Flashpoint

21

Murdock stared at the gun-wielding American. “¿Qué pasa? Qué pasa?” Murdock said, using his best Spanish accent.

“Oh, shit, you kidding? None of the greasers down here have frogman junk like you’re wearing. Full wet suits, breathers, masks, gloves, and even boots.”

“Inspección, inspección.” Murdock shouted, not knowing what else to do. He held out both his hands in a pleading gesture.

Two silenced rounds drilled into the gunman’s chest six feet in front of Murdock. The guard grunted and slammed backward, dropping the submachine gun he held and falling with dead weight against some pipes and pulleys on the deck.

Murdock charged forward and grabbed the weapon and checked the American. He was dead.

Jaybird climbed over the rail and grinned in the darkness through his camo-paint-splotched face.

“De nada,” Jaybird whispered. Together they lifted the body and carried it down a dozen feet along the rail and dropped it overboard. By then, two more SEALs were on deck, and they spread out as previously arranged. Murdock and Jaybird took the bridge; two more men cleared the area just below it. And two more took each of the other decks and areas where there might be crew or guards.

On the bridge, Murdock and Jaybird found one Bolivian guard sleeping. They knocked him out and tied his hands and feet with riot cuffs. The papers were all in Spanish. By the time they moved down the ladders to the holds, Senior Chief Dobler said the boat was secure.

“We found three crew and three more guards, all goofing off. No shooting. All contained and cuffed. Ching talked to all of them. One said the secret cargo was in hold four. He took us down to it. This way, Cap.”

Hold four was in the center of the big cargo vessel. A mixed cargo was arranged around the heavy wooden boxes. Each one was four feet square and three feet high. Jaybird found some tools and ripped off the top of one. Inside, wrapped in triple heavy plastic, lay the powdered cocaine.

Lampedusa had out a fire hose, and Bradford waited at the valve to turn it on. There were ten boxes stacked three high. Ching and Ronson pushed the top ones off to fall to the deck, then the men began breaking in the tops of the other boxes.

The water came on, and Lam aimed it into the powder. At first they used too much pressure and the white powder flew all over. With practice, they figured out how much water to use and washed down one box after another until there was a milky flood over half of the hold floor. It took longer than they figured. An hour into it, they had half the boxes of cocaine ruined. All the tops were now pried off, and a second fire hose was watering down the coke.

Jaybird came running down a ladder and called to Murdock.

“We have some trouble, Cap. Four guys coming up the gangplank. Two in suits. Two look like gorillas.”

Murdock took Jaybird and Dobler with their silenced sub guns, and they ran up to the top deck. The men headed for the bridge.

“¿Aye, qué pasa?” Murdock called. The men turned. Two pulled out automatic handguns, looking for trouble. Murdock and Jaybird had shots. Both the big men went down with a pair of 9mm slugs in their chests.

Dobler ran up and covered the two suits.

“What the hell is going on here?” one of the suits yelled.

Jaybird checked both the gunmen. Dead.

“I said, what the hell is going on here?” the taller of the two men asked.

“You forgot to pay your insurance on the cocaine shipment,” Murdock said. “As the shipper, you know damn well you have to pay the insurance.”

“We paid off half the damn country…” The man stopped. “Hey, you’re Americans. You divers or frogmen or what the hell?”

“We ask the questions,” Murdock said. “You two want to live more than five minutes, you better start giving me some answers. Names and addresses.”

“Joe Black from Miami,” the taller one said.

“Phillip Bartlesman, Atlanta,” the other said.

“Who do you work for?”

“None of your damned…”

Murdock lifted the silenced MP-5, and the man changed his tone. “We buy from the big guys, the Medellin. Figured we’d cut out a middleman and do our own delivery.”

“Both ships?” Murdock asked.

“Yeah.”

“Street value?”

“About a hundred and thirty mil. But we don’t see a third of that.”

“Nice profit.”

The shorter man dove to one side, drawing a handgun. Dobler tracked him and put five silenced rounds up his back before he could roll. He never pulled out the gun.

“Keerist, you shot him down.”

“He shouldn’t play with guns,” Dobler said. Dobler put the still-hot muzzle of the MP-5 under the suit’s chin. “Isn’t his five minutes up, Cap?”

“Almost. Who do you work for?”

The suit shivered. “Art. Art Ridozzo. Miami. The Ridozzo Family.”

“Some Mafia shithead doesn’t scare me. Tell him he just lost his sixty million dollar investment and to get into another line of work. Can you swim?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Good, come over here to the rail.”

“I can walk down the gangplank.”

“Not yet. When we’re done, you go for a swim. Cuff him, Jaybird. A gag, too. Then let him lie there until we’re done. Dobler, see if you can find out what’s going on at the next ship.”

Murdock didn’t want to use the Motorolas unless he had to. The Medellin cartel could have some serious receivers and scanners in this area. They could afford to buy the best in the world. Dobler trotted to the far side of the freighter. Murdock went back to hold number four.

The milky swamp on the hold floor was a foot deep by then. They were on the last two boxes of cocaine.

Murdock went back on deck and looked at the other freighter anchored fifty feet away. His earphone came on with three clicks. He clicked three back.

“Cap. We’ve got troubles. Thought we had it clean. Four gunmen jumped us. Fernandez is hit bad. Stalled on the meltdown. Could use five more guns. Come up the gangplank. Oh, Christ. Gotta go.”

“Dobler, Jaybird. Finish the meltdown here. Rest of you top deck for the gangplank. Bravo needs some help. Move, now.”

Murdock ran for the gangplank. He scanned the dock. He saw only one wandering homeless man with a plastic sack over his shoulder. It was sixty feet down a wooden and concrete dock to the next freighter. He saw no one on deck. Holt, Bradford, Lam, Ching, and Ronson came storming up to the plank. All had their weapons at port arms, ready for action.

“Trouble on the next boat. Ed might be pinned down. We go up the gangplank without a sound, search for the bad guys. Four of them. They must be in the hold or can look down into the hold. Let’s go.”

The SEALs moved swiftly but without a sound down the metal gangplank to the dock, then ran the sixty feet along the concrete to the next ship’s plank. Lam went first with his eyes wide open, watching for any movement. Nobody was on guard. They all made it to the ship and hunkered down along the rail, listening.

Somewhere inside the ship they heard a shot, then another one. Muffled but not suppressed. The sound came from the aft section. They moved that way. More sounds. Some shouting.

A hatch was open halfway to the aft end. Murdock looked over the side and saw the deep hold with nothing in it but a dozen wooden crates identical to the ones they had in the first ship.

He could see no SEALs. A white milky flood on the hold floor showed some of the coke had been melted.

“How do we get down there?” Murdock asked.

Ching led the way to a set of steel steps leading down to the holds about halfway back. They moved down and worked a series of catwalks and ladders until they were near the open hold.

“Ed, where are you?” Murdock asked on the radio. “Where are the shooters?”

“All of us are pinned down behind the coke crates. Two of the shooters are to our left in some machinery. Two are behind some heavy boxes to the right.”

“We can’t see them,” Murdock said. “We’re halfway down. Can you use a grenade?”

“Afraid where it would bounce. Close quarters in here.”

“Let it cook for two seconds, then throw it. Give it a try.”

Seconds later, a grenade exploded in the hold. The confined space made it sound like a two-thousand-pound bomb going off in an elevator. Murdock and his men crawled forward for a better look into the hold.

Lam pointed to one side. Two men with automatic rifles hid behind wooden crates. Lam pointed right. Murdock took the one on the left. They both fired three-round bursts from the suppressed weapons. The men jolted backward. One tried to crawl around the box. Lam nailed him with three more rounds, and he lay still.

“Two down,” Murdock said.

“I think the grenade did the other two,” DeWitt said on the radio. “Franklin is checking.”

“Two down here, Cap,” Franklin said.

“Get back to the hosing down,” Murdock said. “We’re running behind schedule. How is Fernandez?”

“Not good. He took two rounds, one in the high chest, one in the shoulder. Mahanani got the bleeding stopped, but Fernandez is moving slow. Nothing vital. Mahanani is worried about the top of his lung getting hit.”

As they spoke, Murdock saw his men turning on the hoses again. All of the tops were off the boxes. The millions of dollars of cocaine rapidly turned into worthless soup on the hold’s floor.

Murdock put Lam on deck as a lookout. He checked his watch. It was nearing 2200. He had hoped they could be out of there and moving toward the dock warehouse and the ether by this time.

He found DeWitt. “How much longer here?”

“Half hour at the most. We’re on the last boxes now.”

“Rush it any way you can. How about Fernandez? Use two men to help him up to the rail across from the one you came in. Send any line you have with him. We don’t want him jumping in the water. I’m going to check on top. Any chance those four clowns we offed had a radio?”

“Don’t know. I’ll have somebody check the bodies. Fernandez is on his way. He’s bitching, so he might not be as badly hurt as it looks like.”

Murdock was halfway to the open deck when his earpiece spoke.

“Cap, looks like we have visitors. Two army trucks. Troops getting out of them.”

“Roger that. Dobler and Jaybird. Get out of that ship and into the bay. Come over to the south side of this freighter and wait. Bring all of our drag bags with you.”

“Aye, Cap. Will do.” It was Dobler.

Murdock ran up the last ladder and slid to the deck so he could see over the rail. Looked like two squads of infantry, fourteen men, maybe sixteen. One squad approached each of the two freighters. They went to ground near the gangplank. What were they waiting for?

“Ed, get your guys out of there, now. Come up the far side if you can. Go over the side and pick up the drag bags. Any line? Can you get Fernandez down gently? Time for us to split. Visitors look like security guards, not anxious to get into a fight. Let’s move, now. Everyone over the far side and into the wet.”

“Yes, we have line. We’ll rappel Fernandez down. We’re moving.”

They all still had on their full wet suits, with rebreathers and fins tied around their necks. The SEALS hung on the rail and dropped into the water twenty feet below.

Dobler and Jaybird waited for them at the side of the ship. The rest of the SEALs dropped in and moved underwater at the side of the ship, touching each other to stay together. Murdock and Dobler waited for Fernandez to be let down. He grinned at them, but there was pain in his dark eyes.

“Can you swim, Fernandez?”

“Think so, Cap. Might not keep up. Hurts like hell. One-arm swim time.”

Murdock put Harry Ronson on Fernandez to buddy him and help him keep up. They would try to match their swim speed to the best that Fernandez could do.

Ed indicated by signs he was on his way with a man to get their drag bags on the other side of the freighter. He was back seven minutes later. Murdock had everyone surface along the side of the freighter, and he swam along, counting wet suit hoods. All sixteen accounted for.

Murdock signaled down, and the seals tied as buddies went to fifteen feet and swam around the freighters. Their intel said the ethyl was in one of a pair of old warehouses on the docks near an unused pier no more than five hundred yards from the freighters. Murdock hoped that they were right. Fernandez worried him. The chest shot could be bad. He could go sour and die as he tried to swim.

After enough strokes to cover 500 yards, Murdock surfaced with his tied-on buddy, Holt, for a sneak and peak. He barely let his face break the surface and looked around. They were thirty yards off the dock, a wooden affair that stilted ten feet into the water.

Around Murdock more SEALs broke the surface. He counted. Seven pairs of heads showing.

Where were Fernandez and Ronson? It had to be them. He waited two minutes by his watch, then another minute. To his relief, he saw two more heads surface slowly. Ronson’s rebreather tube came out of his mouth. “Cap?” he whispered. Murdock was halfway there.

“Need to get Fernandez to shore pronto. He’s hurting.”

Murdock helped pull Fernandez along as they swam to shore under the overhead of the dock. They eased down on the rocky shoreline, and Fernandez took off his mouthpiece and goggles and shook his head.

“Gonna be a long night, Cap. Don’t think I can hold up my end of the fight.”

“You rest right here. This one should be a cakewalk. Just a little bonfire to start. Then we take an easy run down the channel and out to sea. Have you back on the Jefferson before you know it.” Murdock found Quinley along the line of SEALs.

“Watch Fernandez. Stay with him. Get him some morphine and pain pills from Mahanani. Time for us to be moving up.”

They left their rebreathers and fins on the rocky slope just over the water and took out of the drag bags what they needed. More TNAZ and C-4 and extra ammo. The alert around the ship might have triggered more troops to come to the area.

Murdock went to the side of the pier and up to the top. He watched the first warehouse for five minutes. There appeared to be no roving guards. He couldn’t be sure about fixed guard posts. Lam had come up with him and said he’d take a quick look around the place and see what he could find.

Lam moved a dozen feet toward the building. He was still thirty feet away from it when a siren went off, floodlights billowed on his side of the building, painting the whole scene as light as day. Lam surged back over the rocks beside the pier and out of sight.

The SEALs had taken out their Motorolas from waterproof pouches as soon as they landed. Now Murdock hit his lip mike.

“Snipers, get the hell up here. We have some fucking floodlights to shoot out. Looks like the party is starting.”