"We find them and take them out with our twenties before they can use their forties," Murdock said. "The Russians used to a.s.sign one RPG man to each squad. That could be the ratio here. So maybe they only have one RPG with them. Gardner, you see anything more up there?"

"Nope. We took out the two men we spotted. Haven't seen or heard anything else."

"Okay, we a.s.sume then they have one RPG and it's to the south. Lam, work down some of those tributary wadis and see if you can sniff out where the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are. Don't get yourself shot and don't get on the surface. They must be watching the top just like you guys are. Going to be dawn in about thirty. Move fast while you can. Bradford, this SATCOM ready to go?"

"Ready, sir."

Murdock picked up the handset where the SATCOM sat on the lip of the drop-off and pushed the send b.u.t.ton. "Big Daddy, talk to me."

The response was slow, but it came. "Yes, Underground. Our birds are in the air. Their ETA your place is less than thirty minutes."

"May have some bad news. We've got a squad of Iraqi infantry and they evidently have one or more RPGs. The old seven type probably, but mean enough to knock down a chopper. We're hunting them now, but not sure we'll find them before your birds get here. Did you give the chopper pilots one of our Motorolas?"

"I did, little buddy. I remembered getting broadsided before because the birds couldn't talk to you. Five miles is about all the range they have, or maybe six or seven when they are in the air."

"As soon as we hear them coming, we'll talk to them and throw out a red flare. Right now, we're on a search and destroy. Out."

Murdock put the SATCOM back in place. "Kat, how are you doing?"

"Another ten minutes and I'll be done. This bomb is different from the first one. Don't know why. I can do both of them. Give me ten and then time to set the fuses and we'll all choggie out of this neck of Iraq."

"We pull back how far?" Murdock asked.

"Two hundred. I'm having Senior Chief Neal rig the wall that's holding up the roof slab so it will blow out the wall and let the whole thing drop down and crush the bombs. He'll set that timer for two minutes after the charges on the bombs go off."

"Good, I like it. Get finished. It's almost light out here." Murdock watched the darkness slip away and the first traces of dawn creep over the desert.

"Senior Chief, you read me?"

"Right, Skipper."

"Okay, you've got the con here. Get the three of you out of there when the charges are set. Give yourself at least five minutes to make the move. Then find a wadi up here on the surface to drop into. I'm heading out to where Lam is hunting for the RPGs."

It took Murdock five minutes to get out to where the rest of the squad had the picket line. They were in a gully that ran parallel with the bomb factory.

"Lam went down that one," Jaybird said, pointing to a branch of the wadi. "He's been gone fifteen and we haven't heard a word. He traded me for my Bull Pup."

"Lam, you on the scent out there?" Murdock radioed.

"f.u.c.king close. I can hear some chatter, but can't see anybody yet. Oh d.a.m.n. Just around a bend in this ten-foot-deep gully, I can see them. Six, maybe eight of them, and they have three RPGs."

"Let me get up there," Murdock said. "You have a twenty?"

"Yes and four rounds."

"I'm coming. Lead me in. I go to the first branch to the left-is that the direction?"

"Second branch, and go right. I'm about fifty yards from the turnoff."

"Be there in five. Hold your fire." Murdock took off at a sprint, got to the first-branch wadi, went past it to the second. That's when he heard the sound of the two choppers coming in. He ran ahead again. If he didn't get there in time, the RPGs could knock down their ticket out of there.

"I hear it, too," Lam said. "About two miles out. You better get here quick. Otherwise I'm going to have to do it myself."

"I'm no more than a minute away. Two rounds are better than one. I'm running, Lam. If I don't get there in time, you take them out with the twenties. We can't afford to let them get off a single round."

"I'm sighting in and waiting, Skipper. Shake a leg. Those birds are getting closer."

Murdock frowned as he ran. "Jaybird, don't throw out that red flare until we get these RPGs taken care of."

"You best hurry, Skipper," Jaybird said. "The birds are zeroing in on the smoke still coming up from parts of the factory."

Murdock scowled into the growing light and surged down the flat bottom of the wadi toward where Lam must have been waiting.

21.

Murdock panted as he rounded the small turn in the five-foot-deep wadi. No Lam ahead. He could hear the sound of the choppers now coming in from the southeast.

"Skipper, Gypsy isn't sounding good. She's wheezing now and her pulse is so low I can hardly find it," the medic said. "Where are those d.a.m.n flyboys?"

"Coming. First the f.u.c.king RPGs. Lam, where are you?"

"I can hear you, Skipper. Next curve on the wadi and you have it."

"Underground, this is Bird One. We don't see a flare."

"Hold it, Bird One, circle or something. We've got some RPGs down here we need to shoot up."

"That's a roger, Underground."

Murdock came around the next small turn and saw Lam belly down in the dirt next to a sharper curve. He ran up and dropped beside him.

"I'll do a contact round, Skipper. You do an airburst. They're up there about fifty yards."

Murdock leaned around the lip of rocks and sand and saw the uniforms. "That's a go, swabbie. On three. One, two, three." Both men fired. The twin reports of the twenties startled the Iraqi soldiers, but they had no time to react as the 20mm rounds exploded almost at the same time. Lam's contact round blew two men into the air and riddled one RPG launcher with dozens of penetrating shards of shrapnel. Murdock's airburst sent hundreds of razor-sharp metal fragments blasting down on the eight men who crouched in the gully.

Both men at once fired second rounds, and the next time they looked around the bend in the wadi, they saw only one man standing. He stared down the gully at them and lifted his RPG. Murdock's contact 20mm exploded in front of him before he could fire. The explosion set off the round in the RPG launcher and tore the soldier apart who held it. He jolted backwards, one of his arms missing and his torso riddled with shrapnel.

The SEALs looked again, saw no one alive, and Murdock hit his radio.

"Jaybird, throw out that red flare. Kat, how are you coming?"

"Flare is on the way," Jaybird said on the net.

"You eliminated the RPGs?" the new voice on the Motorola said.

"Yes, Bird One, you should have one red soon to land. Kat, what's your status?"

"We're all three out of the crater. Senior Chief Neal set the charges on the wall, and we punched up the boom-booms for five minutes. That was a minute and twelve seconds ago. Right now we're hoofing it fifty yards away and finding ourselves a hole."

"Blast set for about three minutes from now, everyone. Bird One, wait about five before you land. We want to see what happens at the bomb hole."

"That's a roger, Underground. We're holding."

Murdock could hear the choppers then. The sound came and then diminished, then came again. They were circling.

Murdock and Lam ran back down the wadi to where they could get out easily, and then jogged toward the line of pickets they had set out. Just as they got there, Murdock felt the ground shake.

"Fire one," Lam said.

A gush of smoke and dust blasted out of the opening behind the crane. Then a second explosion came, followed at once by a third. More smoke and dirt gushed out of the hole; then they heard a rumbling and saw the slanted roof on this end of the factory shake and then slide into the hole that had been the bombs' home.

Murdock, Lam, and the rest of Alpha Squad hiked back toward the crane. They met Kat and Neal, who were both grinning.

"Looks like you did it," Murdock said.

Kat nodded, her smile bright. "Oh yes, we did. The slab dropping down seals those two bombs in there so no radiation can come out. They should be safe there for about a thousand years."

"Flare now, Skipper?" Jaybird called on the radio.

"Flare now, affirmative."

Murdock hurried forward and found the gully where Gypsy lay on a bed of cammie shirts. He knelt down beside her. She opened her eyes.

"Kat got the bombs?" she asked, her voice husky, so low Murdock had to strain to understand.

"Yes, all three are destroyed. Now our job is to get you safely out of here and to a good doctor."

"I like this one," she said and smiled. Then her face tightened and her eyes closed. She gasped as pain drilled through her body. She shuddered, then nodded and opened her eyes.

"Hurts some," she said.

Fifty yards behind Murdock, the choppers both landed on an open s.p.a.ce.

"Load up," Murdock said to his mike, and he saw men moving toward the two birds. "Howard and Canzoneri, come over to where Gypsy is. I'm standing and waving."

The four men held each other's wrists under Gypsy and moved her as gently as possible to the chopper door. Eager hands helped take her inside and put her on a cargo pad on the floor.

"Everyone on board?" Murdock asked. "How many bodies in the first chopper?"

Gardner responded. "We've got eight here. Kat's with us."

Murdock counted. "We have ten including Doc and Gypsy. Eighteen is our number. Cleared for takeoff."

Just then an explosion shook the first chopper.

"RPG incoming," the pilot shouted into his Motorola. "It didn't miss us by much. We're out of here."

The second chopper pilot lifted off at the same moment, and when the bird was twenty feet into the air, another RPG round went off where the craft had been sitting. They felt some pings and the sound of whining shrapnel, but nothing that came through the skin of the chopper.

Both helicopters slanted south at top speed and a minute later Murdock relaxed. They must be out of range of the RPGs by now. They were dangerous and deadly but better at short range than long. He touched his radio mike. "Bird One, what's your flight time to Kuwait?"

"I have it an hour and forty-eight."

"Good. Can you advise them we have wounded and we'll need an emergency team at the landing site ready for one critical."

"Will do that, Underground. Congratulations on your mission. Talk about hairy. You SEALs do good work."

"We had help from one brilliant and gutsy lady, and a second lady who is leaving her country to help us. Get us to medical help as soon as possible."

Murdock went over to Gypsy and held her hand. She was unconscious. He gripped her hand and she stirred, then opened her eyes.

"Dream. I just had a dream. Wild. Abstract. Nothing fit anything else. Almost a nightmare."

Mahanani hovered nearby. "Gypsy, do you need some more morphine? Is the pain too much for you?"

"What pain? I'm with friends." Her scratchy voice was hard to hear over the roar of the chopper. Mahanani took her pulse and scowled. He went up to the pilot.

"Tell the medics at the airport to have a portable defibrillator on their gurney and everything else. Her heart rate is so slow I'm afraid it'll stop before we get there."

The pilot nodded and made the call to his home base.

In the chopper the SEALs sat and watched the struggle for life. For a time Mahanani hovered over Gypsy, watching, testing her pulse and listening to her breathing. At last he leaned back, his face near a smile as he nodded.

"She's stronger. I don't know where she finds the strength, but she's doing better than I hoped. At this rate, she might make it."

Twenty minutes from touchdown, Gypsy cried out in pain and tried to sit up. Murdock and the medic held her down. Mahanani took her pulse and frowned.

"So d.a.m.n low it almost isn't there. Make this d.a.m.n machine go faster," he shouted into the chatter of the rotors.

When they landed, Murdock had the door open and saw the team of white-coated medics running forward with two gurneys. One was empty, the other loaded with machines and material. Two men jumped into the chopper and checked her with their stethoscopes. One frowned and shook his head. The other called for the paddles. They came into the chopper on their long cords.

"Three hundred," the medic shouted, then, "Clear." The paddles contacted Gypsy's chest and shoulder and made her slender body jolt upward. The stethoscope came again, held by the doctor. He shook his head. "Four hundred," the doctor called and the paddles. .h.i.t her again, jolting her upward off the pad then down.

The doctor with the stethoscope nodded. "She's back," he said. "Let's get her out of here and into emergency."

Two hours later Murdock and Kat paced the waiting room near the operating suite. An hour before, a nurse had come out and told them that Gypsy was still in critical condition but they had stabilized her. The bullet had gone through her chest, lung, and out her back, and most of the damage had been repaired. Her right lung had collapsed, but they had it working again it and it was functioning well.

"There's a little more repair work we need to do, and she isn't out of danger yet, but her chances look extremely good. She's a tough little lady. We'll let you know how we're progressing."

At last they both sat down and stared at each other.