Murdock downed a cup of instant coffee, then drove to the SEALs' home base just south of Coronado on the Silver Strand in the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base. He called Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt, his 2IC, leader of the Second Squad, and caught him at home.
By 1000, eleven of the sixteen men were on hand working on gear for the trip.
"We're still five guys short," Jaybird said, coming into the commander's office.
"Who?"
"Magic Brown, Adams, Red Nicholson, Lincoln, and Holt."
"Put one man on each one and have them track them down," Murdock said. "If they can't find them by fourteen hundred, have them get back here. Who went to Baja?"
"Brown and Red Nicholson, both fishing nuts. Don't even know where they were going. Not much below Ensenada, I don't think."
Murdock scowled. "Yeah, The Matzalan Fish Shack. Give them a call. Nicholson liked the guy that ran it. He used to go down there every weekend. Remember, he used to talk our ears off about the good fishing down there? You might hook them at that Fish Shack."
"Where the fuck we going, L-T?" Operation Specialist Third Class Joe "Ricochet" Lampedusa asked as he came in the door when Jaybird left.
"It make any difference?"
"Hell, yes, we take mucklucks or suntan lotion?"
Half the crew brayed with laughter.
"Make it sun-tan lotion and desert cammies. Any other dip-shit questions?"
The SEALs razzed Lampedusa, and went back to work packing their gear and cleaning weapons.
Murdock watched his men. He had finished his packing and cleaning and oiling his weapon, an HK MP5SD4 specially custom-fitted for the SEALS. These were good men. He'd lost one on the last mission. He hoped he didn't lose any this time.
The Navy SEALs carried a ton of macho mystique with them that was becoming known more and more outside the service. Mostly they were famous for their training course — the six-months Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL regimen. Over the years, the name had been shortened to BUD/S. It was rougher and tougher than any other training course in any military force in the world.
Every man who came to the BUD/S training center in Coronado was a volunteer. Most didn't know just how tough the twenty-six-week training schedule would be. Physical fitness and training dominated the first part of the schedule. Some of that involved lifting eighteen-inch-thick telephone poles on the shoulders of seven SEAL trainees. They might hoist it overhead and hold it, hoist it partway up, or put it on their shoulders and do a five-mile run.
They trained with eight-man inflatable boats in the surf, learning how to get them through the Pacific Ocean breakers, and how to get them back in without dumping everyone into the water.
They took ocean swimming as a matter of course, doing five- and seven-mile swims in the open sea with and without fins, and with and without underwater breathing apparatuses.
By the time the SEALs came out of BUD/S training, they were so accustomed to the water that it had become their second home.
The basic lesson in all of the training was teamwork. SEALs operated in eight-man squads. Every man relied on every other man to protect his life. Teamwork became so ingrained in SEALs that in combat situations they functioned automatically, taking the right action and making the right decisions. If they didn't, one or more of the team could die.
Navy officers go through the same training as any other SEAL. They have no rank when they enter a BUD/S class. They lift the logs, run the killer obstacle course, work the boats, get sand and water thrown on them during exercises and classes, and generally accept all of the rugged training procedures the other men do.
There is one officer-related requirement. Any officer in any SEAL trainee class is expected to test better than the rest of the class. All this helps mold a strong bond between enlisted, and their SEAL officers, and to a large degree breaks down the "officer country" psychology of the military. A lot of regular Navy officers don't like this aspect of SEAL operations.
SEAL officers say when you're trusting your life to the SEAL behind you in a life-or-death firefight operation, it doesn't matter what rank or rate he has. All that matters is that he can do his job, protect your back, and run a successful mission.
One thing about SEALs that Murdock had always questioned. The SEALS, like all enlisted men and women in the Navy, carry a rating, a work specialty like Hull Technician or Machinist's Mate. These ratings simply don't apply in the SEALs' operations. They have an entirely different kind of job and specialty.
To the Navy, however, these men still must study their manuals and take tests twice a year for promotion in that job specialty. This also bugs most of the SEALS.
In training and after it, most SEALs move toward a combat specialty that interests them and suits their talents. One man may be an expert on weapons, another communications, one parachute rigging, and somebody else electronics. All are slotted in where they can do the most good and still maintain their basic job hitting hard with maximum firepower, killing the enemy, capturing the objective, and getting out without the loss of any men.
Losses. Six men from SEAL Team Seven, Third Platoon, had been wounded and one killed in the Firestorm mission. Murdock had taken a bad arm wound. Now all but one of the wounded had recovered during the two-month training period, and were back in service. One man was still in the hospital, and Greg Johnson had died of his wounds and was brought home.
That meant two new men who were qualified SEALs had been needed in the mix, and had had to learn to work with their new buddies. Murdock had brought in Torpedoman's Mate Third Class Les Quinley the first week back from China to replace Johnson. Quinley's explosive talents would come in handy.
Murdock wasn't sure when or even if Scotty Frazier would be out of the hospital and fit for duty. He'd waited a month. Frazier's "slight side wound" had turned ugly before he got to Balboa Park Naval Hospital in San Diego, and he'd been on the critical list for a week. After a month, Murdock talked to Frazier's doctor, crossed Frazier's name off the roster, and brought in a new man.
He'd picked Ted Yates off the available list. Yates already had his Trident, the badge of honor of the proven and tested SEALs who had seen covert-operations duty. He was twenty-four and a Bos'n's Mate Second Class. He would help lend a little maturity to the Second Platoon.
Now the men had trained together for a solid month, including an interminable week at the Chocolate Mountain gunnery range out near Niland. They'd slept on the ground and lived on MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, for six days.
It had been almost as bad as Hell Week during BUD/S training, when the new men were up continuously for four days and got only four hours of sleep. It was right after that tough week that a lot of the trainees laid their green SEAL helmet liners with the class number on them next to the quitting-bell post on the "grinder." They then were out of the program and went back to the regular Navy. Many times half a beginning class washed out. One famous class had had every man quit before the six months were up.
Sixty-eight miles south of Tijuana along the Baja California, Mexico, coastline, Eric "Red" Nicholson, Torpedoman's Mate Second Class, hooked a fish and let out a rebel yell. "Hell of a good bite," Red brayed. "Took that anchovy and dove straight down. Fucker is still taking out line."
"Not a yellowtail then," Martin "Magic" Brown, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, said. "Yellows don't sound that way. Bet you twenty bucks it's a bluefin tuna."
"No bluefins in the Ensenada Bay this time of year," Red said. He had his six-foot fighting pole lifted to an eighty-degree angle, and the bend was tiring out the fish below. A moment later, the line stopped whining off the spool.
Red grinned and lowered the rod slowly, reeling in as he went. Then he pumped up the pole gently and reeled down again.