“All clear?” Sergeant Per asked.
“Clear as the midnight ride of Paul Revere. In a word, yes.”
“Be there in five,” Per said.
Van Dyke checked the car. They’d had time; they could have booby-trapped it. He used his flash and checked underneath on the muffler. No heat-sensitive bomb. Nothing wired under the hood to go boom when the starter kicked over. He picked up the dropped AK-47’s and pushed them into the car’s trunk. Van Dyke slid into the brush out of sight when he heard the five men coming.
“Friendlies coming in, hold your fire,” Ching called out.
“Welcome on board,” Van Dyke said, stepping out of the brush. “Let’s get this act on the road.”
Murdock looked north as the car turned around and headed back to the Army base at Rama. He wondered how the other ten SEALs were doing.
* * *
Jaybird, Jefferson, and Victor had slept most of the way to the target from the Rama Army Base. One of the Israelis with them nudged them awake.
“Close by now,” the squad leader said. He was Sergeant Jacob Epstein, and he told them he’d been on over twenty killing missions into the Palestinian territory. The SEALs could tell a bloodied trooper when they talked to one. Epstein said they were less than a mile from their parking spot. “Let’s get ready.”
The SEALs pushed magazines into weapons and charged rounds into the chambers. Their car edged to a stop near a pair of small buildings on a dirt street that ended in an open field. They could make out a security fence not far beyond the end of the road.
They had been briefed on their target. Their two six-man teams would go after the barracks for trainees, visitors, and workers at the learning center. The driver and squad leader told them there should be about 150 trainees and workers at the site. They should be mostly in the barracks. Epstein’s team would launch a surprise hit on one of the two units precisely at 0100. The other team would hit the near by second barracks in the complex. Both buildings were new and had been in use for less than a year. This secret facility had been exposed after a PLO prisoner captured by the Israeli forces had talked his head off in exchange for his freedom. He’d given them a detailed description of the facility, personnel, and scheduling of classes.
Both Jaybird and Jefferson had 20mm weapons. They would start the operation with white phosphorus through the windows on the ground floor, then HEs through as many windows as they could hit. There should be three or four other strikes by the combo forces in the main area of the camp at the same hour, so any opposition would have to choose what to defend.
The second sedan rolled to a stop not far away, and its six men got out. Jaybird and Epstein’s squad left its car and assembled near the fence.
Sergeant Epstein motioned them to the side. “We’ll cut this fence. Too close to use explosives. Cut it and get through at fifteen minutes after midnight. Gives us thirty more to get in position above the barracks for the 0100 attack. Everyone ready? We have ammo and plastique, right?” They all murmured their assurances.
“The other lads will cut the fence; we’ll follow them through,” Epstein said. “No quick triggers. We don’t fire until I give the order. Jaybird and Jefferson, you’ll start the party. Let’s move out.”
They worked through the fence cut, then to the left and up a slight hill past a dark and silent building to a cut-bank above the first barracks. It wasn’t as large as Jaybird thought it would be. Three stories and maybe a hundred feet long. Housing for fifty students, probably on double-deck bunks. Jaybird hoped they all were home when the party started. There was a good chance that the trainees would not have ammo for their weapons in the barracks.
He waited.
Victor fingered his MP-5. He might not shoot until they were closer or inside. The range was almost a hundred yards. He screwed on the silencer, thinking it might help inside.
The growl came from the right.
“Dogs, damn, fucking dogs,” Epstein said. “They use them for guard dogs. But usually they’re just packs of wild things. Might be only one or two or a dozen. We can’t fire our weapons at them. Knives?”
A dog lunged through the darkness directly at Victor. In a reflex action he lifted the MP-5 and drilled three silent rounds into the dog’s chest. The large dog angled to the left of Victor, pushed by the high-velocity 9mm Parabellums. It whined a moment, then rolled over and didn’t move.
“Nice shooting, Victor,” Epstein said. “I didn’t even know you had a silencer for that little squirt gun. There could be more dogs, so keep alert.”
They had moved up another forty yards when three dogs leaped at them without a sound. Victor got one; the other two went down with KA-BARs slicing into their throats and hearts. Jaybird pushed a big black dog off him where it had knocked him down. The dog gave a low growl, and Jaybird drove the KA-BAR into the dog’s throat and slashed it out.
“Damn dogs,” he said, wiping canine blood off his blade and his right hand.
The squad paused and waited for the other unit to catch up with them. Then they eased along the last quarter mile until they were at their two assigned firing points.
Jaybird checked his watch. He pushed the light on the dial and saw that they were ten minutes early.
“We wait,” Sergeant Epstein whispered to the men. The six men were spread out at five-yard intervals watching the target. There were still a few lights on in the rooms.
Three minutes later a ragtag unit came into the security lights at the back of the building. One man kept shouting something.
Epstein came past each SEAL. “He’s screaming for a medic. Claims he fell down and broke his leg and he needs attention.”
“He’ll have a lot more than a broken leg to worry about in about four minutes,” Jaybird whispered back.
The two Bull Pups would start the action with WP rounds into the ground-floor windows. Then move with HEs, or more WPs, on any targets the two SEALs could see.
Jefferson and Jaybird sighted in on their targets. Jefferson had the left side. Less than a minute later the word came in the earpieces.
“Twenties, give them hell.”
Jefferson had been waiting with his finger on the trigger. He fired. Jaybird’s round came out a moment later. The smoke rounds both went through windows on the ground floor. At once the rest of the squad began firing into the barracks. Jefferson and Jaybird put four more WP rounds each into the barracks’ ground floor, and at once could see the smoke of the fires they had started.
Men poured out of the building, caught the rifle and automatic-weapons fire, and promptly scurried through doors toward the front of the structures where they would be out of the direct line of fire. There was no return fire.
Jaybird got in one airburst before the screaming students found their way back into the burning building or out the front.
“SEALs hold here and continue firing at targets of opportunity. I’m taking the SAS and moving around so we can get some shots at the front of the place,” Epstein said. He scowled. “Jefferson, bring your twenty and come with us.”
They left at once, running down the hill and across a lighted area to the darkness and around the side of the building, keeping fifty yards away from it.
Jefferson got off a round as they ran. He saw thirty or forty men, clad mostly in underwear, milling around the front of the burning building. His first shot airburst over them and a third of them went down.
The Israelis fired automatic weapons, and what was left of the group scattered. Jefferson tracked a group of ten and lasered them and fired. Only four of them kept moving after the airburst that sprayed them with deadly shrapnel.
“Jefferson, put some HE into the front of the building. Windows if any are left.” The words came over the Motorola.
Jefferson fired two contact rounds. The first hit the window frame and smashed it inside as it blew. The second went in a third-floor window and exploded inside.
Jefferson watched a car race into the area and slam to a stop. He put
a twenty-millimeter round into the car before the men inside could get out. The car exploded, then the gas tank went, and the whole thing was a funeral pyre blazing into the night.
“Move back,” the radio in his ear told Jefferson. He lifted off the ground where he had been firing from, and ran with the three SAS men back the way they had come.
Jaybird was still slamming twenties into the second and third floors. “You got any more WP?” he asked.
Jefferson said he had four. “Give me two and let’s light up the second floor,” Jaybird said. “Damn box isn’t burning fast enough.”
They fired the last four WPs’ and the phosphorus started more fires. Jaybird had a view of the second barracks. It too was now on fire, burning brightly.
“We’re done here,” Sergeant Epstein said on the radio. “Let’s hook up with the other squad and move back. Other squad, where the hell are you?”
“In your hip pocket in case you hadn’t noticed,” the radio chirped. “Be there in two. Going your way.”
The other squad jogged in out of the darkness, and they all left for the parking area.
“Scout out front?” Jaybird asked over the radio.
Epstein thought a minute, then the radio came on. “That you, Jaybird? If it is, take the lead. Keep within forty yards of us. Hard to see anything in this damn half-moonlight. Use your radio and keep us up to date.”
Jaybird said he would, and jogged ahead on the route back toward the cars. At first it was just a walk in the park. He kept his eyes watching forward, and nearly missed the movement to the right near the fence.
He dropped into the sandy rocks and used the mike. “Company. Something next to the fence behind me about twenty and twenty in front of you. I think I smell exhaust, so it could be a jeep or an armored rig. They have any?”
“No armored. Maybe a jeep. We’re down and waiting.”
“How about a star shell straight up? I’ll nail the bastards if it’s them. Couldn’t be any of ours, could it?”
“None of our people are within half a mile of us,” the whispered words said. “Star shell coming.”
Jaybird found some thick weeds to lie in with the Bull Pup aimed at the suspect. He heard the rifle report; then seconds later the flare blossomed two hundred feet above. He saw the rig at once, an open jeep with four men. All had rifles. He had already aimed, and he fired less than a second after the flare burst. The HE round hit the small vehicle in the engine area, blew it off its wheels, and turned it over, disintegrating the engine. His second round found the gas tank, and the whole thing went into a fireball that lighted the area for fifty yards around. He could see no movement. Then he did.
One man crawled away from the fire directly toward Jaybird, who switched to 5.56 and drilled six rounds into the crawling form. The terrorist flopped over once, then never moved again.
“Welcome to hell, bastard,” Jaybird whispered.
“Light or no, we’ve got to move.” The radio brought Epstein’s words. “We’ll circle and find you, then get away at a fast run. Moving.”
Jaybird saw them come out of the fringes of the light. He jogged out to meet them; then they angled for the fence, and the two miles they had to cover to get to their parking spot.
Jefferson and Victor pulled alongside Jaybird.
“Good shooting, little buddy,” Jefferson said.
“Yeah, but I’m down to one more twenty.”
“I’ve got four more in case we hit trouble. Glad to share.”
They kept running.
Just over twenty minutes later they hit the dirt and checked out the hole in the fence they had cut an hour ago. It would be a perfect trap for anybody watching for them.
One of the SAS men slithered toward it, used night-vision goggles, and tapped his mike three times.
“All clear,” Epstein said. “But we still go through one at a time, twenty yards apart. Move.”
Five minutes later they slid into the two cars and headed for Ramallah.
“Nice night’s work,” Jaybird said where he sat next to the driver in the front seat.
“Beautiful,” Sergeant Jacob Epstein said. “We’ve got to get some of those twenty-millimeter slammers if we have to steal them.”
“Amen to that,” Jaybird said. “I voted to have each of our men carry one, but seven is all we could wrangle.”
“Don’t make me jealous. Now let’s settle down and get some sleep before we hit home. I’ll let you know if we run into any trouble.”
It took Jaybird five minutes to get to sleep. He wondered what the rest of the SEALs were doing. Was it target practice like they’d had, or did some of the guys come up against some real opposition? He looked north, where more SEALs were in operation around the headquarters of this training complex.
17
They had a seven-man squad with four SEALs and three Israelis. Fernandez checked the scene. They had just hiked in two miles from their transport, and were on a small rise behind what they were told was the general headquarters building of the training complex run by the PLO with some assistance from Osama bin Laden.
Fernandez frowned. Ahead was a concrete-block building, two stories, with only one window on the rear and no rear doors. From his vantage point it looked like a fort. SEALs Donegan, Franklin, and Canzoneri dropped beside Fernandez.
“We going to take that place down?” Canzoneri asked. “Looks like the outside of a tank.”
Sergeant Menuhin slid into the dirt beside Fernandez. “Looks pretty tough, doesn’t it? But we take it from the front. We have ten minutes before 0100. By that time we’ll be in front of it with half the squad on each side. We have one of the twenties. You’ll fire it to start our operation. Then after five or six rounds inside, we throw grenades through the windows and charge in and clear it out room by room.”
“How many rooms?”
“Twenty-eight if our spy is correct. Shouldn’t take long. Your long-range artillery should soften them up considerably.”
“Who will be there this time of night?”
“It’s a combination office and living space for the top officials in the training division here. If we’re lucky, we can wipe out their top cadre and training officers. There are supposed to be twenty-two men quartered and working here. We better move.”
The Israeli Mistaravim had split his seven men into two details, one on each side of the block house. They expected no guards walking outside. It was a secure area. Fernandez and Canzoneri went with the sergeant and another Israeli around the right-hand side of the building.
The three with the sergeant walked toward the building as if they belonged there, especially in their Arab civilian clothes. They paused at the side of the building, and Sergeant Menuhin checked his watch.
“Two minutes to wait,” he said.
They took a quick look around the corner of the building, and saw four men leave the complex. All had on civilian clothes since that was what they wore when they went on raids. Menuhin let them go. He looked at his watch again, then saw two quick flashes of light from the far side of the building.
“Let’s move. We get out front far enough for Fernandez to use that twenty. Now.” They sprinted out thirty yards and went to the dirt in what looked like a parade ground. Fernandez put the first round through a second-story window, the second one through the front door, which he blew off the hinges. He tried a WP round on the first floor to the left, and by the time he got off one more WP round to the second floor left, men began pouring out of the building.
He lasered one round over the heads of a dozen, then shifted to his 5.56 barrel and with the rest of the shooters began picking off individuals who darted out of the building. They couldn’t get out the back.
Some return fire came. Fernandez saw muzzle flashes from the end of the second floor. He triggered a twenty into the room, where it exploded, and the firing stopped. He searched other windows for shooters, but found none. No more men came out the door.
“Move up,” Sergeant Menuhin
said into the personal radio. “We go in two at a time. SEALs pair and you Army types take it. First team goes in and works down the left-side hallway clearing the rooms as you go. Grenades or gunpowder. Next team in takes the right-hand side and we do the same routine. When the first floor is clear and there isn’t a battalion out front firing at us, we work the second floor. SEALs, inside.”
Fernandez and Franklin hit the hole where the door had been, and darted to the left through a small lobby. They saw no one alive. Two bodies had been blown across a desk and another one was sprawled beside it. They ran to the first door in the hallway. Fernandez kicked it open and jolted to the wall beside the opening. No reaction. He looked inside. The lights were still on in the building. No one was in the room.
Franklin went to the next door on the other side, and turned the knob and pushed it open hard. Two rounds blasted through the opening. Franklin reached around with his MP-5 and hosed down the room with nine rounds. He looked in from floor level, and found two men in civilian clothes, both dead against the far wall.
They checked seven rooms on the ground floor left, found four empty, and killed four more terrorists before they reported the floor clear to Sergeant Menuhin. They had heard firing to their left, and soon Donegan and Canzoneri came on the radio reporting their section clear.
“Stairs center,” Menuhin said. “We’ll meet there and take on the upstairs.”
They met and moved up the stairs slowly. The sergeant poked his head over the top step and then jerked it down. Three rounds blasted through the space where his skull had been.
Donegan jerked the pin out of a grenade, let the handle fly off, and cooked it two seconds before he threw it down the hall. It exploded when it hit and they heard some yells. By that time the sergeant had a grenade ready, and he threw it farther down the hall.
When the shrapnel stopped zinging down the hallway, Canzoneri lifted his MP-5, pushed it over the top step, and sent three bursts of three rounds down the hall. He took a look.
“Nobody showing,” he said. “I’ll crawl to the first door left. Cover me.”
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