Deathrace (7 page)

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By 0900, Kat’s right shoulder was sore from firing the submachine gun. She had lost count how many 30-round magazines she had burned up. She liked the three-round burst. Only twice had she fired it on full auto. In two bursts she emptied a full magazine.

“All right, Kat. You have a full mag. We’re hiking along this trail. I’ll be behind you. Without warning we start taking enemy fire from the left. I’ll say ‘Fire from the left!’ When I shout that, you drop to your stomach, have the MP-5 up, and return fire into the dune. Use up the magazine with three-round bursts. Got it?”

Kat nodded.

They moved back to the start of the range and began walking across the face of the big dune. DeWitt waited until they were almost across the mouth of the range before he called out.

Kat dropped to her stomach, broke her fall with her elbows, aimed, and fired at the carved-out sand dune within three seconds. She fired all thirty rounds, ejected the empty magazine, slammed in a new one, and worked the slide to push a round into the firing chamber the way DeWitt had showed her.

“Cease fire,” DeWitt said. He squatted beside her. “Yes, Kat. Good. I didn’t even tell you to change magazines, but that’s a basic. In any firefight you keep a loaded magazine in your weapon at all times. If you can change from a partly used one to a full one, do that. Never get caught with an empty magazine, or you and half the platoon could be dead.”

“Got it,” Kat said.

They did the firing on command six more times, three from each side so she learned how to twist her body to return fire to the right. Each time she did it quickly and the right way.

DeWitt sat down across from her and stretched out his legs. He watched her. She looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s break time. In your pack is a canteen. I filled it with Coke and ice cubes before we left the Grinder. Strongest thing we have on base.”

A grin flashed across her face as she grabbed the canteen and drank. She smiled. “Oh, yes, I needed this. Like Navy grog of old.”

“Kat, I know you have a Ph.D. in physics. Any minors like law?”

“How did you know? I went into prelaw for two years, then switched.”

“How did I know? You have a sharp analytical mind, I’d guess. What I’ve seen this morning is that I don’t have to tell you or explain anything to you twice. You listen, you see, you learn, you memorize I’d bet, and then you do. Traits of a good trial lawyer. I had prelaw and then a year of law school before I went to the Academy.”

“Still happy with your choice?”

“Remarkably. I’m so Navy that it hurts sometimes.”

She nodded. “I can see that, DeWitt.”

They worked on the canteens of Coke.

“What’s next?” Kat asked.

“Easy, we have all day. You seem determined.”

“I didn’t really want this job. They told me I was the best person to do it. Now that I’m into it, I’m determined not to get anybody killed, and to get in and out, and stay alive myself.”

“That’s exactly our plan. So, you ready to work with a pistol?”

“I’ll be carrying one besides the MP-5?”

“Right, we all have at least two weapons. Some of the guys also have a hideout, a little twenty-two or a thirty-two.”

He reached in his pack, and took out a pistol. DeWitt gave it to her. “This is an H&K P7. It fires a nine-millimeter round and holds eight of them in the magazine in the handle.
It doesn’t have the hitting power that the forty-five you shot yesterday does. But neither does it have the weight or the recoil.”

She held it, careful to keep the muzzle pointing down-range.

“One interesting feature on this weapon is that it has no safety. Most pistols have a safety. You can’t just draw and fire like in the old westerns. You have to push off the safety, then fire.

“This pistol has a unique grip catch in the front edge of the butt. When your hand grips this, it engages the trigger with the cocking and firing mechanism. That all means that to fire the weapon you simply grip the handle and pull the trigger. If you drop it, the weapon’s grip catch isn’t engaged, so it can’t go off accidentally.”

DeWitt stood. “Give it a try. It’s loaded.”

She stood, aimed at the sand dune, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“That’s an automatic,” DeWitt said. “First you need to pull the slide back like you probably did on the forty-five. You need to do this on any automatic just after loading an empty weapon with a fresh magazine.”

“Right,” she said. She pulled back the slide and let it snap forward, then lifted the weapon, gripped the handle, and squeezed the trigger. It fired. She nodded. Aimed again, and fired. Soon the 8-round magazine was empty and the slide stayed open.

DeWitt handed her a full magazine. “How do I get the empty one out?” she asked.

“The magazine catch is at the left side of the butt, behind the trigger. Push it and the magazine drops out. Slide in the new one.”

“Then I pull the slide back to chamber a round. Got it.”

“Now hold your fire while I set up some man-sized targets.” He went to the face of the sand dune, pulled six
targets from a closed wooden box, and leaned them against the back of the carved-out sand.

Back beside her, he motioned at the targets twenty yards away.

“This is a common target distance, twenty yards. That’s sixty feet, three times as far as the Old West gunmen liked to be for a gunfight. Twenty feet was plenty for those old six-guns.

“We’ll move up to ten yards and give you a try. No weapon is any good if you can’t hit what you’re aiming at. Anyone we start shooting at won’t be afraid of the sound. It’ll take hot lead to discourage him. We use the point-and-shoot technique with pistols and handguns. It works.

“Just push out your finger and point at something. You’ll do the same thing with the H&K in your hand. When you are pointing at your target, pull the trigger. Give it a try on the first target. Hold the pistol at your side. Then lift your hand almost shoulder high and point at the target. When you’re on target, squeeze the trigger.”

Kat did. The first two shots hit the first target. Then she missed three, and the last three she hit.

“Yes,” DeWitt said.

They fired forty rounds through the P-7 then tested two other handguns, both with 14-round magazines. Kit liked the H&K P-7, without a safety to worry about.

They packed up, finished the canteens of rapidly warming Coke, and cleaned up the brass from the rounds they had fired. Then they headed back down the beach.

“Packs are a lot lighter this time,” Kat said.

They ran back the three miles to the Grinder and dropped into chairs in Murdock’s office.

“Boots,” DeWitt said. “How do they feel?”

“Blisters,” Kat said. “They’re half a size too big. I need eight-and-a-halfs instead of nines.”

“I’m on it,” Jaybird Sterling said. “I’ll pick up a pair this afternoon.”

“How’s the shooting eye?” Murdock asked.

Kat shrugged and pointed to DeWitt.

“Good. Point and shoot with the pistol was right on. Kat likes the H&K P-7. We’ll keep at it. The MP-5 is coming along. Didn’t do much on accuracy. Down the road. What about longer guns? We still have that friendly rancher up by Boulevard?”

“Last time I knew,” Murdock said.

“Think Kat and I’ll slip up there in the morning for some work on the long guns. Kat, we want you to be able to fire any weapon we carry in an emergency. Not that you have to qualify, but you should be familiar enough to pick up one and use it if you lose yours or you run out of rounds.”

“Sounds reasonable. What’s next?”

DeWitt looked at Murdock.

“A run?”

“We did six miles already,” DeWitt said.

“What about the obstacle course? I’d like to try it.”

“Not on your agenda,” DeWitt said.

“You don’t think I can do it,” Kat said.

Murdock grinned. “Might be a good welcome to the SEALs,” he said. “Yes, Kat, I’ll lead you on a tour of the obstacle course. Any one of the stops you don’t want to try will be fine.”

“I’ll do the whole course. Let’s go.”

7

George Imhoff sat in the second room of the small apartment and tried to make sense out of what went on between the huge fat American and the Iranian lens grinder. George belched and his stomach growled at him. He hadn’t had anything to eat since that morning. The four warm French beers hadn’t helped any. He had no idea where Tauksaun, the huge one, found French beer in Tehran.

George looked at Yasmeen for the hundredth time and lifted his brows. They sat near the door that had been opened three inches so they could see, and Yasmeen could hear. Most of the conversation was in Farsi.

“They still talk about the soccer match. Each time Tauksaun brings up the lens grinding, the man changes the topic.”

George swore softly, and watched Yasmeen’s eyes light up. She seemed to be excited by the dirty words, but he didn’t have time for that now. He slipped the forty-five from his pocket and checked the magazine. Full. He held it in his right hand and reached for the door.

“No,” Yasmeen said softly.

“Yes, I don’t have time for this shit. Past time for some action.” He stepped through the door and cleared his throat. Both men near the bed looked at him. Tauksaun shook his head when he saw the weapon.

George didn’t hesitate. He pulled the forty-five’s slide back and let it snap forward, slamming a round into the firing chamber. He carried the pistol low as he walked up to the Iranian.

“Tell him the bullshit is over. Do it, Tauksaun.”

The huge man tried to roll to one side a little to ease the pressure on his hips. He sighed, then stuttered out some Farsi.

George brought the forty-five up to aim at the lens grinder’s chest.

“Now, tell him I want to know exactly where he was taken to do the grinding work on the polished steel. Exactly. None of this blindfolded crap.”

George waited as the translation came. Then he put the pistol’s muzzle against the lens grinder’s chest, directly over his heart.

The Iranian was thin, small, with a full dark beard and bushy brows. He slumped back toward the bed and George moved with him, increasing the pressure of the forty-five. The Iranian looked up with black eyes that showed stark fear.

He chattered once, and paused, then came out with a flood of Farsi.

George waited.

Tauksaun nodded. “He says he knows they went to the southern port city of Chah Bahar. From there they drove north by truck into the mountains on a good gravel road. He says they never got all the way through the mountains into the great plain. So the spot must be in the mountains.”

“Could he find the place again?” George asked.

When the Iranian heard the translation, he looked at George and shook his head.

The translation came that they had been kept in covered trucks all the way from the port. He only knew they went north. They did not go into Pakistan.

The questioning went on.

The man had no idea what kind of project he had worked on. He was grinding some kind of metal. He never saw a finished product. He and ten others had worked around the clock on twelve-hour shifts.

Yes, they had completed the project and then were sent home. Yes, they each received wages, and a bonus of 210,000 rials. That would be about seventy dollars, not a lot of money for a lens grinder.

“That’s all he knows, CIA agent,” Tauksaun said. “I don’t appreciate your use of the weapon in my house. It wasn’t needed.”

“It worked, nobody got hurt.”

“So far,” Tauksaun said. He spoke with the lens grinder for a few moments, then Tiny came. They put a blindfold around the small man’s eyes, and Tiny led him out the front door.

It would take Tiny a half hour to get the man out of the area and safely away. Tauksaun didn’t talk to George. He tried to find some American music on his short-band radio. He got mostly static, then located an American station on one of the Air Force bases in Germany. The music came through loud and clear.

The Andrews sisters had just finished a golden oldie, when Tiny came in. She closed the door, then tried to turn, but staggered a step before she fell to the floor. George went down beside her and held her head.

Her eyes rolled for a moment, then steadied in place.

Blood seeped from her mouth.

“Police,” she whispered in English, then passed out. George carried her to a pallet beside the floor bed and stretched her out. He had tears in his eyes. Yasmeen knelt beside Tiny on the pallet, making a quick examination.

“She’s been shot in the chest,” Yasmeen said. “Probably hit one lung, and for sure lots of internal bleeding. If she doesn’t get to a hospital, she’ll die.”

“No hospital,” Tauksaun said. “The police would recognize her and let her die there. Tiny isn’t exactly unknown to the authorities. This is all on your head, CIA man.”

He stared at Tiny for a moment and blinked rapidly. He nodded to himself, and then used the telephone. He spoke quickly in English and Farsi, then hung up.

“A friend, a nurse, will be here quickly. Before she comes, you two must go. Now.”

“Can I help?” Yasmeen asked.

Tauksaun watched her; his eyes seemed to narrow as a frown tainted his round face. “Perhaps. Your father is wealthy. We always need money. Yes, you can help. Twenty million rials would be good. That’s only a little over sixty-six hundred dollars, George, don’t look so surprised.” He rolled, and sat up straighter with a great effort.

“Now both of you out of here with your radio and your American dollars that could get us all shot on sight. The Secret Police will be here shortly. Somebody will always rat on me for a few thousand rials. Out.”

“Thanks for the help,” George said. He picked up the radio and put it away in his shoulder bag, then pocketed the forty-five after making sure the safety was on.

“No thanks needed. I just hope you haven’t got me killed.”

Yasmeen and George went out the front door and hurried down the street. George could almost smell the Secret Police coming. He frowned as they rushed along. He had a little more information, but not nearly what the Company demanded. How the hell was he going to find out anything else without going into the region? The idea of a small plane was good, but he’d have no chance at all renting such a plane down in that area. There might not even be an airfield down there. He didn’t know that much about Iran.