“Let’s move out at a trot. Then when we see the two Syrians, we sprint for them with weapons at port arms. Let’s do it.”
The nine SEALs, with Kat and Yasmin in the middle, charged the unsuspecting Syrians and overwhelmed them.
“Stop, stop,” the Syrians shouted, but by then Khai had hit one with a shoulder block and slammed him to the ground. Mahanani put the second one in a bear hug and powered him backward three steps against the building. Their weapons were stripped away and Ostercamp worked on the door. The lock was too good. DeWitt fired twice with his silenced MP-5 into the lock, and the door jiggled open.
He went in first, fast and low, followed by the rest of the SEALs except for Khai and Franklin, who took the new Kalashnikov 74’s and stood guard where the Syrians had been. The Syrians were hurried inside, then gagged and plastic bands cinched on their ankles and wrists.
Inside the lighted building, the SEALs found a short assembly line where large bombs were evidently loaded with their powder charge and the fuses attached. In the far corner, steps led downward. Ed DeWitt and Murdock charged down the steps with their flashlights on. Down ten steps they came to a concrete wall with a steel door firmly in place. It had a time lock on it.
“Fernandez, get down the steps with some primer cord, now,” DeWitt said to his mike.
Fernandez arrived a few moments later, saw the problem, and unrolled two one-foot-long strings of the quarter-of-an-inch-thick pliable C-4 explosive. He pasted one strip against the door circling the lock, and then put an X across the lock itself with the other strip. He inserted a timer/detonator into the cord.
“Three minutes?” he asked, and looked at DeWitt. The officer nodded, and Fernandez activated the timer. All three SEALs ran up the steps and to the side, out of the way of the back-blast that would funnel up the steps.
The rest of the SEALs heard the talk, and faded to the sides away from the steps. The blast came on time with a muffled roar; the near side of the building next to the steps shook for a moment, but didn’t come down.
Murdock and DeWitt hurried into the smoke down the stairs. They came right back up coughing and wiping their eyes.
“Check with the guards in front to see if there was any reaction outside,” DeWitt said. Canzoneri slipped out the front door, and came back a moment later.
“No reaction,” Canzoneri said on mike. “Our guys heard the blast, but didn’t think the noise traveled far.”
It was four minutes later before the SEALs could penetrate the fading smoke and get to the door. The lock had been blown right through the metal door, and it sagged outward on bent hinges. It took both men to pull the door open enough so they could get inside. There were no lights. Their flashes served as they checked the twenty-foot-square room.
In the middle stood a table with a sealed container on it.
“We’ve got our warhead,” DeWitt radioed. “Kat, get down here with your kit of tools.”
Kat came through the door with her kit and two flashlights she had borrowed from SEALs. She looked at the sealed container, and took out her issue fighting knife and began ripping it apart. It was made of hard and soft plastic, and soon she found the key and opened one seal that held the two halves together. She lifted the top half and looked inside.
“Yes, the same warhead as the one in Libya,” she said. “Help me lift it out of there and then I can get to work.”
They pulled it out, cut off the rest of the plastic, and Kat began to work.
“Jefferson,” DeWitt said on mike. “Find Yasmin and stay with her. We don’t want her doing anything weird.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jefferson said.
Murdock sent two more men downstairs to hold flashlights while Kat worked. They began to sweat when Kat did as she began the delicate operation to make sure the trigger device could not possibly work to set off the nuclear bomb.
“This one is different,” Kat said. “No way I can kill this one without some radiation.”
DeWitt checked with Murdock, who was topside.
“Do it,” Murdock said. “Sometimes we have to crack a few eggs to get the job done.”
“Hey, Cap, we’ve got trouble up here,” Franklin said from the front of the building. “The damn patrol rig is coming up. What do we do?”
“If they get too curious, waste them and get the jeep out of sight around back somewhere. Keep it silent as possible.”
“Got it,” Franklin said.
In front of the building, Franklin watched the jeeplike rig come closer, turn away, then make a U-turn and come back straight for them. He was going to make a social call. Damn, Franklin thought. It might be the last U-turn that driver ever made. He lifted the AK-74 and wished to hell that he had his silenced H & K MP-5. Shit. A SEAL had to do what a SEAL had to do.
30
Franklin watched the utility vehicle come to a stop ten feet in front of them. The driver looked out and shook his head. From the other side of the rig a soldier came around with a marching step. He had chevrons on his sleeve, wore a floppy hat, and had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, muzzle down. His face was a silent mask of anger.
“Soldier, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Guard duty, Sergeant,” Franklin said in Arabic.
“You’re not the men I assigned here two hours ago.”
“Oh, yeah, we’re from the supernumerary, replacements. The two guards here got food poisoning and they rushed them to the medics.”
The sergeant came closer until he was only four feet away.
“Your uniform…” That was all he got out. Franklin had been holding the long rifle on his shoulder. He pivoted the butt downward suddenly and slammed the barrel into the side of the sergeant’s head, jolting him to the ground like a head-shot deer.
The moment Franklin made his move, Khai leaped forward, swung down the Kalashnikov, and pushed the barrel into the driver’s throat.
“Unless you want to die in five seconds, don’t make a sound. Get out of the vehicle.” Again all in Arabic.
The driver stared at his sergeant motionless on the ground, and slowly stepped out of the rig. Khai marched him to the side of the building in the shadows, where he tied his hands and feet with plastic strips, and then gagged him.
Franklin dragged the dead sergeant around to the side of the building. “No need to gag this one,” Franklin said. “Can you drive the jeep?”
Khai said he could, and pulled the rig to the side of the building into the moon shadows.
The two went back to the front of the structure and resumed standing guard. Franklin told the net what had happened.
“Hope to hell nobody finds them. How much longer we have to stand like clay pigeons out here?”
“We found the device,” DeWitt answered. “She’s working on it. Hang tough.”
Murdock went down to the basement to hold a flashlight and let one of the men go topside. He watched Kat work. She knew exactly what she was doing. No lost time, no waiting and wondering. She cut wires and pulled contacts and wiped sweat out of her eyes.
It took her fourteen minutes to get the warhead in the condition she wanted it to be. She leaned back. “Bring down the charges I made ready,” she said to the mike.
Fernandez brought down the package, and she spent two more minutes placing them exactly where she wanted them, then inserted two timer/detonators, and looked at Murdock.
“That will take care of the bomb. Maybe we can seal this basement with some blasts at the sides of the stairway. They’ll have to go off exactly the same time as the blast down here, or a fraction of a second later. I’ve set the charges so most of the blast will go against the back wall. Which should allow a half a second before it ricochets out the stairwell.”
Murdock looked at the stairs and decided it would work. Fernandez brought more C-4 and TNAZ, and helped form the bombs and place them on each side of the steps low down.
“How long on the timers?” Kat asked.
Murdock used the mike. �
�DeWitt, ten minutes on the timers on the blasts?”
“Sounds right. I’ve got Ostercamp looking at that truck outside. If it will run, we can use that to blast back to the fence to the south. Ostercamp, do we have wheels?”
“That’s a Roger, Mr. DeWitt.”
“Ten minutes on the timers,” DeWitt said.
Murdock, Kat, and Fernandez each set one of the bomb timers at ten minutes when Kat said, “Mark.” Then they hurried up the steps and out the front door. The Syrian six-by stood at the door. The rest of the SEALs were inside. Murdock picked up Kat and tossed her up to the tailgate, then climbed in.
“Count?” DeWitt asked.
“That makes eleven bodies, J.G.,” Mahanani said. “Let’s roll it, Franklin.”
They rolled back the way they had come. A block ahead they had to stop for a line of marching troops to cross the road.
Murdock looked at his countdown watch. “Less than two minutes to blast time,” he said.
The troops kept coming.
“Must be a fucking battalion,” DeWitt said, looking out the windshield. The road guard in front of the truck grinned at them. Then he turned and ran to catch up with the last squad of the formation.
A few seconds later they heard the blasts. Murdock figured the ones they heard were those in the open stairs. The other ones, deep inside the basement’s concrete coffin, would be muffled.
“Hit the gas,” DeWitt said. The truck leaped forward, and went past the second building just as sirens wailed and more lights came on. They drove past the end building, and then suddenly the truck came to an abrupt stop.
“Forgot about that damn ditch,” Franklin said.
“Everyone out,” DeWitt said on the mike. “We hoof it from here on if we’re lucky.”
The people in the back of the truck had been thrown around, but nobody was seriously injured. They dropped off the high tailgate and moved toward the hole in the fence.
“Company,” Ostercamp said. Franklin had cut the lights on the truck. The SEALs crouched in the short grass just beyond the glow of the lights on the buildings.
Then they all saw them. A pair of armored personnel carriers raced along the sides of the boundary fence. One came to a stop at the far corner, and the other a hundred yards farther on. Both turned and aimed their mounted guns back toward the munitions complex.
The near armored rig, with its troops, was next to the fence a hundred yards ahead of the SEALs. A hundred yards down the fence, in the corner, was the escape hole, along with the other armored rig.
“What the hell?” DeWitt asked. “How did they know we’re here?”
“Might just be a preplanned defense, I’d guess,” Murdock said on the mike.
“They can’t see us unless they have NVGs,” DeWitt said. “Let’s move ahead and bypass that first APC and work on the second one. We go fast and keep low. Remember, Yasmin, no shooting. Go.”
The eleven fanned out in a line of skirmishers and ran through the Syrian night. They were about fifty yards in from the fence where the first armored personnel carrier stood. They could see no men near it in the darkness.
Twenty yards past the first APC and still eighty yards from the next one, DeWitt dove to the ground. The rest of the SEALs did too. “I saw some movement down by that next APC,” DeWitt said. “We swing in toward the fence so they can’t get us in a cross fire. If either one shoots, they’ll be shooting right into the other APC.”
They raised up and ran again. Kat was sorry she had brought so much ammo. It was weighing her down, slowing her. She grimaced and ran harder to stay up with the men.
Fifty yards from the corner of the fence and the second armored rig, they went down again. DeWitt was on the radio.
“I can see six or eight troops around and behind the APC,” DeWitt said. “That blocks our exit. Line of skirmishers and lay down ten seconds of fire on my first shot.” He waited for ten seconds while the SEALs double-checked the field of fire in front of them. Then DeWitt sighted in with his Bull Pup set for the 5.56 barrel. He slammed out a three-shot burst, and the rest of the squad fired at the shapes and forms around the armored rig.
The first few seconds, there was no return fire. Then a shot or two came, then half a dozen, before someone screeched near the APC and the firing there stopped.
“Bull Pups. Let’s each put three rounds of the twenty on the APC at the corner, no laser, just on contact. Fire when ready.”
A moment later five of the big 20mm rounds slashed into the APC and exploded, bringing screams.
Kat moved over beside Yasmin and watched her. She had been firing her Uzi at the near APC with the rest of them. In the darkness, Kat could see a smile on the Syrian woman’s face.
When the fifteen rounds of 20mm ended, DeWitt used his NVGs again, and saw four men running behind the rig. “Another ten-second welcome,” DeWitt said, and fired three rounds from his 5.56 barrel, and the ten other guns with him chimed in the chorus.
Kat fired bursts of three at the vehicle, trying to graze along the side rather than hit it directly. She watched Yasmin firing the Uzi. She went through one magazine, then a second one before the weapons stopped.
“Now, Bull Pups, three rounds each of the twenties on the APC behind us. We need to discourage them as well.”
When the firing stopped this time, they could hear the first APC start its motor and move quickly away toward the lights.
“Franklin, come back,” DeWitt said on the net.
“Hoo-ya,” Franklin said.
“Tell them they all don’t have to die. They can pick up and roll out of there, following the fence the long way home.”
“That’s a Roger.” In the quietness of the night, Franklin shouted his offer of a safe retreat in Arabic to the APC in the corner. They waited. Nothing happened.
“Three more rounds of the twenties,” DeWitt said. They fired on and around the APC. Then quiet settled down again.
“J.G., we’ve got three sets of headlights coming from the rear, maybe four hundred yards off,” Ostercamp said.
“Let’s laser them with the airbursts and see what we can hit,” DeWitt said. “Three rounds each.”
It took the men a few seconds to get their lasers and range finders turned on and working. Then the first shots went out and they saw the airbursts over the moving trucks. The first salvo knocked out the lights of one truck and probably stopped it. The next rounds hit a truck, and a moment later it burst into flames. The third truck turned around, and they fired at its taillights.
Ahead of them, by the corner of the fence, the APC’s motor started, and it drove forward along the fence away from the SEALs. When the rig was out of the area, Ostercamp ran forward and checked the position.
“Looks clear to me, J.G. Found one body they missed. They can get it in the morning. Ya’ll come down.”
Ten minutes later they were through the fence and running for the moving van three hundred yards down the road. The driver was pacing up and down.
“Friends coming in,” Franklin called to him when the troops were thirty yards away. He gave a small cheer and started the truck engine.
The SEALs and friends jumped on board, and DeWitt took a head count. Then they drove away. The driver explained that he knew the area. They could go down four or five kilometers and turn back toward the city and not go past the Army base.
In the rear of the truck, Yasmin sat with her back against the side and smiled in the darkness. Kat moved over beside her.
“We did it, Yasmin. We exploded that warhead so it will never be any good as a bomb or even furnish parts or pieces for a bomb. The radiation should be minimal if they keep it in that basement and seal it inside.”
Yasmin caught Kat’s hand. “I’m glad it worked right, Kat. You were excellent. I’ll put you in my report. I’m feeling better myself.”
“You fired a lot of angry lead at those soldiers back there.”
“Yes, it felt so good. I don’t know if I killed any of them, but I might
have. I hope that I did. I feel just great.” She was silent for a minute. “Now, we should talk about getting you back to the Israeli border. It’s about eighty or ninety miles. There’s a chance there won’t be any traffic checks, but there might be. Can you talk to the people in the front seat?”
“Yes. Talk to DeWitt?”
“The head man, yes. Tell him that the driver knows what he’s supposed to do, where to go. He’ll take some back roads so we’ll be harder to find. They will be looking for us, especially after it gets light. But we should be near the border before then. Can you tell Mr. DeWitt that?”
“You just did, Yasmin. Did you copy that, J.G.?”
“Roger that, Kat. I want everyone to check weapons and be sure you have full magazines. We could find some more trouble before we hit the friendly lands.”
“Have the driver tell you where we are now and then,” Kat said into the mike. “We can’t see anything from back here.”
A few seconds later the radio earpiece came on again. “You folks in the cheap seats,” DeWitt said. “We are now about five miles past the last turnoff to Damascus. We will stay on the back roads for another half hour, then hit the main highway south and make some time. More report later. Thank you for flying with Syrian Motor Transport.”
Murdock moved over by Yasmin. “What are the odds that we’ll get all the way without a roadblock or traffic check?”
“Not good. The Army does a lot of checking just to have something to do. No war to fight, so we civilians become the target.”
“What kind of roadblocks do they use?”
“I’ve seen them with big trucks all the way across a street or a road. No way to bust through or go around. They get clever putting them in single-access areas.”
Murdock had been holding his mike out to pick up what Yasmin said. “You hear that, DeWitt?”
“Every syllable. We’re watching all the time. If we spot a block quickly enough, we will try to go around it. Might work. Otherwise we’ll just have to blast through it. Will keep in touch.”
“Do that.” Murdock stretched out on the floor. “Good time for a half-hour nap. By then we might be busy again.”
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