Nucflash

10

Inge Schmidt left her apartment, walking down the long hallway, turning into the foyer, and stepping out into the early morning sunshine. It was a glorious day, with a clear blue sky and the promise of an early spring.

She wondered if… no, when she would see Blake again.

The truth of the matter was that the American SEAL had really gotten to her, despite all of her promises to herself never to become emotionally involved again… not the way she’d been with Josef. Thinking about Blake, she couldn’t help but remember the attack that evening, when she’d seen him take down three of their four attackers in the space of a couple of heartbeats.

“Guten tag, Fräulein.”

She started. Glancing to her left, she saw Klaus Dengler’s ironic smile as he leaned against the side of a trash dumpster, crisply dressed in a suit that betrayed the bulge of an automatic pistol beneath his jacket. “Hello, Klaus. All quiet?”

“So far.”

Dengler was a Section Three man, one of those assigned to provide security for Inge since the incident here on this very street three days before. It was nothing so obvious as a constant guard; someone was simply… always about, walking around the block, sitting in a car in the parking lot with a newspaper, or perhaps sitting on the front step, talking with a friend.

“Well, you can come on in to work now,” she told him. “I don’t think anyone will steal the building while I’m gone.”

“Actually, Fraulein, I’ll be following you in this morning.” He shrugged. “The boss wants it that way, until we know more about why those RAF thugs tried to get you the other night.”

“Well, I’ll see you at work, then.” She walked toward her Renault, parked in her numbered space in the lot.

She heard a shoe scrape on the pavement behind her. She assumed it was Klaus… but something tickled at the back of her mind, a warning, a tremor of fear, and she turned. A stranger was there, a big man in a heavy overcoat, coming straight toward her and only a few feet away now. He was reaching beneath his unbuttoned coat, pulling something out…

Turning sharply, she started to run, but two more men had appeared, one emerging from behind her car in the lot, the other moving rapidly toward her from across the street. That stopped her… and an instant later a hand closed on her upper arm. “Be perfectly silent, Miss Schmidt,” the man said in German.

She twisted hard, trying to gain the leverage she needed to break the hold, but something ice-cold and metallic pressed against the base of her neck. “Don’t,” the man said.

“What is it? What do you want?”

“Some information. You will come with us.”

“Go to hell!” She opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could.

The blow on the back of her head stunned her, an explosion of pain that made her gasp and turned her knees to jelly. Slumping forward, she felt the man in the raincoat grab her from behind, keeping her on her feet. She wanted to fight back, wanted to lash out, but the blow had stunned her to the point where she was having trouble coordinating any movement, or even managing to stand. “Help me,” he barked in German to one of the others.

She heard running footsteps. As they dragged her off the sidewalk, she was just able to turn her head. Expecting to see still more assailants, she was momentarily relieved, then horrified, to see Klaus Dengler running toward her, an H&K pistol already drawn from his shoulder holster.

Gunfire erupted from at least two different directions — the muffled, hissing chirps of sound-suppressed shots — and Dengler stumbled, took another three steps, then collapsed facedown onto the pavement.

“Klaus! No!” Even stunned, Inge could still twist and struggle in her captor’s grasp. God, they’d shot down Klaus!

Shock warred with shock. Somehow, she found the strength to scream again, louder, and someone clamped a leather-gloved hand over her mouth. “None of that, Miss Schmidt,” he said in her ear. “Be a good girl and come with us and you will not be harmed. I am sorry about your friend, but… fortunes of war, yes?”

With a squeal of tires, a van careened around the corner, pulling up on the street opposite the parking lot, and her captors half dragged, half walked her across the road. Her eyes widened in terror. It was the same panel truck Blake had noticed the other night, the same vehicle that had carried the two “utilities men” to the attack in the parking lot. Desperate now, more desperate than she’d ever been in her life. She lashed out in a karate sidekick against one of the men holding her.

Her target yelped, then cursed; one of the others hit her again from behind, then propelled her forward, facedown onto a rug on the floor of the van. Someone else, a woman, she thought, was ready with handcuffs, securely locking her wrists together behind her back.

“You bastards—”

“Quiet, bitch.” A hand roughly yanked her hair, hard, forcing her head up and back. A wad of something — a roll of gauze, she thought — was jammed into her mouth. She tried to spit it out, but they were wrapping tape around her head and over the gauze, effectively gagging her. One of the men tossed her handbag in after her. Doors slammed. The van’s engine gunned, and she felt the lurch of acceleration, followed by a right turn at the next intersection down the street.

A man kneeled beside her, rummaging through her handbag, then extracting the pistol she carried there. “Ah!” he said, smiling. “You were planning perhaps on using this on us?” Several of the others laughed.

The one who’d yanked her hair settled his weight across her buttocks, straddling her hips. Still tugging her hair back as he reached down over her shoulder, he fumbled with the front of her blouse, tearing buttons free, then reached his hand in and slipped it under her bra. Her skin crawled as he squeezed her breast, and she screamed into the gag, twisting back and forth, trying to throw her tormentor off.

“Johann!” The woman’s voice snapped. “None of that!”

The hand lingered, then pinched her painfully before sliding out from under her clothing. “Shit, Felda,” the man said. “I wasn’t hurting her… ”

“Ulrich said no rough stuff,” the man with her handbag said. “Leave her alone!”

Abruptly, the weight on her buttocks lifted and was gone. A blanket was dropped on top of her, smothering her in darkness.

In blackness, then, Inge sensed the van racing down the street. She tried to roll over, but someone dropped his legs heavily across her back, pinning her to the floor.

She was pretty sure from the turns she was sensing that they were headed toward the Autobahn, probably heading north.

Not that the knowledge helped her even the tiniest bit.

Murdock stood with Colonel Wentworth next to an HMMWV, the ubiquitous “hum-vee” of the NATO forces. They appeared to be standing on the main drag of a small town, with narrow streets and neat two- and three-story buildings. Wentworth held a stopwatch in one hand. Sergeant Major Dunn was with them, pressing the earphone of a headset speaker to his ear as he monitored the radio net.

The mock battle was already very nearly over. Murdock heard another muffled three-round burst… then one more… and then Dunn, still listening to the radio net, announced, “Exercise complete.”

Wentworth’s thumb snicked the button on his stopwatch, and he peered at the final time with a skeptical stare. “Two-twenty-one,” he said. “Slow… damned slow!”

Dunn, meanwhile, changed channels on his radio and spoke into his pencil mike. “All right, Freddy. Send ’em on through!”

Two more hummers drove up a few minutes later, both crowded with men. As the vehicles creaked to a stop and the doors banged open, Murdock immediately recognized the passengers spilling from them and onto the street.

A young U.S. Navy lieutenant j.g. with a SEAL’s Budweiser on dress whites totally at odds with Murdock’s green fatigues snapped to attention and saluted crisply. “Good morning, Lieutenant! Gold Platoon reporting for duty!”

“Two Eyes,” Murdock said slowly, watching as seven enlisted sailors spilled into a rough line along the street. “What the hell is this?”

The j.g. was Ed DeWitt, known as “Two Eyes” for his position as “2IC,” the platoon’s second-in-command. “I guess Washington decided you couldn’t handle the SAS all by yourself, Skipper,” he said, grinning. He handed a bulky manila envelope to Murdock. “They sent us over to help you out.”

Dubiously, Murdock accepted the envelope, unwound the length of twine sealing the flap, and glanced briefly at the thick sheaf of orders inside. The cover sheet on top told him what he needed to know. Stripped of its Navyese jargon and bureaucratic circumlocutions, it informed him that NAVSPECWARGRU-2—that was the Navy’s Special Warfare Group stationed at Norfolk — had been placed on alert pending the possible unfolding of a terrorist scenario somewhere in northern Europe. First Platoon, SEAL Seven, was directed to continue with its current mission — meaning the exchange training program with the SAS at Dorset — but to maintain an alert readiness state in anticipation of further orders. To this end, First Platoon’s Gold Squad was being transferred from Norfolk to Dorset. Operational equipment and expendables would be arriving on a MACV flight at Lakenheath by late tomorrow.

There was no word as to what the terrorist scenario might be, but Murdock was certain that the intelligence reports filtering back both from the interrogation of the Korean woman at Lakenheath and from the BKA in Wiesbaden must have gotten someone back in CONUS pretty damned well stirred up.

And about time too. Too often, especially lately, the White House had been totally adrift when it came to reacting to developments overseas. Maybe this time someone back there had finally read an intel brief on smuggled nukes and been scared enough to forget about apple-polishing, ass-kissing, and sound bites on the evening news.

Maybe.

Murdock tucked the packet of orders under his arm and let his gaze run down the line of men. Gunner’s Mate First Class Miguel “Rattler” Fernandez, Gold Squad’s big-muscled 60-gunner. Radioman First Class Ron “Bearcat” Holt. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ben “Kos” Kosciuszko. Torpedoman’s Mate Second Class Eric Nicholson, variously called Red for his hair color, or “Nickel” for his last name. Mineman Second Class “Scotty” Frazier.

The seventh member of Gold Squad technically was Jaybird Sterling, but Murdock had shifted him at least temporarily to Blue Squad the week before. On paper, Third Platoon consisted of two officers and twelve enlisted men, but they’d suffered some casualties in recent missions; “Doc” Ellsworth was still recovering from a sprained ankle he’d gotten during a HAHO drop into Yugoslav Macedonia the month before, while “Boomer” Garcia had been taken off the active list after being shot through the lung. A new man sent out to replace Boomer, “Nick the Greek” Papagos, was now on TAD to Athens in the wake of the Macedonian op, all of which had left Third Platoon’s Blue Squad two men short. Murdock had transferred Sterling to even out the two squads at six men apiece.

Only now, apparently, there was another newbie, a face in the line of SEALs that Murdock didn’t recognize. “What’s your name, sailor?”

“Mineman Second Class Greg Johnson, sir,” the man snapped back. He had a powerful, muscular build, as did most SEALs, but he looked so young and had his hair shaved so close that Murdock was put in mind more of a high school linebacker than a Navy SPECWAR expert. “The guys all call me Skeeter.”

“You’re Ellsworth’s replacement?”

“I guess so, sir. They, uh, they didn’t really tell me anything. They just told me to pack my gear and go. Sir.”

Murdock looked him up and down. Johnson seemed to be an unlikely replacement for the wild and often unpredictable HM2 Ellsworth… stiff and formal, the yes-sir polish of a raw FNG still as sharply evident as a fresh coat of paint. Murdock noticed that Johnson alone of all the men there was not wearing a Budweiser pinned to his shirt. “How long since Coronado?” he asked.

“Three months, sir. They sent me to Fort Benning to learn parachuting out of BUD/S, then back to California for SDV school. After that, it was straight to Virginia Beach.”

Murdock nodded. Graduates of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school at Coronado, California, were put on a six-month probationary period, followed by a session with a review board before they could pin on their SEAL insignia. Training alone — even the rigors of Hell Week — did not make a SEAL. He wondered how the kid would fit in with the rest of the team.

“Bus driver, huh?” Murdock said, referring to the SEALs’ swimmer delivery vehicles, or SDVs.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll be filling some pretty big shoes, son,” Murdock told him.

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Good. You can start by dropping at least every other ‘sir.’ It makes me feel old.” He looked up at the rest of the squad. “Well, gentlemen, all I can say is, welcome to England.”

“Great to be here, L-T,” Kos said pleasantly. “When do we get to kill something?”

“Yeah,” Holt added. “We’re ready to prowl and growl!”

“Loot and shoot!” Rattler exclaimed.

“Yeah, well let’s just belay the ‘loot and shoot’ stuff,” Murdock told them. “The British are our allies. At least so far. Colonel Wentworth, do you think your people can find barracks space for eight more shooters?”

“I think we should be able to accommodate you, Lieutenant,” Wentworth said. “I’m beginning to wonder about you chaps, though. Haven’t had this many Yanks running around underfoot since D-Day.”

“If I were you, Colonel,” Murdock told him, “I’d place every bar, pub, and brothel in a fifty-kilometer radius of this base on full alert. I’m not entirely sure whether to compare this bunch to D-Day… or the Blitz.”

Three hours later, Murdock was sitting on a folding metal chair in First Troop’s ready room, going over the stack of paperwork from Norfolk sheet by mind-numbing sheet. So far, his orders were typically vague, and as nearly as he could distill them, required only that he keep himself and his men in a state of readiness and take no direct action unless said action was specifically directed by CO-NAVSPECWARGRU-2, which was to say Admiral Bainbridge.

A British Army orderly stuck his head into the room. “Lieutenant Murdock, sir?”

“That’s me.”

“Telephone for you, sir. Main desk. Overseas call.”

“I’m coming.”

He wondered who the caller might be. Washington? He doubted that they would be moving quite that fast. The platoon’s combat gear and other equipment hadn’t even arrived yet.

He picked up the phone and punched the blinking, white-lit button. “Lieutenant Murdock.”

“Blake?” a familiar, accented voice said. “This is Lieutenant Hopke.”

“Yes, Werner! What can I do for you?”

“I… I fear I have some bad news, Blake. There has been another incident. Inge has been kidnapped.”

“Shit! When? How did it happen?”

“This morning. In front of her apartment.”

“Didn’t you guys have security on her?”

The voice on the other end of the line sounded tired. “Ja, Blake. We did. He was shot down in the street.”

“Who did it?” As if he didn’t know. Anger flared white and hot deep within Murdock’s mind. Somehow, he kept his voice calm. “Have they made any kind of contact with the authorities.”

“We have heard nothing, but we must assume it was the same group that made the attempt on Friday. I probably should say nothing more. This is supposed to be a secure line, but…”

“Understood.” The fact that the Red Army Faction, or the People’s Revolution or whatever else they were calling themselves these days, had been keeping a close watch on Inge Schmidt suggested that the BKA’s security might have been compromised in other ways as well. Informants within the organization, taps on the telephones… modern terrorist organizations were often as well provided for in the intelligence department as were the military units tasked with hunting them down.

Sometimes, Murdock thought, the opposition’s intel was a hell of a lot better than what the SEALs had available.

Inge… kidnapped by terrorists? After thanking Hopke and telling him to keep him informed on every development, Murdock hung up the phone, his mind racing. The only possible motive the RAF had for such an act was their need for intelligence. With a terrible, burning clarity, Murdock could see the step-by-step reasoning that must have led the terrorist leadership to issue the orders to grab her. Unidentified Americans — members of the U.S. military, no less — were consulting with the BKA and their Komissar computer. That suggested an interest in possible terrorist activities.

Item: Murdock and MacKenzie had gone to Wiesbaden in the first place to check up on what Komissar had in its files about the two North Koreans Chun and Pak.

Item: Chun had been captured in the company of RAF and Irish Provo terrorists, involved in something called the “People’s Revolution.” She’d had traces of radioactivity on her clothing and skin that suggested that she’d recently been close to something nasty… like the plutonium in a poorly shielded nuclear warhead.

Item: While there was nothing definite, there were hints and rumors about that a major terrorist group was planning something big… and soon. A nuclear warhead would certainly qualify as “something big” in anybody’s book.

Item: Inge had been kidnapped, probably by the same organization, probably to find out what she knew about American interest or involvement in European terrorist ops. The fact that they’d kidnapped her now suggested that the “something big” on his list must be going down damned soon, or they wouldn’t have risked tipping their hand to the BKA or the SAS.

He thought about what Inge must be going through right now, and his neatly ordered chain of logic dissolved. Colonel Wentworth and British intelligence might disdain torture as a means for getting information out of a captive, but Murdock knew that the opposition held no such compunctions.

God, Inge… it was my fault. If you hadn’t been seen spending time with me…

That kind of circular and self-destructive thinking would get him exactly nowhere. As he walked back to the SAS ready room, he concentrated on replacing the guilt and the fear with a cold, diamond-hard lust for the PRF bastards who’d orchestrated this.

One thing he was certain of. Whether the final orders ever came through from Washington or not… Murdock was going to find the people responsible for kidnapping Inge Schmidt.

And then he was going to kill them… if he had to force-feed them their own basement nuke one gram of plutonium at a time.