Specter

12

"I said turn around! Hands behind you!"

"Oh, very well…" Murdock pivoted, turning his back to Solomos… but then continued the movement, hard and fast, ducking his head and snapping his leg up and around in a reversed roundhouse kick. His foot slammed into the DEA captain's gut, bending him double and lifting his toes clear of the pavement.

"Lochagos!" a soldier shouted, and then Magic's elbow slammed into his face not once but twice, so quickly the movement was a blur. Papagos sidestepped his guard, smashed down on the inside of the man's ankle, and stepped inside the muzzle of his M3 grease gun and snatched it away before the man's finger even reached the trigger. Roselli simply spun and threw a roundhouse kick into his startled guard's face, sending the man flying backward into the water. A second soldier was gaping at Solomos, who was still busily folding himself around Murdock's shoe, and never saw the two lightning kicks that caught him first in the stomach, then in the head.

Normally, trying an unarmed takedown of soldiers with automatic weapons was nothing less than an act of desperation… and a great way to get somebody shot. Murdock had taken the measure of these men, though, and decided that if the SEALs were going to make a break, it had better be now, while things were confused, rather than later… quite probably inside a Greek prison cell. The soldiers, he thought, were army troops brought in to assist the DEA, not DEA men themselves. They were young and they were inexperienced; it was clear from their milling about on the dock that they didn't have the faintest idea what was going on. No doubt they'd been rousted out of their barracks that evening and told that they were helping the police, and they still didn't know who or what their prisoners were.

They were finding out in a hurry. One-two-three, and three more soldiers were down or disarmed. In the flurry of confusion, the male prisoner off the Glaros saw an opportunity and started to run, but Razor calmly reached out with one foot and tripped him, slamming him facedown into the pavement.

"Drop 'em! Drop 'em!" Magic barked, gesturing with the grease gun he'd lifted from one of his victims. The soldiers gaped at each other, then at Magic, who shouted at Papagos in frustration, "For Christ's sake, Nick, tell these guys to drop 'em!" One by one, pistols and submachine guns clattered onto the pavement, and men began raising their hands in the air.

Murdock, meanwhile, had reached down and grabbed Solomos by his hair, whipping him up and around with his left arm about the man's throat, one extended right knuckle pressed menacingly against the DEA captain's temple. "Let's have the keys to Roselli's cuffs, Captain." The man struggled, then tried to pull away, and Murdock increased the pressure of his knuckle against his head. "Do it, or I'll reach into your skull and pluck out your eyeballs from the inside! Do it!"

Hastily, Solomos grabbed something, and a Greek sergeant unlocked Roselli's hands. The other soldiers stood in a half circle around the SEALS, some looking confused or scared, others furiously angry. Papagos made the rounds then, gathering up the discarded weapons. Keeping three of the grease guns and several magazines, he dropped the rest over the side of the pier with a loud splash. After a moment's thought, Murdock also ordered them to unlock the girl's hands as well. She was almost certainly an innocent bystander, but Murdock had heard unpleasant things about what went on inside Greek jails. Besides, she might be persuaded to help with the other prisoner.

With a squealing of tires, a dark blue, four-door sedan bumped up onto the curb with Scotty Frazier at the wheel. Armed, then, the SEALs backed away, keeping their weapons trained both on the Greek soldiers and on the sailors watching helplessly from the deck of the patrol boat. Several tourists, those who hadn't already fled, stood nearby, watching as though the whole scenario had been arranged for their entertainment. Roselli helped the girl into the front seat, then slid in beside her. Magic and Papagos climbed into the back.

"Just to show you my heart's in the right place," Murdock told Solomos, reaching across the man's shoulder and plucking a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver from his shoulder holster, "you can have that one." He pointed at the prisoner who, face bloodied, was still lying on the concrete. Murdock had considered bringing the man along as well, but decided that he would be too likely to slow them up.

Besides, he owed Captain Beasley one; the Delta team must know what was going on down here but they hadn't intervened against the SEALS. Leaving the prisoner as an intelligence source for Delta would be a good way to say thank you.

"You will be court-martialed for this!" Solomos growled.

"Maybe, but it won't be your choice. Now why don't you work on finding out where the real bad guys took Ellen Kingston, okay? Otherwise we might have to come back here to discuss it with you, and I don't think you'd like that at all." He gave Solomos a hard shove, knocking him to the pavement, then dove into the open right rear door of the sedan. As the car lurched forward off the curb, he could hear Solomos screaming up the wall of the tower. "Beasley! Shoot him! Beasley! Shoot him!"

Then the car was racing down the Leoforos Nikis, past the White Tower and then hard left onto the Ethnikis Aminas. "You know where you're going?" he asked Frazier from the back seat. Much of downtown Salonika was off-limits to cars in an attempt to control pollution, some parts just during the day, others at all times. The streets, most of them, were straight, but many crossed one another at confusing angles.

"No problem, Skipper," Frazier called back. "But we're going to want to ditch this heap before we get close to the new hotel."

"Right. What is it… a rental?"

"Uh, actually, Boss," Frazier said, sounding embarrassed, "Mac and me didn't have time to find a rental place, and anyway, Mac was worried about the paper trail, y'know?"

"So you stole it."

"Yeah. Well, borrowed it."

"Right. I should have guessed. You guys ever decided to leave the Navy, you've got a great career ahead of you in larceny and grand theft."

"Hey, be all that you can be," Roselli quipped.

"That's the damned Army, numb-nuts," Magic said.

"Aw, they won't mind if we borrow their slogan. We borrowed one of their suspects, didn't we?"

"Cap it," Murdock warned. He still didn't know if the girl spoke English, and he didn't want her to hear too much. "Let's find a place to stop, okay?"

Somewhere in the distance, a police siren was giving its odd, piercing, two-tone chant. The SEALs were going to have to work fast if they were to salvage anything out of this mess.

Jaybird throttled back on the Zodiac's engine, turning the steering handle slightly to guide the rubber boat gently past an anchored sailboat. The gasoline engine was louder than the SEAL could have wished, but there was still plenty of commotion going on across the harbor to the southeast, and he doubted that anybody was paying him any attention.

Ashore, two police cars hurried past, racing along the Leoforos Nikis toward the White Tower. He hoped Roselli was okay.

The operation this evening had been loosely planned and open-ended; ideally, Jaybird and Roselli were supposed to have grabbed Vlachos and Trahanatzis and gotten them ashore in the rubber Zodiac. Mac, DeWitt, Frazier, Stepano, and Papagos were supposed to find a new hotel, one hidden away in a secluded part of the city where Solomos and his people weren't likely to find them, then go out and boost a couple of cars. After that, Papagos was to join Magic and the L-T by the White Tower, where they would be watching the op go down with the Delta guys. Frazier would take one car and be their backup if they needed a fast getaway, Stepano would stay at the hotel, and Mac and DeWitt would take the other car and wait for Roselli and Jaybird to show up at the pier near the customs house.

Jaybird still wasn't sure what had gone wrong, though he suspected that that bastard Solomos was behind it. Maybe he'd seen the two SEALs making their final approach on the yacht from his OP overlooking the harbor. Maybe Jaybird and Roselli had simply been guilty of extremely bad timing, launching their snatch operation at the same time as a planned raid by the Greek police. Whatever the reason, the original plan had gone to hell as soon as that Greek patrol boat had come rumbling out of the night, searchlight glaring.

But SEALs were good at improvisation, and the possible need for improvisation had been worked into the plan. When one of the two men had come sailing over the Glaros's transom and into the water, Sterling had drawn his diver's knife, grabbed him from behind, and delivered a short, sharp blow with the knife's pommel to the base of the guy's skull. He'd gone limp, and Sterling had rolled him into the Zodiac tied to Glaros's stern.

While he was heaving the unconscious man's dead weight up into the raft, a half-naked woman had dived off the well deck, splashing into the harbor a few feet away, surfacing, then swimming rapidly toward the shore. Jaybird had ignored her. The plan had been for the SEALs to take the men and leave the women behind. Roselli was on the flying bridge at the moment, taking down the second man.

Freeing his pistol from the bag at his waist, Jaybird had prepared to board the yacht to give Roselli a hand, but the Greek patrol boat was bearing down on them fast. He'd heard the first loud-hailer challenge, and Roselli's reply. When the loud-hailer voice had shifted to English, demanding that Roselli drop his gun, Jaybird had decided that it was definitely time to start improvising.

Roselli wasn't going to be able to get away. The L-T had explained that they needed at least one prisoner — it didn't matter who — and they needed to get him away without Solomos and his people knowing about it, if possible. Roselli was busted, kneeling on top of his prisoner with his hands clasped behind his head. Jaybird knew that if he hung around for long, he'd be picked up too… and the SEALs would lose both prisoners.

Damn! What a choice! A SEAL never left his buddies… but this time around the mission demanded it. He'd reached up with his knife and cut the line, then watched for his chance to slip away.

With all the confusion, EE had been surprisingly easy. That bright searchlight had actually helped, since it tended to ruin the night-vision of anyone watching the scene, either from shore or from the deck of the patrol boat. Treading water, watching for his chance, he'd waited until the Greek sailors were pulling the Glaros alongside, then swum beneath the loom of the patrol boat's bow, the Zodiac's mooring line clenched in his teeth. He'd towed the raft and its unconscious passenger until he was hidden in the shadow on the patrol boat's port side, while all of the troops and sailors aboard were gathered to starboard. Rolling into the raft, he'd checked the outboard motor's gas tank — nearly full — then cracked open the ignition and hot-wired the engine. As shouts and laughter had echoed across the water from the far side of the patrol boat, he'd eased open the throttle and motored slowly away, steering a course that would keep the Greek vessel between the Zodiac and watchers ashore for as long as possible. Using several other anchored boats for cover, sticking to shadows and darkness, he'd slowly zigzagged his way across the anchorage, first to the west, away from the waterfront, then north, steering by the lights from the city's customs building.

Now, very nearly forty minutes later, he was nearing the pier. There was quite a bit of light from the customs house, and some dock-workers were off-loading a cargo ship a hundred meters further down the pier, but the site selected for the rendezvous was deserted and dark. Slipping up to the pier in the shadow beneath a Liberian freighter, Jaybird cut the engine and drifted the last few feet. Mac materialized out of the shadows, tossing him a line and dragging him in.

"What the hell happened?" DeWitt looked worried as Jaybird scrambled out of the Zodiac.

"They got Razor," Jaybird said. Standing on the pier, he stared across the water, trying to see what was going on back at the anchorage. It looked like the patrol boat had taken the Glaros in tow, that both vessels were up against the waterfront close by the White Tower. "Shit, I didn't want to leave-"

"You did right, Jaybird," Mac said. "Razor'll be okay. And you got our prisoner. Good work."

Not until that moment did Jaybird realize that he didn't know the identity of his prisoner. Vlachos or Trahanatzis? Not that it really mattered. Either man ought to be able to answer their questions… assuming they could make him talk. "Well, the police or whoever those guys are got the other one. And they got Roselli. Chief? Mr. DeWitt? What are we gonna do?"

"Let the Skipper worry about Roselli," Mac said. "We've got to get this guy to the hotel."

"You found a room?"

"Papagos did." DeWitt wrinkled his nose. "Not exactly the Hilton."

Together, they hauled the prisoner out of the Zodiac, tied his wrists and feet just in case he decided to wake up and bundled him into an empty canvas laundry bag. The hotel was located beyond the White Tower from where they left the Zodiac, but they took a roundabout route to avoid passing the cluster of police cars and soldiers now spilling across the Leoforos Nikis.

It took twenty minutes to reach the place, called the Dimitriu, tucked away just off of Lampraki Street, southeast of the fairgrounds, only a few blocks from the city's Kaftanzoglion Stadium and on the opposite side of the city from the Vergina.

DeWitt had been right. The hotel was small and had a battered air to it, with its facade showing dark patches where the whitewash had crumbled away, but it was off the main thoroughfares and it had a fire escape in an alley in the back. The three of them snuck the bulky laundry bag up to the third-floor room through the back. Then Mac left again to dispose of the car in the stadium parking lot.

Jaybird, Stepano, and DeWitt settled down to wait, sitting in the dilapidated hotel room with the prisoner, saying nothing to each other.

Damn, Jaybird thought. What else could I do? Why the hell couldn't Razor dive over the side and swim for it?

Because the bastards would have searched for him, idiot, and probably caught you both.

He eyed the man, who was lying unconscious on the bed, still wearing nothing but a damn pair of boxer shorts.

"You'd better be worth it, you bastard," he said.

"Parking garage," Magic said, pointing. "Turn in there." At this time of night, there were few customers. They turned up to the building's entrance, accepted a ticket from a sleepy-looking attendant, then drove to a far corner of the garage and parked. The huge, dimly lit concrete cavern offered a relatively secure spot to talk to the girl they'd rescued.

At the moment, she didn't seem all that sure that she had been rescued. Her name was Nikki latrides, and she spoke very little English. She answered Papagos's questions in Greek, speaking in a low, scared voice, and she seemed preoccupied with tugging the hem of her borrowed shirt as far down her bare thighs as she could manage.

Clearly, she was terrified; a night of fun and friendly sex aboard her boyfriend's yacht had ended in gunfire and the yacht crewman's blood splattered over the cabin windows. She'd tried hiding under a galley table, but soldiers had burst in and dragged her, naked, onto another boat filled with leering, gun-waving men. Someone had given her the shirt. Someone else had handcuffed her, then herded her ashore like an animal with Eleni and a stranger wearing swim trunks and a wet, black T-shirt. She didn't know what she'd done, she didn't know who the SEALs were, she simply wanted them not to hurt her.

Gently — as gently as he could, under the circumstances — Murdock questioned Nikki, with Papagos as interpreter. She told them that she was an office secretary for Trahanatzis Shipping and that that was how she'd gotten to know Eleni Trahanatzis, the boss's son. Though Eleni didn't work for his father, he was frequently in and out of the office, and she'd started dating him perhaps five months before. She didn't know anything about the IMRO or the EMA. She was a Macedonian Slav — with her pale blond hair and blue eyes she could hardly be anything else and still be Greek — but she knew nothing of politics and cared nothing about "that other Macedonia, across the border." She'd been born and raised in Lankadas, a village a few miles north of Salonika, and in her entire eighteen-year life she'd never even been as far away as Athens.

More than once during the interview, her low voice had gotten louder and higher and louder and higher, and Papagos had been forced to stop and spend long minutes trying to calm her down. She had no idea what was going on. She'd assumed that she and those with her were being arrested for some reason… but why did he — and at that point she'd turned and stared with wide, terrified eyes at Roselli, seated beside her — why did he trip Eleni when he tried to run away? Did it have anything to do with narkoticos, with drugs? She'd started wondering about that when Eleni's friend had started flashing so much money about. She didn't use drugs, she didn't know about drugs, she didn't…

"Okay, okay," Murdock said. "Tell her she's not under arrest. We just want to ask some questions, okay?" When Papagos had spoken to her and she'd calmed down again, he added, "Ask her about this Vlachos character. What does she know about him?"

After speaking briefly with the girl and getting a considerably longer and more emotional reply, Papagos turned to Murdock. "Interesting, Skipper. She met the guy through her boyfriend Trahanatzis a couple of months ago. She doesn't really like him, though."

"Why not?"

"Well, I'm reading between the lines here, but I get the impression that Vlachos is a libidinous son of a bitch. It was supposed to be a cozy, romantic weekend, with Nikki and Trahanatzis and Vlachos and his girlfriend, Maria. Vlachos wanted to turn it into an old-fashioned orgy, but Nikki here just wanted to screw with her boyfriend. Trouble was, Trahanatzis was awfully eager to impress Vlachos and was pressing Nikki to, uh, be extra nice to him."

"Cute. Get her to tell you about Vlachos. Why doesn't she like him?"

Papagos rattled off the question in Greek. Nikki's reply was a long one, accompanied by quick, nervous hand gestures. Once the words started coming, there was no stopping them.

"She says he was boorish and loud and… and arrogant. Sounds like he thinks of himself as a real stud, a God's-gift-to-women kind of guy. And he's prejudiced. It seems Nikki here has some friends, neighbors of her family's back in Lankadas, who are Muslims. Nice people, she says, just plain folks who helped out her father once when he was in some kind of trouble. Financial, I think. Anyway, Vlachos was always going on about Muslims… 'Turks,' he called them. Thought they were all terrorists and ought to be butchered like pigs. Uh… that's a pretty strong insult to a Muslim, Skipper."

"I know. Go on."

"That's about all. Something about the other three hiding all her clothes to make her fuck Vlachos. I'm not sure if she's telling the truth there, or making up a story to explain why she didn't have anything on when they dragged her out from under the table. I do know the poor kid's scared half to death. She's not faking that."

"Does she know where Vlachos is from?" Murdock asked.

A moment later, Papagos turned to Murdock, his eyes sparkling. "Bingo, Skipper. She says he never told her, but he speaks kind of clumsy Greek, like it's not his native tongue. Seems he speaks Macedonian, though. So does Nikki, enough to know he speaks it with a northern accent."

"Macedonian, eh?" The language, like the people, was Slavic, more closely related to Bulgarian than to Greek.

"Well, well," Roselli said. "A Macedonian who arranges sexy weekends aboard his yacht with members of the DEA."

"He was DEA too, remember," Murdock said. "Ask her, was he the only one she knew from up there?"

"He's the only one she knew well. She says there were these four other guys, all Greek Macedonians and all members of the DEA, that Vlachos and Trahanatzis entertained a lot. She only met them a couple of times, and Trahanatzis didn't seem to want her around those times."

"Nice guy."

"Yeah. Sounds like a real sweetheart. Anyway, sometimes they got together on Vlachos's boat. Usually it was ashore, at some restaurant or other."

"Sounds like those four might be people we'd like to meet," Frazier said from behind the wheel. "If we could get names, I'll bet a month's paycheck that they're the same as four of the names on that list of DEA agents assigned to Kingston's flight."

"At least we have a direction to go in with our questions." Murdock reached into his trousers and extracted his wallet. They'd all been issued 100,000 drachmas — about 400 American — in spending money by their embassy contact aboard the Jefferson that morning. Murdock counted off 20,000 drachmas and handed them to the girl. "Tell her she's been an enormous help," he told Papagos. "Tell her we're sorry about what happened on the boat, but that Vlachos is a bad man and we're trying to find him. She can have the money to buy herself clothes, or to get her home, or for whatever else she needs."

"What about Solomos, Lieutenant?" Magic asked. "That bastard's going to be looking for her."

"I know. Can't be helped, though. Damned if we can adopt her. Tell you what, Nick. Tell her to try to stay away from the DEA and the soldiers, but that if she can find a local cop, someone from here in Salonika, she might be able to get him to help her." People were people, whatever their language. Just as Solomos didn't like the idea of Americans intruding on his turf, the chances were good that local cops didn't care for the elite Dimona coming along and carrying out paramilitary operations in their territory.

It was the best he could do for her… and he hated taking the added precaution of having Papagos tell her they were hunting for Vlachos, not that they already had him. If they did pick her up, that was what she would tell them… another fiction that might delay a police search by a precious few more hours.

If they were lucky, Jaybird, Mac, DeWitt, and Vlachos were already at the new hotel, waiting for them, while the police were searching the streets.

Nikki couldn't know about any of that, of course. She did seem grateful, though, now that these mysterious foreigners were letting her go when she'd been imagining the worst. When they all got out of the car, she came up to Murdock, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on his cheek. "Sas ejharisto poli, kirie," she said, her eyes shining.

"Hey, L-T," Roselli called. "Who's your friend?"

"She says thank you very much," Papagos added.

"How do you say, 'You're welcome'?"

"Parakalo."

"Parakalo, Nikki."

"Hey, L-T," Roselli said, grinning as the girl hurried off, bare feet slapping on the concrete. "I think she kind of likes YOU."

"Shut up. Let's find that hotel."