Specter

3

"Jesus!" Roselli said. "L-T, you killed him!"

"Damn straight." Murdock checked the kid's right hand. On the back of his wrist were the letters CCCC–Cyrillic initials that stood for "Only Solidarity Can Save the Serbs."

So much hatred in this land. "Doc! Professor! I think we're still missing one. Any sign of him?"

"Negative, L-T," Doc's voice came back.

"Same here, Sir."

"Okay. Doc, you come in and help Mac. Professor, you swing around to the rear of the building. Magic, you go with him… and check inside the building too. Look sharp and stay together. Mac? How's Gypsy?"

Mac had the CIA contact flat on the ground now. The man was trembling, his face and coat covered with blood.

"Shaken up, but I think he'll be okay. All that blood's not his, thank God. He got splashed by the bad guy next to him."

"Roger that. Anybody in the squad hurt?"

"Hell," Roselli said. "I don't think the sons of bitches even got off one shot."

Hadn't they? In the adrenaline-pulsing heat of the firefight, Murdock hadn't even noticed. Now that he thought about it, though, he realized he hadn't heard any unsuppressed gunfire… just the harsh thumps of the SEAL HKs and M-16s.

Doc came trotting up as Murdock peeled off the NVDs, now grown intolerably heavy. "Doc, check our boy out."

"Right, L-T."

Murdock and Roselli went to the women next, freeing the one still trapped on the mattress, then using their SEAL diving knives to cut the twine that had been used to bind the wrists of all three. Roselli produced a relatively clean overcoat from somewhere and draped it over the girl's shivering, bony shoulders. "Silovana sam," she said in a low and trembling voice, repeating the words over and over. "Silovana sam."

"Take charge here, Razor," Murdock said. "See if any of them speak English, see if you can get sense out of them. Check with Doc if you think they need meds or anything."

"Sure thing, L-T."

Murdock wished he had someone in the squad who spoke Serbo-Croatian. Normally they'd have had a linguist along, but this op had been too rushed to cover the fine points. Besides, as Fletcher had happily pointed out, Gypsy spoke English and the SEAL squad would not be interacting with anyone else ashore, civilian or military.

Yeah, right.

It was sheer chance that they'd missed him. Narednik Andonov Jankovic had been leaning against the wall of the monastery, close beside the southeast corner, when his friends and comrades had begun collapsing left and right, mouths gaping, heads exploding, blood and gore spraying everywhere, all to the almost melodious chuffing ring of sound-suppressed gunfire.

Jankovic's rank of narednik was equivalent to that of a senior sergeant, and though he wasn't in uniform he was still an active-duty member of the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army. Six months ago, he'd been seconded to the Serbian Volunteer Guard as an "advisor," one of thousands of JNA regulars assigned to keep the pro-Serb militias in line. With decent training and fifteen years' military experience, he'd acted instinctively when the militia troops started to fall, rolling around the corner of the building, then scrambling for cover as quickly as he could go. Judging by where the fire was coming from, he thought that one of the parked trucks had shielded him from view, but he couldn't be sure he hadn't been seen; he'd plunged into a shell hole in the side of the monastery's chapel, emerging inside the sacristy. By the time he reached the apse, the sounds of the firefight outside had died away.

The chapel had been torn by shell fire and was open to the sky. The icons, the altar, and most of the furniture had been all carried off, either by the original Dominican brothers when they'd fled, or by looters looking for gold or firewood later on. No place to hide… no place good enough, anyway. He scrambled through a gap in the north wall, vaulted an ironwork fence outside, and scrambled into the chill shadows beneath the trees beyond. The snow lay in patches… careful not to leave tracks. Where to go? Where to? In the woods! A snowbank! Plunging into the snow behind a tangle of fallen branches, he lay there, panting hard, trying to control the heart-pounding terror that had propelled him into the forest. God, God, God, who were these people? Not Turks, surely… as he thought of the Bosnian Muslims. The UN arms blockade still prevented the Muslims from receiving more than a trickle of weapons from outside, and certainly they wouldn't have silenced guns.

What was that? Jankovic was sure he'd seen movement, close by the east side of the monastery's chapel. Holding very still in the snow, scarcely breathing, he watched a patch of darkness moving against darkness. The shape revealed itself against a bare patch of wall dimly illuminated by the glowing sky… but only for an instant.

Jankovic tried to digest what he'd just seen. The shape had been… nightmarishly alien, terrifying, with some kind of harness or vest heavy with equipment, with something like goggles or a camera over its face. A second shadow joined the first. They moved so stealthily, so silently, that Jankovic kept losing sight of them. He wanted to run, but he suppressed the urge, knowing that if he so much as moved, they would see him.

Russian Spetsnaz? The only Russians in Yugoslavia, apart from a UN brigade present solely for cosmetic purposes, were advisors secretly helping the JNA. Americans, then?

Everything he'd been told about the Americans said that they were cowards, afraid to fight save from behind the screen of their near-magical technology. Jankovic's superiors warned almost daily of the danger of American air strikes, impressing on the men the need to capture any downed pilots alive. But ground troops? It seemed impossible.

But as Jankovic lay in the snow, watching the two shadows quartering the grounds behind the monastery, he became convinced that they must be Americans, possibly even their legendary Delta Force. They had so much expensive equipment — personal radios, night-vision goggles, silenced submachine guns — they must be Americans, because only Americans could afford that kind of lavish, high-tech gadgetry.

Did their gadgetry include infrared goggles? Could they see him beneath his blanket of snow? Jankovic had worked with Russian IR equipment and knew that his body heat must be glowing as brightly as a bonfire against the cold ground. Even starlight optics allowed some vision at infrared wavelengths. If they saw him…

But no, the shadows moved within ten meters of his hiding place, giving no evidence of having seen him. Silently, the shadows passed him by, circled the west end of the monastery, and vanished.

Even so, it was several minutes before Jankovic could force trembling legs to support him. He didn't dare head for the road, not when more of the invaders could have an ambush posted there. Instead, he started climbing the mountain behind the monastery. The road angled back across the face of the mountain, perhaps five hundred meters up the slope, and from there it was another three kilometers to a local militia outpost.

There was a radio there, and he'd be able to call for help. This was definitely a job for the JNA, and they would have to work fast to trap these high-tech shadows, before they could make their escape.

Magic and Professor showed up a few minutes later, silently materializing out of the darkness like wraiths. "No trace of that runner, L-T," Magic said. "He must've decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge."

"Shit, that son of a bitch's feet won't touch the ground twice before he hits the Bulgarian border," Doc said, coming up on Murdock from behind. "Skipper? Our spook friend checks out okay. I gave him a one-grain tab of phenobarb to kind of quiet him down, like."

"Okay, Doc. See to the women, will you?"

Doc's painted face split in a toothy grin. "Hey, my pleasure, Skipper."

"Cut the crap, Doc. They've just been through hell and they don't need any shit from you."

The smile vanished. "Aye, aye, sir."

Damn, he hadn't meant to snap at Doc. The guy had a wild rep with the ladies on liberty, but on duty he was always strictly professional, except for his sometimes quirky sense of humor. The aftereffects of the firefight, and the fact that one of the bad guys had escaped, had Murdock on edge. He hurried over to where Mac was sitting on the ground with the CIA man. Squatting next to him, Murdock tried to give a reassuring smile, an expression that he knew well could not be all that reassuring delivered through all of this camo face paint. "You're Gypsy?"

The man seemed to be trying to focus on Murdock. His glasses were still blood-smeared. "Uh… ya sam Gypsy," the man said. "You… you Nomad?"

That was the proper recognition code, Gypsy and Nomad, sign and countersign. "I'm Nomad."

The man gestured vaguely at the jeep. "Papers, in there."

They found what they'd come for on the floor of the jeep, a briefcase bulging with typewritten papers. Not originals; from the look of them, they'd have been stamped secret if they were. They appeared to be carefully compiled lists of troops, regular forces and militias, personnel rosters, TOE breakdowns, headquarters sites, SAM positions, artillery placements.

"You use, ne?" Gypsy said as Murdock carefully clicked the briefcase shut. "You send jets, kill many Christians, kill many Chetnik bastards, da?"

Murdock looked back at the monastery and at the bodies littering the ground. "Kill many Christians," he said, his voice hard. "Da."

"Hvala. Vrlo ste lyubazni."

The Mi-8 transport helicopter descended toward the clearing, a broad stretch of open and relatively level ground on the otherwise thickly forested Mountainside that had been the site of a logging operation several years earlier. Several vehicles had been lined up to either side of the roadway, their headlights illuminating the touchdown point.

Brigadni Djeneral Vuk Mihajlovic remained in his seat as the helicopter touched down, a crew member slid open the cabin door on the right side, and his aides and bodyguards clambered out into the night. He didn't like flying, especially at night, and especially as parts shortages and wear and tear claimed more and more of the aging aircraft purchased years ago from the then-Soviet Union. Still, it was the only way a brigade general could maintain personal control of his command, and this time it sounded as though he'd happened upon a special piece of luck.

JNA helicopters in Bosnia tended to fly only short hops nowadays, sticking to hair-raising, low-level flights through mountain passes and valleys just in case NATO or the Americans decided to enforce their ludicrous and arbitrary no-fly-zone decrees. Mihajlovic had been en route from Kotor to the headquarters of his Third Regiment in the hills outside Dubrovnik when the Mi-8's pilot had picked up an urgent radio call from Checkpoint Orandzasta. Normally, he would have ordered the pilot to ignore the signal, but the caller had used a code phrase that indicated he was a JNA advisor with the militias. He'd then reported an ambush on Bosnian-Serb forces that he claimed had been launched by American commandos.

That seemed unlikely. Almost certainly, what the caller had blundered into was a raid by one or another of the anti-Serb militias, probably Croats with the paramilitary HOS, the so-called Croatian Defense Army. There was almost nothing left of the Bosnian Muslim forces, not enough to have caused the slaughter the JNA advisor was screaming about over the radio.

In any case, since Mihajlovic happened to be in the area, it wouldn't hurt to stop and find out what was going on. Mihajlovic was a hands-on type of commander, Russian-trained, popular with his troops. It wouldn't hurt to check on the man's story, especially if the Croats were up to something unpleasant. A commando raid against the naval base at Kotor was a definite possibility, as were guerrilla-style raids against the Serbian supply lines through the mountains above Dubrovnik.

Careful not to give the appearance of unseemly haste, he unbuckled from his jump seat and stepped out of the helicopter. With head bent to avoid the still-turning rotors, he walked toward the building nearby, a decrepit-looking shack that had been the office for the lumbering company here and that now served as Checkpoint Orange.

He was met outside the building's front door by two men, both in dirty mismatches of Soviet-style and Yugoslav army uniforms. "Dobro yutro," he greeted them. "What seems to be the trouble?"

"Good morning, Brigade General," the older of the two men said. "I am Captain Balaban, in command of this post. I-"

"Sir! Senior Sergeant Jankovic," the other man said, abruptly interrupting the militia officer. "I am a JNA advisor with these people."

"You are the one who reported an attack," Mihajlovic said, ignoring Balaban. The militiamen tended to be disorganized and more often than not exaggerated the situation, whatever it was. But the JNA sergeant looked reliable enough.

"Yes, sir. American commandos wiped out a section of Serbian Volunteer Guards not five kilometers from here."

"And how is it you escaped, Sergeant?"

"The chances of war, General. That… and I was able to react swiftly when the attack started." He glanced briefly at Balaban. "The militia handled themselves as well as could be expected under the circumstances. The attackers were almost certainly American commandos. They opened fire suddenly, without warning, when most of our men did not even have their weapons."

"Um. What makes you think the attackers were Americans?"

"Their equipment, my General." He went on to describe the attack, and what he had seen of the two commandos, in precise detail. He did not say — and Mihajlovic did not ask — just what the Bosnian militiamen had been doing at the ruined monastery in the first place, other than to mention that the unit had been standing down, with minimal security measures in place. In all probability they'd been engaged in what the JNA high command euphemistically called "pacification," breaking the stubborn Bosnian-Muslim will to resist, and the Seth general did not care to know too many of the details.

Sometimes, terrible things had to be done to further a cause, to achieve a necessary goal.

When Jankovic had completed his report, Mihajlovic was more than half certain that the sergeant had, indeed, seen Americans… or at least a contingent of NATO commandos. The description of their uniforms — black coveralls, combat harnesses, low-light goggles, silenced automatic weapons — sounded very much like the British SAS, though there were no reports that any Special Air Service detachments were stationed anywhere near the Adriatic just now. German GSG-9 was another possibility; the Germans had been taking a keen interest in military developments in the Balkans, though they were still unwilling to operate outside of the guidelines set by NATO. Americans? Very possible. Delta Force, Army Rangers…

But what could Americans be after at a ruined Bosnian monastery? Jankovic had mentioned a civilian who'd driven up moments before the ambush. That could be significant. A curfew was in effect throughout Bosnia and coastal Croatia; a civilian out in the middle of the night, alone at a place that should have been deserted, was extremely suspicious… and supported Jankovic's contention that the attackers were foreign commandos. "You did not see what became of the civilian," he said bluntly.

"No, my General. I know only that he was there in the custody of two of my men when the attack began."

"And the attack took place-" He consulted his watch. "-just over an hour ago?"

"Yes, sir. I remember looking at my watch when the civilian drove up. It was two-thirty-five."

"Then these invaders, whoever they are, are still in the area. Come with me, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir. Where are we going?"

"To find these commandos, of course. I would like to know what they find so interesting about a deserted, tumbled-down church."

"L-T?"

"Yeah, Razor."

"We got the brass policed, L-T," Roselli said. He'd found the lieutenant standing next to the highway, staring up the mountain, a distracted look on his face. "We're clean."

"Okay. Get your gear together and let's move. It's time to get the hell out of Dodge!"

Roselli, frankly, wasn't sure what to make of the L-T. He'd thought he'd known the man pretty well; eight months of close, hard training and two combat deployments — one in the Indian Ocean, the other just a few days later at the Iranian naval port at Bandar Abbas — were enough to make brothers out of any two men, whatever the differences in their backgrounds or families. Now, though, he wasn't so sure.

It was, he knew, the way Murdock had gunned down that Serb militiaman, right at the end of the firefight. Oh, the fact of the killing alone wasn't the problem. SEALS, like covert forces tasked with counterinsurgency/counterterrorism worldwide, frequently had to get into tight places and out again without being seen and without jeopardizing the op's success by dragging along prisoners. The written orders for this mission had directed Blue Squad to handle prisoners "according to SOP," a bit of verbal misdirection that meant they would not be taking prisoners.

But Lieutenant Blake Murdock was not just another SEAL platoon leader, whatever he might tell the guys. He was the son of Congressman Charles Fitzhugh Murdock of Virginia, and Roselli knew damned well that there was a lot riding on that relationship. According to the scuttlebutt, the elder Murdock hadn't wanted his son to go into Navy Special Warfare in the first place, and had done damn near all he could to get him out. The L-T was a stubborn son of a bitch, though, and the story was that he'd joined the teams in defiance of his dad's wishes.

But man, if the story got out that Murdock personally had blown away a bad guy after he'd tried to surrender, the political fallout would be inconceivable. At the very least it would end the younger Murdock's career… and maybe the elder Murdock's career as well. There were plenty in Congress who felt that SEALs and elite units like them were anachronisms, necessary, possibly, during the Cold War, but embarrassing and even dangerous in this enlightened day of world peace and military cutbacks.

Besides, the L-T just wasn't that cold. Oh, Murdock could be hard when he had to be; he ran a tight platoon and didn't let the guys slack off for a minute. But he was also less intense than a lot of SEALS, and he didn't come across as a stone killer. He'd been to Annapolis — an honest-to-God ring-knocker — and he looked more like a fighter jock or an XO aboard some supply ship or, hell, like a lawyer than he did a SEAL. Athletic — lean and wiry rather than muscular — and clean-cut, clear-eyed, nonsmoker, nondrinker, kind of on the quiet side. And sometimes, like now, he got real quiet… and then you never knew what was going to go down.

He'd talked to that spook local for quite a while, then tried to use him as a translator with the women, none of whom spoke any English. That hadn't worked out very well, because the women were still in shock and Gypsy had been real anxious to be on his way. Before he'd let the guy go, though, he'd made him promise to take the girls along, get them out of the area. Gypsy hadn't wanted to do that, but Murdock had told him that the CIA would find out if he didn't take them someplace safe… and then the SEALs would come for him.

Then he'd made the guy wait even longer while he had some of the guys take shirts and coats from some of the Serb bodies, ones that weren't too badly bloodied, and give them to the women who'd had their clothing cut up.

That was scarcely the manner of a cold-blooded killer, or even of a SEAL officer who thought of nothing but the mission.

For the next half hour, Murdock had had the SEALs picking up all the spent brass from the firefight and bagging it. The 9mm rounds fired by HKs were common throughout Europe, but the .223 rounds fired by the M-16s carried by Mac and Magic were unmistakably NATO. Perhaps he should have insisted that everyone carry local weapons, like AKs, but damn it, there wasn't supposed to have been a firefight in the first place. The weapons were insurance against the unthinkable… to be used only as a last resort.

Now their concern was exfiltration, getting out with the minimum fuss possible. He'd ordered Doc and Higgins to gather up the bodies and dump them in the two trucks, after which Mac had siphoned off a couple of liters of gasoline and doused both vehicles and their contents. There was no way to hide what had happened here tonight, but Murdock clearly hoped to leave as few traces behind as possible.

"Everything's set," MacKenzie said, as Roselli shrugged into his assault vest. "The squad's ready to move out."

"Okay. Touch off the trucks and let's go."

MacKenzie stayed behind long enough to toss a couple of thermite grenades into the backs of the trucks. The SEALs were already well into the woods when the incendiaries went off, and the night-black forest behind them lit up brighter than day.

They were moving single file down the slope moments later when Murdock stopped, letting the rest of the men file past him. Roselli had the next-to-the-last position, just ahead of Mac. "L-T?" he asked as he came up to where Murdock was standing. "You okay?"

"I keep thinking I hear something," Murdock said. He looked worried.

Roselli stopped and listened too. He could hear the roar of the fire, but far off now. There was nothing else…

No, there was something. Roselli heard it too, a kind of dull, clattering noise. "Chopper," Murdock said. "Damn that was fast!"

"Maybe they're just passing by."

"Maybe. And maybe they're stopping to have a look at our handiwork." Murdock reached up and touched his tactical radio's transmit switch. "Blue Squad! The dogs are out. Let's take it double-time!"

Roselli could hear the helicopter clearly now, a pulsing whop-whop-whop sounding through the forest from higher up on the hill.

Murdock hadn't been kidding. The hunt was on, and the SEAL squad was the prey.