Warren Murphy: Troubled Waters

"It would be most difficult to come up with a rationale for canceling routine war games," Dr. Smith had said. He had the sour voice of a man who had just chomped down on a lemon wedge.

"The pack's gonna stay out if there's a bunch of paramilitaries romping around," Remo argued.

"So wait until the games are over," Smith countered.

"No," Remo said. "First of all, the wolves may still be migrating for all we know. We know where they are right now and I'm gonna grab them right now, before they move on. Second, if the wolves do show themselves, the SEALs are gonna go get their real guns and start shooting. Third, I don't wanna."

"You have no choice, really," Smith said.

"Yeah. Put me inside."

"What?"

"You know. An observer or something."

"That's not plausible," Smith replied curtly. Remo sighed. He was at a phone booth at a convenience store in some small town in Arizona, already on his way to New Mexico. "Better to go in with an implausible cover than with no cover at all," he stated flatly.

"Remo-"

"Because-listen very closely to this, Smitty-I am going in, one way or another."

Smith relented, but by the time Remo called him back a hundred miles later, he had thrown a wrench into the works.

"I anticipated all manner of red flags showing up when the order was issued," Smith said. "I could not hope to quell them all without giving you better cover."

"Yeah. So what's my cover?"

"Department of Homeland Security Special Forces Special Scenario Evaluation Specialist," Smith said.

"Uh-huh."

"Your role is to offer Special Forces experience with out-of-the-ordinary field events and capabilities," Smith explained.

"You want me to try to trip up the SEALs while they're wargaming one another?"

"I want you to engage the SEALs. You'll be one of the teams."

"You're right. One guy taking on a freakin' army will be much more low-profile than if I was going in as an observer," Remo said.

"Specialists of this type exist, Remo, and they're being used in just this way to prepare our military for field scenarios they might not expect. Just don't let them see you do anything too, er, unusual."

"Whatever," Remo said. Of all the cockamamy situations he had found himself in courtesy of Harold W. Smith, this one ranked way up near the top.

So here he was, trying to hunt wolves while taking on the Navy SEALs. Single-handedly.

Those SEALs had better not distract him from the wolf hunt.

The SEALs were late. They had been air-dropped north of town, a HALO jump from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules. They came loaded for war-or, in this case, for Remo-packing the usual assortment of firearms, knives, garrotes, explosives, night surveillance gear, whatever. It was certain that each member of the team would have a watch and compass of his own, and since there were no other "enemies" participating in the exercise who could have slowed them, Remo was forced to think of reasons for their tardiness.

One possibility a casual observer might have raised was that the SEAL commandos were not late at all. They could have closed the gap between their LZ and the ghost town right on schedule, infiltrated silently, and were stalking Remo through the dusty shells of buildings even now. But a Master of Sinanju was difficult to sneak up on. He'd hear them coming. If they muffled their footsteps, he'd hear their breathing. If they held their breath all the way into town, he'd hear their heartbeats-two or three buildings away.

Unless they had crashed or gotten lost, both highly unlikely, Remo assumed the SEAL team was trying to outfox him with an indirect approach, perhaps circling wide, north of town, to approach from the west or east.

Oh, well, here they came now. It wasn't the noise of their approach that alerted him; he could smell them.

You load some poor sap down with enough hardware to have his own gun show and put him out in the hundred-degree-plus heat, and he's gonna sweat a little. And that's the kind of smell that carried for miles, notably when the hunter came in with the wind at his back.

The approaching perspirer made his way into town. Remo listened to the thumps of his boots as he took cover in the building at the west end of town. Remo had already been there and had swiped at the floorboards with his short but surgically sharp fingernails. They scored the wood in a thin, invisible line.

The SEALs, who had conducted exercises in this ghost town before, would have no reason to doubt that the floors at Sundberg's Mercantile weren't sound. However...

Remo heard the minute creak of the floorboards as the SEAL took a careless step. Then there was a crash-loud enough for everybody to hear-and while no startled cries or curses accompanied the noise, Remo was satisfied that he had bagged an "enemy." The Navy SEALs were too well trained to cry out in a combat situation if they suffered injury, but it was also possible that the commando, who had plunged twelve feet into the basement of the mercantile, was now unconscious from the fall. In either case, he would be in for more surprises if and when he tried the ancient wooden stairs.

One down.

Squads varied in their sizes, depending on the branch of service and the mission, but he had been told that he was up against a dozen Navy SEALs. Their guns were loaded with paint rounds, the seriousness of a "wound" determined by location of the splash, with any hit between the neck and groin considered a "kill." Before the game had started, Dr. Smith had cautioned Remo to remember that it was a game.

Remo didn't even really care about the game. He'd like to herd every last one of the SEALs into some dusty basement for the duration so he could concentrate on his real purpose here-find those wolves.

Remo left the old hotel through a side door, emerging in an alley where the pent-up heat of the afternoon still simmered wickedly. Long strides brought him to the main street-the ghost town's only street, in fact-and he stood waiting in the shadows, watching for his adversaries. He could hear them scampering around town like a bunch of parade marchers.

A man-sized shadow dodged between two buildings on the far side of the street, immediately followed by a second, then a third. It made sense that the team would be divided, sweeping both sides of the street and working house to house until they found their prey.

Or he found them.

Another group was coming in behind him, to his left, advancing from the west. Remo fell back to meet them, barely conscious of the dusty, almost stifling air in the narrow alleyway.

Using a hole in the wall as a stair, Remo ascended to the hotel roof quickly. The hotel was just one story. Remo felt the sagging roof with his feet and decided it was sound enough to support his weight, despite enduring the years of sun and wind and insects that had been working on all the town's predominantly wooden buildings. At the southwest corner of the roof he knelt and glanced below.

Three men in desert camouflage, with dusty faces, were advancing toward him, proceeding in spurts of motion followed by statuesque stillness, ready for incoming fire each time they changed position. Apparently, they thought the "specialist" they were hunting would be armed as they were, but in fact his hands were empty as he casually watched them making progress on the ground. They didn't pause to enter any of the buildings that they passed, and Remo wondered what their plan was. Were they moving toward a rendezvous with other SEALs, somewhere behind him? Three on one side of the street and two on the other left five guns unaccounted for, but he would deal with those in front of him before he went in search of others.

REMO WAITED UNTIL THEY were just below him, then stepped off into space. The drop was not a long one, no more than eleven feet, and he landed directly in their path.