Direct Action

28

From his vantage point, Murdock considered the situation. He thought the Syrian sweep was a serious development but not a catastrophic one. The advance on line was the most difficult military formation to control. Anyone who had tried it with only a few troops over a short distance knew how hard it was. To do it with more than a thousand troops over miles of woods and broken ground was well-nigh impossible without breaks in the line, units getting ahead of or behind each other, and frequent stops to sort things out. Seven men ought to be able to either evade or slip through that force. It was something SEALs specialized in.

The main problem, as Murdock saw it, was bringing helicopters into the midst of such a concentration of enemy, even at night. It was going to be tricky. And, like all ground commanders in the age of the helicopter, he wasn’t quite sure how much information to give out. If you told the truth about how bad it was, they might not come and get you. If you didn’t, they might come in using the wrong routes or tactics and get shot down, also putting you in the lurch. He wasn’t worried about the 160th. It was the CIA’s timidity that had gotten them into the present situation, and Murdock didn’t intend to test their resolve any more than he had to.

He would have loved to consult with Razor Roselli just then, but he had to assume that the Syrian electronic warfare units had also come out to the field that Saturday. With modern equipment, even a short transmission from an MX-300 was way too easy to get a fix on.

The essence of war was the right place and the right time, and Murdock intended to choose well. He estimated that the Syrian sweep line would reach the patrol base in an hour and a half, two hours at the outside.

“As nice as it is up here,” he said to Jaybird, “I think we’d better get back to the platoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hey, Jaybird?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop calling me sir, will you? After all this time it just makes me think you’re fucking with me.”

Jaybird’s grin was enormous. “Yes, sir.”

Murdock sighed.

They eased their way down the hill and back to the patrol base. And after an exchange of birdcalls, the backup signal to a radio message, they got into the patrol base without being shot by their fellow SEALS. It had happened.

“I love it how the breaks just keep getting better and better,” said Razor Roselli after Murdock gave him the news.

All the SEALs were in a tight circle. Shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face. “Comments?” Murdock requested.

“Make some hides, let them walk right past us?” Higgins suggested.

“We don’t have time to dig good ones,” said Doc. “These woods are so open, if a Syrian took a wrong step and fell into just one hide, we’d all be screwed.”

“What the Syrians are counting on,” Magic Brown weighed in, “is that we’ve got the wide-open valley and fields to our east, and another thousand feet of mountains that are just bare rocks to our west. These woods aren’t more than three miles across at the widest point. Look how long we had to patrol to find enough cover to cross the damn roads. We’re going to have a hell of a time maneuvering around to find a gap in their lines.”

“I was watching how they’re doing the sweep,” said Jaybird. “Every time they came to a road everyone would automatically stop. That way whoever fell behind got a chance to catch up. Then, when they were all on the road, all covered and aligned, they’d start up again. It worked pretty good, ‘cause there’s dirt roads cutting across these woods every couple of miles. So if we’re going to make a move, it has to be just before they reach a road and get themselves unfucked. That’s when they’re the most disorganized and vulnerable.” He looked around the circle to see what everyone was thinking.

“Keep going,” Murdock urged. “You’re on a roll.”

“Okay,” Jaybird said, feeding off the enthusiasm. “What we’ve got to do is think a couple of moves ahead of them, like Magic does in chess.”

Imagining he was hearing his game slandered, Razor’s eyes narrowed. “Now,” said Jaybird, “What I was thinking is this.

Listening, Murdock felt once again that any officer who thought he had all the answers was an asshole.

When Jaybird finished, Razor Roselli was the first to speak. “You know something, Turdbird? I think you’re starting to work your way off my shit list.”