Once the firing started up, the Syrian soldiers in front of Murdock stopped dead in their tracks. Murdock visualized the radio conversation that had to be taking place. Then orders were screamed. The Syrians faced about. Where they had been sweeping northeast now they headed southeast, in the direction of the firing.
Murdock looked around and saw SEALs grinning at him. He waited, giving the Syrians time to get out of the way. A few hand signals, and Jaybird was back on point with the others formed up behind him.
The SEALs patrolled southwest, right through where the Syrian sweep line had originally been. A few hundred meters more and they were behind the sweep line, in the area the Syrians had already cleared.
Murdock had the completion of a perfect fantasy in mind. The Syrians would take their time, pound the living crap out of the ridge with mortars or artillery, and then assault. When they found nothing, they would eventually get sorted out and decide that the booby traps had only been intended to delay them. Angered by their losses, they would get back on line and renew their sweep with greater vigor, totally convinced that the enemy was up ahead. Which would be perfect, now that the SEALs were safely behind them.
Murdock made a mental note to name his first child Jaybird.
30
The SEALs had made it out of the noose, but the main roads were still covered by the Syrians, and the section of woods they were now forced into was alarmingly small.
Now Murdock had to decide whether to sit tight or keep moving. There seemed to be no contest. There wasn’t any assurance that the Syrians had finished moving around the area. If the SEALs kept moving there was always the risk of bumping into some random unit. Better to lay low and keep their heads down until dark.
But first they had to find the right place. The SEALs patrolled excruciatingly slowly, making no noise. They didn’t follow a straight route, zigzagging back and forth instead to make it more difficult for anyone trying to trail them.
Jaybird found a spot that looked good, and Murdock was unwilling to keep patrolling in order to find something better. Unlike the previous patrol base, this one was on higher, more defensible ground: the side of a high but gently sloping ridge, covered with boulders, brush, tall grass, and scattered scrawny saplings clinging desperately to the rocky soil.
The SEALs arranged themselves across the nose of the ridge, settling in among the boulders with good 360-degree security.
After twenty minutes of peace and quiet, a small group of men passed by at a distance of several hundred yards. They were armed but scruffy, wearing combinations of military uniforms and civilian clothing. Murdock thought they had to be Hezbollah.
Another half hour passed. Murdock had no intention of allowing himself to fall asleep again. He chose the most uncomfortable position he could find.
A single shot was heard, not far away. Murdock was so keyed up that it made him jump slightly. It wasn’t a rifle shot, though. It sounded like a shotgun. Then there was another shot, closer. It was definitely a shotgun. Murdock couldn’t figure it out, and he didn’t like it when that happened.
Fifteen minutes later he had his answer. Two Lebanese civilians appeared, carrying shotguns and accompanied by a dog. Murdock couldn’t believe it. Half the Syrian Army in Lebanon was pounding the hills on a major manhunt, and these dumb bastards were out hunting. He’d heard amazing stories about recklessly stupid and fatalistic Lebanese behavior during the civil war, but this was ridiculous. Then again, if you lived in a country where armed soldiers regularly roamed the hills, maybe that wasn’t reason enough to make you postpone your Saturday outing.
Go away, Murdock ordered them in his head, go the fuck away.
The dog flushed a bird at the base of the ridge. Both hunters fired, and missed, but their shotgun pellets rained in among the SEALs’ position. Murdock was glad that shotgun pellets didn’t travel far before losing velocity. Considering that it was Lebanon, he supposed he ought to be thankful that the two yokels weren’t out hunting with machine guns.
The dog picked up a scent and bounded up the ridge. Murdock didn’t know whether it was scenting an animal, the mass of Syrians who had already passed through, or the SEALS.
The dog kept coming, and Murdock knew the animal was on their trail. They had made the usual question mark maneuver before heading into the rocks, so the dog went almost all the way around the ridge before heading down and then coming back toward them.
Then the dog ran into the line of CS crystals Razor Roselli had thoughtfully sprinkled down.
The dog didn’t take a few tentative sniffs, then call it a day and head for home. No, it took a deep drag of CS and went absolutely berserk.
The dog nearly did a complete back flip. It yelped and howled and rolled in the grass. Then it chased its tail in tight frantic circles, howled some more, and began rubbing its eyes and muzzle in the dirt.
The two hunters were running up the slope to see what was the matter with their dog. And the dog, in the course of spazzing out, had come within twenty yards of the SEALs’ position.
By the time the hunters reached it, the dog’s muzzle was caked with dirt. They got ahold of the dog. One of them, clearly the owner, began wiping the dirt off the dog with a rag while the animal whimpered. And the other hunter just had to take a look around and see what had caused all the fuss.
The hunter literally stepped over Professor Higgins. If the man hadn’t seen him, Higgins never would have moved. But the hunter’s eyes went wide, and before the man could move his shotgun an inch Higgins shot him in the head.
Higgins, like the rest of the SEALS, was carrying as a backup weapon a sound-suppressed Russian Makarov pistol, which they called the P-6. The weapons were part of a stockpile inherited by the Germans from the former East German Spetsnaz special forces. Although the shot was quiet, Higgins couldn’t do anything about the dead body rolling back down the hillside. As soon as that happened all the SEALs were up and blazing away with their pistols at the other hunter.
Even if it had been the hunter’s first scrape, which it probably wasn’t, his reflexes were perfect. As soon as he saw the green and brown apparitions bouncing up out of the very earth, he instantly abandoned his dog and his shotgun and launched himself down the ridge at a dead run.
Twenty yards or more is a long pistol shot, especially with a suppressed weapon designed to be used at point-blank range. It was professionally embarrassing, but all the SEALs who were able to get a clear shot missed.
Twigs and leaves clipped by the bullets fell all around the man, but he remained untouched. He hit the base of the ridge without breaking stride and smashed into the brush.
Murdock passed hand signals down the perimeter. They said in essence: “Let’s mount up, we’re out of here.” It wasn’t going to take that hunter very long to find someone to tell his story to.
The situation was that the Syrians were off to the northeast, and the hunter had run southwest. Murdock looked at his map to try to figure out which village the man would head for. There was one to the east, and another almost equally distant to the west. Great.
Murdock’s choices were even more limited than that, being determined by the available terrain.
The SEALs headed northwest, Jaybird setting the pace as fast as he felt secure. They had to put some ground between themselves and that ridge.
Jaybird zigzagged wildly across their base course, to throw off pursuit. Razor spread the last of the CS crystals behind them.