It was barely 2100. Many men still milled around, evidently working on their displays, getting them ready for the rush of customers in the morning.
Now and then, a light blinked out, and Murdock figured they should stay put for a while. He hoped the place would be deserted by the time they got there to place the explosives.
He frowned as he saw a soldier walking what must be a guard post. He went behind two shapes that must be tents, then moved thirty yards north and went back between displays.
Lam groaned beside him. “See that fucking guard?”
“Yeah. Complicates things.”
Murdock used the Motorola. “We’ve spotted some Army guards patrolling. Changes things. We’ll hunker down here and wait until all the lights go out. By that time, we’ll figure out what to do about the guards and our whole timing operation.”
They moved forward slowly for a quarter of a mile and found a small ravine a hundred yards from the display that would hide them. The SEALs spread out and settled down. Murdock, Dobler, Lam, and Jaybird talked it over.
Jaybird had watched the sales area and reported what looked like a series of guards who were on the whole layout.
“No chance we can get in and get out without being spotted,” Jaybird said. “If we take out three or four of the guards, they’ll find that out in a rush, and we’ll have to fight our way in and out. They might not want to give us a hell of a lot of time to booby-trap all of those goods.”
“How about a diversion?” Lam said. “We can use the forty-mikes to cause a problem for them two hundred yards the other side of the strip. They bug out over there, we put down the charges and haul ass out of there before they get back.”
“Yeah, but would all of the guards go out there, or do they have a company of troops somewhere waiting for trouble?” Dobler asked.
“Probably,” Murdock said. “We’ve got to count on them having a good-sized force here. Iran doesn’t want a black eye, especially on bin Laden’s show. So we go with the worst scenario. If it doesn’t happen, we’re glad and get the job done and get our asses back in the water.”
They all looked at the objective again through the glasses.
“I figure about twenty guards,” Lam said. “They each seem to have a zone about twenty-five yards long. They go around and around.”
“We move in and take out ten of them,” Dobler said. “On their next round, we take out the other ten. Then we dig in and plant our bombs and TNAZ and get the hell out.”
“How long to plant all the goods?” Murdock asked.
Jaybird shrugged. “Each of us has fifty yards. That’s maybe twenty bombs. I’ve got thirty. By rushing and having the detonators in first, we should be able to do it in twenty minutes.”
Murdock rubbed his face with one hand. He needed a shave.
“So, say we try it that way. We snuff half the guards, and ten minutes later, they make the second round and we get the rest. If all goes right, we have twenty minutes to lay down the explosives and haul ass.
“If things get out of hand, say there’s a shot or two fired by the guards, that would alert the rest of the forces and a jeep or two. Then we send out our forty-mikes on my command and create our diversion. We hope to drain off the manpower there until we get done with the goop.”
“They’ll know they’ve been hit by then and come right here to the prize and start checking,” Lam said. “No way we can wait until morning to blow the bombs.”
“Why they give us that time line, anyway?” Dobler asked.
“Said they wanted to catch the buyers in the area and snuff as many of them as possible.”
“Probably won’t go down that way,” Jaybird said.
Murdock looked back at the target. “Fewer lights now. One generator must still be working.”
“By 2400, that place will be dead black,” Lam said. “I hope.”
Murdock called up Petard Canzoneri.
“Yes, sir, all ready to go. Each man has enough explosives for twenty bombs. He also has twenty detonator-receivers. They will be handed out in groups of sixty, working from one end of the line to the other. Each group of sixty detonators will have a separate frequency to explode the bombs.”
“Not all at once?” Murdock asked.
“No, sir. I don’t have that many hands. This way I can work from one end, or from both ends, or from the middle outward, depending which will do the most damage.”
“Sounds like a good plan, Canzoneri. Get some rest. We won’t be moving for some time.”
The plans made, they waited. Murdock knew they had five grenade launchers. On command, each man with a carbine would launch four rounds across the target and well inland to maximum range.
He had posted guards, one on each end of the SEALs’ gully, and one in the center, all watching the target. None of the Iranian Army men had even looked outward toward the SEALs’ location.
They waited.
At midnight, Murdock checked the target again through the NVGs. He had trouble finding any lights. At last he made out two, both small. Next he searched for the guards. Yes. There was one. He timed the man’s circuit. It was fifteen minutes before a guard appeared at the same spot. Probably the same man.
Lam slid into the sand beside Murdock.
“I make their rounds every fifteen minutes,” Lam said.
“Agreed. Senior Chief, are you awake?”
“Ready,” came the sound over Murdock’s earpiece.
“Work with Canzoneri and spread out the men so we can take the guards. Also have him give the men the twenty detonators in the sequence he wants. Have them put the detonator-receivers into the bombs. Do it now.”
“That’s a roger.”
Ten minutes later, the radio earpiece spoke.
“All men in position,” Commander. “All detonators given out in the proper sequence. We’re ready.”
“Good, Senior Chief. Let’s move up slowly. Everyone will stop twenty yards from the tents and displays. When the guards come, dispatch them silently. Let’s move.”
Murdock checked the line with his NVGs. The fourteen other SEALs were in line and moving forward.
They were twenty yards from the target when the men began dropping to the ground. Murdock went with them. Directly ahead, he saw a guard come around the corner of a bright blue tent. He didn’t even look toward them. Instead, he stopped and lit a cigarette, cupping the glow of the smoke. Murdock was closest to the man. He waited until the guard turned away, then Murdock unsheathed his KA-BAR fighting knife and moved silently forward. The last four steps, he ran. The Iranian must have heard his footsteps. He started to turn just as the blade drove deeply under his left arm into his heart. He went down, dead, like a head-shot steer.
Murdock took the AK-47 and checked it. Loaded. He looked down the line and saw two other SEALs moving up to the tents and display tables. He heard no sounds. Good. He waited four or five minutes, then used the radio.
“Alpha Squad, how many guards down?”
He knew the voices. Four responded. His made five. That left fifteen. “Bravo Squad, how many terrs down?” Six different voices answered. That made eleven. Maybe they could pull it off. Another ten minutes, and he saw more guards through the NVGs moving around the backs of the displays.
He saw one man go down, then a second.
Before anything else happened, a piercing scream shattered the Iranian night, then the flat blasts of a dozen AK-47 rounds ripped through the air. Another voice shrilled. He heard the chugs of a silenced weapon near him. Somewhere a siren went off.
Murdock hit the mike. “Shoot those forty-mikes. Four rounds each. Fire now. Everybody plant those charges.”
Murdock ran to the front of the tent and ducked inside. The tent was filled with 105 rounds and stacks of bags of gunpowder. He pushed two charges under the gunpowder. Sympathetic explosions should wipe out all of the rounds as well. He ran outside and began working to his left.
By now, he wasn’t sure that the double teams wer
e intact. They would plant what bombs they could and haul ass when the fresh Iranian troops arrived.
He had heard the forty-mikes being fired and exploding well inland. He hoped that drew most of the others on hand. More sirens wailed. He saw a pair of headlights racing up the old concrete runway toward them.
Before the rig came into the range of Murdock’s MP-5, a longer SEAL gun knocked out the lights and the rig itself with six rounds.
Murdock kept placing the bombs and checking the detonators. He’d never seen such a variety of weapons and ammunition. He had a glimpse of a jet aircraft of some kind and several armored personnel carriers down the way.
Machinist’s Mate First Class Tony Ostercamp and Paul Jefferson had killed the guard they surprised and now came to the white tent. To the left side, they found tables piled high with assault rifles, machine guns, and boxes of ammo.
Jefferson worked there. Ostercamp waved and headed the other way to the tent. Jefferson wrapped charges around two AK-47s at the bottom of the pile. He moved to his right to an orderly layout of RPGs, rocket-propelled grenades. It took him only a few seconds to bury a quarter-pound charge of TNAZ under the stack and push in more securely the electronic detonator. He looked to his right.
Something moved.
He waited. The shadow he had seen stepped forward cautiously. Jefferson was glad his black face and hands wouldn’t show in the darkness of the moonless night. The figure took two more strides forward, then turned to look behind. The guard held an Ingram submachine gun.
Jefferson froze in place, waiting. Another four steps. The man checked behind him again, then came forward.
Jefferson leaped upward at the last moment before the guard would have stepped on him. His KA-BAR knife drove out at the end of his stiff arm like a spear. It slashed through soft cloth, glanced off a rib, and penetrated deeply into the Iranian’s heart. The man slumped forward, dead without a sound.
Jefferson caught him before he fell. The Ingram came between them and wedged in as Jefferson dragged the man behind the table of weapons. He found a canvas and hid the body under it, cleaned off his KA-BAR on the dead man’s shirt, and sheathed it.
He could hear small arms fire inland. He hoped that the forty-mikes drew off some troops. He knelt and looked around. He saw no more guards. They were either dead or hiding. A grenade blew up fifty yards down the long line of arms.
Jefferson went back to his work on the weapons. Next he came to an armored personnel carrier, a small, fast almost-tank that could haul eight to ten men into battle sporting a fair amount of armored protection. He pried off the fuel tank filler tube, pushed an eighth pound of TNAZ into the tube, and reset the electronic detonator.
Jefferson put a quarter pound of TNAZ on the underside of the engine block where it wouldn’t be easily found.
The next display was inside a tent. He unzipped the doorway and went in. A sleeping man jolted upright, lifting a pistol. Jefferson’s boot slammed into his jaw, pivoting his head upward and backward, breaking his neck in a millisecond. The pistol fell out of his hand before his death spasms could jerk his dying finger on the trigger.
Jefferson found nobody else in the tent. Inside were six tables loaded with radios and simple radar equipment, enough to outfit at least a battalion. Jefferson strung primer cord around a dozen of the most complicated units, then put three one-eighth-pound chunks of TNAZ on radios, under tables, and in various spots where they might not be easily seen. He hoped the first man into the tent in the morning figured the primer cord was large electrical lead wiring.
When he finished, Jefferson dragged the dead man outside and put him behind the tent. Jefferson broke off some desert brush and covered him, then continued his work to the right. He heard more weapons fire. Far down at the end of the display, he saw some winking lights as weapons were fired his way. He could hear no rounds hitting.
His sector here was fifty. By then he should meet another SEAL working toward him from the other direction. He left the white tent and had started to look at the next display of shoulder-fired missiles when he felt something jab into his back.
“Do not even twitch, American SEAL. I have seen you people work before. Don’t even think about moving or breathing, or I’ll blow you in half with my machine gun.”
2
Chah Bahar, Iran
Paul Jefferson knew what a gun muzzle in the back felt like. This was the real thing. He didn’t have a clue who held it.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, muthafucka? I’m here on security just the shit like you is. Take a good look at me. Hell, I’m black as a burned-out hutch. Get that stick outa my back.”
There was a soft laugh, then the man whose speech had a trace of English accent came again.
“Oh, yeah, you’re good at acting, too. Now, turn your ass around real slow, so I can watch your bastard eyes as I gut shoot you and see you learn what real pain is. Now, turn slow, slow, and don’t get near that weapon in your hideout. Easy, now.”
Jefferson turned with short, shuffling steps until he faced the man. He was six inches shorter than the SEAL, but the Ingram with a long magazine made him just as tall and twice as ugly. He wasn’t black, but he wasn’t white, either. Some kind of Iranian, maybe.
“Now, shithead, how many of you American SEALs here, a whole platoon?”
“Like I said, I’m on guard duty here for some special friends. We don’t got to tell you bastards nothing.”
The gunman slammed a pistol down across Jefferson’s head, and he staggered back a step.
The pffffftttt came softly. The short Iranian in military cammies standing in front of Jefferson staggered to the left. Something blasted out the side of his head and took bone, blood, and gray matter with it. The small desert animal sounds shut off at once when the silenced weapon spoke. The terr collapsed to the left, dropping the Ingram from dead fingers before he hit the ground.
“Jeff, you all right?”
The whispered words came from the front, where a dark figure crouched near a stack of missile boxes.
“Oh, yeah, dandy now that this dude is dead. Mahanani?”
The big Tahitian/Hawaiian rushed forward and touched the dead man’s throat for a moment, then grabbed the Ingram and with one hand, and dragged the corpse back between the displays.
“What took you so long?” Jefferson asked.
“Playing with this bang-bang shit is not my forte,” Mahanani said. “You do the missiles yet?”
Jeff shook his head, and they both worked bombs into unlikely places where they wouldn’t be seen come daylight.
“Look at these things,” Mahanani said. “A whole damn stack of Stingers. Even these with the two-point-two-pound warhead can bring down a fighter or a commercial airliner. They’ll do Mach one for three miles. Damn, where do these fuckers get this kind of shit?”
“Buy them or steal them,” Jefferson said. “We done here?”
“Yeah, I come up to you just at the right time. I saw another guard, but I went around him.” Mahanani looked closely at Jefferson. “Man, you been under a gun before. He really spook you?”
“He said he knew I was a SEAL. How the hell he know that? Who was he?”
“Iranian, from the looks. I’ve seen them before. Now, let’s get those last missile stacks over there. Shit. Look, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Almost ten feet long, with twenty pounds of warhead. They’ll do Mach two at least and reach out for ten to twelve miles. Man, where do they get this shit?”
They heard AK-47s stuttering to the north of them. An MP-5 answered on full auto.
“Getting hot in here, brother,” Mahanani said. “We better do these two and split.”
“I’m with you, buddy.”
They put two quarter pounds of TNAZ on the inside boxes of the missiles. The blast would create a sympathetic reaction and should explode each of the Stinger warheads. Their propulsion systems also might ignite, and they could take off like twisted snakes in a circus.
The two SEA
Ls moved away from the missiles, working straight back for fifty yards, and joined the other men who had finished planting their bombs.
Ten minutes later, all the SEALs were there.
Lampedusa had come back from a scouting mission. He talked to Murdock a few minutes, then the leader gathered them around him.
“Any casualties?” He paused and looked around in the darkness. Nobody spoke up. “We ran into more security than we figured. I’d say at least a company is working up the street. They won’t think to look for bombs, but we’ll need to blow them as soon as we get back a safe distance. So our job is half done. Better shag it out of here.
“Lam has found our new home. About three hundred yards over, there are some small dunes that get up to fifty feet. Highest ground around here. We’ll get on the far side and work out our firing positions. Squad order, ten yards apart. Soon as we get into position, Canzoneri is gonna blow them. Let’s go do it.”
Ten minutes later, they had their firing spots picked out and customized as much as possible. They would fire over the top of the dune from the safety of the reverse slope as necessary and have a clear run for the beach, which was now about 600 yards behind them. The tide would change that one way or the other.
“Okay, Canzoneri, you ready?”
“All set, Commander.”
“Then do it. Any sequence you want.”
“I’ll start down where the troops were and work up toward us. We should be clear back here.”
Canzoneri took a black box from his combat vest and lifted a two-foot telescoping antenna and looked at Murdock. The commander gave him a thumbs-up.
Canzoneri pushed the toggle switch, and at once the far end of the display line erupted in a series of explosions. They were followed by sympathetic detonations that lit up the countryside for half a mile.
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