Counterfire

27

“In jail?” Murdock exploded. “How in hell?”

“Skipper, the men worked with the colonel on some dishy little jobs this morning checking out suppliers to the boats. It was a total waste of time. When we got back at noon, he said the men could take the rest of the day off. If anybody wanted to go into town he’d give them passes, but they had to be back by 1800. We had some expense money that we parceled out, so the guys wouldn’t be flat broke. Turns out this is an expensive town.”

“And?” Murdock said, urging him on.

“Jaybird didn’t come back. Just an hour ago we found out he’s in jail on several charges.”

“Such as?”

“They didn’t tell us, Commander.”

Murdock used a phone in the dayroom and called the colonel’s office. He wasn’t there. An aide said he might be at the officers’ club. He was. Murdock called and told him the problem.

“Yes, the talkative one. It’s happened before with some of my men. Be at my office in ten minutes in your cleanest cammies. No time for a dress uniform even if you had one. One of my aides and two of our military police will go with you. We usually have good relations with the Tel Aviv police.”

Ten minutes later at the colonel’s office, Murdock met a Captain Bildad, who arrived in a military sedan with driver.

“Commander, sorry about this,” said the captain. “If it isn’t too serious, we should be able to straighten it out. I have authorization to bring your man to our brig under military police escort. If it comes to that, I have a fund we can use to pay a fine or bail.”

“I can’t let these guys out of my sight for five minutes,” Murdock began.

Captain Bildad chuckled. “Sir, they are SEALs. We know about the dangerous jobs you do, the risks that you take. It’s only natural to let off steam once in a while.”

“Let’s hope that the city police are that understanding.” The two military policemen came in a vehicle behind the captain’s sedan. Murdock stewed about it all the way into town. Once there, he tried to relax. They were taken into a reception area, where a sergeant looked up the record and gave a folder to a police captain, who ushered the two officers and the military policemen into a conference room.

Introductions were made. Captain Ranon leafed through the report and looked up. Murdock couldn’t read his face. He was short and solid, with a bull neck ending abruptly in his chiseled face. A small crack appeared in one corner of his mouth; then his eyes took on a tiny glint.

“Commander, you’re with the U.S. Navy SEALs, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So is this lad we have in custody, one David Sterling?”

“That’s right, sir. One of my best men.”

“He seems to be good at several things. We have a complaint here that he was observed climbing the outside of one of our older hotels. He was on the fifth-floor level sitting on a narrow ledge, talking to the pigeons and singing bawdy songs.”

“Yes, sir, that could be our Sterling.”

There was an awkward pause. “Sir, what are the charges against Petty Officer Sterling?”

The captain looked at the papers again and rifled through two or three. “One charge is peeping, looking in a lady’s hotel room, but that one is probably without much merit. The second charge is trespassing. It seems he did not have the hotel’s permission to scale the outside of the building. It attracted quite a crowd before it was over. That is a minor charge.”

“There is more, Captain?”

“I’m afraid so. The more serious charges of exposing himself in public and lewd conduct.”

“Sir, I don’t quite understand.”

“Your Petty Officer Sterling was naked during this climb, Commander. Then he relieved himself, urinating on the fifth-floor ledge.”

Murdock shook his head as the Israelis behind him grinned and muffled the urge to laugh.

“Sir, this particular man has a tendency to get a little drunk at times and when he does, his usual conduct is to climb the outside of buildings in the buff. I can’t explain it. He can’t explain it. I’m sure some psychiatrist after three or four years of probing could come up with the reason. I assure you, he’s harmless. He’s also a highly decorated member of my platoon, where he has served with outstanding distinction for four years. He’s been wounded in action three times, and has a part of a Presidential Unit Citation. He would have various military medals, but our work is covert, therefore no publicity, therefore no medals.”

The police captain shuffled the papers again, closed the folder, and put it on his desk.

“Yes, I can see he’s an integral part of your operation. Are you now under orders with one Colonel Ben-Ami of the Israeli Army Special Operatives Section of the Mistaravim Counter Terrorism Unit?”

“We are, Captain. Sixteen of us.”

“Hmmmm.” The captain looked at the papers again. “Commander, the nickname of Jaybird, the first name that he gave us after his arrest. What does that mean?”

“Sir, it’s from some early American literature, folklore or local sayings. It comes from naked as a jaybird. Which, as you know, he tends to be now and then.”

The policeman looked at Captain Bildad. “Sir, I would assume that you represent Colonel Ben-Ami in this situation. What does the Army have to say?”

“Captain, we have been operating with the Third Platoon of the U.S. Navy SEALs now for about ten days. They have undertaken dangerous and highly productive raids in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. They have performed flawlessly, with precision, at the lowest cost of life. Petty Officer Sterling is an integral part of that operation.

“At the current time we are on a joint venture to stop once and for all the floating booby traps that our beach areas have been plagued with for the past eleven months. Petty Officer Sterling is a part of that operation. Colonel Ben-Ami requests that if the charges are not of a serious criminal nature, the man be released into the custody of the Israeli Army’s Military Police and jurisdiction.”

The police captain nodded at the Army captain, who took a step back. All but the policeman were standing. The cop looked over the papers again, then closed the file and held it out to one of the military policemen.

“Nothing here that should merit the incarceration of the man. He is hereby turned over to the military police, and his commanding officer, and because of his service to the nation, all records of this arrest and the incident are expunged from our databases. This session is closed. You are all free to leave. The man will be brought to you in the waiting area.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Murdock said. They filed out.

Captain Bildad walked beside Murdock. “Well, we won that one. I’ve lost here before. It’s a kind of informal hearing in noncriminal cases. The MPs will take Jaybird in their car until we get back to the base; then he’s all yours.” The captain grinned. “How many times has this happened?”

“Not sure, but he’s only been arrested four times now for it. No jail time, but there was a hundred-dollar fine and costs once.”

When Jaybird came out, he wore a jail jumpsuit of bright orange. The outfit discouraged escape attempts. They never did find his clothes, which he took off and threw away as he climbed the hotel. Jaybird wasn’t making jokes.

“Fucking head hurts like twenty jackhammers are having a contest,” he said. He looked at Murdock, then quickly away. “Sorry, Skipper. Just got carried away. Don’t know what the booze is they serve over here.”

“See you back at the air base,” Murdock said, a small smile showing. Jaybird did look like he was hurting. Good. Maybe it would be longer before he tried his naked climb again.

Back in the SEALs’ quarters a half hour later, Jaybird had little to say. He took a shower, grabbed a can of Coke from the machine, and hit his bunk. Nobody jazzed him about it. The old hands knew better from previous experiences, and the newer men took a clue from the vets.

The Israelis had brought in a big-screen TV set and hooked it to cable. In the other end of the dayroom they had provided a CD player and a hundred CDs, mostly American artists.

Murdock sat in between with the phone. He had been talking to a weather specialist at the Israeli Coast Watch.

“Right, I want to know how many times during the past two months there were high tides that peaked between six and eight in the morning.”

“I could almost tell you from memory, but I’ll do a search on my tides computer file. It should have it down to the minute. Then I’ll read off the dates to you. Will that work?”

Murdock said it would, and waited for the computer to do its work. Three minutes later the night man at the Coast Watch desk had the data. Murdock wrote down the dates. There had been eleven days in the past two months when the tides were high between 0600 and 0800 on the beaches around Tel Aviv.

Murdock tried to contact the bomb squad at the Tel Aviv police, but a recording said they were all out and in an emergency he should dial the general police contact number. He had to wait for morning.

About 2200 Murdock, Lam, DeWitt, Sadler, and Fernandez sat around a table in the dayroom talking about the bombings.

“No way we can just pick up the guy who spreads the bomblets,” Fernandez said. “Hey, we’ve got to follow the trail to the guy who provides him, and then nail him and find out where he gets the shit and nail him. We get back at least three levels and we should be able to choke off the beach bombings altogether.”

“Right,” Sadler said. “Just chopping off the rattles won’t kill the damn snake. Got to go for the body and then smash its head.”

“First we stop the drops, then we go for the next step,” Murdock said.

“Bet you ten to one it’s some fucking A-rab who owns the fishing boat that’s dumping the goods,” Lam said. “Then he has complete control. He can go out anytime that he wants to.”

“Our top two suspects are Israelis,” Murdock said.

“That would make them traitors; they could hang. Does Israel have the death penalty?”

No one knew. The consensus was that it did not.

“How else can we hit the bastards?” DeWitt asked.

“We hit them right up the supply chain,” Murdock said. “The things come from overseas somewhere, so they import them. Once we nail the delivery boy on the Mediterranean, we should be able to squeeze the name of the up-the-line sumbitches out of him.”

Murdock looked around the group. Eyes were starting to drop shut. “Okay, you brain-trust guys. I’m packing it in. Tomorrow Lam and I will work the bomb squad and see what backgrounding we can do with our fishing buddy Captain Sartan on the two major suspects. The rest of you can do some training, or Ed will check with Colonel Ben-Ami to see if there are any other developmental tasks we can do while we wait for the next morning high tide.”

Murdock figured he’d drop right off the second his head hit the pillow, but it didn’t work that way. Jaybird kept cropping up. He’d really looked subdued after this episode. Lucky it was over here and not in the States. If Commander Masciareli, their SEAL Team Seven boss, found out about it, there would be hell to pay. He’d threatened to cashier Jaybird out of SEALs if he ever did his naked climb again. No reason he’d ever hear about it. Murdock would tell each man about the situation and pledge him to silence.

So, he had to have a long talk with the Jaybird. There was a chance that booze was getting to him. It could have turned into poison for him and set off some uncontrollable impulses in his brain. He’d have that talk with Jaybird and try to get him on the wagon for six months. With these hard-drinking SEALs, it would be tough, but not as hard as in the old days. Murdock shook his head, remembering when he went through BUD/S. It was a beer bust every other night. Yeah, he’d have that talk with Jaybird tomorrow. Take him on the trip to town to talk to the bomb squad and then the Coast Watch people. He had to get this damn timing down. It could lead to capturing the bomb spreader. Tomorrow.