Direct Action by Keith Douglass

Author:Keith Douglass [Douglass, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780425248195
Goodreads: 384778
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

21

Saturday, November 11

0400 hours

Near Btedaï

Lebanon

The SEALs soon left the fields and cut back across one of the forks of the dirt road. Murdock had been very uncomfortable with the tracks they were leaving.

There was a ritual to crossing what was known as a danger area. Jaybird and Murdock went across the dirt road first, while Kos and Higgins, on either flank, trained their weapons up and down the road. Murdock secured the far side while Jaybird scouted out even farther ahead. On Murdock’s signal the rest crossed, one at a time, with Kos and Higgins still covering.

Murdock was waiting when the last man, Razor Roselli, made it across the road.

“We’re heading onto more solid ground,” Murdock whispered to him. “Let’s put some CS across our trail.”

Razor nodded, and took a small plastic bottle out of his trouser pocket. It was filled with powdered persistent CS tear-gas crystals. Razor sprinkled the powder sparingly in a zigzag pattern across their trail. Just in case any dogs were tracking them. One tiny whiff of the CS crystals and a dog would no longer have a sense of smell. Rain would not wash the CS away.

Murdock went back to his place at the front of the column.

They edged around the village of Btedaï, population 554. There were a few slivers of light visible from the village, even at that hour. Farmers got up early. The SEALs stayed far enough away to keep from alerting the ubiquitous village dogs.

The SEALs crossed another dirt road. It was expected. This one cut past Btedaï to the south and simply ended.

Just past the road they entered a grove of trees. This patch was the beginning, the edge, of the larger woods. There were pines and oaks; the legendary cedars of Lebanon were not present. It was not a forest in the American sense; the trees were too sparse and widely dispersed. It was cover, though, and a welcome change from the wide-open fields.

As Razor Roselli at the end of the file slipped into the trees, loud voices speaking Arabic were suddenly heard further ahead. The SEALs dropped flat to the ground.

It was the type of situation that required the most careful exercise of judgment. If you started shooting when you could have let someone pass unknowingly by, you alerted the entire neighborhood to your presence. But if you allowed a large force to walk right up to your position, you risked being pinned down, overrun, and wiped out.

Unless one of the SEALs was stepped on or otherwise compromised, it was Murdock’s call. He lay with one ear to the ground, breathing quietly and shallowly through his mouth to keep from sending up a cloud of condensation. He smelled pine needles. His weapon was pointing toward the voices.

And the voices came closer. It only sounded like one or two. Then again, maybe it was more and only one or two were talking. Not for the first time, Murdock wished he spoke Arabic. He added it to his list of early New Year’s resolutions.

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