Lam heard the chopper coming in before anyone. “Chopper to the east,” Lam shouted. They all stopped swimming. Murdock took out a red signal floating flare, lit it, and thew it twenty feet to the side. The red glow blossomed on the sea.
The big Sea Knight came in gently, found the flare, and lit up a circle of light that pinpointed the SEALs. The first thing down was a basket from the side hatch. Dobler helped Fernandez into the aluminum basket. He strapped the wounded man in and gave a thumbs-up to the operator.
Once Fernandez was inside the bird, the rear hatch opened, and the rope ladder dropped down. Jaybird made it to the ropes first and began climbing up. Two more SEALs grabbed the bottom rung to hold it steady, and the SEALs scurried up the ladder as if it were a set of steps on dry land. Murdock was the last one up, and the ladder swung free, making it twice as hard to climb. He came over the lip of the rear hatch and bellied into the ship with the help of two handy SEALs. Once he was inside, the hatch swung upward, closing.
“Commander?” A youngish looking lieutenant (j.g.) asked.
Murdock rolled over where he lay on the floor and nodded.
“Right. Any word on our direction?”
“You’ve been ordered back to the Jefferson, sir. Glad we found you. Anything I can get you and your men?”
“What about some nice hot coffee and sandwiches?”
“Surprise, Commander. Somebody named Don Stroh got all over my lieutenant until he took on board this special box. Yeah, hot coffee and monster sandwiches. Enjoy. We have about a forty-minute ride back to the ship.”
Murdock laughed. There really was hot coffee and sandwiches. Not your usual Navy sandwich, but humongous built things that looked like they came from the neighborhood deli. Murdock had two of them and three cups of the black, scalding-hot coffee.
Mahanani came over, shaking his head. “Don’t know about Fernandez. He doesn’t respond. I had a radio message sent to the carrier. They’ll have an emergency team with a gurney on deck when we get there. His vitals are all way down, but he’s fighting.”
Murdock went over and sat beside the wounded man. He was unconscious but breathing. Mahanani sat on the other side, monitoring him every second.
Stroh tried to meet them at the deck of the Jefferson, but the corpsmen and three doctors were at the door waiting for a litter to bring Fernandez out. Mahanani had stripped off the top of the wet suit before landing, and once Fernandez was on the gurney, the doctors and nurses began working on him. They hung a bottle of blood and some clear liquid and put needles into his arm. They tested him with stethoscopes as the gurney rolled across the flight deck.
Murdock walked alongside; stripping off his combat gear and handing it to Jaybird, who trailed him. DeWitt had told Murdock he would get the troops back to their assembly room and quarters.
Five minutes later, Murdock paced outside an operating room as the doctors went to work. It took them over an hour. Murdock had downed three cups of coffee a steward brought him. Every time someone came out of the operating room, he questioned the person, but no one would tell him anything.
At last he sat down, exhausted. It wouldn’t look good if he went to sleep on his feet, leaning against the wall.
“Commander?”
Murdock looked up and shook his head. He had dozed off. “Yes?”
“He made it. The boy should be dead. He lost a lot of blood. The bullet punctured his left lung, but somehow the hole closed up and the lung didn’t collapse. His shoulder wound is actually more serious now. We did some rebuilding on one area, and he should have full use of the shoulder. Right now, it’s broken and in a cast. We have his uniform and gear in a bag you can take with you if you wish, Commander.”
Murdock stood and swayed a moment.
“Are you all right, Commander?”
“Yeah. I’ll make it. Thanks for your work on Fernandez. He’s a good man. I’ll check with you in the morning.”
“That’s not long now, Commander. Maybe this afternoon.”
Murdock found his way to the SEALs’ assembly room. It was deserted. He went to his quarters and fell on his bunk as soon as he took off his wet suit.
Murdock heard someone get up from the four-officer compartment much later, but he didn’t even check the time. He went back to sleep at once. It was noon again before he came to reality. He showered and put on clean cammies and went to check on Fernandez.
The doctor shook his head. “Fernandez took a turn for the worse early this morning, but we have him stabilized again. The surgery is solid. His lung is responding. We pulled the last of the bullet out of his shoulder before we repaired it. Now it’s mostly up to him.”
“He has to make it, Doctor. He has a family back in San Diego waiting for him. Do your best.”
Murdock had lunch, then went to the assembly room. Half of the men were there. Dobler had taken Canzoneri to the hospital. His stitches had pulled out. They were sewing him back together.
“Don Stroh was in half an hour ago, looking worried,” Senior Chief Dobler said. “Something about throwing his timing off. He said he has to talk to Washington, and then he’ll be back.”
“Not every operation goes the way we plan it,” Murdock said. “Stroh knows that. If we hadn’t brought Fernandez back here last night, he’d be KIA by now.”
“You going to E-mail his wife?”
“Not until he’s out of danger. The doctors are still worried about him. I think he’s going to make it.”
Don Stroh strode into the room with a frown clouding his face. He saw Murdock and sailed straight for him.
“You threw off our damn timing,” he said.
“What timing? What are you talking about?”
“Today you were supposed to be raising hell at Plato, the airfield, production facilities, and storage area for the Medellin cartel. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Today also was when there would be six or eight of the top men in the cartel meeting at a luxury residence in the complex. We had hoped that some of the men would have an accident. You were supposed to be the accident.”
“You didn’t tell us that on our briefing.”
“Not the sort of thing we put on paper or over the air. Our country has an antiassassination policy, remember?”
“But accidents are all right?”
“Who can predict an accident? They happen.” Stroh chuckled. “But now I find out that we may have lucked out on this snafu. Turns out our source says that the meeting has been held over another two days, and a fresh crop of dancing girls has been flown in.”
“Can we get some air support this time?” the platoon leader asked. “Say we go in with a Sea Knight. The most firepower it has are two fifty-caliber machine guns. How about a Sea Cobra from the Marines with its firepower? We fly in together. We drop off three hundred yards from the complex. Our Sea Knight’s fifty shoots up the place, and then the Cobra hits them with its seventy-millimeter rockets. They can cause a whole hell of a lot of damage.”
“Then you go in and clean up and dispatch any of the bad guys who haven’t had the good manners to die?” Stroh asked.
“Sounds good to me. After that, we do in the processing plants and the storage areas and the planes and trucks, then we try like hell to get out of the place. It’s only sixty miles to the water.”
“Another incursion over a foreign nation without its permission? State and the Joint Chiefs will never go for it.”
“Give them a try. Take along the CNO. He’ll love it.”
Stroh groaned as he pushed away from the bulkhead. “Now all I have to do is go fight with my chief and then the CNO and then talk to the President. Be glad you don’t have my job.”