Pacific Siege sts-8

by Keith Douglass

  “He’s moving too fast for the terrain,” Lam said.

  “Got to be a Humvee,” Joe Douglas threw in.

  The Humvee is the U.S. military light-utility truck that replaced the time-honored Jeep. It’s a multipurpose 4x4 wheeled vehicle with automatic transmission, power steering, and a Detroit Diesel 150-hp diesel V-8, air-cooled engine. Top speed is 65 mph with a range of 300 miles.

  “What the hell is a Humvee doing out here?” Ed Dewitt asked.

  As they watched the dust trail come closer to them, they saw a green flare pop in the sky over the dust trail. The rig was still two miles away, and the flare faded quickly. “Trying to get our attention,” Murdock said. “Jaybird, fire a green flare and let’s get moving down this asshole of a mountain. Maybe we’ve got an assignment.”

  “Could have talked to us on the SATCOM,” Holt said. “Oh, yeah, we haven’t had it turned on this morning.”

  “Do it,” Murdock said.

  They stopped, and Holt broke out the SATCOM and aimed the fold-out dish antenna. As soon as he had it aligned, and the set turned on, it gushed with voice transmission.

  “Commander Murdock, respond ASAP. This is Commander Masciarelli.

  This message will repeat every five minutes.”

  Holt switched the set to transmit in the clear, and Murdock took the mike.

  “Commander Masciarelli, this is Murdock. Message received, standing by.”

  Less than a minute later, the speaker came on.

  “Murdock, you’ll be having company there today. Special Agent Olivia Poindexter. She works with the Company, and has a group of special items to show you. You may want to extend your stay in the field for testing. In case you decide to, I’ve sent rations for your platoon for four more days. Advise the master chief of your schedule.

  Questions?”

  “No, sir. The Humvee is in sight now, and we’re moving toward it.

  Murdock out.” Murdock looked at his platoon.

  “You heard the man. We’ve got a date below with the people in that Humvee. Let’s not keep them waiting too long at the boulder field down there.” Ed Dewitt walked beside Murdock.

  “One of Don Stroh’s guys is bringing us some new weapons to test?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. The Agency has some great little items, but usually they don’t share much. I’m interested in what they’re going to show us.”

  Twenty minutes later, they hiked over the last of the boulder field that had stopped the Humvee. A civilian sat in the front seat. The driver was a seaman.

  Murdock put his men at ease fifty yards from the Humvee, and walked up with Ed Dewitt to the vehicle. They were thirty yards away when the civilian stepped out. She was slender, a brunette, and wore khaki pants and shirt. Sunglasses protected her eyes, and her hair had been cut short and stylish. She turned toward them, and waited.

  “Be damned,” Ed Dewitt said.

  “Probably,” Murdock said, and grinned. They stopped a respectable six feet from the woman, and both men came to attention and saluted.

  “Good morning. I’m Lieutenant Commander Murdock. This is Lieutenant (j. g.) Dewitt. I understand you want to see us?”

  Up close, he could see that she was tan, more sturdy than he had first thought, and smiling as she took off her sunglasses. The two SEALS took off their shades as well. Her smile was delightful.

  “Gentlemen, I’m Olivia Poindexter. I often work with Don Stroh, who you know. He asked me to show you some of our newest, and best, defensive and offensive weapons and gadgets. I hope this isn’t too much of a problem for you?”

  “Not at all, Miss. Poindexter. We’re always glad to see anything that Don thinks might help us in our missions.”

  “I’m aware of what you’ve done in the past, Commander. I respect your work, and your skills. I’ll try not to show you anything that might not be appropriate.”

  “We want to see everything you’ve brought, Miss. Poindexter,” Ed Dewitt said. “We’re always watching for new ways to do our job.”

  “Your material is back at the bus?” Murdock said.

  “No, it’s with us, but we can off-load there.”

  “We’re about six miles from the bus,” Murdock said. “We’ll see you there in an hour or a little less.”

  She lifted her brows. “Six miles an hour, Commander. That seems a little fast for men with full field gear.”

  Murdock grinned. “Watch us.”

  The SEALs didn’t even grumble when they went into double time over the desert terrain. They had done it before, many times. Now they had a good purpose, to get back to their Navy bus, which served as their headquarters there in the Navy bombing range. It was near noon and that would mean chow. Even MREs sounded good right then.

  Murdock’s watch showed exactly fifty-two minutes had elapsed when he brought the men to a stop in front of the bus.

  “Let’s eat,” Murdock said, and the men dropped their gear and grabbed MREs from the bus. They sprawled around it in what shade it could provide. The California desert sun beamed down at them in its winter warmth. The high desert should be showing about sixty-five degrees during the day, down to forty-five at night.

  Murdock handed the CIA agent an MRE.

  “Ever had the pleasure of dining on one of these, Miss. Poindexter?”

  he asked.

  “Please call me Livy. It’s short for Olivia. My mother started it a long time ago. No, I can’t say I’ve ever been in a four-star hotel that offered these. Are they good?”

  “Relative term. They aren’t bad, and they keep the troops alive, which is the important element. Sometimes they’re better than my own cooking.”

  “I’ve heard that bachelors either learn how to cook rather well, or spend a lot of time eating out, true?”

  “Absolutely. I’m huge when it comes to beef Stroganoff, and my enchiladas aren’t bad either.”

  She tore open the brown plastic wrap on the MRE. Murdock watched her.

  “Look, I’m eating French,” she said. “I have chicken A la king.”

  “One of our chef’s best,” Murdock said.

  She delved into the contents of the dark brown envelope.

  “There’s peanut butter — yummy — and crackers, a spoon, cocoa beverage powder, a beverage base powder, and this inch-and-a-half-tall tiny little bottle of tabasco sauce. How delightful.”

  “You missed one whole envelope,” Murdock said.

  “There’s more?” She laughed as she said it, and he was pleased she was taking it so well. She could have insisted on driving back to the tiny wide space in the road called Niland for a civilized meal.

  “Oh, I see what you mean, Instant coffee, cream substitute, sugar, salt, chewing gum, matches, toilet tissue, and hand cleaner. Really, you shouldn’t have been so extravagant. I’m not as high-level as Don Stroh.”

  They both laughed.

  “When we have time, and firewood, we make real hot coffee, and hot chocolate even,” Murdock said.

  “All the comforts … “

  The sailor who drove her out unfolded two tables and set them up beyond the Humvee. He carried a half-dozen boxes from the vehicle, and then waited nearby. He had finished his MRE in record time.

  “Things still tense in Korea?” Murdock asked her. “Don told me insula sometime soon.”

  “Tense is a good word. The North seems to think they can push and push, and nobody will shove them back. The time might be near when South Korea will shove back without our permission. Then there will be real trouble over there. The big problem is, it looks like the North is massing troops along some of the border, which could be really, really bad news.”

  The men finished the MREs. Murdock noticed that she didn’t eat all of the chicken A la king, but did better on the crackers and peanut butter. He had mixed up the drink solution for her with a canteen of water, and she liked that.

  “Time to get to work, Commander,” she said.

  “Please, call me Murdock. Everyone els
e does.”

  “Good, informal is better. What I have is a series of gadgets and weapons — some you may know about, some you might have heard about. Some are off the shelf, and others are experimental, and many are one of a kind. Yes, some of it is spy stuff that you can’t use, but Don wanted you to check it out. Maybe your undercover operations could utilize some of our standard equipment. I’ve brought some of that too.”

  Murdock called to Jaybird, and he rounded up the men and sat them in the dirt, sand, and rocks in front of the table. Livy went up to the table, and leaned against the edge of it. She smiled.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I hope you had a good lunch. Now it’s time to go to work. What I’m showing you is a combination of currently available tools that many of our agents use, and quite a few far-out and still-in-development weapons that you might be interested in.

  “I know firepower is your trademark. The ability to put massive amounts of lead into a given target or area in the least possible time.

  Good. Nothing beats it. We have some items that just might help you in that task, and some that might work better even than massive firepower.

  “The first item isn’t in that category. It’s a tool you can use in your training that can be just as effective in a pair of rooms in your headquarters as a full-scale operation in your Kill House.”

  She held up a Glock 17 automatic in one hand and a tube that looked like a ballpoint pen in the other.

  “This is Range 2000, developed by IES, an Israeli company. It consists of a sophisticated digital video-projection system controlled by an IBM-compatible computer with a 133-megahertz Pentium chip. This machine can ‘.‘That means the sequence of events that unfolds on the screen in front of you is determined by your reaction to individual segments as they come on the screen.

  “This tool is aimed at police, and gives them the options of using the right body language and talking so they might not have to use force.

  If force is required, they must choose what level of force, such as pepper spray, a baton, or their pistol.

  “The laser insert works in almost any pistol with the addition of various sleeves, and is powered by a hearing-aid battery good for twenty-five hundred laser shots.

  “The video tapes you confront can be made in various local locations, and then edited for the use you need. You play out the scene, ” with the laser in your own pistol, and get a score on your action, timing, and hits.

  “The cost of this system is about thirty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Lots of luck,” somebody in the platoon called out, and everyone laughed.

  “Yes, it costs a little, but if such training could save just one of your lives, it would be well worth it. At least to the guy who would have died.”

  The sailor next handed her a sawed-off shotgun. She loaded one round into the chamber and closed it.

  “This is a weapon you know something about. It’s a little hard to show you here in daylight, but I just put in the chamber a Starflash round. When fired into a room, the round erupts in a shower of sparking fireballs that ricochet wildly throughout the room. They are intended to be distracting and confusing, and by the time the persons in the room realize what’s happening, you are in there doing what you do so well.”

  She looked around. “Questions.”

  “Are those rounds available?” Doc Ellsworth asked. “I carry a Mossburg pump, and they would surely come in handy.”

  “Yes, available to police and to the military. I’ll see that your master chief gets the address.” She paused.

  “Now, since you mentioned shotguns, here’s a new thought. The finest shotgun in the world, and the one used most by SWAT police across the country, is the Italian made Benelli 12-gauge 121-M-1 recoil-operated semiautomatic shotgun. The Benelli has been called the masterpiece of ballistic handiwork. I have one here, and you can test it out. The semiautomatic feature may be the most important element in the kind of fast-fire situation you guys specialize in. Oh, the Benelli also has an optional mini-flashlight fitted on the barrel.”

  “We do a lot of work in the dark,” Jaybird said. “Does the mounted flashlight have a handy switch for on and off?”

  “To simplify matters, it’s on the back of the flashlight. It could be rigged with a solenoid down by the trigger housing. Any questions?”

  There were none, so she went on. She picked a yellow tennis ball from a box. “Any of you play tennis? If you use one of these, it’s a love game every time.”

  She stepped forward, and threw the tennis ball as far as she could away from the men. It arced out forty feet, and when it hit, went off with a sharp cracking explosion.

  There were some murmurs from the men.

  “That’s a camouflaged impact grenade. As long as it hits something fairly solid, it will explode. It’s about the same power as your usual M-67 fragmentation grenade. Now, tennis, anyone?”

  “Probably not, Livy,” Murdock said. “We don’t do that much undercover work.”

  “Fair enough. Here’s an item you should be aware of. We don’t know all about them yet, but they are on the market, and we expect that they have been sold in some quantity to terrorists.”

  She held up a weapon with an inch-thick solid barrel and a folding stock.

  “This is the Russian-built VAL Silent Sniper. As you can see, it’s sound-suppressed, and has a twenty-round magazine for the nine-millimeter rounds. It fires the heavy bullet at subsonic velocity due to the silencer. The nine-by-thirty-nine round is said to penetrate all levels of body armor out to four hundred meters.

  “Now, the folding stock makes it easy to transport and conceal.

  That’s why we are certain that this weapon will be showing up more and more around the world in the hands of criminals and terrorists.

  “We haven’t completed our testing of it, and only recently obtained two of them, so we should know more in the future.”

  “How much does it weigh with that heavy barrel?” Colt Franklin asked.

  “Good question. Actually, it weighs two and a half kilos, almost exactly the same as your Colt M-4A1 carbine, and your H&K MP-5 when they are without the suppressor.”

  She watched the SEALs for a moment. “Any questions about this weapon? You may never see one; then again, the next batch of terrs you hit may have a potful of them.”

  She looked at Murdock, then went on. “I understand that you use the Heckler and Koch G-11 as a standard weapon. Good. I like it. It works well in the field. And from a security standpoint, it leaves no brass to be identified later by some irate nation.

  “We understand that Germany is now in the process of bringing out an advanced version of this weapon, which was created in 1990, but we don’t have any of the new models yet. We’ll keep you informed if and when we get one and what the availability is.”

  “What about some real spy stuff?” Al Adams asked.

  Livy smiled. “You mean like an umbrella with a poison dart in the end, a BMW with a rocket engine and machine guns under the headlights, and a pen that explodes when it’s turned the wrong way?”

  “Yeah, like them.”

  “Sorry, most of those extreme measure items went out with the Cold War. There really are few enemies now that our field agents are asked to kill. From what I hear, this platoon’s body count is probably higher than that for all the Company personnel in a year.”

  She looked around. “Commander Murdock. That about takes care of my indoctrination for you. Don Stroh says he’ll have some items to talk to you about from time to time. Just to keep you informed.”

  “Thank you, Miss. Poindexter. Tell Don we’ll be waiting for his call. Now, it’s time the foot soldiers out here got back to basics.

  Today is the land phase of our training. I understand you have brought us some more rations.”

  “Yes, they were unloaded into your bus when we arrived.” She looked around. “Thanks, guys. Have fun in the sun, and don’t get those nice clean uniforms all dusty.”

&nbs
p; The seaman quickly had the displays boxed up and put back in the Humvee. He started the engine, and the Humvee moved back down the lane toward the gate, and then back toward San Diego.

  Murdock stretched and looked up at the sun. “Okay, SEALs. You have five minutes for a piss call. Then it’s back to work.”

  They hiked away from the bus with full vests and weapons, combat ready, in their sweat-stained cammies.

  A half-mile out, they halted, and Murdock gave them hand signals.

  He wanted Ed’s squad to take the lead in a diamond formation. His squad would follow in another diamond. The signals told them to stay ten yards apart.

  “Anytime you see a red flare, that will be the signal that we’re taking fire from that flank. You will form into a line of skirmishers to that side, take cover wherever you can find it, and return fire on my first burst of three rounds. Move out.”

  7

  Monday, 12 February

  Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range

  Niland, California

  The Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven had been moving across the barren landscape of Southern California for two hours. It had been almost a month since the four men in his platoon had been wounded in Iraq.

  The two men with shrapnel gouges had healed completely — Ron Holt, with the bullet through his arm, was back to ninety percent and had been taking training with them after only a few days’ rest. Kenneth Ching, with the slug through his thigh, had been the slowest to heal.

  After a month, though, he was back to full training. This was his second hike in the desert. He was holding up well, Murdock decided.

  Every day when Murdock came over the quarterdeck and waved at Master Chief Mackenzie, he expected to find orders from Don Stroh. There were even news accounts now of the North Korean saber rattling along the border. Commentators said it was intended to distract the population from being so short of food and other necessities. The idea was to hate the Americans instead. Murdock was pleased the way his men had recovered and moved back into the training-and-conditioning mode.

  Conditioning was the most important aspect now. Mahanani had blended in well with the rest of the platoon. He was easygoing, never got angry, could lift his weight in elephants, and was the first to be there when another man needed help.