DeWitt took things in hand. “Let’s get their ammo,” he said crisply. “From what I heard, they were all using AKs.”
Jaybird and DeWitt stood security while the rest of the SEALs went down the line of corpses and stripped them of weapons and magazines. Razor Roselli stayed with Murdock.
“Smugglers,” Razor reported. “They had a string of donkeys loaded with hash. I think they stopped to take a break, and we just ran into each other in the dark.”
“It was my fault,” said Murdock. “We were patrolling too fast. I was pushing Jaybird too hard. If I’d been scanning with the imager, we would have picked them up with enough time and space to go around.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Razor said firmly. “That’s all over and done with. We have to get out of here, and fast.”
Murdock knew Razor was right. They had to clear the area. Some of the smugglers had undoubtedly gotten away. There were always survivors in every engagement. It never happened that way in training, but it always did in real life.
The SEALs formed a hasty perimeter and redistributed Kalashnikov magazines. The grenades the smugglers had been carrying were so old and beat up no one wanted to mess with them. Doc Ellsworth and Ed DeWitt took two AKMs that seemed in the best shape.
“Use the grenades to booby-trap the bodies?” Magic Brown suggested.
“No,” Murdock replied. “We don’t want to make it look too professional. If we’re lucky, anyone who finds them won’t make the connection. They may write it off as a business disagreement.”
Kos Kosciuszko’s body was wrapped in Doc Ellsworth’s German nylon poncho. It had six stout carrying straps on each side and doubled as a stretcher.
Murdock took point. DeWitt followed him. Jaybird, Razor, Higgins, and Doc carried Kos. It took that many to bear his weight and still cover the ground at a decent pace. Magic Brown took over the tail-gunner position.
Despite what had happened, they pushed harder. The firefight had to have attracted attention, and the nearby road networks would allow a fast response. And the fast-approaching dawn was on everyone’s mind. The ground was rising fast as they headed up higher into the mountain highlands. It was hard going.
The time only permitted a mile and a half advance before Murdock called a halt. They formed another perimeter with Kos’s body in the center. Professor Higgins broke out his backpack radio.
It was a piece of gear that had only recently come into SEAL service, the AN/PRC-117D. Extremely compact at fifteen inches high, eight inches wide, three inches deep, and fifteen pounds total, it was one of the most sophisticated tactical radios in the world. Capable of operating in a number of modes and multiple frequency bands, the PRC-117D combined the functions of the three different radio sets it had replaced in SEAL service.
It could send and receive UHF satellite communications, or SATCOM, capable of reaching literally anywhere in the world. It also used UHF line-of-sight, to talk to aircraft and direct air-strikes, and VHF, or FM, the band used for tactical communications by most of the world’s armies, the same band the Motorola MX-300 walkie-talkies operated on.
Changing bands was as easy as flipping a switch and deploying the right antenna. The radio’s power could be adjusted anywhere from ten watts maximum down to 1 watt to reduce the probability of enemy interception. It could also be switched to automatic frequency hopping in the VHF band. The encryption system was embedded in the radio, and the crypto keys could be changed daily by simply punching in a new set of numbers.
The radio could transmit in a number of modes: voice, data, video. A special interface could even link it into the worldwide cellular telephone system.
The capability was incredible, but it also allowed everyone in the chain of command to contact and supervise you to an extent that Murdock did not care for at all. The Vietnam ploy of turning off the radio or pleading poor reception was no longer a viable option if you could talk in real-time with the admiral in Coronado or the President at the White House from the middle of the Lebanese hills.
If it had been a straight SEAL mission, Murdock would have been transmitting code words to mark his progress at each step in the operation, from landing onward. But as he’d told the CIA, if they weren’t going to provide him with any external fire support, then he didn’t need to be talking to them every five minutes — no matter how much they might want him to.
Higgins unfolded the satellite antenna, which was just a collapsible wire facsimile of the familiar dish. The radio set told him when the antenna was in line with the communications satellite overhead.
A signal sent straight up to a satellite was hard for an enemy to direction-find, but not impossible. Especially if you were dealing with a paranoid dictatorship like Syria, which had the best signals-interception and direction-finding equipment money could buy. So the SEALs would send their message by data-burst. Instead of talking over a handset, Murdock wrote out his message and Higgins typed it into a small keypad. Previously agreed-upon code words were used to reduce the length of the message. It went something like this, but in a continuous line of traffic with STOP where any periods would have been:
E70: Phonetically, Echo Seven Oscar, 3rd Platoon’s call sign for that day.
SWITCHBLADE: Target destroyed.
ZEBRA-1: One friendly killed in action.
SEATBELT-1: Request immediate helicopter extraction. No change from mission brief.
PENGUIN: Landing zone is secure.
857682: Their current location, in map grid coordinates.
END.
Murdock reviewed the message in the keypad’s liquid crystal display and nodded to Higgins. Higgins pressed a button and entered the message into the keypad. Another button automatically encrypted it. Then he pressed the SEND button and the message went out over the air in a compressed burst of less than a millisecond in duration. Now there was nothing to do but wait for confirmation and any return message to come back from the aircraft carrier.
24
The huddle of men packed together in the dull gray intelligence center of the George Washington was becoming both more hyper and more despondent, if such a thing was possible. The coffee they’d consumed by the gallon had done its own small part to jack up the general mood.
Don Stroh of the CIA couldn’t sit down in his institutional Navy chair for more than a minute before springing up to pace. He wouldn’t call it pacing, though, just a continuing process of checking in with the line of Navy communicators at their consoles, or talking to the ship’s bridge or Combat Operations Center on the phone.
Paul Kohler, his CIA counterpart, had gone through what seemed to be about five cartons of cigarettes, based on the contents of the ashtrays. The fastidious young sailors in the room, high-IQ types one and all, appeared to be on the verge of donning breathing apparatuses.
The Army major from the 160th was sitting with his legs crossed and reading a paperback novel, to all intents and purposes the very picture of professional calm. But that crossed leg was bouncing up and down so fast it might have been hooked to an electrical current.
Miguel Fernandez, the lone SEAL, was catching up on some sleep. His feet were up on the worktable, his head thrown back, and every minute or so he let loose with a few seconds of loud honking snores. Whenever it happened the others threw him looks that were pan disgust, pan envy.
One of the communicators suddenly shot forward in his chair. “Message just came in,” he announced excitedly.
They all practically climbed over each other to reach the terminal and read Murdock’s message off the display.