Direct Action

25

The light on the keypad blinked. Murdock and Razor were both huddled over the tiny display.

“What the fuck took them so long?” Razor whispered in Murdock’s ear. “They bring in Shakespeare to compose the fucking message?”

Murdock reached over and hit the button to review the message.

They watched eagerly as it ran across the narrow strip window of the display:

Razor couldn’t believe it, and reviewed the message again.

Murdock felt like he’d been kicked in the balls.

Razor took a moment to regain his composure, then whispered, “Well, this has to be the best fucking I’ve ever taken, bar none.”

“I think I’m finally starting to get a handle on the drawbacks to working for the CIA,” Murdock whispered back to him.

“Fuck ‘em,” Razor whispered. “We’ll get our own selves out.”

“Acknowledge the transmission,” Murdock told Higgins. “And don’t tell them to go fuck themselves.”

“Roger that, sir,” the Professor replied. “I’ll keep it professional.”

With that, as might be expected sitting in the Lebanese woods with dawn approaching, it was back to business.

Murdock crawled to each man and gave him a whispered briefing. They were SEALS, so no one went hysterical. At first some of them thought Murdock was playing a really bad joke. Then there were a few whispered oaths, followed by a general shrugging of shoulders, as if all that could be expected from the powers that be was a good hard shot up the ass anyway. The SEALs knew what kind of situation they were in but, since they were SEALS, it was the kind of situation they expected to find themselves in.

Murdock briefed them because they needed, deserved to know. And because, as usual, they picked his morale right back up. Jaybird Sterling wanted to know if it meant an extra day of combat pay. Murdock said only if it went past midnight the next day. Jaybird then asked if the lieutenant would take that into consideration in his planning, since he was thinking of buying a motorcycle.

Then Murdock, Razor, and DeWitt pulled a poncho over their heads, turned on a flashlight, and broke out their maps for an impromptu conference.

“Let’s get the hard stuff out of the way first,” said Razor. “We have to leave Kos here.”

Murdock started. He knew it would eventually come down to that, but it would have taken him a while to bring the subject up.

“He’s too big,” said Razor, “and we’ve got too many people hurt and sick to carry him, move fast, and still keep good security. If he was alive we’d take him, no matter what. But you don’t die for the dead. Kos would understand.” He paused again. “I’ll handle the boys.”

“All right,” said Murdock. The fact that you got paid to make the tough decisions didn’t make them any easier.

DeWitt closed his eyes and nodded.

“Okay,” said Razor. “Now, which way do we go? Right now we got our backs up against the mountain range to our west. Not a damn piece of cover on the whole mountain range. We’re coming from the east, the bad guys are following us from that direction. So east is out. I guess we can go either north or south.”

“South is Israel,” said DeWitt.

“It’s not the U.S.-Canada border,” Razor said dubiously. “There’s mine-fields, fences, and a shitload of people with guns. Just to get to their security zone in south Lebanon we’d have to go through a lot of Hezbollah country. Plus it’s a long goddamned walk.”

“Let’s not get off the track here,” said Murdock. “We just have to hide out for twelve hours or so.”

“So they say,” Razor retorted.

“Looking on the bright side,” said DeWitt, “the Syrians are going to think that anyone slick enough to pull off what we did would be long gone by now.”

“If we were Israelis, we would be,” said Razor. “Good thing they don’t know what a stupid bunch of dicks we really are.”

“A few klicks south the forest disappears and we’re back in open country,” said Murdock. “I vote we head north, stay in the woods. And we get moving right now, make as much distance as we can before daylight.”

“This is a vote?” Razor inquired.

“It’s a vote,” Murdock confirmed.

“Then I vote we go north.”

“Don’t look at me to disagree,” said DeWitt, grinning in the red glow of the flashlight. “I’m just the j.g.”

“We love you all the same, sir,” said Razor, trying to lighten the mood like a good chief.