The SEALs had been warned to stay inside and away from all windows. They ate and then waited, stripping and oiling weapons, but only half of them at a time so they would be ready for any surprise.
Yasmin came back to the house just after 1000. She looked grim as she walked inside. Yasmin motioned for Murdock and DeWitt to come into a small room she used as an office. She wore a dark dress and a hat that she took off and threw across the room.
“Worse than I figured,” she said. “My contact says he knows for sure that the warhead originally came into Damascus on the plane, but then was taken at once to a small munitions factory about thirty miles north of town.”
“So we move again,” Murdock said.
“The worst part is that the munitions plant is on the corner of an Army base used to train volunteers for hazardous duty. They have top-notch fighting men there. Usually about two hundred at a time in training.”
DeWitt scowled. “You’re right. It isn’t a pretty picture. Is there a fence or barbed wire around the Army base?”
“I don’t know. I had hoped it would be an easier target for you. How can you… I mean, with only small arms you have to take on maybe three hundred men.”
“Yasmin,” Murdock said. “Is there any way you could get us a dozen rocket-propelled grenades?”
“The shoulder-launched rockets?” She paused. “I know some counterrevolutionaries who have used them. Let me make a call and inquire about red posters. It’s a key word we sometimes use. That one I can make on the phone.”
While she phoned, Ostercamp set up the SATCOM and contacted Athens. He gave Murdock the handset.
“Yes, Athens. We arrived. Have located the package. Working on some local support. Will move as soon as it’s dark.”
“The contact working?” Admiral Tanning asked.
“Yes. She does a good job. Will contact you after our trip north to the candy factory. Murdock out.”
Yasmin came back with Kat. The two were chattering away like old friends. Yasmin grinned. “Some good news at last. My friends say they can bring us ten, but if you can help them replace them, that would be good.”
“Would money help?” DeWitt asked.
“Incredibly. They have to buy them. The going rate here is a hundred U.S. dollars each. You have Syrian pounds?”
“Right. At sixty pounds for the dollar, that’s six thousand pounds per weapon,” DeWitt said. “Each of our men was given fifteen thousand. So we can cover the cost of sixty thousand pounds.”
“Kat,” Murdock said. “Be our banker. Collect six thousand pounds from each of the men. Get the biggest notes they have.” Murdock took off his thin cloth money belt and gave Kat his six thousand.
“Can they bring the weapons here just after dark?” DeWitt asked.
“I’ll tell them to,” said Yasmin. “Let me get a map and I’ll show you where the munitions factory is to the north. Then we need to figure out some transport for you. We can’t risk stealing another truck. We could all get blown away in a hurry if they caught us.”
“Do you have any friends in the trucking business?” DeWitt asked.
Yasmin laughed. “Oh, yes. I do. And he owes me a big favor. One condition. I get to go along on the raid.”
DeWitt looked at Murdock.
Yasmin smiled. “I can shoot, and I have my own weapon and ammo. An Uzi, as a matter of fact, and three hundred rounds.”
“You just signed on,” Murdock said.
That afternoon as the men slept, or worked on their weapons, Paul Jefferson and DeWitt played chess on a small peg board, and Kat and Yasmin began talking.
“Philadelphia, you told us,” Kat said. “I spent several years in Philadelphia back in the late eighties.”
“That’s when I grew up there,” Yasmin said. “We might even have been there at the same time.”
They traded stories, and Kat told her how she had been on a job with the SEALs before. “Nobody will ever know about what we did. But when the President calls you and says he wants you to do something for him, not many people can turn him down.”
“The President himself?” Yasmin asked. “From the White House?”
Kat nodded. “Not once, but twice now. But the SEALs take good care of me. I had to prove I could stay up with them hiking and swimming. They taught me to shoot. I like the MP-5 the best.”
“My husband taught me to shoot. I’m not sure I learned well enough. It still haunts me that on the night he was killed I could have shot better and maybe saved him. I took two bullets, but I wasn’t seriously wounded. They haven’t let me go on any field missions since.”
Her eyes turned misty and she dabbed at them. “I’ve had this one dream forever. I want to get my hands on a weapon and shoot down five or six Syrian soldiers. They were the ones who killed the love of my life. I deserve to get some revenge. Don’t you think?”
Then she cried, and Kat held her until the sobbing stopped.
“This might be the time,” Kat said. “If Murdock said you could go, you’ll have to stay with us all the way. With that many troops up there, we can use an extra gun.”
Yasmin dried her eyes and sniffed and then blew her nose. They took beers out of the refrigerator and popped the caps, and went on doing girl talk for another half hour.
Then Kat frowned. “Hey, you have any pants? Murdock is gonna flip if you show up for the shoot in that dress.” They both laughed, and Yasmin assured Kat she would dress like a man for the fight.
Just before dark, a fifteen-foot moving van pulled up in front of the house and a man came to the door. He talked with Yasmin for a moment, then he and Kat carried a mattress out to the van. They went inside for more, and when it was fully dark, the SEALs began slipping out the back door and into the big door of the van. They went one by one at staggered intervals, until all ten of them were inside with their weapons and gear.
Yasmin had on black pants and a dark brown shirt. Her hair had been pinned up and covered with a brown floppy hat. They waited in the truck for ten minutes before a car pulled up and blinked its lights. The truck driver followed it for two blocks to a spot where there weren’t any houses. The men in the car quickly delivered the ten shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade weapons, and took the money in exchange.
Two minutes after the truck stopped, it moved ahead again, with Yasmin in front with the driver, and DeWitt in between them.
“Radio net check,” DeWitt said.
All nine of the team checked in.
“So, we’re up and operating,” DeWitt said. “Rest and relax. Yasmin tells me it will take us about two hours to get through the outskirts of Damascus and then the thirty miles on north to the target. Time is now twenty-ten. We should be there by twenty-two ten, and check out the target for eval and planning. I hope we can hit it by midnight. Any questions?”
“Yeah, exfiltration,” Manhanani said. “Can we use this same truck to get toward the border?”
DeWitt repeated the question for Yasmin. She spoke with the driver. They talked back and forth, and then she grinned in the darkness.
DeWitt held his mike toward the agent. “He says if we can get away from the area cleanly, without the truck being shot up or identified with the attack, he’ll be glad to pick us up and take us as close to the border as possible. He is a businessman, and will need to be paid.”
“Sounds reasonable,” DeWitt said. “You know our cash position. Work out something with him.”
To DeWitt it sounded like a haggling process. At last the two stopped talking and Yasmin smiled again. “He’s part of the resistance here, but he has to make a living. He says he can get us almost to the border with Israel for fifteen thousand pounds. That’s two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Sold,” DeWitt said.
An hour and a half later the truck came to a stop a half mile from a brightly lit compound ahead. They were off the main road and on one that ran along the back of the Army base and the munitions factory. Lights seemed to be everywhere.
/> “Drive by so we can get a better look,” DeWitt ordered. They drove at a normal speed along the dirt road, and when they were a half mile beyond the plant, they stopped and the driver turned off the lights.
“Let’s hit the bricks,” DeWitt said on the radio. The SEALs and two women helpers left the truck and went to ground in a shallow ditch next to an open field. Two hundred yards down the way a chain-link fence barred their way to the munitions factory.
“There it is,” DeWitt said on the radio. “Now just how the hell do we get inside and find the fucking nuclear warhead?”
29
North of Damascus, Syria
Murdock came to rest prone in the weeds of the ditch as he looked at the lighted target. DeWitt landed beside him, and made a futile gesture to his superior. Murdock shook his head and pointed back at DeWitt.
The J.G. took his field glasses and stared at the target. He shouldn’t have shown any indecision. Damnit! What was the matter with him? It was a target, like any other. He’d find a way. He checked the near side of the chain-link fence through the glasses. At the corner he saw what looked to be a hole, or at least a section of the stiff fencing that could be bent back.
He grinned. Soldiers would be boys. When they wanted out without a pass, they could find a way. He used the Motorola.
“Looks like an entry point near the corner of the fence. Ostercamp, check it out. The rest of us will move up to fifty yards from the corner. Move, now.”
Murdock had told Yasmin to stay right beside DeWitt. “You don’t dare fire your weapon unless he does. When he does, it’s a signal to the platoon also to open fire. Don’t get excited and try to get the scalp on your belt before it’s time. You could destroy the whole mission.”
“I understand,” she said.
Now she ran when DeWitt did, flopped on the ground when he did, always protecting her Uzi and her ammunition, kept in a shoulder bag slung at her back. All she wanted was one or two good shots at the enemy, at the soldiers who had killed her beloved.
Kat held close to Murdock. She carried an MP-5 and enough magazines of ammo to sink a battleship. This was crazy. What was she doing out here with these professional strike team guys? What was she trying to prove? Then she grinned in the dark. She had proved it already. Now she was just doing what her president had ordered her to do. Yeah, that was it.
Ostercamp’s voice came on the radio. “Yeah, J.G., hole big enough for Mahanani to crawl through. Been used quite a bit. Don’t see any kind of security on the other side of the fence where I am. Come on up.”
“Let’s go,” DeWitt said into his mike, and the ten dark figures lifted off the ground and ran, bent over, toward the fence, then through the hole one at a time. Murdock and Kat went through last.
“Ostercamp?” DeWitt asked.
“Out front about fifty, J.G. There’s a fucking track through the light grass and weeds where the AWOL guys have been walking. No guards, no rovers that I can see. Lights are another two hundred yards ahead.”
“Go slow, watch on all sides, and keep moving up,” J.G. told Ostercamp. Then he moved his squad forward.
Ten minutes later, DeWitt lay in the grass and weeds just outside the flare of the floodlights. The nearest building was open on the back and looked like a maintenance structure. They all hugged the ground as a small utility vehicle growled around the building, slowed as two men in the rig looked the area over, then speeded up, and went around the near side and toward the next building. A small-caliber machine gun was mounted on a pedestal between the seats.
The soldiers wore camouflaged fatigues much like those the SEALs had on. Their hats were different. De Witt called Franklin up, and told him what he wanted him to do. Franklin grinned, and crawled back to Canzoneri and Ostercamp.
“We’re gonna play soldier,” he told them. “This is a Special Forces training area. Those guys must be running all over here on practice missions. We’re gonna be one bunch of them. Follow my lead. If we hit any live Syrians out there, I’ll do the talking. We’ll go sneaky wherever we move. Now.”
The three men lifted up and ran, bent half over, toward the first building. No one challenged them. They flattened out against the building, checked inside, then went around the near side and out of sight toward the next structure.
Franklin snorted as he saw how easy it was. Nobody around. Why no guards if this place was so damned important? He and his two men rested against the second building. At least the doors were closed. He read the sign over the small door. “Packing, Shipping.” Not what he wanted. “Second building a dud,” he said on the Motorola, and led the men toward the third one. All buildings were well lighted, and yet he saw no guards. Strange.
They had just come around the third building, which had a sign saying it was used to manufacture small arms, when a pair of soldiers came toward them. They walked with rifles on their shoulders as if on an interior guard post. The soldiers stared at the three SEALs, nodded and waved, and went on past.
The fourth building looked more promising to Franklin. About time they turned up something. His gut was tightening up the way it always did when he was in action. He held up his hand, and his men stopped behind a truck parked in front of the place. Two armed guards stood near a small man-sized door. Two large truck doors at the left were closed.
One of the guards said something to the other one, but Franklin couldn’t hear what it was. One guard looked around carefully, then lit a cigarette and held it hidden in one hand.
“We go at them head-on like it was a target,” Franklin said. “If we’re lucky they’ll only yell at us.”
The three SEALs came out from behind the truck, held their weapons in front of them with both hands, and ran flat out toward the two guards twenty yards away.
“Hey, stop, you stupid assholes,” one of the guards yelled in Arabic. The SEALs kept going until they were ten feet from the guards, who were fumbling with their weapons.
“You’re both dead,” Franklin shouted in Arabic. “We gunned you down while you were smoking.”
“Damned goat-fuckers, this building is off limits to your playacting. Go somewhere else and leave us alone. You don’t even have real bullets, but we do. You get out of here.”
“You’re camel-shit stupid,” Franklin shouted. He waved the SEALs to one side, and they ran behind another building. In the shadow of the overhang, Franklin used his radio.
“Might have something, J.G. Two real guards outside a building, fourth one in. Looks sealed up. Not as large as the others. No windows. Two truck doors, closed. Want us to take out the guards and check inside?”
“No, we’re coming in. They believed you were Special Forces on maneuvers?”
“Worked well, J.G.”
“Good. We’ll use the same tactic if we are spotted. We’ll have Khai out front if we need his Arabic. Stay out of sight. We should be there in about five.”
DeWitt led his squad directly at the nearest building, swung around it, and headed for the second one. Well ahead he could see the smaller structure Franklin had described. They ran in spurts, then hid behind the wooden buildings. They had just rounded the corner of the third one when Khai stopped and lifted his Bull Pup. J.G. DeWitt nearly bumped into Khai, then saw the problem.
Directly ahead of them, no more than twenty feet, stood a squad of ten Syrian Special Forces troops, dressed in desert cammy uniforms and floppy hats. They had various kinds of weapons, and a young officer in front of them stared hard at the SEALs.
“We declare your unit captured or killed,” Khai screeched in Arabic. “You are out of the maneuver. Sit down and take off your hats as a sign of surrender.”
The officer leading the Syrians shook his head. “This isn’t even your sector. You can’t capture us. The referee will agree with us. I’m Captain Palmyra. I order you to return to your own sector.”
“Call yourself a major,” DeWitt whispered.
“I am Major Al Saad, with the division. I order you to sit down and remove the
magazines from your weapons. You are hereby captured. I’ll remember your name, Captain. Now we have to go capture our primary objective. Sit down!” The last command came as a thundering bellow, and the Syrian officer gave a quiet order and his men sat down, took off their caps, and took the magazines out of their weapons.
Khai nodded and waved his troops forward at a trot, past the surprised Syrians and on toward the fourth building.
“Nice work, Major,” DeWitt said.
Khai grinned in the pale moonlight. “Hey, at least we’re still alive. Good thing they had an exercise on.”
Khai heard the roving jeep a moment later, and the SEALs slid into the deep moon shade next to a building and waited for the rig to pass. It turned and went around another building, and he took the men on toward the next structure.
Franklin and his detail came out of the night and met them. They could see the small target building fifty yards ahead. It was lit like the rest of them, and now there were three guards in front. One evidently was talking with the other two. They saluted him and he walked away into the night.
“Ostercamp, have you been around the building yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Take a run, see if there are any other doors or any windows.”
Ostercamp took off at a run to the end of the building that covered them. He looked around the corner, waved at them, then vanished.
“We need to keep this a quiet mission for as long as possible,” DeWitt said in his mike. “If there are no other entrances, we’ll charge forward in a no-shoot assault and capture the two guards as part of the maneuver games. It should work again.”
The J.G. paused, then nodded to himself. “Any other bright ideas?” he asked the net.
Nobody had any.
“Murdock, any thoughts?”
“Sounds like a good move. We hustle the guards inside, replace them with Franklin and Khai with the Syrian weapons, and we see what they are protecting.”
“Good.”
Ostercamp was back five minutes later. “No back door, no windows anywhere.”
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