Jankovic needed that reassurance just now. The slaughter on the beach had been indescribable. In almost four years of fighting Bosniaks, Jankovic had seen plenty of death and suffering, but never, never had he seen anything to match the horror that he'd seen tonight. The faceless enemy had killed or wounded a dozen men in seconds, then somehow called down death incarnate from out of the overcast sky.
They can die. They can be killed.
Jankovic clung to that simple and comforting thought.
"Then what happened, Chief Roselli?"
Roselli's glance traveled from Dulaney, the Navy officer who'd been running the debriefing, to the three civilians in the steel-walled compartment, then across the table to Commander George Presley, Nassau's Combat Information Officer.
"Well, sir," Roselli said slowly, looking back at Commander Dulaney. "The Skipper started around the front of the truck on the left. I think he popped a couple of shots at the runner. I'm not sure."
"Did the man stop?"
"I think he did, sir. I'm pretty sure he was turning around."
"And Lieutenant Murdock shot him?" one of the civilians asked.
Damned suit, Roselli thought. "Uh, yes, sir."
"I see. Was he armed?"
"I don't know, sir. I was still quite a ways back and couldn't see real well. The truck was in the way."
"Do you know if any of the militia soldiers at the monastery tried to surrender?"
"Not that I know of, sir. It was all over pretty fast. If any of 'em wanted to, I doubt that they could have."
"What do you mean by that, Roselli?" Fletcher, the boss suit, asked. "That you weren't taking prisoners?"
"No, sir. I just mean we were in there just taking initials, cause we were moving too fast to take names."
"Did you understand, Chief," Fletcher said, "that your rules of engagement required you not to fire unless you were fired upon? That Lieutenant Murdock violated the ROEs by ordering you to open fire?"
"Well, we didn't have much fuckin' choice-"
"Chief!" Dulaney said sharply. "Please."
"Well, it's true! Excuse me, sir, but your agent would've been dead if we hadn't opened up when we did, and the whole op would've been for nothing."
Fletcher leaned over and whispered something to Dulaney.
"Very well, Chief," Dulaney said a moment later. "You may go."
"Thank you, sir."
Fletcher glanced down at a notebook in his hand. "And would you have, ah, Quartermaster First Class Martin Brown step in here, please?"
"Right, sure thing. Uh… listen, about the L-T-"
"That is all, Chief. Thank you."
"I just wanted to say that he-"
"That will be all, Roselli."
"Aye, aye, sir." Roselli rose, took a last look at the men gathered there, and walked out of the compartment. In the passageway outside, Prof, Doc, and Magic were waiting for him.
Just four hours ago, they'd been plucked from the sea off the Adriatic coast by a Navy SH-60 Seahawk off the Nassau. Flown back to the amphibious assault ship's flight deck, they'd been greeted before they even climbed out of the helo by a team of hospital corpsmen and a ship's doctor who'd bundled Garcia, strapped into a Stokes wire-frame stretcher, off to sick bay. While they were still climbing off the helo, they'd been met by Commander Dulaney himself, who'd told them they had two hours to get cleaned up and squared away for their debriefing.
Dulaney had not looked pleased.
When the SEALs had reported aboard the Nassau two weeks earlier, they'd brought full seabags as well as their combat gear; even SEALs couldn't run around aboard ship in their combat blacks all the time, and Murdock had always been a stickler for doing things the Navy way. "The fewer waves, the better," he'd told the platoon more than once, and so the SEALs had showered and shaved and changed into their blues.
Roselli had felt like he was under a damned magnifying glass throughout the briefing. Something had gone sour besides the mission itself, and he couldn't tell what it was.
"So how'd it go, Razor?" Magic asked.
"I'm not sure. Feels like they're railroading the Skipper, though." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "You're up next, Magic."
"Wish me luck, guys." The big SEAL sniper tugged at the bottom of his blue jumper, took a deep breath, and stepped through the compartment door.
"Shit," Doc said after the door had clanged shut. He folded his arms and leaned back against the bulkhead. "Here we go with the munchkin madness again."
"Aw," Prof added in a mincing, little boy's voice. "Are they upset that we bwoke their itty-bitty rules of engagement?"
"Something like that. Where's Mac and the L-T?"
"They went up on the flight deck. Something about needing some air."
"Don't blame 'em," Roselli said. "Maybe I'll join them. Uh, any word on Boomer?"
"Nope. He's still in sick bay. I imagine they'll fly him out today. Pneumothroax and he lost a lot of blood. They'll want him in a hospital Stateside pronto."
"Damn bad luck," Roselli said.
"Yeah, well, it happens," Higgins said. "He knew the odds when he got his Budweiser."
Roselli reached up and fingered the heavy, ugly gold emblem pinned to his dress blue jacket, just above its neatly ordered rows of colored ribbons. Eagle with outstretched wings. Anchor. Trident. Old-fashioned flintlock pistol. The "Budweiser" emblem that marked a man as a SEAL. "I guess so. Any word on what's going down? I feel like we're up for court-martial or worse. Mac got the package back okay, didn't he?"
"Turned it over to Dulaney soon as we stepped aboard," Higgins said. "Of course, things have been real tense with the Serbs all along. Maybe they're afraid that firefight's going to touch off some worse fighting."
"Well, shit," Roselli said with feeling. "Bring 'em on! Let's stop with the pussyfooting and settle this thing, right?"
"Rules of engagement," Doc snorted. "Who do they think they're shittin' anyway?"
Murdock and MacKenzie had not stayed on the flight deck for long. Nassau was in the middle of full flight deck ops, using her catapult to hurl Marine Harriers into the sky one after another. The noise on the flight deck was so loud that anyone without protective headgear would have been deafened in moments, and ordinary conversation, certainly, was impossible. Too, the stink of jet fuel made that "fresh air" Murdock had spoken of rather hard to find. After being confronted by a chief aviation boatswain's mate who told them both point blank that unless they had some specific business on his flight deck they'd both be pleased to go play tourist someplace the hell else, they decided to take the man's advice and find a spot for themselves somewhere out of the way.
The crew's lounge, aft and three levels down from the LPH's flight deck, normally didn't cater to either officers or master chief petty officers, and from the looks they were getting, Murdock decided that there probably wasn't any place aboard this ship where he and MacKenzie could unwind, at least not without collecting stares. A ship, even one as large as the Nassau with a complement of 58 officers, 882 enlisted men, and 1,924 Marines, is a tight, tiny community where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else, and where the only thing faster than radio communications is shipboard scuttlebutt. The SEALs had attracted a lot of attention since they'd come aboard two weeks ago, and Murdock still wasn't used to always being watched.