Then a second shot hit him in the shoulder, shattering two bones there and bringing a great wail of pain. He almost blacked out, but fought to stay conscious.
When he recovered enough to have a coherent thought, he told the secret service officer the address.
The officer wrote it down, then nodded to the traitor.
"Thank you for your fine service to Iran and the greater Islamic Republic." He scowled, then shot Shamil twice in the head, and hurried out the back door on his way to find the American spy.
3
Murdock sat in the booth and stared at the pretty woman across from him. She was slim, looked fit, had short brown hair, maybe five-eight, tanned and with penetrating brown eyes that watched him with barely concealed amusement. "Stroh, you aren't kidding, are you? I'm surprised."
"Blown out of the water seems a better Navy phrase, Lieutenant Murdock," Kat said. "I've had that reaction before at other good old boy's clubs."
"Can you swim, Miss Garnet?"
"Yes, and I'm a SCUBA instructor." Her mouth formed half a smile.
"Good. What about parachuting?"
"I've had twenty jumps so far, concentrating on free fall." The half smile grew.
Stroh gave a short laugh. "Let's forget the twenty questions, Lieutenant. Here's her short biography Kat is twenty-eight, has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from M.I.T. Has been working on dismantling our overstock on nuke warheads. She's a G-12 on the civil service scale. Is she in good shape? She won the second Hawaiian triathlon ever held for women. Now she keeps in shape running marathons. I'm wondering if your SEALs will be able to keep up with her."
Murdock closed his eyes and lifted his brows. He took a deep breath. Then he nodded and looked up at Kat.
"Well, it looks like I have my orders, Miss Garnet. Welcome to the Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven."
She smiled, and it erased the harsh lines of a frown.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Murdock. Please call me Kat. I'm looking forward to working with you."
"Kat, our first job is to survive. Our next job is to get to the target. Then we, or in this case, you, do the dismantling and destruction. Then we have our biggest task — trying to exfiltrate out of some hellhole without getting ourselves killed."
She unclenched her hands where they had been gripped in her lap, and smiled. "First things first, Lieutenant Murdock. I especially like that part about surviving. I did hesitate before I took on this job. Then the President called me. One advantage you have over me Nobody has ever shot at me trying to put big holes in my body."
"Our job is to protect you, Kat, and call me Murdock. No sense our getting to the target if you're riding along dead in a body bag."
"I don't like body bags." She looked up and a small frown creased her pretty face. "Oh, one more thing. I've never fired a gun in my life. I figure I need to learn how."
"No problem. We've got sixteen experts who will be falling all over themselves to teach you." Murdock looked over at Stroh, who couldn't stop grinning.
"This shoots your timing schedule all to hell, Stroh. No nonsense about a week for our DOD. I can rely on the current sharpness of my men, but I'll need at least a month to get Kat integrated and up to speed. How big a pack can she carry? What weapon for her? Check her out underwater with the rebreather. Can she jump with forty pounds of gear? Has she ever parachuted into water? Hell, we've got a year's worth of training for her to jam into a month."
"I'll talk to my people and they will talk to the President. State is all out of joint on this one. They say if any one Arab state gets a workable bomb, they can blackmail half the rest of the Arab states and form the biggest Muslim nation in the world. That will upset the balance of power over there, and jeopardize the whole Middle Eastern oil flow. The oil, of course, is the biggest worry."
"Have your people talk to my people," Murdock said, and Kat laughed.
Murdock looked at the woman again, only then noticing what she wore a skirt, mid-calf, and a brown blouse with short sleeves.
"What kind of shoes are you wearing?" Murdock asked Kat.
"Shoes? Oh, one-inch heels. Sturdy enough?"
"Good, we might as well get started. We won't be back to the Kill House for a while. Let's get out there and I'll run you through it for a cold-shower approach to what you're letting yourself in for."
"Right. I want to do some shooting today, too."
Murdock stood, and Kat was up with him.
"You have any gear?" he asked.
"Just one bag in the booth."
"Bring it," Murdock said, and headed for the door. Kat looked confused for a moment, then hurried to the booth, picked up her black travel bag, and ran out the front door. When she got to the Buick, Stroh held open the rear door for her.
On the drive out to the range, Stroh said he'd arranged for Kat to have quarters at the Amphibious Base Officers Quarters.
"On the books, Kat, you'll have the temporary rank of Lieutenant," Stroh said. "That's not a field rank, but in the SEALs rank doesn't count anyway. As the President told you, your main job is to stay alive going in so you can do the job on the nukes."
"So it doesn't matter a hell of a lot if I make it out of the country alive or not?" Kat asked.
"Getting those nukes destroyed and the rest of their nuclear capacity blasted into rubble is our only job," Murdock said. "If we do that, it isn't important if any of us come out." He hesitated and watched her shiver. "Of course to each one of us it's damn important to get out of there in one chunk."
Kat lifted her brows and smiled. "I like that last part the best."
They pulled up at the Navy bus on the range, and Kat and Murdock got out. Kat carried her bag.
Murdock talked to Stroh through the open front window. "Remember, I need a month to get this crew put together, and to safeguard Kat. Won't do any good to get to the target in there if we lose her going in. Make your boss and the President understand that. A month. No less."
The platoon was still out on one of the training exercises. Murdock motioned to Kat. "Over this way, sailor. Leave your bag in the bus, and we'll take a look at the Kill House."
He went with her to the bus, picked up a Colt .45 pistol and three extra magazines and the new HK G11 they had been testing. Kat looked at the weapons. He pushed the safety on on the .45, and pulled out the magazine, racking back the slide and catching the forty-five round that spun out. He handed the weapon to her.
"Get the feel of it. This could be one of the weapons that you'll carry."
She took the gun and frowned. "Heavy, isn't it?"
"Heavier with a loaded magazine in it."
They stopped twenty yards from the Kill House. It was especially built of bullet-absorbing material so the rounds wouldn't go all the way through and outside where they could hurt anyone. It had a roof and four rooms all rigged with the "terrorist" dummies.
Murdock took the weapon from her and pushed in the magazine. Then he gave the forty-five back to her.
"Grab the slide on top and pull it backward."
She tried. It didn't move. He put her hand forward and showed her how to grip it.
"This weapon is no good unless you can rack the slide back. That pushes one round from the spring-loaded magazine into the firing chamber. Then it's ready to fire."
She tried again, and this time pulled the slide back, and let it snap forward.
"Locked and loaded," Murdock said. "That means you're ready to fire." He reached over and pushed off the safety. "This is the safety. You can't pull the trigger when this is on. Now it's off. Always keep the muzzle of a loaded weapon pointed down-range."