A few minutes later Captain Zertiz came down to the SEALs.
“You going to do this night pickup from the water or the deck?”
Murdock laughed. “Hey, Captain, anybody can board a chopper off a destroyer deck. We won’t have that option on a mission. The dark-water pickup is more dangerous for the chopper crew as well as us, but it’s the only way we can exfiltrate on some missions.”
“Going to jump in?”
Murdock shook his head. “Nope, we’ll ask you to come to one knot forward so we can go down the lines and stay together with glow sticks. We’ve done it before.”
A seaman came to the captain and talked a moment.
“Commander,” Zertiz said, “looks like the chopper pilot wants a word with you. He’s on his way.”
Murdock went to the communications center and took a mike.
“Yes, CH-46, this is Murdock.”
“We’ll be landing on the destroyer, correct?”
“Negative, Forty-six. We’re SEALs here. We want a water pickup with your ladder out the rear hatch. You’ve done it before.”
“Never at night, Commander.”
“No sweat. Turn on your down landing lights, keep six feet off the water, and let out the ladder. My boys do the rest.”
“Do I have an option? If I think this will endanger my helicopter and my crew, I will refuse to do it.”
Murdock waited a minute to let the pilot think it over. He came back on the air.
“What the hell, Commander, let’s give it a try. If it doesn’t work we can always get you off the rear-landing pad on the destroyer. Out.”
It went by the book. The destroyer slowed to one knot forward. The SEALs went down the lines, tied them to the IBSs to be hauled on board, then congregated around light sticks to wait for the chopper. It came in high the first time, went around, and came in at six feet with the ladder trailing in the water.
Jaybird went up first, followed quickly by three more SEALs. Then the fifth man lost his footing and fell off the ladder. He hit his head on one of the swinging steps. Murdock saw it, and dove to where he figured the SEAL could be. He bumped into something in the dark water, and grabbed hold of cammies and kicked for the surface.
Two more SEALs were there to help. It was Van Dyke, the new man, who had fallen. Murdock slapped him in the face gently until he came around. By then all but the four at the ladder had gone up. Murdock put Vinnie over his shoulder and with Bill Bradford, Quartermaster’s Mate First Class, right behind him holding the man in place, the three of them went up the unstable rope ladder to the end of the hatch, where six hands grabbed them and pulled them inside.
Kenneth Ching, Quartermaster’s Mate First Class, followed them up the ladder quickly, and the chopper crewman pulled in the ladder and closed the hatch.
“Home, James,” somebody said, and half the SEALs hooted.
Vinnie shook his head. “Hey, I don’t know what happened. I slipped, I guess, and that damn ladder slammed into my fucking head.”
Jack Mahanani, Hospital Corpsman First Class, and the platoon corpsman, knelt beside Vinnie and checked him out. He used his pencil flash and had Vinnie lie down on the floor of the chopper.
“You’ll be fine. Stay down until we land.”
Murdock let out a held breath. He looked at DeWitt, who sat nearby. “Second, have we ever made a nighttime ladder pickup like this before?”
DeWitt grinned. “Not that I can remember. May be sometime before we try another one, unless we’re getting away from a hot firefight somewhere.”
4
Baninah, Libya
Not far outside the limits of Benghazi is the regional airport at the small town of Baninah. The international airport serves many airlines, and at the far side, well away from the civilian terminals, sit four large hangars that are patrolled by Libyan soldiers.
Inside one of the hangars final preflight checks were made on a MiG-23 Flogger E, Russian-made and one of the best aircraft of the aging Libyan Air Force. Major Akbar Andwar sat in the cockpit fighting himself. He knew the mission. He knew that he would be closely monitored by three other MiG-23’s. He must perform flawlessly.
Akbar also knew that today within a few hours, he would kill thirty thousand people — not soldiers, but civilians, men, women, and children. Even small babies who could not yet speak.
He slashed at sweat beading on his forehead. His colonel climbed up the steps to the cockpit and smiled.
“Today, Major, we make military history. We use a nuclear weapon as an instrument of peace, not war. We use the bomb to avoid killing many thousands in an all-out ground war to rid the world of the cancer that is Chad.
“Our children and our grandchildren will forever be in our debt for this glorious act of honor and justice.”
“Yes, my colonel. It is time. I should order the doors rolled up and get my engine started.”
“Do it now,” the colonel said as he saluted Major Andwar and stepped down from the plane.
Before he wanted it to happen, Major Andwar realized that he was rolling along the access route to the main takeoff runway. In minutes he and his three buddies would be in the air, working up to thirty thousand feet and ripping almost due south toward the Chad border.
In an hour’s flying time at Mach 1, the planes would cross the border. Then, a hundred miles on south, they would be at the small town of Yebbi Bou. It would take only ten minutes after crossing the border. Then, at the correct point, he would release the nuclear bomb and he and his wingmen would swing round and blast north until they saw the flash behind them.
Major Andwar checked his controls. They were almost at the border. The land below looked the same, the unending Sahara Desert. Not even a fence showed where the border was. There were no roads, no towns, only sand and more sand.
Even as he thought that, he had slammed through another ten miles.
No. He was closer. His radio chattered, but he didn’t understand. The transmission came again.
“Just checking, buddy. We’re three minutes from release point. Wind drift has been noted and punched into the computer. Now we are two minutes and forty-five seconds from release. You read?”
“Ah, yes, I read. All is good here. Ready for release. I make it slightly over two minutes, at thirty thousand feet. I’ll tell you release time and then we turn right and get out of here.”
He waited a minute.
“One minute to release. Is everyone on board?”
He listened to the three radio check-ins. Then one of the men began a countdown on the radio.
“Retribution Leader, I have forty-five seconds to release.” There was a pause. “I now have thirty-five seconds. By five second intervals: thirty… twenty-five… twenty… fifteen… ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…”
“Release!” Major Andwar said, his voice rising with the emotion. “I have release, showing a clean separation from the aircraft. Do you have visual?”
“Yes, visual, it’s on its way, let’s do our right turn now.”
The four Libyan jets turned to the right 180 degrees and slanted north at thirty thousand feet.
Twenty seconds later a brilliant flash filled the cockpits of the four jet aircraft, slashing at them from the rear and blasting forward to the horizon. A few seconds later a shock wave jolted the four planes sideways through the sky as if they had been swept away by a giant hand.
“Hold on to the controls,” Major Andwar shouted into the microphone. “It’s the shock wave, it will be gone quickly, don’t lose control.”
The planes did a little dance in the sky, but because they were a half mile apart, did not slam into one another. Then the shock wave was past and they flew straight and level again.
“Turning ninety degrees left to look to the rear,” Major Andwar said. The four planes turned. The giant mushroom cloud towered well over their thirty thousand feet.
“Confirmed,” the major said.
“Confirmed,” the other three said
.
“We just killed thirty thousand human beings,” one of the pilots said.
“No,” the major shouted. “Don’t ever say that again. We did our duty and now return to base. On my signal we turn due north. Now.”
The planes dropped down to ten thousand feet to watch history in the making below on the desert. Thousands of wheeled and tracked vehicles charged across the desert heading south.
Thousands and thousands of troops rode forward, ready for battle if there was one. Major Andwar knew that the diplomatic channels were crackling with charges and countercharges, and from Libya there would be an ultimatum to Chad. He would hear it later on television and radio when they returned to their base near Benghazi.
* * *
In Benghazi, al-Qaddafi took the cue from the television director and began to speak.
“To the people of Chad. Libya bears no malice toward you. It is your leaders and your corrupt form of government that we abhor. We have today vaporized the town of Yebbi Bou in northern Chad with a nuclear weapon. This is our message to your leaders.
“Our Armed Forces are even now overrunning the northern boundaries of your country. The Chad military must lay down its arms at once and surrender the country to Libya. You have twenty-four hours to do this and to cease any and all forms of resistance from both military and civilians.
“If any Libyan Army or Air Force units are fired upon or attacked, dire retribution will be meted out to the guilty.
“If your leaders do not believe us, or think that we are not in earnest about our annexation of Chad, we will drop another nuclear bomb on a much larger Chad city exactly twenty-four hours from when the first fell.
“Urge your leaders to capitulate and to broadcast such a message to us within the hour.
“The target for the second nuclear bomb will be your capital, N’Djamena. We have no wish to vaporize your capital city. We will want it to be flourishing as one of our show points when we control the ex-nation of Chad. Demonstrate to us and to our Army units that your leaders are sincere in their capitulation, and your historic capital city will be spared.
“We come not as conquerors, but as brothers too long separated, so that we may now complete this part of our family circle. We look forward to hearing your answer.”
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Everard Sylvester scowled at the printout where he sat at his desk in the A section on the fourth floor. Less than an hour ago Chad had been hit with a nuclear bomb, a small town wiped out, and an immediate ultimatum of surrender issued by al-Qaddafi.
Response.
What was the U.S. going to do to nip this sort of nuclear-blackmail aggression in the proverbial bud before it came to full flower and engulfed half of Africa?
Don Stroh dropped into the visitor’s chair next to Sylvester’s desk.
“So?” Stroh said.
“I don’t know. The chief gave me an hour to come up with my recommendation and I don’t have a clue. Step in with a broadcast nuke threat of our own to al-Qaddafi? Pull his forces back and cease and desist on the use of any more nuclear weapons or one of his own towns would be vaporized? Will the big stick work anymore? He would broadcast a counterwarning that a named U.S. city, say Portland, Oregon, would be blown off the map by nuclear bombs if any U.S. aggression took place on Libya soil. Threat and counterthreat. I don’t think that’s the way to go here.”
“So?” Stroh asked again.
“My other plan takes longer. Find out where he bought the nuke he used and quash his supply. Eliminate any more nukes he may have, and then turn the economic screws on him, even going so far as to blockade his oil export ports of as-Sidar and Marsha al-Burayqah.”
“An act of war,” Stroh said.
“So is A-bombing a Libyan city.”
The two men stared at each other.
Stroh broke the stalemate. “First we find out where they bought the bomb and shut off that supply. The only nukes we know of for sale on the open market have been in Odessa, Ukraine. We have been following some activity there lately. We can check the ship movements from Odessa and see if any went directly to Tripoli.”
“We can do that?”
“A computer scan of the satellite photos of the past week to ten days. If the satellite shows it, we’ll find it. I better move.”
Stroh talked with the CIA director for five minutes and had approval for the search. A half hour after it started, the satellite analysis specialist came in with the report.
“Two ships, both freighters, left Odessa within minutes of each other six days ago. One meandered around a general route toward the canal. The other, much faster, plowed straight through to Tripoli.”
Stroh hurried up to the director’s office with the report. “We know the one ship is of Chinese registry, an old rusty freighter making only ten knots. We’ve been watching it, but the faster ship we haven’t tracked.”
It took the CIA only an hour to dig out the name of the two ships that left Odessa on that day. One or both of them could have carried ex-Russian ICBMs from the Odessa hideaway.
“Track that fast ship and see if it’s still in Tripoli harbor,” said the director. “If it is, we need to know if there is a missile there, or part of one, and we need to know if the missile was one of the ones with ten independently targetable reentry warheads. The warheads could be yanked out of a Satan and used as single-shot weapons such as was dropped on Chad.”
“You want the SEALs to go in and check out the ship and destroy or capture the remaining nukes if they are on board that ship?”
“That’s why you’re here, Stroh. I’ll have to get approval from the President, but that shouldn’t take more than an hour. Alert your SEALs for the mission and keep them on standby. Oh, be sure to go through the CNO. Some of the sailors out there in Coronado are getting touchy.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll call the Chief of Naval Operations and get the operation set and we’ll trigger it when the President gives us a thumbs-up.”
NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE
Coronado, California
Master Chief MacKenzie took the phone and identified himself.
“Yes, Master Chief, good to hear your voice.”
“Mr. Stroh. How are you these days?”
“A bit different. We had our asses chewed by the Navy, so now we’re going through channels. Wanted to warn you and give you a time line on these guys. See how long it takes to get the word to you.
“About a half hour ago the President authorized my boss to take some direct covert action on this Libya situation. You’ll get official word through channels. Just wanted to see how long it takes. Mark down your time now and let me know when your team commander gets the word to you.”
“Will do, Mr. Stroh. Good to hear from you again. Will you be along on the mission?”
“Probably. Somebody’s got to keep your boys out of trouble. You take care, Master Chief.”
MacKenzie took a piece of paper and put on the top the name of Don Stroh, then behind it he wrote in the time, 1042. He would see just how efficient the Navy was in an emergency order transmission.
It wasn’t until almost 1345 that Master Chief MacKenzie took the call from Commander Masciareli.
“Master Chief, where is Third Platoon right now?”
“On the strand taking a hike, then a swim,” MacKenzie said.
“Send a Hummer out there and bring back Murdock and DeWitt. Then show them up to my office as soon as possible. Something is cooking.”
“Aye, aye, Commander. Right away.”
Fifteen minutes later, the two SEALs, in their wet, sandy cammies, and MacKenzie, in his pressed and spotless uniform, stood at attention in the SEAL Team Seven commander’s office.
“At ease, but don’t sit down, you’re still wet. We’ve got an assignment for you. Just came from the admiral’s office the way it should. He received it from the CNO, who had the order directly from the President.
“You know about the nuclear bomb
that Libya dropped on Chad early this morning. For sometime the CIA has been monitoring the ICBMs left over in Ukraine after the breakup of the USSR. They all were supposed to go back to Russia for disposal, but not all made it.
“Last week the CIA found out that some were sold or stolen and taken out of Odessa on a ship. We believe, but are not certain, that one or more of the Russian Satan ICBMs were on that ship, which went directly from Odessa to Tripoli. The CIA believes that one of the multiple independently targetable reentry-vehicle warheads was what Libya dropped on Chad.
“Your platoon has been authorized to conduct a covert operation to determine if the ship did have one or more of the Russian Satan missiles, and if so, to destroy the remaining warheads so they can’t be used as independent bombs. Either that or capture the remaining warheads and transport them out of the country for U.S. control.”
“Simple,” DeWitt said.
Commander Masciareli glared at him a moment.
“The only easy day was yesterday, J.G.” He looked down at some notes. “You will operate from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean which will move up from its position off Lebanon. Don Stroh will be your on-board contact and you will work out your strategy and operation en route and on board the carrier. Transport for your platoon will leave North Island in three hours. Is your platoon operational, Commander?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve had almost two months since our last fling and our wounded are healed and tough. Our one replacement man is integrated into our group and can function.” He paused. “Is there anything else, sir? We need to get our men out of the ocean and into some dry clothes.”
Two and a half hours later, the properly cammy-clad Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven stepped off a Navy bus at North Island Naval Air Station onto the edge of the taxi strip. A sleek Gulfstream II, which the Navy designates as VC-11, sat on the taxi strip warmed up and waiting for them.
They had flown in the business jet before. It was usually reserved for VIPs, and called a large executive jet by the Navy. It was made by Grumman Aircraft, later called Gulfstream Aerospace, carried a crew of two or three, and could transport nineteen passengers.
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