Specter (8 page)

Murdock's mouth, just visible beneath his goggles, twisted in a frown. He shook his head, then pointed down the shelf of the beach toward the surf:
No. We'll go out that way
.

Roselli accepted Murdock's decision, but he felt a stab of disappointment nonetheless. SEALs prided themselves in coming and going along hostile shores and leaving no trace of their visit. If they abandoned the raft, together with two sets of rebreather apparatus and seven pairs of masks and fins, someone would be certain to find it sooner or later. The next good gale or storm surge would uncover it ... as would a careful search by the local military using mine sweepers or metal detectors. Besides, there was the SEAL warrior's image to uphold. Swimming back to the
Nassau
without even their duck fins would be a little too much like being chased out with their figurative tails between their legs.

It would be a long swim too without their fins and masks.
Nassau
was on station just beyond the old Yugoslavian twelve-mile limit. While a twelve-mile swim wasn't out of the question for SEALs, even after a rugged mission ashore, their best bet would be to link up with Gold Squad and the second CRRC. Twelve miles in the open sea with neither fins nor floatation devices was going to be murder, pure and simple.

Before they could even think about swimming back to the ship, though, they would have to get across the beach. The tide had gone out since the SEALs had arrived on this beach over five hours earlier. Mediterranean tides rarely rose or fell as far as their oceanic cousins, but the gradual slope of the beach along this particular stretch of the Dalmatian coast meant that even a small difference between the high- and low-water levels could expose quite a lot of beach. Roselli estimated that the beach was eighty meters wide now, more than twice what it had been when they'd come ashore.

Another helicopter rattled overhead, traveling west to east and sweeping the beach with its searchlight as it went.

This could get damned tricky.

Narednik
Jankovic walked along the north side of the seawall, trying hard to see everywhere in the darkness at once. His comrades, members of the Third JNA Mechanized Infantry Brigade, had laughed at his belief that the infiltrators they were searching for were Americans.

They'd laughed harder still when he described the slaughter at the monastery ... had it only been three hours ago? After all the Srpska Dobrovoljacki Straza—the Serb Volunteer Guard—while made up of fellow Serbs, was nonetheless a militia, good for hunting down Bosniaks but not all that good in a stand-up fight. Caught in an ambush by professionals, of course they'd been wiped out. But that sort of thing could never happen to regular army troops.

Jankovic wasn't so sure. A great many members of the various Serbian militias had been JNA men like him, allowed to leave the army expressly so they could join the militias or to serve as “advisors.” Bosnia-Hercegovina had a sizable Serb population which did not want to live under either Muslim or Croat domination should Bosnia become either free or a Croat protectorate. Letting Bosnian-Serb troops leave the JNA to join the militias had been an easy means of keeping Bosnia—most of it, at any rate—under Yugoslav, that is to say, under
Serbian
control. While JNA troops might joke about their Bosnian brothers, the difference between the members of any Serb militia unit and the Yugoslav National Army had nothing to do with bravery, skill... or with determination. Indeed, many in the militia, especially the NCOs, were like Jankovic, still officially with the national army but serving on special attached duty with the Bosnians.

He wondered if General Mihajlovic was right in his guess that the SEALs must be headed for this particular stretch of beach. If so, the commandos could be anywhere. . . though they hadn't really had time yet to travel all the way down the Gora Orjen. Likely they were still up there, somewhere in that pine forest above the highway. He wondered if they were watching him right now, and shivered.

“Jankovic!” a young JNA
poruchnik
, a senior lieutenant, called from further down the sea wall. “Get over here!”

“
Da, moy Poruchnik
,” Jankovic called back. He broke into a trot and hurried to join the group.

The lieutenant and several troops were gathered together on the seaward side of the wall. One of the men had a mine detector, while the others were on their knees, scooping out a shallow hole in the sand with their hands. There was something in the hole. . . .

“Jankovic!” the lieutenant said, grinning. “Do you think this might have been left here by your friends?”

He turned his flashlight on the object in the hole, his beam mingling with those of several of the men standing nearby. It looked like an inflatable boat, jet black in color, with a small engine carefully wrapped in plastic mounted on the rear.

“It could be, Lieutenant,” Jankovic replied. “Are there any markings?”

“None. It could even have been left here by Big Brother Slav.”

“Somehow, sir, I doubt very much that this is Russian.”

“Agreed. I thought you would like to see that your wild story has some vindication.” He laughed. “When we catch them, we'll have to teach them a lesson for littering our beautiful Adriatic beaches!”

“What now, Lieutenant?” the man with the mine detector asked.

The officer pointed up the beach. “We keep looking. There may be more than one of these. You two. . .” He pointed out two of the men. “Stay here, and stand guard. Jankovic's monsters could be just a few meters away, waiting for their chance to sneak back and claim their property!”

Everyone save the two “volunteers” laughed, and Jankovic smiled. “Stay alert,” he told them. Then he turned away and started following the man with the mine detector.

Murdock had been seriously worried about options for some time now. Back at the monastery, he could have called for a helicopter pickup, but he'd thought it wise to get clear of the area. Subsequent developments had proved him right on that one; there were too many Serb helicopters about, too many airmobile troops, to risk an incursion by U.S. Marine or Navy helos off the
Nassau.

Okay. Next he could have headed straight for the beach, or he could have taken his men in some other direction, moving deeper into the forest-clad slopes of the Gora Orjen. They could have found a place to hole up, maybe call for a pickup the next night, or the night after that. He'd chosen to return to the beach. At first there'd been no indication that the Yugoslavs were onto them; once the JNA helo touched down at the monastery, it had seemed safer to try to make a run for the sea, before the locals could figure out that was where the SEALs might be headed.

A bad call... but the best he could have made under the circumstances. Once confronted by Yugoslavian troops and helos between the SEAL squad and the sea, he'd again been forced to make a choice—either to head back into the hills or to try to get around or through the enemy line.

There are no certainties in combat. None. In a difficult tactical situation there is no way to know in advance which of several possible options is the right one. As one of the SEAL instructors with Murdock's BUD/S class had put it once, “If you end up dead, chances are you made the wrong choice.”

The entire trek back down the mountain from the monastery, though, had been one combat decision after another. So far, all seven SEALs were still alive, which was something, but Murdock had the feeling that he was being backed into a tighter and tighter corner, with fewer and fewer doors leading out. SEAL tactical training emphasized taking the initiative; it was supposed to be the SEAL team that set the ambush, the SEALs that forced the enemy to react to them, not the other way around.

Never mind. The sea was almost within reach. Mac and Magic had already started down the shingle of the beach, crawling flat on their bellies, spacing themselves well apart. Murdock had already lost sight of Mac, and thought he must have reached the surf line by now. Chief MacKenzie was carrying the waterproof rucksack holding Gypsy's briefcase—another cold tactical decision on Murdock's part. Of all the men in the squad, Murdock thought that the big, muscular Texan had the best chance of making it back to
Nassau
with the CIA's prize intact.

Another pair of jets thundered low overhead, and Murdock peered up into the overcast sky, trying to see them. Nothing. Were they Yugoslav? Or fighter cover for the SEAL exfiltration?

Less than five meters away, just on the other side of the seawall, a Serbian soldier stepped out from the shadow of a poplar and peered up toward the sky as well. Satisfied, apparently, that the aircraft were either friendly or, at least, not interested in him, he slung his AKM and produced a pack of cigarettes. A moment later, a match flared briefly between his cupped hands.

Murdock reached out, squeezed Higgins's arm, and pointed:
You're next
.
Go!
Higgins began slithering down the beach, following in Magic's wake. They had to get off this beach. There were far too many Serbs wandering around in the dark. Sooner or later. . .

Roselli tapped Murdock's arm three times, and pointed:
Look! They've found something!

Murdock looked along the seawall toward the west. Sure enough, close by the wall and seventy meters away, a group of Serb soldiers were laughing, as some shouted at each other.

They'd found the IBS. The SEALs had to move,
now
. He tapped Doc on the arm, and pointed:
Go! Go!

The excitement was spreading among the Yugoslavs, like ripples in a pool. Someone aboard the Hip was angling the helicopter's searchlight toward the beach now. The circle of illumination danced momentarily across the white breakers offshore, then skittered up the beach, briefly touching the line of weed and flotsam marking the high-tide line. The long, black shadows cast by the poplars between the helo and the beach moved across the sand like vast, silent finger shadows on a wall.

Briefly, Murdock considered putting a suppressed round through that damned light and making a running break for it in the ensuing confusion, but decided against it. Once bullets started flying across that beach, the SEALs' lives would be hanging purely on chance and on the Serbs' reaction. He wanted to maintain control of the situation for as long as he possibly could.

Only Boomer, Razor, and Murdock were left at the top of the beach. A group of Yugoslav soldiers was coming toward them now, moving along both sides of the seawall with weapons unslung and at the ready. One of them had what looked like an old-fashioned mine detector, a WWII-vintage treasure-finder mounted on the end of a long pole. The helicopter's searchlight danced along the sand in front of them as though leading the way, moving across the sand toward the SEALs.

The light caught Doc, starkly illuminating him where he lay on the sand, twenty meters from the wall. . . .

“
Sta ye to!”
someone shouted. An instant later, gunfire cracked and crashed and stuttered in the night, at least eight Yugoslav soldiers opening up with automatic weapons on full rock-and-roll.

On the beach, Doc leaped to his feet and dove headfirst out of the light, as sand erupted about him in a flurry of geysering impacts. Other soldiers, further up the hill and on the highway near the helicopter, opened fire as well. The Serb who'd been smoking a cigarette near the remaining SEALs by the seawall suddenly lurched to the side, the cigarette spinning from his mouth like a tiny orange meteor. He collapsed on the ground screaming, cut down by friendly fire.

The Serbs with the mine detector were moving down the beach now, still firing wildly as the helo's searchlight swept back and forth, trying to nail Doc. Murdock snicked his fire-control lever to full auto, then rose to a half crouch, H&K raised to his shoulder. “Go!” he shouted. “Go! Go!” He aimed at the close-packed mass of Serb troops and squeezed the trigger, sending a long volley slashing into them from the flank. Someone screamed. . . and then someone else spun wildly, his AKM still firing on rock-and-roll. The result was a deadly, bloody chaos as men were hit both by Murdock's volley and by the uncontrolled, full-auto fire of their own people. The thick-muzzled weapon bucked in Murdock's hands with a muffled, hissing clatter as the receiver bolt cycled rapidly back and forth. The Serb with the mine detector slumped over and collided with a companion, then collapsed backward onto the sand, his metal sensor lying across his chest. The man beside him got off one more wild burst with his AK before Murdock caught him squarely in the chest. Other men dove for cover or staggered and fell.

Murdock burned off half a thirty-round magazine in a little over a second, then spun to the right, shifting targets to the searchlight that was swinging now to capture him in its glare. The dazzle from the spotlight was blinding through the low-light goggles, but Murdock had squeezed his eyes shut behind the rubber-padded objective lenses and was firing at where he estimated the light must be. An instant later, he sensed the light beating against his eyelids flare and go out. Hit!

When he opened his eyes again, his low-light optics revealed an all-out battle, with at least thirty men firing in almost every direction. Bullets clipped the stone wall nearby and whispered overhead with a sound like ripping paper. The familiar flat crack of AKMs fired on full auto filled the night, as did the hard, jutting stab of their muzzle flashes.

Doc and Razor were halfway down the beach, running flat out. Garcia was hanging back, firing his H&K in precise, carefully aimed three-round bursts.

“Boomer!” Murdock called over the tactical radio. “Get your ass off this beach!” Garcia didn't appear to hear. Shit, was his radio off? “Boomer! Acknowledge!”