Specter

Specter by Keith Douglass Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Specter by Keith Douglass Read Free Book Online
Authors: Keith Douglass
Southern Bosnia
    â€œL-T?”
    â€œYeah, Razor.”
    â€œWe 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.”
    â€œOkay. 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

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