“Hey, pretty Nancy. I’m going to marry you. Did I tell you that?”
She looked up at him and laughed. “Hey, no offense, but I’m shooting for a higher goal. Some rich guy who can take care of me and buy me all sorts of diamonds and cars and furs and boats and we go to Las Vegas and drop a few thousand and we don’t even notice it. Oh, my, yes. I want to marry a rich man. Now isn’t it just as easy for a girl to fall for a rich guy as it is to fall in love with some handsome sailor boy?”
He said he figured it was. At her place there was a porch without a light, and he eased up close and looked at her, then lowered his face toward hers. She didn’t back away or protest. He kissed her gently, then again. The third time, she had her arms around him and pushed close against him.
They went out every night for two weeks, then he had to go on sea duty for six months. When he came back, she was there, waiting for him, and two months later, they were married.
She hated his six-month sea duty, but it came and went. The first time after they were married, she was pregnant with Helen. She cried and asked him to quit the Navy. He explained it wasn’t a job you could walk in and quit. He had signed for four years. Two were up, but he had two more to do. She begged him to quit after the hitch was up. He promised they would talk about it.
Somehow, they never did. Then one day he came home and found Nancy on the floor, nearly dead by her own hand. That was when he talked with her mother and discovered Nancy’s sensitive nature and her suicide attempts when she was in high school.
This last one had been the worst. He thought he had lost her. Even now he wasn’t sure. Yes, she had moderated, she had come down from her manic stage, but how long could she hold? Most important, would the two other SEAL women be a positive influence on her?
He stared himself right in the face and knew the way he was going. He had eighteen years in the Navy. He could do the last year and a half standing on his head. It didn’t have to be in SEALs. He slammed his hand against the ground.
Damnit, if he had to, he would quit the platoon and go back to administration or some other nonfield assignment in the SEAL Team operation. With his clout, he could find a berth for a year and a half. Then he’d consider getting out of the Navy for good. It all depended on how Nancy reacted to this mission and his absence. He knew she’d go half crazy when she saw his shot-up thigh. No way he could keep that a secret.
But first, they had to get out of this trap. How could their own government write them off this way? How could they ignore fifteen U.S. citizens on foreign soil where the embassy had just been invaded, the diplomats held captive, and by now the embassy totally destroyed. How in hell could his own government do that to him?
Twenty feet below where Dobler worried, Murdock came awake and alert. He felt his lip mike in place. “Who’s on guard duty?” he asked softly in the set. No one responded. It was almost dusk in the woodland. He rose silently and moved down the hill to the lookout point. Bill Bradford sat there with his weapon across his knees, looking through a bush down the hill.
“Bradford?”
The man turned. “Hi, Cap.”
“Didn’t you hear my last transmission?”
“Not a whisper. Try it again.”
Murdock spoke into the lip mike.
“Damn, I’m down. Could be the battery. We have spares? Oh, yeah, that little package in the waterproof. Watch this spot for me for a minute, and I’ll go get a new battery.”
“Go.”
Murdock studied the last of the landscape he could see. He could hear no guns chattering. Maybe the war was over until daylight for the game players. He hoped the tanks had gone back to their base. It was so frustrating. He knew they couldn’t be more than three to five miles from the sea, yet somehow they couldn’t get there.
Hell, they were going to head due west with dark and go around or through anybody or anything that tried to stop them. They had the firepower and the incentive. Besides, he was getting hungry.
He tapped his mike. “Wake up call, crew. Time to rise and shine. We’re heading for the water. With any luck, we should be back in some warm, dry bunks before the night is over. Anybody want to take a hike?”
He got various comments over the net. Five minutes later, they were assembled and ready to move.
DeWitt came up to Murdock in the darkness. “We better cut these four soldiers loose, Cap. Don’t see how they can hurt us. Somebody must know we’re in this general area. We’ll take their rifles and throw them away.”
Murdock thought about it a minute. “Go,” he said. The men couldn’t believe they were set free. Ching told them they were lucky to be alive. That they should rush back to their units and say only that they got lost and misplaced their rifles.
Lam led them out due west, down the hill, over part of the heavy tracks of the tanks, and along a small stream heading for the sea.
Lights showed to one side a half mile away. Murdock guessed they were the war games camp. They didn’t have out any patrols or security. Around a small hill they saw more lights, and the clanking of heavy metal on metal.
Lam stopped for Murdock to come up. “Has to be the tank company,” Lam said. “They are working on tracks or rollers, something with a heavy sound.”
“Around them,” Murdock said.
“You don’t want us to steal a tank and ride in style to the beach?” Lam asked.
“Not unless you can get fourteen guys hanging on the outside of the rig.”
They detoured and kept going. Murdock thought he could smell salt air. Lam said no way.
Dobler realized with a start that he was limping. He hadn’t noticed it before. Just a little limp, a quick move with his right leg so it wouldn’t have to take his weight so long. Damn. In the dark nobody could see it.
Nancy would shit purple if she knew he was wounded. He had made Murdock promise not to let her know until they got home and he could do the talking.
A mile on west, they heard loudspeakers. Ching listened closely but could catch only a few words.
“ ‘Enemies of the people of Colombia,’ that’s all I can understand, Cap,” Ching said.
“What the fuck is going on up there?” Murdock asked. DeWitt and Jaybird shook their heads.
“Could be a beach blockade,” Dobler said. “Somehow they knew we were SEALs in the other places. Why not here, too? They know we go to water. They knew where we were. This must be one of the closest places to get to the Caribbean Sea.”
“Lam, Jaybird, on me. Let’s go see.” They worked their way silently through the dark night along the stream, which had now grown into a good-sized river thirty feet across. Beyond the fringe of trees bordering the creek, they could see farmland and a few houses here and there. Most had lights on.
Six hundred yards from where they stopped, the three SEALs bellied down beside a fallen tree trunk and peered over the decomposing top.
They saw a highway, and beyond it the crashing surf of the Caribbean Sea. The highway was easy to spot. Two huge searchlights shone on it, turning the night into noon. Not even an ant could crawl across that blacktop road without being seen.
“The searchlights are easy,” Lam said. “The twenties with impact hits. Then a charge.”
“Where are their support troops?” Jaybird asked. “They must have a couple of hundred riflemen guarding the area with the searchlights.”
“Just beyond the blacktop roadway, the beach drops off ten, fifteen feet,” Murdock said. “They could have the troops down there waiting. A surprise party.”
“The searchlights are reaching out about a hundred yards,” Jaybird said. “So they cover a spot two hundred yards wide. We could shoot out the lights, with most of our guys down in the dark on the other side of that light. That way we’d go across at a spot they didn’t think they would have to defend.”