Under Siege (34 page)

The bird was on the ground for two minutes, then De-Witt jumped in and closed the door. The doctor and nurse had the SEALs hold the cot steady as they took off and headed the six miles across Iranian land to the Persian Gulf and much safer territory.

Mahanani watched the doctor. They had hung a saline drip and detailed Mahanani to hold it. Then they began doing what they could in the unsterile situation.

DeWitt sat along the side of the chopper and covered his face with his hands. Two hours. If they had been closer, Tate would have had a much better chance of staying alive. Now the doctor looked up and told them it was a fifty-fifty chance whether Tate lived or died.

* * *

Nay Band, Iran

Jaybird watched Lam crawl up the slope to a shallow ravine that would give him cover on his route up the hill and around the attackers. He checked Kanza. She lay low to the ground in the edge of the ditch where they had taken cover. Salama Masud worked his way up to the lip of the shallow ditch so he could see the men firing. He had his rifle up and loaded.

“I can see them,” he said. He sighted in and fired and Jaybird was glad for the throaty sound of the AK-47. It would give the attackers something to think about besides the pops of the handguns.

“Yes, Salama,” Jaybird said. “Keep firing, but conserve your rounds. How many do you have?”

“About forty. I can do lots of damage.”

Bradford and Ching were hunkered down out of sight, wishing they had better firepower.

“Save your pistol rounds,” Jaybird said. “If they try to rush us, we’ll need the close-in firepower.”

There was a pause in firing from below. Jaybird crawled down the ditch and up to the pickup. He used one of the front tires to protect himself and lifted up so he could see inside the cab. Murdock lay sprawled on the front seat. Jaybird powered up to check him. He saw an ugly pool of blood on the floor of the cab. One arm dangled down, dripping the red stuff. Murdock’s chest was a mass of red. Jaybird checked his breathing. Yes, some, light and not regular, but breath. He touched Murdock’s throat to find the carotid. A good pulse. He was alive, but Jaybird didn’t know for how long.

Jaybird’s Motorola spoke.

“Okay, sport fans,” Lam said. “The game is about to begin. I’m within fifty of them. They don’t know I’m here. I want whoever is using the AK-47 to start popping in there regularly. A shot every fifteen seconds. That might get them moving around and give me more targets. There are only six
of them. I spot no officer. They do have on army uniforms and a vehicle of some kind, looks like a three-quarter-ton truck. Try to nail some of them with the AK. I’ll clean up. Let’s go now.”

Bradford was nearest Masud. He told the Iranian what to do, and he began firing. That brought some return fire, but not much. Then they heard the stutter of the MP-5. Jaybird had come out of the pickup and watched over the lip of the ditch. He saw one soldier look behind him and stand up. Just then Masud took him out with a round and he slammed to the ground.

Masud continued to fire. Lam kept up a chatter with the MP-5.

“Yeah, we got them coming and going. Four are down and the last two are playing a waiting game. Keep the AK working. I’m moving up each time you get off two or three shots.”

Masud grinned and kept shooting.

There was a pause, then the MP-5 fired again, a pair of six-round bursts. Then there was a silence.

“We’re clear down here,” Lam said. “Did the LC get hit?”

“A really bad chest hit,” Jaybird said. “I don’t know if the pickup will run. We’ve got to get him some medical.”

“I’ll bring up this army rig. It’s got the keys in it. Hold for me.”

Five minutes later Bradford got the pickup running. The back window was shot out and one tire was low on pressure. They moved Murdock gently into the bed of the pickup and lay him on a pad, then drove down the hill and toward town. Lam left the army rig and joined them. Kanza hovered over Murdock, blotting blood, trying to stop the bleeding. Tears came quickly and she wiped at them and kept tending to Murdock.

Salama Masud had a plan. “I’m a buyer of wool from the outlying herders. Many times I run into bandits trying to kill me and steal my truck. The doctor in town is young
but good. He’ll believe my story that Murdock was helping me and he was hit but I fought them off. The rest of you we leave outside town and you come to my house after dark.”

Jaybird held up his hand. “We are done here. We are supposed to call our home base and a helicopter will come in from Afghanistan and pick us up. I don’t see how Murdock can make the flight. Can you get him to a good hospital?”

Masud stopped the pickup a half mile from town. The SEALs got off. Jaybird had the SATCOM.

“First I talk to Dr. Ghani,” Masud said. “He can do a lot of minor repairs and stabilize your leader, but he doesn’t have the equipment for any serious surgery.”

“How far away is that kind of equipment?” Jaybird asked.

“That would be at Zahedan, big town, over five hundred thousand people and some good hospitals. It’s right near the Afghanistan border. Dr. Ghani would report it if he treated a non-Iranian and then he vanished the next day amid talk in town of a helicopter coming over.”

“We can’t just leave Murdock here,” Jaybird said.

Lam had been listening. “Actually it’s the only thing we can do. We can’t fly him out in his condition. We need this doctor. And if he treats him we can’t fly him out. So it’s this Zahedan and the big hospital until he’s well enough to get across the border into Afghanistan.”

Bradford and Ching agreed with Lam. They let Masud and Kanza take Murdock into town to the doctor. They vanished into the countryside until it got dark, when they would work their way to Masud’s house for some food and rest. As soon as they were hidden in some brush and a gully, Jaybird set up the SATCOM and reported the situation to Home Team Leader.

“Yes, Team One. We have assets in Afghan we can use. First we’ll lift you four out of there. Too late to make arrangements for tonight, but we’ll be there after dark tomorrow. Can you maintain until then?”

“Affirmative Home Team Leader. You agree on leaving Murdock here?”

“Yes. We know about Zahedan. We have an agent there who can assist. Suggest you get Murdock to a good hospital as quickly as possible. We can communicate with him through our agent. Good work. Lay low for twenty-four and we’ll have you out of there.”

“Right, Home Team Leader. We’ll talk later.”

In the little town, it took almost no explanation to Dr. Ghani before Murdock was wheeled into his small operating room and he began repairing as much of the damage as he could. He hung a saline solution and an antibiotic and probed for bullet fragments. Kanza hovered around watching. At last she offered to help.

“I was a nurse in Tehran before I became a microbiologist,” she said. He let her help.

An hour later Dr. Ghani was done. He washed up and gave Murdock another shot and let out a long sigh.

“I hate it when the bandits do this to you. You help so many of the herders make a living. He has to go to Zahedan as soon as possible. I’ll drive him in my station wagon. It’s almost an ambulance, but not quite. You said he isn’t an Iranian. He’s from where?”

“I think he’s Russian, or perhaps from one of those other states. He’s a traveler, offered to work with me a while.”

“He has papers, of course.”

“No, we lost them in the fight. I don’t even know where to go back to look for them.”

“Don’t worry. I need to go to Zahedan anyway to pick up my six months worth of medical supplies. It’s three hundred and sixty miles, and usually takes me all day, depending how well they repaired the roads.”

He looked at Kanza. “Would you go along as my nurse to tend to him while we travel? I need somebody to watch him. It would be a big help.”

She smiled. “Well, I did have a job at the factory, before the big accident. I’m unemployed. Yes, I’d like to go. Maybe I can get work in that big town.”

Before they started, Salama Masud decided he should go along, too, to help get Murdock through the hospital stay and then out of the country and into Afghanistan.

Thirty hours later, the SEALs caught their ride in a special Blackhawk from Afghanistan. It was painted all black, had no markings of any kind, and flew so low over the mountains that Jaybird nearly threw up.

Four days later they limped into North Island Naval Air Station with the rest of the Third Platoon. Missing was Dexter Tate, who had died in the chopper on the way back to Qatar, and the wounded Robert Doyle. Ed DeWitt had command of the platoon again and the men had their three-day passes, then settled into the training routine to keep sharp. DeWitt and Master Chief Petty Officer Gordon MacKenzie began interviewing men to fill in for Tate and for Doyle, who had been promoted to a bed in Balboa Naval Hospital there in San Diego.

“What about Murdock?” DeWitt asked the master chief.

“We’re working on it almost every day. The medics in Iran think that he will need to stay there for at least a month before he’s ready to fly out. The civil government there is in a shambles. Almost no national control. Should make it easier to get him out. We’re working on it.”

NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE

Coronado, California

The moment that the men of Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven hit the compound they changed clothes and raced for the parking lot. They had three-day passes and a dozen plans. George Canzoneri didn’t phone home. Actually he was worried about what he would find. He drove home, hitting two red lights, but still making good time. When he parked in his slot he noticed a Buick Century in the visitors area. The DeWitt’s had a Century. He raced to the ground floor unit and paused before entering. He rang the bell, then opened the door.

Inside the smell hit him first, spices and cooking smells. Then the laugh that could only be Milly DeWitt. He frowned.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called. Phyllis rushed out of the kitchen and grabbed him with both arms and hugged him so tight he screeched in mock pain.

“Easy, girl, don’t squeeze me in half.” He saw Milly come around the kitchen door.

“So, you guys finally got home. We’ve been waiting for you. Kind of.” She pulled off a small apron. “Well, I guess it’s time for me to bail out. The SEALs have landed and it looks like the ship is under control and in good hands. You’ve got the con, Canzoneri, as you sailors say.”

She nodded as she went past.

“Give you a call tomorrow, Phyl. Maybe we can hit that matinee we talked about.” Then she was gone.

“Baby, I’ve waited so long for you. Months and months.” She hugged him again, then kissed him and pushed him against the hall wall and came away, her expression showing delight and fear and a flood of joy. “I’m so … I can’t tell you … the girls have been coming over … I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Barney kept coming back?”

She nodded.

“Pack enough things for three days. We’re going to a motel. Then I’m going to look up Barney. Nothing overt, nothing he can use against me. Some dirty tricks he’s never even thought of.”

It took them a half-hour to turn off the cooking in the kitchen, pack, and drive out to a motel in Mission Valley. He called Maria Fernandez. She said she understood, that she could come over and stay with Phyllis the rest of the afternoon and night.”

“But Miguel just got home.”

“Hey, he’s cool and he knows what’s happening. He and Linda are coming with me. He’ll help you on your next mission.”

She hung up before he could answer.

Later, in the motel, Fernandez grinned when they started talking about Barney. Before he left his house he had used the Internet to find Barney’s telephone number. It came up with two, one in town and one in Vista. With the address to work with, they drove to the spot in Fernandez’s car. They watched the stand-alone house from four lots down. About six o’clock a black Lexus convertible parked in the street in front of the house and Barney walked into the place. They scanned the area for any security and found two men outside the house. It took them fifteen minutes to slip up on the men just as it was getting dark. They put both
down without hurting them, gagged them, and used plastic ties on their hands and feet.

Fernandez had an idea. “I’ve got this buddy who runs a small concrete outfit. He has one road mixer and sometimes he has a half a yard of concrete left in his rig at the end of the day. Let me give him a call.”

His buddy, Wally, loved the idea. He had heard of Barney. “He said he’d put some cardboard over the logo on the door of his truck and splash the license plate with mud. He’ll be here in half an hour.”

Fernandez met the mixer at the end of the block and used the Motorola they had borrowed from their gear to call Canzoneri.

“He’s here. When we get in place, make a call on your phone to Barney and keep him on the wire for two minutes. That’s all we need, two minutes.”

The truck rolled up and Canzoneri made the call. He pleaded with Barney to bring him some goods. “Come on man, just two papers, all I need. Just two. Promise to pay you next week. My old lady’s check comes next week.”

Canzoneri kept talking as the concrete mixer moved next to Barney’s convertible. Fernandez swung the chute over and the drum started turning. The wet, ready-to-set concrete poured down the chute into the front floor of the Lexus convertible. When it came up to the seats, Fernandez swung the chute to put the rest in the back seat.

“Come on, Barney! Hell, I been good for it for two years with you. You can’t cut me off.”

“I don’t know who you are. What’s that noise?”

“Just some kids and their souped-up cars. Man that Dodge is hot. Come on man. I’m Jodie. You remember me. I got a party planned.”

The concrete fall ended. Fernandez swung the chute around and the driver pulled away and rolled down the street.

“On second thought, drop dead, Barney. I ain’t gonna
buy from you no more,” Canzoneri said and turned off the cell phone. He ran up the street and met Fernandez.

“We need to move the guards. Put them in a safe place where someone will find them in the morning.” The job took a half-hour, then they came back near the house.