Specter by Keith Douglass Read Free Book Online Page B

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 H&Ks 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.
    â€œEverything’s set,” MacKenzie said, as Roselli shrugged into his assault vest. “The squad’s ready to move out.”
    â€œOkay. 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?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œChopper,” Murdock said. “ Damn that was fast!”
    â€œMaybe they’re just passing by.”
    â€œMaybe. 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.

4

0400 hours
St. Anastasias Monastery Southern Bosnia
    â€œMy General,” the aide said. “This does not look like the work of Turk rabble.”
    Mihajlovic nodded, watching the flames in front of the monastery dwindle. “I am beginning to agree. Sergeant.”
    â€œDa, moy Djeneral!”
    â€œYou say you were just there, by the southeast corner, when the attack occurred?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œAnd the commandos must have been there ... hidden in the brush at the tree line.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    There was little left of two military trucks save for the charred and twisted frames. There were no bodies lying around as Jankovic had claimed, but there was plenty of evidence of a massacre—splatters of blood on the ground and on the front wall of the monastery, bullet scars on the stone.
    â€œYou are right, Major,” Mihajlovic said thoughtfully to his aide. “Someone has gone to considerable trouble to clean up after himself.” He’d already had the men with him using flashlights to scour the area for empty brass casings that would have identified the weapons the intruders had used, but so far they’d found nothing, no shells, no discarded equipment or wrappers or food tins, nothing that would have told Mihajlovic who had been here. “Muslim militia would not have been so thorough. Even Croats would simply have ambushed our