Normally, trying an unarmed takedown of soldiers with automatic weapons was nothing less than an act of desperation… and a great way to get somebody shot. Murdock had taken the measure of these men, though, and decided that if the SEALs were going to make a break, it had better be now, while things were confused, rather than later… quite probably inside a Greek prison cell. The soldiers, he thought, were army troops brought in to assist the DEA, not DEA men themselves. They were young and they were inexperienced; it was clear from their milling about on the dock that they didn't have the faintest idea what was going on. No doubt they'd been rousted out of their barracks that evening and told that they were helping the police, and they still didn't know who or what their prisoners were.
They were finding out in a hurry. One-two-three, and three more soldiers were down or disarmed. In the flurry of confusion, the male prisoner off the Glaros saw an opportunity and started to run, but Razor calmly reached out with one foot and tripped him, slamming him facedown into the pavement.
"Drop 'em! Drop 'em!" Magic barked, gesturing with the grease gun he'd lifted from one of his victims. The soldiers gaped at each other, then at Magic, who shouted at Papagos in frustration, "For Christ's sake, Nick, tell these guys to drop 'em!" One by one, pistols and submachine guns clattered onto the pavement, and men began raising their hands in the air.
Murdock, meanwhile, had reached down and grabbed Solomos by his hair, whipping him up and around with his left arm about the man's throat, one extended right knuckle pressed menacingly against the DEA captain's temple. "Let's have the keys to Roselli's cuffs, Captain." The man struggled, then tried to pull away, and Murdock increased the pressure of his knuckle against his head. "Do it, or I'll reach into your skull and pluck out your eyeballs from the inside! Do it!"
Hastily, Solomos grabbed something, and a Greek sergeant unlocked Roselli's hands. The other soldiers stood in a half circle around the SEALS, some looking confused or scared, others furiously angry. Papagos made the rounds then, gathering up the discarded weapons. Keeping three of the grease guns and several magazines, he dropped the rest over the side of the pier with a loud splash. After a moment's thought, Murdock also ordered them to unlock the girl's hands as well. She was almost certainly an innocent bystander, but Murdock had heard unpleasant things about what went on inside Greek jails. Besides, she might be persuaded to help with the other prisoner.
With a squealing of tires, a dark blue, four-door sedan bumped up onto the curb with Scotty Frazier at the wheel. Armed, then, the SEALs backed away, keeping their weapons trained both on the Greek soldiers and on the sailors watching helplessly from the deck of the patrol boat. Several tourists, those who hadn't already fled, stood nearby, watching as though the whole scenario had been arranged for their entertainment. Roselli helped the girl into the front seat, then slid in beside her. Magic and Papagos climbed into the back.
"Just to show you my heart's in the right place," Murdock told Solomos, reaching across the man's shoulder and plucking a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver from his shoulder holster, "you can have that one." He pointed at the prisoner who, face bloodied, was still lying on the concrete. Murdock had considered bringing the man along as well, but decided that he would be too likely to slow them up.
Besides, he owed Captain Beasley one; the Delta team must know what was going on down here but they hadn't intervened against the SEALS. Leaving the prisoner as an intelligence source for Delta would be a good way to say thank you.
"You will be court-martialed for this!" Solomos growled.
"Maybe, but it won't be your choice. Now why don't you work on finding out where the real bad guys took Ellen Kingston, okay? Otherwise we might have to come back here to discuss it with you, and I don't think you'd like that at all." He gave Solomos a hard shove, knocking him to the pavement, then dove into the open right rear door of the sedan. As the car lurched forward off the curb, he could hear Solomos screaming up the wall of the tower. "Beasley! Shoot him! Beasley! Shoot him!"
Then the car was racing down the Leoforos Nikis, past the White Tower and then hard left onto the Ethnikis Aminas. "You know where you're going?" he asked Frazier from the back seat. Much of downtown Salonika was off-limits to cars in an attempt to control pollution, some parts just during the day, others at all times. The streets, most of them, were straight, but many crossed one another at confusing angles.
"No problem, Skipper," Frazier called back. "But we're going to want to ditch this heap before we get close to the new hotel."
"Right. What is it… a rental?"
"Uh, actually, Boss," Frazier said, sounding embarrassed, "Mac and me didn't have time to find a rental place, and anyway, Mac was worried about the paper trail, y'know?"
"So you stole it."
"Yeah. Well, borrowed it."
"Right. I should have guessed. You guys ever decided to leave the Navy, you've got a great career ahead of you in larceny and grand theft."
"Hey, be all that you can be," Roselli quipped.
"That's the damned Army, numb-nuts," Magic said.
"Aw, they won't mind if we borrow their slogan. We borrowed one of their suspects, didn't we?"
"Cap it," Murdock warned. He still didn't know if the girl spoke English, and he didn't want her to hear too much. "Let's find a place to stop, okay?"
Somewhere in the distance, a police siren was giving its odd, piercing, two-tone chant. The SEALs were going to have to work fast if they were to salvage anything out of this mess.
Jaybird throttled back on the Zodiac's engine, turning the steering handle slightly to guide the rubber boat gently past an anchored sailboat. The gasoline engine was louder than the SEAL could have wished, but there was still plenty of commotion going on across the harbor to the southeast, and he doubted that anybody was paying him any attention.
Ashore, two police cars hurried past, racing along the Leoforos Nikis toward the White Tower. He hoped Roselli was okay.
The operation this evening had been loosely planned and open-ended; ideally, Jaybird and Roselli were supposed to have grabbed Vlachos and Trahanatzis and gotten them ashore in the rubber Zodiac. Mac, DeWitt, Frazier, Stepano, and Papagos were supposed to find a new hotel, one hidden away in a secluded part of the city where Solomos and his people weren't likely to find them, then go out and boost a couple of cars. After that, Papagos was to join Magic and the L-T by the White Tower, where they would be watching the op go down with the Delta guys. Frazier would take one car and be their backup if they needed a fast getaway, Stepano would stay at the hotel, and Mac and DeWitt would take the other car and wait for Roselli and Jaybird to show up at the pier near the customs house.
Jaybird still wasn't sure what had gone wrong, though he suspected that that bastard Solomos was behind it. Maybe he'd seen the two SEALs making their final approach on the yacht from his OP overlooking the harbor. Maybe Jaybird and Roselli had simply been guilty of extremely bad timing, launching their snatch operation at the same time as a planned raid by the Greek police. Whatever the reason, the original plan had gone to hell as soon as that Greek patrol boat had come rumbling out of the night, searchlight glaring.
But SEALs were good at improvisation, and the possible need for improvisation had been worked into the plan. When one of the two men had come sailing over the Glaros's transom and into the water, Sterling had drawn his diver's knife, grabbed him from behind, and delivered a short, sharp blow with the knife's pommel to the base of the guy's skull. He'd gone limp, and Sterling had rolled him into the Zodiac tied to Glaros's stern.