Under Siege (31 page)

“Everyone afloat?” Murdock asked.

He heard a jumble of voices; he couldn’t see any of the chutes in the dark. They had planned it that way. Brown silk is tough to see at night.

“Light sticks,” Murdock said. They each had a different colored stick that would produce a soft glow.

“I’ve got a red to my right,” Murdock said.

“Red. That’s me, Lam. Anyone else see me?”

“No, but I’ve got a green,” Bradford said.

“That’s me,” Murdock said. “Move my way, I’m closing in on Lam. Jaybird, where the hell are you?” Murdock waited a minute. “Jaybird, this is no joke, where the hell are you? Are you all right? Talk to me, damn it!”

“Jaybird, come in,” Murdock pleaded on the Motorola. “If you’re in trouble, blow into the mike.”

They waited. Nothing.

Murdock looked down. He couldn’t tell how far they were from the ground. He had moved to the side with the directional pulls on the chute until he could make out the SEAL next to him.

“How far to the ground?” he asked on the mike.

“Maybe a thousand,” Lam said. “Where the hell is Jaybird? He bailed out first. He should be first one on the ground to our right. I’m swinging my chute that way to try to see him.”

“Everyone keep a look-out,” Murdock said. “We’ve got to find him.”

Then the land came up fast. Murdock saw some lights a quarter of a mile away, then he saw the ground and as soon as his feet touched it he ran forward with the chute, collapsing it and keeping his feet. He shucked out of the shrouds and ran with the wind. He met Lam and they found Bradford and Ching. Nobody had seen or heard from Jaybird.

“Spread out, twenty apart, we’ll sweep downwind for a quarter and then expand to both sides. Leave the chutes here, bring everything else. We don’t have time to bury the silk. Let’s go.” Murdock had never lost a man on a jump. He didn’t intend to break his record.

They walked slowly, looking all around them. They were near the end of their quarter mile when Ching sounded off at the end of the line.

“Got him. He’s down, his chute opened. Oh, hell, some of the lines are tangled round his neck. Over this way, fast.”

The men charged to where Ching worked on Jaybird. He had the shroud lines untangled from Jaybird’s throat and had him stretched out. Jaybird had cut and scratches on his face.

“He’s breathing,” Ching said. “My guess is the straps cut off his wind for long enough to make him pass out. Then he hit the ground and the line loosened and he was breathing again.”

Murdock knelt beside the silent form and gently slapped both his cheeks. “Come on, Jaybird. Wake up. Chow time, let’s get out of here. Wake up, little buddy. We’ve got work to do.”

The form didn’t move. Murdock took his canteen and slashed some water on Jaybird’s face. He snorted, then coughed and opened his eyes. Murdock saw they were glassy.

“Jaybird, you with us, buddy? You took one hell of a ride. Jaybird, look at me.”

Murdock saw the eyes blink then focus more and at last settle on Murdock’s face.

“Oh, damn, am I dead?” Jaybird whispered.

“Alive and kicking,” Ching said. “Anything feel broken?”

“Busted? On a little jump like that?” Jaybird started to sit up, groaned, and lay back down. “Give me five, I’m a little woozy.”

“You should be,” Murdock said. “You had a bad case of shroud strangulitis.”

“Yeah. I pass out?”

“On the way down after you pulled the ripcord. Try sitting up again.”

This time he made it. Murdock gave him a drink out of his canteen.

“Let’s see if you can stand up and walk,” Murdock said. “We need you.”

Jaybird got up by himself and stood. He looked around. “Where’s my fucking MP-5?”

“If you didn’t have it tied onto your pack, you dropped it when you passed out. Don’t worry about it. We have two more. Can you walk?”

“Oh, yeah. My momma taught me that several years ago.”

“Lam?” Murdock asked.

“Been trying to orient us. My best is that those splash of lights up there north shows from our little town. Maybe five miles. We ready to choggie?”

Murdock looked at Jaybird. “Want to take a hike?”

“What I dreamed of doing when I was passed out. Let’s go.”

Murdock walked beside Jaybird for the first mile, then moved apart the usual ten yards, coming behind him. Lam was out two hundred and they made good time toward the village. Best estimates were two thousand people. They had directions to the home of Salama Masud, the deep cover CIA agent. Murdock hoped he was home.

They came to the outskirts of the small town a half-hour later. Jaybird was functioning, but Murdock didn’t know how well. They had hunkered down behind a low rock wall just beyond a house and waited for Lam to make his recon. He came back in ten.

“Found the street. The house must be the one at the far end. Not all of them are numbered. You said one-eleven.”

“Right, it’s one story, block with stucco on the outside. Supposed to be one scraggly tree in the front yard, if it hasn’t died.”

“Yeah, saw it. Nobody on the streets, but we’ll go round and come toward the place from the back.”

Ten minutes later they lay in the dirt watching the back
of the house. It had no lights. Murdock and Lam went up to the rear door and tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. The door led into a closed-in porch. The door inside was locked. Murdock knocked six times on the door, rattling the hinges. There was no response. He beat on the door again with the side of his fist, hitting it a dozen times. Now a light glowed from somewhere inside and shined under the door. Murdock and Lam stood back from the panel.

A voice asked a question in Farsi. Murdock wasn’t sure what it meant. He used the two words he knew for friend in Arabic, then knocked once more, this time gently. He moved close to the door. “Your uncle needs some help,” Murdock said. It was a secret phrase that every CIA person in the world was supposed to know.

“A moment.” The words came in English through the thin door. It opened slowly. It was now dark inside the room.

“Yes, what do you want?”

“Your uncle needs some help. We come on a mission. Can you aid us?”

“Yes, yes, come in. I had to be sure. I’m not the least bit suspected here. Of course I haven’t done much yet. How many?

“Five of us. Salama Masud?”

“Yes, yes. I am. Come in. I will do all I can for you.”

“You’ve told your contact that there was a new facility built somewhere near here that could be a place where biological weapons have been developed.”

“Yes.” He turned on a light, making sure the blinds were drawn tight. It was a kitchen with a table and four chairs. They sat down. “The place is not far, maybe fifteen kilometers, ten miles. Strange things going on. Big trucks came in for a while. About twenty people work there and live there in large tents.”

“You have a car? We need to go there tonight and check it out.”

“Tonight? It is late.”

“We work best in the dark. A car?”

“No, a small pickup truck, but it will hold all five of you. I have freedom of movement since I talk to the herders about their wool. I’m a wool buyer. We can drive within two miles of the secret place before the road turns away from it. There may be a roadblock. Since the new regime took over, it’s hard telling what might happen. You heard about the riots and looting in several cities.”

“Yes. Strange. Can we leave now?”

“Yes, but let me get my rifle. I am permitted to carry it. Wild dogs and thieves sometimes waylay lone vehicles.”

A few minutes later the five SEALs and the driver settled into an older pickup of undetermined make and drove out of the small town to the west, into a range of low foothills that escalated into a ridge of mountains.

They still had two MP-5 submachine guns. Murdock put men with both of them in the back of the pickup so they could stand up and fire straight ahead or to each side. He put Jaybird in the cab with him and Masud. Murdock worried about Jaybird. He wasn’t his old self yet. He was awake and functioning, but no bright remarks or wise-cracks. He would watch the man closely.

They had driven out five miles, winding into some low hills on a good paved road, when the road faded into a gravel track that had been well graded and maintained.

“Rougher from here on,” Masud said. “Road doesn’t go much of “anywhere out here. They tried to drill for oil once, but nothing came of it. The big trucks going into this new place pounded the road hard, but they kept repairing it.”

At the seven-mile mark, Masud slowed. “Up ahead, a roadblock. At least I can see one army truck off to the side.”

The closer they came in the darkness, the less it looked like the place was manned. Then they were there. The truck had two flat tires and there were no soldiers in sight.

“Gave up on it,” Murdock said. “Maybe the new regime hasn’t got word out to the troops in this area.”

The road slanted upward into the mountains. The slopes were mostly barren, with a few blushes of trees and brush along ravines that would carry runoff from any sudden desert rain. Masud had to shift into second gear to get up the next sharp incline and then he pointed.

“Up there a quarter of a mile is the turnoff into the new facility. No idea what it might be for, but it’s been kept top secret around here.”

“We drive in or hide your truck and walk?” Murdock asked.

“I can’t drive in there. If there are still people there they would take my truck and shoot all of us. We have to hike in if we want to stay alive.”

Ten minutes later they had hidden the truck in a small wash well off the road and started the walk into the buildings. Murdock watched Jaybird.

“How do you feel, tiger?”

“LC, I’m fit and ready to go. Just a little headache. Okay, so it’s a whanger of a headache. But I can play hurt. Let me get at ’em. I’m ready.”

Murdock grinned. That sounded more like the old Jaybird.

After a mile’s hike, they stopped and Murdock opened the SATCOM and set up the antenna. He had it on the right frequency and called.

“Murdock calling Home Team Leader.”

“Home Team Leader here. What’s the word?”

“Don’t know yet. We’re down, made contact with our man, and we’re about a mile from the facility we need to check. No problems so far. We’ll keep in touch.”

“No reports yet from the other two groups. Home Team Leader out.

Lt. Ed DeWitt stood in the cabin of the Pegasus and watched the coast of Iran come out of the shifting moon-light. The sleek insertion boat for the SEALs had throttled
down from its top speed of forty-five knots to five and coasted toward shore. The boat was eighty-two feet long and only seventeen and a half feet wide. It had a range of five hundred and fifty-five miles without refueling.

The shore line was still a mile away when the SEALs slipped into the water in their Iranian costumes, without their rebreathers and only disposable swim fins. DeWitt and his five men swam on the surface with an easy side-stroke to make as little splashing as possible. The coastline here was rocky, with a quarter of a mile of lowland leaping upward into a series of low hills. Aerial recon flown that afternoon had picked the spot for them to land. It was twenty miles south of Bandar-e Bushehr, a town of around three hundred thousand persons.

This short stretch of beach was unoccupied, with the coast road going south almost twenty miles inland. There were no towns or settlements shown on their maps along this coast for a hundred miles. With nearly seventy percent of Iran’s army wiped out in the charge into Iraq, there was probably no army presence in this part of Iran at all. De-Witt thought about all of this as he stroked cleanly for shore. They stayed together and landed within a few yards of their objective, a stunted pine tree that had been gnarled and twisted by the gulf winds.

The SEALs washed up on shore with the small waves like sodden driftwood, then lay in the wet sand as they scanned the land in front of them.

“Looks all clear,” Van Dyke said on the Motorola.

“Clear this end,” Tate said.

“Straight across the beach to dry land and see if we can find some cover,” DeWitt said.

They lifted up and ran forward, across the dry sand, past some coarse salt grass growth, and then into the baked brown, dry Iranian land mass.

“Down,” DeWitt said on the radio, and they stopped and took a knee, everyone alert, watching for any sign of
humans, any danger. DeWitt scanned the area as far as he could see in the darkness. He could spot no lights of any kind. The soil wasn’t farmed. It looked like it was a dried-up salt marsh.

“Okay, troops. Looks clear as far as we can see. We might not spot a live one until we get near the big town. Until then we have a twenty-mile hike, so let’s get moving. Drop the swim fins if you haven’t. We won’t be needing them again.”

They hiked north in a column of ducks. One man with an MP-5 led out, the other MP-5 holder brought up the rear. DeWitt wished he had Rafii in his team. They had the name of a contact in the town, but not sure how to find the address. Rafii could have sniffed it out and come back and led them in. This time they’d have to play it by ear. It was such a big city, they could easily get lost.

DeWitt checked his watch. It was only 1920. They had hit the beach a half hour after full dark, giving them lots of time to get to Bandar-e. What they did when they got there would depend on what they found, and who they could ask direction from. They would have to split up into two groups and tail each other. He hoped that the military and the civil authorities were lax in their duties after the devastating defeat in Iraq.

They took a break at 2200.

“How far have we come, Howard?”

“Two aching feet and a knee that’s twanging at me. That means we’re closing in on ten miles.”

“I figure ten and a half, but who’s counting?” Mahanani said.

“I think our team stands the best chance to find the plant,” Neal said. “This area has lots going for it. Close to the port, so they can get the needed materials in easy and the goods out. Protection in the hills, and far enough away from population centers.”

“No protection at all this close to the coast,” Tate said.
“That’s why we won’t find it here. Look how easy we got onshore and in business. Nope, it’s got to be farther inland.”