Free Hostile Fire by Keith Douglass Page A

just for the fun of it. She had won the classic Hawaiian women’s race twice.
    “I hear you’re going to be going on the picnic with us,” Murdock said.
    “I’ll go, but I get to play with the toys only if you guys can find them. Any idea where they could be?”
    “Our only hint so far is that they are in the desert. But that involves hundreds of square miles. We have a man in Baghdad who is supposed to give us the coordinates.”
    “You and Ching and this man I don’t know will be going into Baghdad to help him. Be careful.”
    Murdock pulled up Rafii. “Kat, this is Omar Rafii, one of our SEALs. Rafii, this is the little lady who makes the atomic weapons go poof instead of bang. At least she did before, twice, and we all survived. We hope she can do it again.” The two shook hands. “Kat, are you just as good with a sub gun as you used to be?”
    They moved up in the cafeteria line, picked out what they wanted, and soon were seated at tables with real chairs.
    “A sub gun. You had to remind me. I’m afraid I’m out of practice. But then I haven’t had to kill anybody in the office where I work. You would have to remind me of that.”
    “Hey, you saved my skin out there in the boonies. I’m not about to let you forget that. I still owe you big time.”
    She grinned. “You still all tied up with that tall blonde from Washington, DC?”
    “No. Ardith lives in San Diego now. We just bought a condo.”
    Kat scowled for a moment then lifted her brows. “You really know how to spoil a girl’s day. Well, I guess it’s just business then.”
    “Right, just business.”
    After lunch, the three SEALs reported back to the classroom. Sedgewick, their trainer for the day, nodded as theycame in. “Before we get started on our language unit, I have some news. Our man in Baghdad who had been feeding us most of our information is no longer communicating with us. He was supposed to give us a general area where the Iraqi bombs were being stored. On his last report he said he had a contact who should be able to get the general area for us. He had a scaled-down version of the SATCOM to use to contact us. It had a built-in safety device. The operator had to punch in a special code to deactivate the self-destruct charges. If it is turned on, or opened in any way without that code, there is a ten-second delay. During that delay the set automatically broadcasts a distress call on all frequencies notifying us that it is in the delay mode and will soon self-destruct. We received the distress call just after twelve-twenty P.M. in Washington and here. If the set is dead, we can be sure that our agent there is either dead, compromised, or being interrogated.”
    “So we have no help in Baghdad?”
    “There’s one chance. Twelve years ago we had a top man in Baghdad. He married an Iraqi woman, has a family. When it was time for him to come out, he declined. Said he was retiring and we should send his check to an address in Baghdad. We did. We found out later that he’s been on the bottle religiously, that he’s never been compromised as an agent, and that he’s evidently happy enough living in Baghdad. He does some writing for a Baghdad newspaper as an expatriate who knows America and can tell the Iraqi readers a slant on life they don’t know about.”
    “We still go into the capital and try to find out where the bombs are located?” Rafii asked.
    “That’s your job. It just got about ten times harder. You can contact this man. His name is John Jones. We have his address. He won’t be easy. Lately he’s been on the wagon. His wife is helping him. The last time we heard he had a hundred and thirty-eight days clean and sober. The probability is he’ll flat out refuse to help you, not wanting to jeopardize his setup there.”
    “Great, a burned out ex-spy who’s now a drunk,” Ching said. “Will he be any help at all?”
    “We’re not sure. For all I know he’s a sleeper, still anagent, but posing as a real-life