One of the soldiers was moving directly toward Roselli's position. Had he been just a few meters to either side, Roselli would have let him pass, but there was too great a risk that he might see one of the SEALs lying flat on the ground… or step on one.
Roselli tensed, the dull ebony length of his diving knife held tight in his hand. The soldier walked slowly closer, paused two meters away, listening, then took another step…
The SEAL swept up from the ground, left hand sweeping around the soldier's head, hand clamping down over nose and mouth, right hand gripping the knife, snapping up and sharply down. Roselli went for a straight stabbing takedown, rather than a chancier and noisier throat slash, angling the knife down at the hollow of the Serb's throat as he snapped the chin back. The blade slid smoothly through the half-circle described by the man's first rib, making a tiny chink as it scraped down the inside of his right clavicle and snicked through the subclavian artery. The man shuddered in Roselli's grip. Shoving the knife's hilt hard back toward his jaw sent the blade slicing into the heart; angling it sharply forward again cut through windpipe and esophagus and the thoracic vertebra with a faint, dry, cracking sound. The soldier went dead-limp, and Roselli lowered him gently, gently to the ground.
Five meters to the left, Magic Brown silently merged with a second Yugoslavian soldier. The diving knife flicked, a razor-edged blur; there was a quiet, almost regretful sigh, and then Magic eased that body too onto the grass. To left and right, the other Yugoslavs kept walking, unaware of the two deaths in the middle of their line.
Roselli and Brown maintained their positions over the bodies, knives drawn, as the SEALs one by one slipped through the gap opened in the enemy's search line. They moved as silently as the wind, with only a faint rustle in the grass to betray their movement, and with the Hip's rotors still slowly turning the noise was easily lost. Moments later, the SEALs reached the road, gathering in a ditch on the north side of the road about eighty meters east of the helicopter.
They used hand and squeeze signals only to coordinate their movements. There was a terrible danger here, of the helicopter turning its searchlight on the road, or of vehicles approaching with headlights on. They could clearly hear the Serb soldiers who'd remained with the helicopter talking by the seawall just a few tens of meters away. Mac went first, his big bulk slipping across the pavement as lightly as a ballerina, edging past the line of poplars, then rolling across the seawall and onto the seaward side. Next went Magic… then Higgins… Doc… Boomer… the L-T. Roselli went last, backing across the road with his HK raised, ready to return fire if someone spotted them.
On the seaward side of the wall, the SEALs lay flat on the sand. Their buried IBS and diving gear, as nearly as Roselli could tell, were on the far side of the helicopter, perhaps 100 or 120 meters up the beach to the west. Touching Murdock lightly on the sleeve, Roselli looked into the expressionless lenses of the lieutenant's night-vision gear and silently signaled To the raft?
Murdock's mouth, just visible beneath his goggles, twisted in a frown. He shook his head, then pointed down the shelf of the beach toward the surf. No. We'll go out that way.
Roselli accepted Murdock's decision, but he felt a stab of disappointment nonetheless. SEALs prided themselves in coming and going along hostile shores and leaving no trace of their visit. If they abandoned the raft, together with two sets of rebreather apparatus and seven pairs of masks and fins, someone would be certain to find it sooner or later. The next good gale or storm surge would uncover it… as would a careful search by the local military using mine sweepers or metal detectors. Besides, there was the SEAL warrior's image to uphold. Swimming back to the Nassau without even their duck fins would be a little too much like being chased out with their figurative tails between their legs. It would be a long swim too without their fins and masks. Nassau was on station just beyond the old Yugoslavian twelve-mile limit. While a twelve-mile swim wasn't out of the question for SEALS, even after a rugged mission ashore, their best bet would be to link up with Gold Squad and the second CRRC. Twelve miles in the open sea with neither fins nor floatation devices was going to be murder, pure and simple.
Before they could even think about swimming back to the ship, though, they would have to get across the beach. The tide had gone out since the SEALs had arrived on this beach over five hours earlier. Mediterranean tides rarely rose or fell as far as their oceanic cousins, but the gradual slope of the beach along this particular stretch of the Dalmatian coast meant that even a small difference between the high- and low-water levels could expose quite a lot of beach. Roselli estimated that the beach was eighty meters wide now, more than twice what it had been when they'd come ashore.
Another helicopter rattled overhead, traveling west to east and sweeping the beach with its searchlight as it went.
This could get damned tricky.
Narednik Jankovic walked along the north side of the seawall, trying hard to see everywhere in the darkness at once. His comrades, members of the Third JNA Mechanized Itra Infantry Brigade, had laughed at his belief that the infiltrators they were searching for were Americans.
They'd laughed harder still when he described the slaughter at the monastery… had it only been three hours ago? After all the Srpska Dobrovoljacki Straza — the Serb Volunteer Guard — while made up of fellow Serbs, was nonetheless a militia, good for hunting down Bosniaks but not all that good in a stand-up fight. Caught in an ambush by professionals, of course they'd been wiped out. But that sort of thing could never happen to regular army troops.
Jankovic wasn't so sure. A great many members of the various Serbian militias had been JNA men like him, allowed to leave the army expressly so they could join the militias or to serve as "advisors." Bosnia-Hercegovina had a sizable Serb population which did not want to live under either Muslim or Croat domination should Bosnia become either free or a Croat protectorate. Letting Bosnian-Serb troops leave the JNA to join the militias had been an easy means of keeping Bosnia — most of it, at any rate — under Yugoslav, that is to say, under Serbian control. While JNA troops might joke about their Bosnian brothers, the difference between the members of any Serb militia unit and the Yugoslav National Army had nothing to do with bravery, skill… or with determination. Indeed, many in the militia, especially the NCOS, were like Jankovic, still officially with the national army but serving on special attached duty with the Bosnians.
He wondered if General Mihajlovic was right in his guess that the SEALs must be headed for this particular stretch of beach. If so, the commandos could be anywhere… though they hadn't really had time yet to travel all the way down the Gora Orjen. Likely they were still up there, somewhere in that pine forest above the highway. He wondered if they were watching him right now, and shivered.
"Jankovic!" a young JNA poruchnik, a senior lieutenant, called from further down the sea wall. "Get over here!"
"Da, moy Poruchnik," Jankovic called back. He broke into a trot and hurried to join the group.
The lieutenant and several troops were gathered together on the seaward side of the wall. One of the men had a mine detector, while the others were on their knees, scooping out a shallow hole in the sand with their hands. There was something in the hole…
"Jankovic!" the lieutenant said, grinning. "Do you think this might have been left here by your friends?"