Firestorm sts-5

by Keith Douglass

  Murdock settled in at fifteen feet and lined up the compass arrow at the bearing he had chosen and began his steady and even kick. He could tell the distance he traveled through the water by the number of kicks. After years of practice he found he could think about something else while still counting the rhythmical kicks in his head. It worked out to so many kicks per hundred yards, and he could come out within inches of his target every time in practice.

  He felt a tug on the buddy line and looked through the dank waters at Radioman Ron Holt. The SEAL came closer and gave him a thumbs-up sign and they kicked forward.

  The cammies in the waterproof pouches were a precaution. They needed to be prepared in case they did get cut off from the water or had to go inland to that other facility. The cammies were much easier to fight in on land than the restrictive wet suits.

  Murdock went over and over their plans for the poison-gas missiles. They had to be disabled without letting any of the gas escape. They didn't want to kill a hundred thousand Chinese. Besides, if they ruptured the containers, the thirteen SEALS on-site would be the first to die.

  Murdock heard motors in the water. They sounded close. He turned the light on his attack board up high and pointed it around him in a signal to the others. It meant come to the light. Soon he had all the men close by. Murdock signaled that he was going up for a sneak and peek.

  He lifted to the surface and pushed out his face so he could see around. He pulled back his mask. Not fifty yards to starboard he saw a Chinese patrol craft. It idled in the water. He could hear the crew chattering. For a moment he thought about simply ignoring it and going back to depth and proceeding. He changed his mind and he and Holt went back down to the men. He found Willy Bishop. With hand signals he told the men to stay at depth and wait. He untied himself from Holt, then took Bishop to the surface. They pulled out their rebreather mouthpieces and talked. "You have some TNAZ handy?" Bishop nodded. Murdock pointed to the idling patrol boat. "Let's give them a small blast. Enough to blow it out of the water with a ten-minute fuse."

  Murdock lifted Bishop far enough out of the water that he could unzip a waterproof pocket on his vest and take out half of a quarter-pound chunk of TNAZ. He took a timer detonator from another pocket, and then Murdock let him down. He held both out of the water and inserted the detonator into the chunk of explosive and set the timer for ten minutes. They both swam silently toward the boat. There were no lookouts.

  Bishop wedged the explosive into a fitting on the boat about two feet above the waterline. He pushed the timer to activate it, and they dove down and swam back to where the rest waited. Jaybird was waving the attack board with its light fifteen feet underwater, and they found the rest easily.

  Murdock checked his watch. They swam toward their objective for seven minutes. Then he motioned the others to the surface. They watched behind them. The boat had moved farther away from shore. They could see its running lights. A minute later the sky flashed with a bright blue-white flame and a rolling thunder of the explosion rocketed across the water at them. The patrol boat shattered into a hundred pieces and the fuel on board caught fire, and for a moment a bright light cut into the darkness. Then it faded.

  Murdock motioned down and the men went to fifteen feet and resumed their swim toward the shore.

  Before long Murdock could hear engines powering above them. They must have sent out more patrol boats to find out what had happened to the first one. Nobody would ever know. It would give the Chinese something to wonder about. For a moment Murdock thought it might put the Chinese on a higher alert. He was sure the whole country was alerted after what had happened at the atomic island and at the air base. This explosion sinking a patrol boat wouldn't help. The Chinese had too much coastline to really seal it off to invaders. That was one military problem China would always have.

  Murdock and Holt, tied together again, swam for another twenty minutes. They should be close to shore. He and Holt worked up to the surface for a look.

  They could see the lights of the town now. It was a big place. Ahead they spotted the entrance to the harbor marked by a row of lighted buoys. Convenient. As they watched, they saw a pair of boats larger than the patrol craft. The two boats worked back and forth across the channel leading into the harbor like a pair of Prussian guards. They must have sonar and radar, but neither would show the swimmers. The only way the boats could find them would be with some frogmen of their own.

  They all swam again. Soon they were under the guard boats near the channel. They kept swimming forward, the sound of the guard boats faded, and they were inside the bay. A hundred yards farther inside, Murdock lifted to the surface again to check, and found the channel marker buoys where they should be. The SEALS hugged the left side of the entrance and worked along close to the shore. They were at less than fifteen feet now as the water became more shallow in this undeveloped part of the harbor.

  They almost swam into a point of land inside the bay, and Murdock surfaced for a moment to check his position. Yes. Around this point and then along the side of the bay for maybe a half mile. The Chinese Navy docks should be in that area. They moved cautiously now, past some warehouses, some shallow water docks, then a boatyard.

  Murdock took one more quick peek. They were just outside the Navy's restricted area. He saw docks, warships, and the part he was interested in — Pier 12. It was clearly marked. On Pier 12 was the warehouse where the loaded gas missiles were supposed to be held prior to loading on the Luda-class destroyers.

  From the dark waters of the bay a hundred yards offshore, the SEALS checked out the dock and its security. It had much more protection than they could see from the satellite photos.

  The building itself was set twenty feet back from the edge of the pier, evidently to facilitate loading. There were two chain-link fences around this end and side of the warehouse. They spotted a roving guard on foot. Inside the fences Murdock pinpointed four stationary guards. The fences could be electrified.

  Behind the fences he could see big double truck-type doors and a smaller one to the side. Just getting into the building would be a fight.

  He sent word back to Bishop to come up front.

  "The wire," Murdock whispered to him.

  "No problem. Use primer cord and cut a man-sized hole in the first one and then the second one. Need some fire support. Have to have those sentries and guards eliminated first."

  "Are the fences electrically charged?"

  Bishop took another look at the setup and shook his head. "No, Sir. No juice in them. Be a snap to cut through."

  Murdock used hand signals to the clustered SEALS, and Red Nicholson and Kenneth Ching moved out as scouts to get under the dock and then on-site and take out the roving guard.

  They swam underwater to the pier, went under the wooden supports to some dry land, and took off their rebreathers and fins. Then they went up the ladder to the dock. The roving guard outside the wire moved toward them unaware. Red cut him down with a three-round silenced burst from an MP-5. At that point none of the stationary guards could see them. The two SEALS pulled the body off the dock and dropped him into the bay. They kept his AK-47 and four magazines of ammo.

  The two SEALS waited out of sight from the dock on the ladder, and Murdock couldn't figure out why. Then he spotted a second roving guard riding a bicycle up the dock. When he was almost beside them, Ching jumped up and said something in Chinese. The man turned his way. Ching grabbed him, applied a choke hold from the back, and lifted the man off his feet and let him fall, a foot breaking his neck.

  Chin dropped the dead guard into the bay and sent his bike in after him.

  Now they looked for the fixed guard posts. Ching stayed where he was, and Nicholson went back to the ground under the edge of the pier and ran down to the second ladder up from the water. It was fifty feet down the dock and gave him a better view of the side of the building. Nicholson now used a silenced M-4A1, the old CAR-15 with its.223 screamer rounds. He lifted just over the edge of the dock an
d checked his field of fire. Just the two fences. He'd have to hope one of his rounds would get through.

  The guard on his end was in a small shelter at that end of the building. Nicholson braced on the ladder, leaned on the dock, and set up his shot. He tried for a chest hit. Red fired twice and the guard slumped in his guard station.

  Red heard a soft chuff, chuff from down the dock. Ching must have found a target. Red quickly sighted in on the second guard, who'd come out of his post and stretched. Red put two rounds into his chest and watched him go down in a heap.

  Two more coughing rounds from Ching were heard. Nicholson dropped down the ladder and met Ching on the dirt under the pier near his ladder.

  Murdock watched through his NVG from his spot, now about fifty yards off the pier. The night-vision device gave him a lime-green view of the scene and outlined the situation in a glance. He saw the four guards inside the fence go down and then his two scouts drop down the ladders.

  "Let's go," he said softly to the remaining ten men around him, and they swam for the pier. Three minutes later all were onshore and had dropped their breathers and fins. They drained the water from their weapons, opened watertight pouches and put on their Motorola MX-300 communications radios. They each had a headset, an earpiece inside the left ear, and a wire down the back of the neck, through a slit in a shirt, and plugged into the battery and transceiver on each man's belt. A filament mike perched below each man's lower lip. It provided no-hands-on instant communication for about two hundred yards.

  "Bishop, get up there and do the fences. Fernandez and Lincoln, go along to cover him. As soon as the fences both are blown, First Squad is on the assault. The rest of the Second Squad spread out in defensive positions in case we have some company. Go, go, go."

  The three SEALS rushed up the ladder with Bishop in front pulling out the tools he would need, including the primer cord, really a heavy string of pliable explosive that burned so fast it was deadly. Wrap it around a man's neck and set it off and it will blow the man's head off. The SEALS used it for cutting holes in things like fences, doors, and walls.

  Bishop sprinted to the first fence while the other two SEALS dropped to the tarmac both facing outward, both with CAR-15's set on full automatic and ready to fire.

  Bishop worked quickly, weaving the ends of the primer cord in and out of the chain-link fence, tying it in place here and there with strips of plastic. He soon had a man-sized hole outlined. He inserted a detonator timer, set it at fifteen seconds, and pushed the lever to activate it. Then he ran back twenty yards and went to ground facing outward with his hands over his ears.

  The cracking explosion sounded like a stick of dynamite hung on a string from a tree limb had exploded. A sharp cracking detonation cut through the chain-link wire and blew the "doorway" out of the fence and against the next one ten feet away.

  Bishop jolted up as soon as the explosion hit and ran for the hole, through it to the next fence. He repeated the routine there and blew the second hole.

  By that time, the seven men of the First Squad came up to the first fence and waited. When the second one blew, they surged through the opening in a flash and charged the small door to the left of the center of the warehouse. The door was locked.

  Six rounds from Murdock's MP-5 smashed the lock and the door swung open inward.

  The first three men went through the way they did in a Kill House. Murdock went first and took the right-hand third. Jaybird was second through, and handled the left third of the room. Holt came through a fraction of a second later ready to hose down the center of the room.

  All three wore NVGS. It was a small office-type room with a desk, two chairs, and a bookcase. No one was there, it seemed. Then a man lifted up from behind the desk, a pistol in his left hand. Holt put two rounds from his CAR-15 into his chest and one in his head, and he slammed backwards out of sight.

  "Clear here," Holt said.

  "Clear," said Jaybird.

  "Clear," Murdock echoed.

  A small night-light burned to one side. The SEALS lifted their NVGS and checked the place again. Holt looked at the Chinese and made sure he was dead.

  Two doors led off the room. Murdock unlatched one as silently as he could by turning the knob, then cracked it open so he could see through. It was the inside of the warehouse, brightly lighted. It was full of missiles, some in slings, some standing in mounts to be worked on, others in a rack next to the wall. Murdock could see more than a dozen.

  He heard some men talking loudly to each other, and he motioned Ching up to the doorway. He listened for a minute.

  "Bragging about the women they're going to have when their twelve-hour shift is over."

  Murdock edged the door open an inch wider. Now he and Ching could see two Chinese soldiers on a catwalk at the far end of the building. They had rifles slung and seemed to be walking a fixed post.

  The rest of the First Squad crowded into the room. They were weapon-ready for a fight.

  Jaybird and Murdock had MP-5's, Ron Holt had a CAR-15 carbine with a grenade launcher, Magic Brown had his M-89 sniper rifle, Red Nicholson had another CAR-15 with launcher, Harry Ronson toted the HK 21A1 machine gun with NATO rounds, and Doc Ellsworth carried his favorite, a Remington five-shot sawed-off shotgun with the pistol grip instead of a stock. He kept it slung around his neck to leave his hands free.

  They checked the other door from the room. It also opened into the main warehouse area.

  Murdock pointed to three men and at both doors. "Take out the two men on the catwalk first. Then we charge in and see who else is in there."

  Two SEALS with long guns moved to the cracked-open doors and sighted in.

  "Now," Murdock said. The coughs of the two silenced weapons sounded and the SEALS burst through both doors. The sentries overhead were dead or dying. Two more Chinese Murdock hadn't seen on the floor stepped out from behind a stack of missiles and began firing at the SEALS.

  23

  Sunday, May 17

  0052 hours

  Naval yards

  Amoy, China

  Four SEALS dove behind heavy wooden boxes to avoid the rounds from the two Chinese soldiers ahead. Murdock rolled once and came to his feet behind some crates.

  "Watch your fire," Murdock said into his mike. "Don't hit any of the missiles."

  They had been cautioned to use single shots, not burst fire, while inside. Murdock looked out from his protection and saw that the Chinese had taken cover as well. Murdock nodded at Holt, who was beside him. Holt leaned around the boxes and blasted down the aisle as Murdock jolted ten feet ahead to another set of wooden boxes. He passed a missile and hoped that none of their shots ricocheted and penetrated the warheads holding the poison gas.

  He made it, then laid down fire toward the place where they saw the Chinese, as Holt moved up on this side and Magic Brown surged forward on the other side of the eight-foot-wide aisle. There had been no more firing from the Chinese. "Ching, talk to them," Murdock said to his mike.

  All firing stopped. Ching's voice bellowed into the open space of the warehouse with its three-story ceiling. "Soldiers. You are surrounded. Come out with your weapons held over your heads. You can't escape." There was no response. Ching repeated the lines in his best Mandarin.

  A moment later a roar came from down the aisle. Three Chinese soldiers surged from behind wooden crates, firing automatic weapons and charged forward.

  Murdock and Magic Brown chopped down the three before they ran twenty feet.

  "Clear here," Murdock said. "Check the rest of the facility."

  Murdock and Holt worked the right side of the hundred-by-hundred-foot complex. They found no more defenders.

  "Clear left," Murdock heard in his earpiece. Ronson.

  "Clear center," Doc Ellsworth reported by radio.

  "Clear right," Holt said.

  Quickly they checked the far front and then the back. There had been only five defenders, all accounted for.

  Ching checked the Chinese c
asualties. "One is still alive," he reported on his radio.

  "Question him," Murdock said. Murdock went up to where Ching knelt by one of the three soldiers. Blood came from the man's nose and mouth. His eyes were glazed, but Ching shook him and he spoke slowly.

  Ching asked him several questions in Mandarin. The man answered them, then almost lost consciousness, but Ching shook him and he went on talking. Then his eyes glazed again and a long deep breath came out of him and he died. Ching looked up. "These are all regular DF-15 missiles in this building, with a range of nearly four hundred miles. They go on the Luda-class destroyers. These do not have poison gas. The poison-gas missiles are the smaller DF-11. He said they won't come from the assembly plant until tomorrow night. The gas missiles make the workers and the soldiers extremely nervous."

  Murdock sent outside for Bishop. He checked the missiles and confirmed the dead soldier's words.

  "Just plain old HE type, Skipper. No room for any poison gas in these babies. They sure will make a big bang, though."

  "You're certain?"

  "Yes. As certain as I can be without exploding one of them."

  "Check every one of them. Do it now and quickly. If they all are HE, then rig enough of them with TNAZ so the whole complex will go up with one big bang. Use two-hour timers so we'll be long gone. Get with it."

  They checked the dead men again. SEALS don't take prisoners. They made sure they were dead with a quick, silenced shot to the head of each of the five Chinese.

  Murdock could hear firing outside. He hit his send button. "Dewitt. What's going on out there?"

  "Company. Four guys drove up in a funny little rig that looks like a rip-off of a jeep. We nailed three of them. One got away. The jeep looks good for transport if we need any."