“The rest?” Jaybird asked faintly.
“The rest,” Murdock said definitely. “And I want you to know that I’ve got every confidence in you. Now get out of here and quit distracting the doctor before he sews my butt cheeks together.”
Magic, still giggling, led a dazed Jaybird Sterling from the compartment.
Murdock allowed himself another good laugh. He felt fifty pounds lighter. “Sorry about that, Doc. You can go back to work.” He glanced over at the corpsman. “I think you need to hand over that urinal and help me roll over. Now I’ve really got to go.”
“Quite a group you have there,” the doctor mumbled from behind.
“Oh, they’ll break your dishes and piss on your floor, said Murdock. “But they’re worth the trouble.”
51
Murdock made sure Razor was still pretty well doped up when he told him who was standing in for him. Murdock didn’t want him to have an embolism or anything.
Razor’s evil smile was a little dreamier, but still a sight to behold. “Jaybird’ll get me back on the job if he has to take charge of my rehab himself,” he predicted.
Murdock spent the next three days limping around with his own evil smile well hidden as the responsibility, rather than the authority, worked its magic on Jaybird Sterling. Just as it had on Razor Roselli. And George MacKenzie before him.
Jaybird organized, cajoled, persuaded, and occasionally threatened. The gear was cleaned, inventoried, and packed, paperwork was started. The platoon was ready to go.
They flew off the ship on the 14th. The platoon was on one of the Chinooks, with Razor and Higgins strapped to stretchers and a Navy medical team attending. The other Chinook carried the Army maintenance people, with the wounded Blackhawk slung beneath it. The surviving Blackhawk flew off under its own power.
They landed at Sigonella after dark. C-5’s were waiting to take the helicopters back to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
The SEALs and the medical team went from helicopters right onto an Air Force C-9 Nightingale. This was a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner specially fitted out as an aeromedical evacuation aircraft to transport casualties between theaters of operation. The Navy medical team disembarked and left Higgins and Razor in the care of the Nightingale medical crew.
The Nightingale lifted off immediately and flew from Sigonella to Rhein Main airport in Frankfurt, Germany. Higgins was taken off to the hospital there for more surgery. He was still unconscious, and for security reasons the platoon couldn’t accompany him off the aircraft. But a SEAL lieutenant commander and senior chief from Special Operations Command Europe were there to take care of one of their own.
At Rhein Main the SEALs dragged Razor Roselli and their equipment off the C-9 and onto a C-141 transport. That too took off immediately.
The C-141 stopped in Shannon to refuel. The SEALs ate foil-wrapped TV dinners and stared longingly out the windows in the direction of the duty-free shop.
From Ireland they stopped in Newfoundland to refuel. The SEALs were not allowed off the aircraft. The C-141 hopped across the U.S., finally touching down at North Island Naval Air Station.
Razor Roselli was taken off in an ambulance to San Diego Naval Hospital, and the rest of the very exhausted and jet-lagged 3rd Platoon boarded trucks for the short drive to Coronado.
52
Third Platoon received a very respectful reception back at SEAL Team Seven headquarters. No one knew the details of the operation, or would, but word had gotten around that 3rd Platoon had really counted coup.
In his will Kos Kosciuszko named Blake Murdock the executor of his estate. There wasn’t much for Murdock to do. Kos’s parents were dead. As Kos said in a letter attached to the will, “My other relatives never cared about me, and the feeling is mutual.” He’d been married once; a SEAL divorce and no children. The Navy was his home and the teams his life.
Don’t any of you feel sorry for me,” he said in the letter. “I loved every minute of it!”
Kos left most of his money to Navy Relief. Treasured possessions, souvenirs from his travels, and his beloved gun collection were earmarked to specific SEALS.
Blake Murdock got a Remington 12-gauge autoloader because he’d never managed to outscore Kos when they’d shot skeet. Razor Roselli got a lovingly customized Colt.45 because: “He’s always getting himself into trouble and ought to have something to get him out.” Magic Brown received a pre-1964 30–06 Model 70 Winchester with a beautiful walnut stock. The first time Murdock ever saw Magic cry was when he gave him the rifle.
Jaybird Sterling got a mahogany sculpture of some long-forgotten pagan fertility god with fantastically outsized genitalia. For a long time after that Jaybird walked around with a faraway look of remembrance in his eyes.
The other SEALs of the platoon all got something. The rest of Kos’s possessions, never more than would fit in a self-storage locker during deployments, went to Goodwill.
Contrary to what Murdock had thought, there was to be no burial of an empty coffin with full military honors. Kos had been to too many of those, the letter said. He’d always hated them.
In an eerie piece of prophecy that raised the hairs on the back of Murdock’s neck, Kos wrote that if he had fallen in battle, he hoped that no one would get hurt or go out of their way on his behalf. “Once you’re done with it, the body is just an empty container. It’s stupid to concern yourself with the container, only what’s inside it.”
But if it wasn’t too much trouble, Kos wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. He didn’t want the service for burial at sea to be read “by any pencil-neck Navy chaplain. I’m definite on that, sir. It has got to be a SEAL Master Chief. If George MacKenzie isn’t around, anyone you can dig up will do. And no eulogies or speeches. I hate the idea of you all lying about what a great guy I was. Just keep it to yourselves.”
There were so many SEALs and chiefs from Special Boat Squadron One who wanted to go that they ended up on a large and elderly LCU landing craft. It was a gray and overcast day, with heavy chop. The SEALs wore their blues. Razor Roselli was in a cast that ran all the way up to his crotch, supported on either side by Jaybird and Magic.
The members of 3rd Platoon had made up a package with letters, mementos, and Budweiser badges. George MacKenzie read the centuries-old service for those lost at sea. The package slid over the side. SEALs from the other teams tossed wreaths. The LCU headed back to shore.
Kos had left money for an open bar at his favorite drinking establishment. A place where the proprietor didn’t mind a ring of solemn SEALs each tossing a shot of Bacardi 151 onto the bar and setting the liquid ablaze. It was a SEAL tradition — their version of the Viking funeral. Then they all got loudly shit-faced and told Kos Kosciuszko stories long into the night.
George MacKenzie’s drinking days were long over. When the glass fell out of Blake Murdock’s hand while he was in the process of swallowing, Mac thought it was time to take the lieutenant home. Before he did he picked the pockets of all the SEALs in the platoon and removed their car keys. He left cab fare for them with the bartender, along with an unveiled threat that it had better be used for cab fare.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said to Murdock.
“Okay,” Murdock replied. He was well into the zombie mode. If someone had said set yourself on fire, he would have replied, “Okay.” He got off the bar stool.
Mac caught him before he hit the deck. He got Murdock out to his pickup, positioning his head carefully so that any vomiting would take place out the window. Mac wasn’t a Master Chief for nothing.