Specter by Keith Douglass

deck for long. Nassau was in the middle of full flight deck ops, using her catapult to hurl Marine Harriers into the sky one after another. The noise on the flight deck was so loud that anyone without protective headgear would have been deafened in moments, and ordinary conversation, certainly, was impossible. Too, the stink of jet fuel made that “fresh air” Murdock had spoken of rather hard to find. After being confronted by a chief aviation boatswain’s mate who told them both point blank that unless they had some specific business on his flight deck they’d both be pleased to go play tourist someplace the hell else, they decided to take the man’s advice and find a spot for themselves somewhere out of the way.
    The crew’s lounge, aft and three levels down from the LPH’s flight deck, normally didn’t cater to either officers or master chief petty officers, and from the looks they were getting, Murdock decided that there probably wasn’t any place aboard this ship where he and MacKenzie could unwind, at least not without collecting stares. A ship, even one as large as the Nassau with a complement of 58 officers, 882 enlisted men, and 1,924 Marines, is a tight, tiny community where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else, and where the only thing faster than radio communications is shipboard scuttlebutt. The SEALs had attracted a lot of attention since they’d come aboard two weeks ago, and Murdock still wasn’t used to always being watched.
    Screw it. He wanted a cola and he wanted someplace to sit and talk with Mac. They ignored the looks, got their drinks from a coin-operated machine near the compartment’s forward door, and found themselves a table. The compartment was not too crowded at this hour of the morning. Two sailors were bent over a couple of arcade games aft, and several more were sitting on a sofa, watching television.
    â€œThey seemed pretty bent out of shape, Skipper,” Mac said as they sat back in their seats. “They were hitting me with questions about the firefight at the monastery, and about you capping that guy who tried to surrender. How the hell did they find out about that?”
    â€œEasy,” Murdock said. “I told ’em. Hell, I’m not going to lie about something like that.”
    Mac shook his head. “Sometimes, Boss, you’re just too much the frigging straight arrow.”
    â€œHell, I didn’t like doing it, but there was no way I was going to risk the mission screwing around with prisoners,” Murdock said. “But I don’t think that was what was bugging them. It was more like they were worried about, I don’t know. What evidence we might have left behind.”
    â€œWhat, like our IBS? Boomer’s piece? That stuff’s all sterile.”
    â€œI know. It’s just—”
    Murdock stopped in mid-sentence, staring at the television monitor across the compartment.
    â€œLieutenant? What is it?”
    Murdock gestured toward the TV. Nassau sported her own TV studio on board, but most programming was picked up from Armed Forces Network broadcasts and piped through the ship’s closed-circuit network.
    At the moment, an attractive, dark-haired, professional-looking woman was on the screen. Visible behind her was the familiar-looking facade of the St. Anastasias Monastery.
    â€œOh, shit ,” Murdock said.
    â€œHey, son,” Mac called to the sailors watching the program. “Could one of you turn that up, please?”
    A second class obliged, and Murdock listened to the newscaster’s words, comprehension dawning.
    â€œ. . . ian officials claim that American commandos carried out the predawn raid as a deliberate provocation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. One observer had this to say....”
    The woman was replaced on the screen by a military officer, an older man with the single star of a Serbian brigadier general on his gold-heavy