The scene on the television monitor was a bird's-eye view of an airport; a large, four-engine aircraft, seen from almost directly overhead where it sat on the runway, was clearly visible. The points of light moving toward it were antlike in comparison.
But Coburn felt a thrill as he watched the screen. Those were his men moving like shadows across the television monitor. God, how he wanted to be with them! "Feeling your age, Phil?" a soft voice murmured at his side.
"Stuff it, Paul," he whispered back, and the other man grinned in the darkness.
Captain Paul Mason was Coburn's single friend and confidant in the room, and another veteran of the Teams in Nam. A training injury had knocked Mason out of the jump and PT quals twelve years back, though he still thought of himself as a SEAL. The Teams were like that. Once you were one of them, you never left, no matter what your current duty assignment might be. Now Mason was a staff officer, serving as a voice for the Teams with USSOCOM, the U.S. Special Operations Command that managed all SPECWAR groups, including the Army Special Forces and Delta Force, as well as the Navy SEALS.
Shared experience had made the two men friends. Mason was no longer qualified as a SEAL, while Coburn, though he'd maintained his quals over the years with a fiercely dedicated daily regimen of running, exercise, and workouts, was stuck behind a desk. His last field assignment had been Grenada, and at fifty years of age he could feel the inner clock ticking away. Damn it, he thought, staring at the monitor. I should be there, not nursemaiding a bunch of suits and-flags in a Fort Fumble basement!
"I'm still not sure what the hell I'm seeing," a Navy admiral complained. His name was Thomas Bainbridge, and he was the commanding officer of NAVSPECWARGRU-Two, the Little Creek-based headquarters of the East Coast SEALS.
"Real-time thermal imaging, Admiral," Mason said smoothly. "Computer-enhanced and corrected to give a steady image from a single angle. Right now our Aurora is circling above Shuaba at ninety thousand feet ... so high up you couldn't even see it from the ground in broad daylight, much less in the middle of the night. Its scanning infrared sensors are incredibly sensitive. What you're seeing is the body heat from our SEALs as they deploy for the assault. This lone guy here on the control tower is probably an Iraqi soldier. These white glows up here look like warm engines, probably a couple of jeeps parked there in the past couple of hours. And ... looks like four more guards by the jeeps."
"There they go," an Air Force general said, pointing to the left side of the screen. "Can you get a close-up of that?"
A computer technician typed several characters, and the image on the screen changed, zeroing in on four ghostly shapes moving with short, leapfrogging rushes across the dark blue ground toward a cluster of green buildings. Three other shapes remained in place in the rear. Close inspection revealed one of them to be a man bracing a dark, elongated object atop a low hill. That would be the team's sniper.
"The detail is absolutely amazing," an Army colonel remarked.
"Welcome to the twenty-first century, Colonel," one of the suits, a CIA liaison officer, said. "Warfare with all the comforts of home." He took a bite from a slice of pepperoni pizza, and some of the others chuckled.
Coburn said nothing, but continued to watch the stealthy deployment of his men on the screen. The comment about warfare in comfort rankled, but then, as friends of his in the Teams had often told him, "When an asshole gives you shit, you gotta consider the source."
Almost as though he'd read Coburn's thought, Mason winked at him.
Coburn rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, then leaned closer to the screen. "Could we see a wide-angle shot, please?" he asked quietly. The tight view requested earlier showed nothing but a single team sprinting toward the aircraft; there was a full platoon on the ground now, fourteen men, and he wanted to see the entire plan unfolding, not just one small part of it.
The technician typed in a command, and the C-130, huge on the screen, dwindled to a toy outside a tiny cluster of buildings.
According to plan, the two SEAL squads had approached the objective separately. Gold Squad was to neutralize the guards at the runway roadblock and in the control tower; Blue Squad would hit the guards outside the Hercules and board the aircraft itself. Coburn could just make out the flitting heat shadows of the two SEAL groups as they dispersed across the airfield. Two men appeared to be creeping up on the Iraqis at the roadblock. The others were moving to jump-off positions closer to the C-130.
"Fairyland, Tally Three" sounded over the room's speakers. "Hot Iron, repeat, Hot Iron."
General Bradley, one of the Air Force officers, cocked his head, listening to the murmured transmissions, relayed through an Air Force AWACS aircraft over northern Saudi Arabia. "Ah! There's Tally Three. Here we go!"
Tally Three was a pair of F-117 Stealth fighters circling south of al-Basra. When informed that the SEALs were going in, the black, arrow-head-shaped aircraft had swung north and commenced their approach. Their target was an Iraqi SAM site and command bunker dug into the hillside above the village of Zabeir. When the bunker went, the SEAL platoon would launch their assault.
The tension in the room was growing, tightening. Even here, in a darkened room thousands of miles from where the action was going down, Coburn felt the old combat reflexes kicking in. His senses were sharpened; it seemed that he could smell not only the pizza, but the breath and sweat and aftershave of each of the men present in the room. He could hear the tick and hum of the room's computers, the sigh of the air conditioner, the excitement in the anonymous radio voices of the AWACS crew as they noted the time and confirmed that Cowboy One, Two, and Three were all airborne.
He desperately wanted to be in the field again, on the ground with Third Platoon.
"Man, oh, man," the spook said, grinning. "This is the way to fight a war!"
Somehow, Coburn resisted the urge to drive that pizza slice down the man's throat with his fist.
0236 hours (Zulu +3) Shuaba Airport, Iraq
"You got him?"
"He's dead meat, Skipper. He just don't know it yet." Brown lay prone at Cotter's side, the Remington braced on his left hand, motionless, his right eye pressed tight to the rubber shield of his starlight scope to keep the device from casting a telltale glow on his face. "Say the word 'n' I cap him."
Cotter checked his watch again. Tally Three ought to be sounding the starting gun almost any moment now. Invisible to radar, silent as death, an F- 1 17 should have already loosed its Paveway 11, sending the one-ton smart bomb gliding in along an invisible laser beam and right through the SAM bunker's front door.
A yellow flash lit up the southeastern sky, sudden, startling, and utterly silent as it billowed skyward into an orange fireball unfolding from the hillside above Zabeir. Cotter kept his binoculars on the Iraqis near the C-130. All were standing in the open now, staring into the flames with gaping mouths. "Knock, knock," Higgins said. "Avon calling."
Then the sound of the bomb blast thundered down from the hill, and Cotter's hand touched Brown's shoulder. "Do it!"
The sniper's rifle bucked in the SEAL's hands, its crack swallowed by the distant waterfall roar of the explosion. On the control tower's deck, the lone Iraqi guard pitched backward, dropped his weapon, then collapsed unmoving onto the walkway. Brown had already shifted targets, aiming toward the Hercules where the guards were pointing at the explosion and calling to one another. He fired again, and one of the Iraqis, the red triangle of the Republican Guard plainly visible on the sleeve of his fatigues, spun back into the boarding steps, arms akimbo. Before his comrades could react, four night-clad figures, torsos bulky with unfamiliar gear, faces painted black and heads shrouded by balaclavas and the insect-glitter of night-vision goggles, materialized out of the shadows and opened fire.
Brown shifted targets again and, one by one, began knocking out the spotlights surrounding the plane.
0237 hours (Zulu +3) Shuaba Airport runway, Iraq
Hollywood depictions to the contrary, no sound-suppressed w
eapon is completely silent. The MP5SD3s carried by the three SEALs in the aircraft assault element came close, though, the high-speed whiff of their bolts louder than the stuttering cough of their firing. Roselli sent two quick three-round bursts into the center of mass of one of the Iraqi soldiers at a range of fifty meters, jerking the man back and tossing him aside like a string-cut puppet. To either side, Doc Ellsworth and Mac MacKenzie loosed sharp, controlled bursts in synch with Roselli's, taking down the last three Iraqi guards in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Boomer Garcia backed them up, ready with his M-16/M203 combo as he scanned the darkness encircling the C-130.
Roselli raced to the parked Hercules, feeling vulnerable. The terminal building loomed beyond the aircraft, the slanted windows of the control tower dark and empty and threatening.
He ducked beneath the C-130's wing, pausing to put another three-round burst into the sprawled body of one of the Iraqi soldiers. Nearby, Doc made sure of another one.
During the mission planning, there'd been some discussion as to whether or not they should take prisoners, especially at this stage of the operation when some hard intel about whether or not the Iraqis had already boarded the aircraft would be damned useful. The final decision had been that there would be no time to interrogate prisoners, no time to cross-check their stories for confirmation. Better to just hop-and-pop, relying on speed and surprise to overcome any bad guys waiting aboard the Herk. As for taking prisoners, well ... shooting POWs was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention. Third Platoon's written orders directed them to handle prisoners "according to SOP," which everyone understood to mean that there would be none. "Clear!" Ellsworth called from the other side of the aircraft.
"Clear!" MacKenzie called from the foot of the boarding ladder.
One Iraqi body lay on its back, left arm thrown across its chest in an awkward position. As Roselli approached, the arm slipped down and flopped limply onto the tarmac. Instinctively, he triggered a burst into the man's chest. "Clear!"
"Alfa, Bravo," MacKenzie said over his tactical radio. "Stage one, clear. Five tangos, five down. Going to stage two."
Tangos--SEAL talk for terrorists. These Iraqis weren't terrorists, Roselli knew. They were just soldiers, doing what they'd been told to do.
Unfortunately for them, the same could be said of Third Platoon, SEAL Seven. And the SEALs were very good at what they did, better, he thought with a natural and unassuming arrogance, than anyone else in the world.
"Let's move it, Razor," MacKenzie said, using Roselli's squad handle. "Up the ladder! Go! Go! Go!"
"Right, Big Mac." Slapping a fresh magazine into his HK, Roselli braced himself, then sprinted for the boarding ladder at the side of the Hercules. It was dark--the searchlights aimed at the Herky Bird were gone now, courtesy of Magic brown--and he'd slid his NVGs up on his head so that he wouldn't lose his peripheral vision in combat. He nearly fell headlong when he stumbled across the body of the Iraqi lying on the stairs, but then he was past and climbing, with Doc and Mac at intervals behind him, and Boomer mounting guard at the bottom with his 203 grenade launcher. The C-130's crew-access door was closed, but Roselli had the T-shaped key that opened it.
Slamming the heavy door back on its mount, he paused outside to see if anyone was going to react to his arrival with gunfire, then lunged through and into the interior.
Aboard the C-130 Hercules, the forward, port-side access opens onto a fore-and-aft passageway on the aircraft's port side. To the right, the passageway leads straight aft to the aircraft's cavernous cargo deck; to the left, it goes forward a few steps, then takes a sharp twist to the right and up several steep steps to the flight deck.
Roselli turned right, then went prone, MP5 at the ready and extending into the plane's hold. Behind him, Mac went left to clear the flight deck. Doc followed Roselli to help secure the hold.
On the cargo deck the only light came from a couple of battle lanterns hanging from the starboard bulkhead. In their pasty glare, Roselli could see a number of men milling about in confusion, some already on their feet, others just rising from blankets or sleeping bags scattered about the deck. Some wore civilian clothing, others military fatigues, though all had the blue armband of the UN. There were a couple of Land Rovers parked aft in front of the tail ramp, piled high with cardboard cartons.
Hours of practice in SEAL Team killing houses had trained Roselli to take in a room at a glance, separating the bad guys from the good in an instant. No one visible in that crowd was holding a weapon, though some wore pistol holsters. None had the look of focus or concentration that suggested he was carrying out some prearranged plan. To a man, they looked frightened, confused, and a more than a little dazed.
"What the hell's going' on?" someone yelled in English. He was answered by an excited voice in French, then by someone else speaking what might have been Swedish.
"Everybody down!" Roselli bellowed, hoping the tone of his voice would carry the meaning to those who didn't speak English. "We are American Special Forces! Everybody down!" The babble of voices increased, and Roselli shouted again, his voice echoing in the hollow compartment. "American Special Forces! Everybody down!"
A big, blond man wearing a uniform and a blue beret approached, hands raised. "You are ... Americans?"
"Please get down, Sir," Roselli replied crisply, still on the deck, his MP5 unwavering. "I don't want to have to shoot you. Now!"
The man complied, and he barked an order at the others as he did so. In a few moments, everyone was lying flat on the deck. In moments more, the C-130 was secure. The UN inspectors looked terrified, and as Ellsworth moved past him to start checking the rest of the hold, Roselli could certainly understand why. The black fatigues and combat vests, heavy with pouches, grenades, magazines, and equipment; the faces painted black with only the eyes and lips showing through the greasepaint; the commo gear and NVGs pushed back on their heads, all combined to create a terrifying, nightmare image. The SEALs looked like invaders from some other, darker world.
As Ellsworth covered the plane's occupants, Roselli ran a quick count. There were fifteen UN inspectors aboard, plus the four-man crew of the Hercules. Nineteen for nineteen, and no ringers hiding among the hostages.
"Did any Iraqis come aboard?" Roselli asked the inspection team leader.
"N-no, Sir! They gave us until dawn to surrender the records."
"Looks like we came just in the nick then," Ellsworth said, teeth showing very white against his black-painted face.
"Cargo deck clear!" Roselli called over the radio. "Hotels secure!"
Hotels meant hostages. Had there been bad guys on the plane the SEALs would have had to tie the hands of everyone aboard with plastic restraints and clear them one by one, but that wasn't necessary now. MacKenzie appeared a second later. "Flight deck's clear. Regular cakewalk." He touched his Motorola's transmit key. "Alfa, Bravo!" he called. "Stage two clear, negative tangos. We have the package! No damage!"
0239 hours (Zulu +3) Shuaba runway, Iraq
"We have the package! No damage!"
Cotter heard those welcome words over the tactical channel and loosed a pent-up sigh of relief. The code phrase meant that all of the UN people were safe, the first half of the mission successfully accomplished.
Which left only the getaway.
"Alfa, this is Charlie!" That was Nicholson, one of the two Gold Squad men sent to take down the guards at the roadblock, "Clear! Four tangos down!"
That left one element of the assault still unspoken for. Delta, consisting of the rest of Gold Squad--DeWitt, Wilson, Fernandez, Holt, and Kosciuszko--had been assigned the daunting task of clearing the airport terminal facility, together with the attached air traffic control building that glowered over the parked Hercules like a prison guard tower. "Delta, this is Alfa. Report."
For answer, there was only a series of clicks, a signal that element Delta was busy right now.
0242 hours (Zulu +3) Shuaba control tower, Iraq
Electrician's Ma
te Second Class Charles Wilson, "Chucker" to his squad mates, braced himself on one side of the door, while Chief Kosciuszko took the other. This was the deadliest part of clearing a building, going through a closed door with no idea what was waiting for you on the other side. Reconnaissance by grenade was the preferred room-clearing technique, but the assault so far had been carried out in near-perfect silence, and the longer the SEAL assault team let the neighbors sleep, the better.
So Kos nodded to Chucker, and Chucker nodded back. The chief took a step back, kicked at the flimsy, hollow-core door, and smashed it open. In a smooth roll around the door frame, Wilson burst into the room, his HK held high, tight, and ready.
Nothing. Several beds, one of which looked as if it had been slept in recently.
Neither man wore NVGs. Even low-light gear requires some light to work, and it had been decided before the mission that individual IR goggles, which "saw" heat instead of visible light, were too heavy to make bringing them along as well worthwhile. Instead, both men had flashlights taped underneath the heavy, sound-suppressor barrels of their MP5SD3s; they provided both light for searching darkened rooms, and a quick-and-dirty aim-assist device in a close-quarters firefight.
Chucker crouched to one side of the door, HK still at the ready, as Kos rolled in and began searching the room. They moved swiftly and with few words. "Clear," Kosciuszko said, and withdrew from the room. Chucker noticed a closed door and tried the knob. Locked. He put his shoulder to it and the cheap lock gave easily. Inside, his flashlight revealed a tumble-down of empty cardboard boxes, a mop and a wheeled, metal bucket, piles of rags and cleaning supplies.
"Chucker!" sounded over his radio. "Move! Move!" Kos sounded worried. Time for the search was sharply limited.
"On my way."
"Kos, this is Rattler." That was Fernandez. "We're in traffic control. Negative, negative. No hostiles."
Seal Team Seven 01 - Seal Team Seven Page 3