin’s hands and pulled him up higher. The two Secret Service men came and helped. It took the six
of them another three minutes to tug and shove and heave Franklin over the rail. He was still unconscious. They rolled him on the deck, where he wheezed and spit up water and struggled back to consciousness. He looked up, blinking at the ring of faces over him.

“What the hell?”

“You were almost there, Franklin,” Vice President Milrose said. “Hell, I mean. Don’t you have any common sense at all, or are you still drunk?”

“Huh, what?”

“You just went swimming.”

“The hell you say.”

“Then why do you have on a wet swimsuit and feel like you swallowed half of the Mediterranean?”

Franklin rolled over on his stomach and coughed and then vomited a bile green mess onto the polished deck. He tried three times, before he at last sat up. None of the men moved to help him. He groaned. “Oh god do I feel like hell.” He looked up, his pudgy face contrite, eyes puffy, his nose running. “Fuck, I musta been smashed out of my gourd drunk. Shit.”

“You can say that again.”

“Shit.”

“These two men saved your life. You’ve got a big drinking problem, Franklin. You better get some help fast before you risk the lives of anybody else. Stay up here and sober up. I’m going to check on your wife.”

“Louise? Is Louise sick? What do you mean?”

“She’s been sick all day, didn’t you notice? We’re not sure what’s the trouble but it could be serious. You stay up here in the fresh air.”

Down in the second stateroom, Louise lay on the big bed, her eyes wide with pain.

“It hurts, darlin’,” Louise said. She was in her forties, light skinned and now pale. Her short blond hair needed a touch-up and her face without makeup looked fragile to the veep. Bright blue eyes looked at him.

“Sorry to be a party pooper, Mr. Vice President. It just hurts.”

Millicent nodded at her husband and pointed out the
door. She was tall and slender, dark with short black hair and bangs that framed her face. Her eyes were gray, and high cheekbones and a beautiful face had earned her work as a model when she was a teenager. But nursing had called her.

“You take it easy. Millicent is as good as most doctors. You just hang on and we’ll be right back.”

In the hall Millicent talked softly. “Well, I should have caught it quicker. Pain around her belly button, no appetite, nausea and vomiting. What we don’t want is for the pain to shift to the lower quadrant and become continuous. She’s also had a little bit of coughing and sneezing but not serious yet. I should have seen it hours ago. Louise is having an attack of appendicitis.”

“At her age? I thought this was a kid problem.”

“Usually, but people of any age can get it.”

“And if it bursts?”

“Then we’re talking about Louise getting peritonitis and dying within a few hours.”

“Any way to figure out how far away she is from that point?”

“None. All we can do now is monitor her.”

Milrose watched his wife for a beat. He had to ask the question. “Can you take out her appendix?”

“Arthur, you can’t be serious. I’ve watched dozens of operations, but we don’t have anything sterile and no scalpels or disinfectants …”

“But she could die.”

Millicent’s eyes went wide, her mouth came open. “Oh, my. If nobody comes in the next few hours … Oh good Lord, I don’t know if I could do it or not. I’ve seen it done, I know what has to be done, but we don’t have a scalpel, sutures, bandages, sponges …”

“I’ll check the ship’s first-aid locker. They should have a lot of material.”

Five minutes later Wally showed him what they had: bandages, lots of antiseptic, tape, some sterile pads. No scalpels, sutures, or medical sponges.

The vice president went to the galley. The cook was working on dinner.

“You have an oven that works?”

The chef nodded.

“Can you sterilize some bandages for me? And some of your sponges? Use brand-new ones and cut them up into two-inch squares?”

“Sure. Why?”

“We may need to do an operation. Oh, do you have any really sharp knifes that can cut flesh?”

“You ain’t kidding, are you? Yeah, some fish filleting knives you could shave with. I’ll get three of them sharpened and sterilize them in boiling water. When you want this stuff?”

“As soon as you get it ready. Then keep it sterile until we need it. We might not need it. I hope not.” He found a crewman and the laundry room. They tore a sheet into bandages and squares to use for sterile pads. He took it all to the cook.

He found Millicent just outside the cabin where Louise moaned in a soft, regular rhythm.

“She any better?”

“No, a little worse. It doesn’t seem to be progressing a lot. The pain is still near the navel, which is good.”