Yasmin smiled. “I can shoot, and I have my own weapon and ammo. An Uzi, as a matter of fact, and three hundred rounds.”
“You just signed on,” Murdock said.
That afternoon as the men slept, or worked on their weapons, Paul Jefferson and DeWitt played chess on a small peg board, and Kat and Yasmin began talking.
“Philadelphia, you told us,” Kat said. “I spent several years in Philadelphia back in the late eighties.”
“That’s when I grew up there,” Yasmin said. “We might even have been there at the same time.”
They traded stories, and Kat told her how she had been on a job with the SEALs before. “Nobody will ever know about what we did. But when the President calls you and says he wants you to do something for him, not many people can turn him down.”
“The President himself?” Yasmin asked. “From the White House?”
Kat nodded. “Not once, but twice now. But the SEALs take good care of me. I had to prove I could stay up with them hiking and swimming. They taught me to shoot. I like the MP-5 the best.”
“My husband taught me to shoot. I’m not sure I learned well enough. It still haunts me that on the night he was killed I could have shot better and maybe saved him. I took two bullets, but I wasn’t seriously wounded. They haven’t let me go on any field missions since.”
Her eyes turned misty and she dabbed at them. “I’ve had this one dream forever. I want to get my hands on a weapon and shoot down five or six Syrian soldiers. They were the ones who killed the love of my life. I deserve to get some revenge. Don’t you think?”
Then she cried, and Kat held her until the sobbing stopped.
“This might be the time,” Kat said. “If Murdock said you could go, you’ll have to stay with us all the way. With that many troops up there, we can use an extra gun.”
Yasmin dried her eyes and sniffed and then blew her nose. They took beers out of the refrigerator and popped the caps, and went on doing girl talk for another half hour.
Then Kat frowned. “Hey, you have any pants? Murdock is gonna flip if you show up for the shoot in that dress.” They both laughed, and Yasmin assured Kat she would dress like a man for the fight.
Just before dark, a fifteen-foot moving van pulled up in front of the house and a man came to the door. He talked with Yasmin for a moment, then he and Kat carried a mattress out to the van. They went inside for more, and when it was fully dark, the SEALs began slipping out the back door and into the big door of the van. They went one by one at staggered intervals, until all ten of them were inside with their weapons and gear.
Yasmin had on black pants and a dark brown shirt. Her hair had been pinned up and covered with a brown floppy hat. They waited in the truck for ten minutes before a car pulled up and blinked its lights. The truck driver followed it for two blocks to a spot where there weren’t any houses. The men in the car quickly delivered the ten shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade weapons, and took the money in exchange.
Two minutes after the truck stopped, it moved ahead again, with Yasmin in front with the driver, and DeWitt in between them.
“Radio net check,” DeWitt said.
All nine of the team checked in.
“So, we’re up and operating,” DeWitt said. “Rest and relax. Yasmin tells me it will take us about two hours to get through the outskirts of Damascus and then the thirty miles on north to the target. Time is now twenty-ten. We should be there by twenty-two ten, and check out the target for eval and planning. I hope we can hit it by midnight. Any questions?”
“Yeah, exfiltration,” Manhanani said. “Can we use this same truck to get toward the border?”
DeWitt repeated the question for Yasmin. She spoke with the driver. They talked back and forth, and then she grinned in the darkness.
DeWitt held his mike toward the agent. “He says if we can get away from the area cleanly, without the truck being shot up or identified with the attack, he’ll be glad to pick us up and take us as close to the border as possible. He is a businessman, and will need to be paid.”
“Sounds reasonable,” DeWitt said. “You know our cash position. Work out something with him.”
To DeWitt it sounded like a haggling process. At last the two stopped talking and Yasmin smiled again. “He’s part of the resistance here, but he has to make a living. He says he can get us almost to the border with Israel for fifteen thousand pounds. That’s two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Sold,” DeWitt said.
An hour and a half later the truck came to a stop a half mile from a brightly lit compound ahead. They were off the main road and on one that ran along the back of the Army base and the munitions factory. Lights seemed to be everywhere.
“Drive by so we can get a better look,” DeWitt ordered. They drove at a normal speed along the dirt road, and when they were a half mile beyond the plant, they stopped and the driver turned off the lights.
“Let’s hit the bricks,” DeWitt said on the radio. The SEALs and two women helpers left the truck and went to ground in a shallow ditch next to an open field. Two hundred yards down the way a chain-link fence barred their way to the munitions factory.
“There it is,” DeWitt said on the radio. “Now just how the hell do we get inside and find the fucking nuclear warhead?”
29
Murdock came to rest prone in the weeds of the ditch as he looked at the lighted target. DeWitt landed beside him, and made a futile gesture to his superior. Murdock shook his head and pointed back at DeWitt.
The J.G. took his field glasses and stared at the target. He shouldn’t have shown any indecision. Damnit! What was the matter with him? It was a target, like any other. He’d find a way. He checked the near side of the chain-link fence through the glasses. At the corner he saw what looked to be a hole, or at least a section of the stiff fencing that could be bent back.
He grinned. Soldiers would be boys. When they wanted out without a pass, they could find a way. He used the Motorola.
“Looks like an entry point near the corner of the fence. Ostercamp, check it out. The rest of us will move up to fifty yards from the corner. Move, now.”
Murdock had told Yasmin to stay right beside DeWitt. “You don’t dare fire your weapon unless he does. When he does, it’s a signal to the platoon also to open fire. Don’t get excited and try to get the scalp on your belt before it’s time. You could destroy the whole mission.”
“I understand,” she said.
Now she ran when DeWitt did, flopped on the ground when he did, always protecting her Uzi and her ammunition, kept in a shoulder bag slung at her back. All she wanted was one or two good shots at the enemy, at the soldiers who had killed her beloved.
Kat held close to Murdock. She carried an MP-5 and enough magazines of ammo to sink a battleship. This was crazy. What was she doing out here with these professional strike team guys? What was she trying to prove? Then she grinned in the dark. She had proved it already. Now she was just doing what her president had ordered her to do. Yeah, that was it.
Ostercamp’s voice came on the radio. “Yeah, J.G., hole big enough for Mahanani to crawl through. Been used quite a bit. Don’t see any kind of security on the other side of the fence where I am. Come on up.”
“Let’s go,” DeWitt said into his mike, and the ten dark figures lifted off the ground and ran, bent over, toward the fence, then through the hole one at a time. Murdock and Kat went through last.
“Ostercamp?” DeWitt asked.
“Out front about fifty, J.G. There’s a fucking track through the light grass and weeds where the AWOL guys have been walking. No guards, no rovers that I can see. Lights are another two hundred yards ahead.”