"He's got to come with us, he's an American. We take out all of our people when we pull back. Dead or alive!"
The chief wiped sweat off his forehead. "Damn foul-up! There are two civilians and a captain in the other room. He says we were supposed to be here yesterday. Their radio got shot to pieces and they had to sit and wait for us. Some assholes got curious outside and they had a running firefight for the past six hours."
A half-dozen rifle rounds slammed into the room and everyone hit the floor.
Johnny left the rocket weapon on the floor and crawled to a broken window. He triggered a burst with his M-16 through the window. It drained his magazine but sent two attackers stumbling into a death-sprawl in the sand outside.
"Nice shooting, kid. What's your name?" Swanson asked.
"Gray, Petty Officer Johnny Gray, sir."
"Keep them pinned down out there, Petty Officer. We've got to get the other three ready to travel so we can get back to the boat. The crew pulled it back into the sea, and they'll come back for us on three flashes of light, then three more."
Johnny looked over at Randall on the far window. Randall lifted up and fired three rounds, then dropped back out of sight. When he glanced at Johnny, they both made a thumbs-up sign and grinned.
Another cautious look by Johnny showed no movement outside his window. He had jammed in a new magazine and automatically charged a round into the chamber.
Chief Swanson slid down beside him.
"Gray, you been under fire before?"
Johnny shook his head.
"No sweat, just keep your head the way you've been doing and we'll all get out of this. We have three VIP types in the next room. As soon as we do a little more prep work on them, we'll start moving out of here.
"We lost some good men to that machine gun. I need a chain of command. You're it. If I go down, you've got to get this detail back to the landing zone. Everyone must be removed. This operation is highly classified. In fact it never took place — if we get out with all the people. Twenty-four is the number. If we can't get everyone off this rock, we don't go until we can."
Johnny looked up. "What's so secret?"
"Hell, nobody told me. We don't need to know. We just get twenty-four people into that LCVP."
A hand grenade crashed through part of the window glass still in the frame behind them. Without hesitation Johnny leaped for the explosive, scooped it up and tossed it outside in one continuous motion.
The grenade exploded as it cleared the sill, shattering the rest of the glass. A chunk of shrapnel tore through wooden molding and chewed a ragged, inch-deep hole in Johnny's shoulder.
"Keep the bastards back!" Swanson screamed. "We need another four or five minutes. Use some of those grenades. They don't do any good hanging on your webbing!"
The volume of rounds coming from the house increased. Johnny heard a stuttering machine gun in another room. Several of the candles were snuffed out. Johnny sent five rounds through his window and heard two more grenades discharge outside.
As Swanson talked he slapped a gauze pad over the bloody shoulder wound and wrapped Johnny's upper arm with a roller bandage over his torn shirt.
"Hell, I thought I was dead. I saw that grenade and I knew it was cooking and we had maybe two seconds to live. Thanks, kid."
Johnny flexed his arm and simply nodded.
Swanson ordered another man to take up Johnny's post. "Fire a few rounds to keep their heads down," the squadron leader instructed. "We leave here in two minutes."
Swanson motioned Johnny to follow him, and they crawled across the floor into the safe room. On a bed lay a girl who looked to Johnny to be about nineteen. She was beautiful, with deep brown eyes and glistening black hair. Her upper body was bare except for a new bandage that covered her right breast.
"We're almost ready to go," Swanson told her. She nodded. A younger boy, unmistakably her brother, moved to her side and helped her struggle into a white blouse. He buttoned it for her. She kept staring at Johnny, and at last she smiled. He knew the smile came despite her terrible pain. He nodded and smiled back. She looked away.
The third person in the room was Navy. He wore a captain's silver eagles on his khaki shirt collar. He had a bandage on one arm and another on the side of his head. He appeared to be dazed.
Swanson knelt in front of the seated officer and indicated Johnny, who squatted beside him.
"Sir, this is Petty Officer Gray. He's next in command if I buy one. The most important people here are this young lady and her brother. Our orders are to get them back to our ship. And we must take out all of our dead and wounded. Now get ready, we'll move in one minute."
Johnny worked out of the room with Swanson, who pointed to the front. "Get around there and find our men and move them to the back of the house. We've got to haul ass out of this cracker box before the enemy bring up their big stuff."
Even as Swanson spoke, Johnny spotted a Russian tank lumbering toward the house where his assault force was hiding. In another twenty seconds the Soviet-built monster would be in a position to train its big cannon on them.
2
Johnny Gray dived across the living-room floor, grabbed the Armbrust and hoisted it onto his shoulder. Aiming through a broken window, he tracked on the tank past a tree, glued the crosshairs on the side of the machine a foot above the churning treads and squeezed the trigger.
The pistol-crack of the weapon sounded louder inside the room, but of course there was no back blast. Johnny held his position so he could still peer over the sill. The round hit the tank and a second later the hatch blew off as the HE projectile set off the tank's magazine and blew it into an expensive piece of junk, smoking in the moonlight.
Chief Swanson nodded. "Now get the hell outside and bring those men around," he barked at Johnny, who spent a moment to detach the empty tube, take a live one from Randall and lock it in place. Then he shifted the weapon to his back, cinched it up and crawled to the far door. He slid through the opening on his belly and dropped quickly behind a low block wall.
A member of the SEAL team rose and motioned. Johnny rolled across a gap in the wall and fell behind another section of the concrete barricade.
"Pulling out," Johnny said. "Bring everybody else around back. Follow me."
There was no surprise. The combat specialist nodded, waved at two more men and they crawled along the side of the house, then began running in a crouch, heading for the rear of the residence.
In the dim light Johnny saw the girl appear at the rear exit and look out. Johnny ran to the door, took her hand. She wore sandals, a thin skirt and a white blouse. Her brother was ahead of them. Johnny urged her out the door.
"We must run," he said.
She nodded.
He tried to cover her from any danger. He saw the pale Navy captain lurch out the door toward the brush. They would use a safer route back to the landing zone.
They were halfway to the beach when the moon appeared again from behind shifting clouds, bathing the dry, dusty land in a kind of light that every combat veteran hates when he's moving, loves when the enemy is trying to advance. The brush helped.
Swanson motioned to Johnny as he ran into the thin growth.
"I've got a scout in front," the chief said. "He's a good man. Says there's a bunch of Arabs up there blocking our way. He's not sure how many. Do we have any antipersonnel rounds for that cannon of yours?"
"Three," Johnny said. "One is loaded now."
"Use one, see what happens."
Johnny moved quietly forward through the brush. He found the lookout twenty yards ahead standing behind a large palm. He pointed the weapon to the shadows fifty yards in front of them. There was an open area with nothing on it but sand, rocks and deadly moonlight.
The darkness under the brush beyond the clearing beckoned to them like a refuge. A hundred yards ahead and to their left, closer to the water, stood a gutted hotel. The top five stories were devastated by bombs and fire. No windows remained in the
side of the structure that Johnny could see.
He sighted on the center of the black mass where the scout said the enemy troops lay. Through the light-gathering power of the sighting scope he could see men moving around. He checked from side to side. There had to be thirty soldiers there at least. Johnny knew the round would hit and spray hundreds of thousands of small wires and shrapnel forward in a 180-degree killzone. He acquired target on the closest moving blobs and fired.
The round exploded forty yards ahead of them almost at the same moment as the pistollike report of the weapon. Johnny kept his eye on the sight.
Bodies flew through the air, heads came unattached, arms sailed past. A torso with no appendages slammed across his vision and was gone. The screams began even before the rolling thunder of the explosion died.
Johnny took the empty Armbrust tube off the firing apparatus. Randall was suddenly behind him, handing him another antipersonnel round. Johnny stopped a shiver from sneaking down his back and locked the warhead in place. He saw that Randall had two M-16s. In the gloom their glances met and Johnny nodded his thanks.
Within a minute the others surrounded them in the brush, sufficiently spread out so a lucky grenade would not do to them what it had done to the untrained Shiite troops.
Swanson knelt beside Johnny.
"Look, Gray, I'm no damn ensign or lieutenant. I don't mind some suggestions."
Johnny looked at the shattered area ahead through the half-light. Clouds scudded over the moon. "Let's bypass those woods, bear left toward the beach and work through the fringe of trees behind those houses."
Swanson looked both ways, then nodded. "I want you to stay with the girl and her brother. They're the damn prize in this big hornets' nest we've disturbed. Keep them in the middle of our detail. Let's move!"
For five minutes they worked forward slowly through the dark line of trees, then came to another clearing. They were just past the burned-out hotel when a machine gun opened up behind them.
"Down!" Johnny shouted. They all flattened out. The girl reached over and held his arm as a volley of machine-gun slugs chopped up the brush over their heads.
"I'm afraid," she whispered, her face close to his.
"We're all afraid. But don't worry." He touched her cheek. "But don't worry, we'll make it."
He bellied toward the rear and found Randall. "How many grenades you got?"
"Two."
Johnny gave him two more. "Go back there and get that damn machine gun or he'll chop us up into pig feed. I'll take the two Armbrust rounds to lighten your load. Move fast!"
Randall Phillips ran to the nearest tree and peered around. The chatter gun had moved to the left. It spat out twenty rounds. Randall faded into the darkness toward the sound.
For the next three minutes they lay there waiting. A new sound came from the front. More troops moving up.
Johnny heard the first grenade go off, then a second. For a moment the echo trailed away, then he heard a scream as an M-16 chattered eight rounds.
A deadly silence closed around them like a shroud.
A minute later Johnny whirled at the sound of a rustling, his M-16 leveled at a figure behind him.
"It's me," Randall whispered. "I got the two bastards."
Johnny nodded and worked his way forward to where Swanson lay.
"They've got us bracketed, at least a company of troops out there," Swanson said. "They don't seem to be well trained and their firepower is low-grade. But we're cut off from the landing zone. We've got two more of your rounds. Time to try for the hotel before they beat us to it. We'll have some solid protection." He looked at his watch. "Damn, it's almost one-thirty. Be light again in four hours."
A scout returned, Swanson led the detail into the first floor of the hotel. They entered through a window and spread out in three rooms facing the landing zone. They were three hundred yards away from the closest point where the boat could touch shore. Escape to the sea was still that far away from them. Right then it looked a lot farther to Johnny.
An attack came almost at once, rifle and machine-gun fire riddling the hotel.
"Hold your fire!" Swanson snapped before anyone returned a shot. "Let them waste their lead upstairs. We don't want them to know we're all down here."
"A diversion," Johnny said. "We need a diversion." Swanson looked at him and nodded. The girl put her hand on Johnny's arm, then pulled away and shivered. She was too frightened to speak. She reached for her brother's hand.
"What's your plan?" Swanson asked.
"Send two men out the far end of the hotel at right angles to our route for about fifty yards. Down there they can throw a couple of grenades and shoot up a storm with the M-16s. That should distract the enemy for a while."
"Worth a try." Swanson looked at Randall, then changed his mind and pointed at two of his SEAL members. He briefed them on what to do and instructed them to haul ass fast back to the hotel. The pair slipped into the night.
The firestorm kept coming from the front, but at a reduced level. There had been no return shots. After some minutes the U.S. strike force heard the grenades exploding to the rear. Then the rifle fire from the enemy ahead of them stopped completely.
"No noise!" Swanson whispered.
Johnny craned his neck to look through the broken window. In the moonlight he could make out twenty men in ragged uniforms running through the night toward the firing. What did that leave in front of them?
A SEAL scout unsheathed a thin knife and went to find out. He returned just as the two men from the diversion checked in. The scout reported that there were still six men blocking their way. He suggested that he go back with four grenades and take them out. Swanson agreed and the man faded into the night.
"When the grenades go off, we get out of here and move twenty yards south of the hit into the trees, then sprint for the damn beach," Swanson said.
"You want an antipersonnel round ahead of us?" Johnny asked.
"Save it, we might need it later."
They heard four explosions followed by screams and the group took off. Johnny was in the middle of the loose formation. The girl, now desperately clutching his hand, ran beside him. Her young brother grinned and sprinted ahead.
Just before the grenades had exploded she stood close to him. "My name is Astra. I am sorry I have caused all this pain, and the deaths of your men. I am Lebanese. My father works with the Americans hoping he can save our country. The Druse and Shiites have put a price on his head."
"I hope this works out well for all of us. My name is Johnny." She had said his name twice, the faint trace of a smile touching her drawn face. Then she put her hand to her breast and breathed slowly. He saw the pain, the new terror on her face.
They ran into the trees and stopped for a moment to regroup. Gulping air, they looked at the beach beckoning in the moonlight, and Johnny knew they were going to make it.
They were racing to the dunes when winking machine-gun fire opened up from a nest in almost the same position as the first one.
Johnny, Astra and her brother slid behind a small dune as slugs geysered the sand above their heads. They lay side by side and she put her arm across Johnny's chest to stop herself from shaking. He touched her cheek and she looked at him.
"I'm going to get both of you out of here, Astra. I promise. I won't let anything happen to you. Stay here and keep down, I have to find the chief."
She nodded and he crawled along the base of the sandy hummock. He found Swanson behind a small dune, looking toward the still stuttering machine gun. Johnny dropped beside Swanson and touched his shoulder.
The mortal remains of Chief Petty Officer Swanson rolled on top of Johnny, and only then did he see in the moonlight that the chief's face had been blown away. Johnny bit back a scream. He gently pushed the body off him and tried to stifle the waves of nausea that were threatening to engulf him.
He unclipped the flashlight from Swanson's belt and found six men, forming them in a skirmish line facing the enemy
. When the machine gun opened up again, Johnny ordered the troops to throw grenades in its direction. One of the small bombs rolled into the right spot and silenced the heavy machine gun.
Then Johnny pointed the flashlight seaward, clicking it on and off three times for five seconds. Two minutes later he repeated the signal, and this time he saw an answering flash from the sea. He hoped it was the LCVP and not some prowling Shiite patrol boat.
Johnny found Randall, made sure he was all right, then sent out two men to bring in the dead. They got the three who were hit by the machine gun, including Swanson, and the SEAL who had been shot in both legs. He was alive, but barely. The machine gun on its second attack had badly wounded one man and killed one more besides the chief.
Johnny asked Randall to help him and soon they had the bodies ready for transport to the landing craft. Two men were assigned to carry each of the two wounded. That left him with three fighting men, the captain and the two civilians. Not much of a defensive force.
They waited.
Twenty minutes passed with only the sound of groans from one of the wounded.
The attack came from the wrong side. Johnny guessed it would be another tank with a platoon behind it. But the assault came from the side he thought was safe. The.50-caliber cannon ripped through the silent night, chopping up the six dead men who lay in a row barely showing over the top of the dune.
Johnny felt no remorse for using the dead to protect his force. He changed rounds, ramming the antitank round on the Armbrust. The moment he had a clear shot at the rolling machine, he fired. The round hit the tank's treads, blowing them apart and tipping the heavy rig on its side.
His men pounded the stricken metal monster with rifle fire as the tankers ran and forced the infantry behind to scatter for protection.
When Johnny turned to Randall for the last rocket tube, he saw his buddy staring at him with a sly smile. It looked strange in the moonlight, and Johnny punched him in the shoulder.
"Hey, this is no time to be playing games. Got that last round?"
Randall nodded, then his eyes closed and a last gush of breath escaped from his lungs as he fell to one side. Then his eyes opened again and he rolled facedown in the sand.
Resurrection Day Page 3