War Cry
( Seal Team Seven - 9 )
Keith Douglass
Since 1953, North and South Korea have been in a stalemate…until now. Led by a group of hard-line generals bent on taking South Korea by force, North Korean troops roll across the border. Lieutenant Blake and his men are dropped behind enemy lines with one objective: eliminate the generals — by any means necessary
Keith Douglass
War Cry
Dedication
This work of fiction is gratefully dedicated to all those real SEALs who do the covert work we never hear about, those dirty little bits of patch and heal in the world of international politics and day-to-day practical government that make the world a safer place to live in.
Foreword
A reader asks me, "Will there ever be a woman SEAL?" Another reader asks, "Why was a woman along in Death race!" Why? Just seemed like a good idea. The whole principle of fiction is conflict. If you don't have conflict, you don't have a story or a book. That's why Kat was there. What could be more out of phase with a SEAL operation than to have a woman along? Most of the readers I heard from said it worked. Some asked to see Kat again in other books. Two or three said no more women on missions… ever! So it goes.
The gist of it all is I like to hear from you. Hey, like it or knock it or have suggestions, let the cards and letters come. Any more votes on the woman-on-mission question? Get your oar in the water. You can do that by dropping me a line at:
Keith Douglass
Third Platoon [1]
Coronado, California
Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock. Platoon Leader. 32,67", 210 pounds. Annapolis graduate. Six years in SEALs. Father important Congressman from Virginia. Murdock recently promoted. Apartment in Coronado. Has a car and a motorcycle, loves to fish.
Weapon: H&K MP-5SD submachine gun.
First Squad
David "Jaybird" Sterling. Machinist Mate Second Class. Platoon Chief. 24, 5'10", 170 pounds. Quick mind, fine tactician. Good with men in platoon. Single. Drinks too much sometimes. Crack shot with all arms.
Weapon: H&K MP-5SD submachine gun. Administrator for the platoon.
Ron Holt Radioman First Class. 22, 6'1", 170 pounds. Plays guitar, had a small band. Likes redheaded girls. Rabid baseball fan. Loves deep-sea fishing; is good at it Platoon radio operator.
Weapon: H&K MP-5SD submachine gun.
Bill Bradford. Quartermaster First Class. 24, 6'2", 215 pounds. An artist in spare time. Paints oils. He sells his marine paintings. Single. Quiet Reads a lot Has two years of college. Squad sniper.
Weapon: H&K PSG1 7.62 NATO sniper rifle or McMillan M-87R .50 caliber sniper rifle.
Joe "Ricochet" Lampedusa Operations Specialist Third Class. 21, 5'11", 175 pounds. Good tracker, quick thinker. Had a year of college. Loves motorcycles. Wants a Hog. Pot smoker on the sly. Picks up plain girls. Platoon scout
Weapon: Colt M-4A1 with grenade launcher.
Kenneth Ching. Quartermaster's Mate First Class. Full-blooded Chinese. 25, 6'0", 180 pounds. Platoon translator. Speaks Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Bicycling nut Paid $1,200 for off-road bike. Is trying for Officer Candidate School.
Weapon: Colt M-4A1 rifle with grenade launcher.
Harry "Horse" Ronson. Electrician's Mate Second Class. 24, 6'4", 240 pounds. Played football two years at college. Wants a ranch where he can raise horses. Good man in a brawl. Has broken his nose twice. Squad machine gunner.
Weapon: H&K 21 — E 7.62 NATO round machine gun.
James "Doc" Ellsworth. Hospital Corpsman First Class. 25, 5'10", 160 pounds. One year pre-med, then he ran out of money. Prefers small dark eyed girls. Single. Competition shooter with pistol. Platoon corpsman.
Weapon: H&K MP-5SD/no-stock, 5-round Mossburg pump shotgun.
Second Squad
Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt Leader Second Squad. Second in Command of the platoon. From Seattle. 30, 6'1", 175 pounds. Wiry. Has serious live-in woman. Annapolis grad. A career man. Plays a good game of chess on traveling board.
Weapon: The new H&K G-11 submachine gun.
Al Adams. Gunner's Mate Third Class. 20, 511", 180 pounds. Surfer and triathlete. Finished twice. A golfing nut Binge drinker or teetotaler. Loves the ladies if they play golf. Runs local marathons for training.
Weapon: Colt M-4A1 with grenade launcher.
Miguel Fernandez. Gunner's Mate First Class. 26, 6'1", 180 pounds. Has a child with a woman in Coronado. Spends his off time with them. Married and is highly family-oriented. Wife: Maria. Daughter Linda, seven. Speaks Spanish, Portuguese. Squad sniper.
Weapon: H&K PSG1 7.62 NATO sniper rifle.
Colt "Guns" Franklin. Yeoman Second Class. 24, 5'10", 175 pounds A former gymnast Powerful arms and shoulders. Expert mountain climber. Has a motorcycle, and does hang gliding. Speaks Farsi and Arabic.
Weapon: Colt M-4A1 with grenade launcher.
Les Quinley. Torpedoman Third Class. 22, 5"9", 160 pounds. A computer and Internet fan. Has his own Web page. Always reading computer magazines. Explosive specialist with extra training.
Weapon: H&K G-11 caseless-rounds, 4.7mm submachine gun with 50 round magazine.
Jack Mahanani. Hospital Corpsman First Class. 25, 6'4", 240 pounds. Tahitian/Hawaiian. Expert swimmer. Bench-presses 400 pounds. Once married, divorced. Top surfer. Wants the .50 sniper rifle.
Weapon: Colt M-4A1 with grenade launcher.
(Replacement for Gonzalez after he was shot up in Iraq on the first phase of that mission.)
Joe Douglas. Quartermaster First Class. 24, 6'1", 185 pounds. Expert in hand-to-hand and unarmed combat He's an auto nut Rebuilds classic cars. Working on a 1931 Model A Ford Roadster. Platoon's top driver, mechanic.
Weapon: H&K 21E 7.62 NATO round machine gun. Second radio operator.
Fred Washington. Aviation Technician Second Class. A black man. 24, 6'0", 180 pounds. Is driven to succeed. Taking computer college courses. Doesn't carouse much. Is writing a novel about the SEALs.
Weapon: H&K MP-5SD submachine gun.
(In sick bay on the carrier from wounds suffered in Counterstrike action in the Kuril Islands.)
1
The Yellow Sea
Off the Korean Coast
Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock felt the salt spray in his face from the light chop in the Yellow Sea as the Pegasus class eighty-two-foot insertion boat slammed through the dark water just after midnight. He judged the distance to the Korean shore and signaled the coxswain to drop his speed to three knots. The boat slowed to a crawl as it moved almost silently toward the Korean coast a mile away.
Murdock and his Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven were on a silent mission to the Korean coast. They crouched low in the slender boat awaiting their time to drop into the sea. His platoon worked with a man short, since Fred Washington lay in sick bay on the aircraft carrier USS Monroe. CVN 81, ten miles at sea behind them. Washington had taken a serious wound in the last mission on the Kuril Islands. There had been no time to get a replacement.
The SEALs wore their full black neoprene wet suits including gloves, boots, flippers, and floppy hats, but no masks or rebreathers. It was a short surface swim. They had their full combat gear and weapons.
When they were a half mile off the breakers, Murdock gave the coxswain a cut signal across his throat, and the soft purr of the engine died.
Murdock whispered last-second instructions. "You know what we have to do. Let's get in and blow it, then shoot and scoot. DeWitt, take your Bravo Squad in first."
The SEALs slid soundlessly into the water, tied their six-foot buddy cords onto their partners, and began a quiet swim the last half mile to shore. Murdock and his Alpha Squad brought up the rear.
It was a simple missio
n. They would come out of the surf, take down any sentries or beach watch patrols they ran into, penetrate quietly a quarter of a mile inland, and blow up a small building that had been the center of enemy activity. Then they would work their way back to the beach, go in the water, and be picked up by the same boat that had brought them. They had done it a hundred times in training and on hot-fire missions.
Murdock stroked silently through the chop of the Yellow Sea. His weapon was tied across his back with a length of black rubber tubing. He was thirty-two years old, stood six-two, and weighed 210 pounds. He had been in the SEALs for six years, the last two commanding the Third Platoon.
His buddy on the swim was Radioman First Class Ron Holt, a twenty-two-year-old in his third year as a SEAL.
Murdock took a long look at the shoreline. Less than a hundred yards away, it looked peaceful. He could spot no guards, or any roving patrols. This was a vital area and should be protected better than this. Their loss, his gain.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt led his Bravo Squad into the surf, where the black figures lay in the wet sand with waves and foam washing over them. DeWitt watched the beach both ways, then signaled two men to sprint out of the water through the dry sand to the sparse growth twenty yards inland.
Both made it without drawing any notice. Once in the brush, Miguel Fernandez, Gunner's Mate First Class, fro ze in place. Directly ahead of him a Korean soldier walked along a path heading for the beach. Fernandez waited until he was less than three feet away, then lunged out, slammed into the slight Korean, and rammed him to the ground. Fernandez grabbed the frightened man's mouth so he couldn't scream.
Guns Franklin, Yeoman Second Class, sprinted over from twenty feet away to hold down the struggling Korean while they gagged him and tied his hands behind him with plastic cinch cuffs like those used by cops.
By the time the man was tied, Bravo Squad had crossed the beach undetected. DeWitt gave Fernandez a thumbs-up sign, and they spread out in a defensive line facing inward.
Less than a minute later, Alpha Squad with Commander Murdock joined them. The two officers whispered for a moment, then Murdock took his squad and moved up the faint trail heading inland.
Alpha Squad was in its normal formation, with the scout, Joe "Ricochet" Lampedusa, out in front of the group thirty yards. Murdock followed with his radioman, Holt, next in line. Then came Bill Bradford, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, with his H&K PSG1 7.62 NATO sniper rifle.
Ken Ching, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, was next in line, with Harry Ronson, Electrician's Mate Second Class, following him. James "Doc" Ellsworth, the platoon medic and a Hospital Corpsman First Class, was next to last, with David "Jaybird" Sterling holding down the tail-end Charlie spot.
Lampedusa dropped to the ground. Murdock followed suit, as did the rest of Alpha Squad. Murdock lifted up to a crouch and ran up to his scout.
Lampedusa pointed ahead. "Mounted patrol, Skipper. Truck and four men. Road is about fifty yards to the left."
"Parked," Murdock whispered. "We've got to keep to our time sked."
"Wish we had an EAR," Lampedusa said.
Murdock wished for a pair of them. They were Enhanced Acoustic Rifles, a non-lethal weapon that could put a target down and unconscious for four hours without harming him.
"Diversion," Murdock said. "You have any WP?"
Lampedusa grinned, and brought up his Colt M-4A1 with the grenade launcher under the barrel. He dug a 40mm white-phosphorus grenade out of his combat vest and loaded it. He angled the round to the left, away from their route.
The sound of the grenade firing brought one of the Korean soldiers on the truck up from where he had been napping. He stared in their direction, then reacted quickly when the grenade exploded two hundred yards down the road in a brilliant starburst of hotly burning and smoking phosphorus. The Korean soldiers on the truck yelled, started the rig, and spun the wheels as they raced the truck toward the fire.
Murdock waved the SEALs forward on double time. All fifteen men cleared the road where the truck had been, and plunged into the brush and trees as they moved inland.
Lampedusa worked fifty yards ahead now in the lighter woodland. They had seen no Korean soldiers for the past ten minutes. Lam dropped into the weeds and grass, and the rest of the platoon went down like dominoes behind him. Murdock and Jaybird Sterling slid to the ground beside Lam.
"Fucking lousy way to run a war," Jaybird said.
"Not a war, not yet," Murdock said. "You get the big bucks so you follow orders. What have we here, Lam?"
"Our objective. They have three guards, walking around the place like it's a gold mine."
"It may be," Murdock said. "How close can we get to it without being seen?"
"Twenty yards on this side. Let me do a run around it and see if there's a closer spot."
Lam melted into the woods without stirring a leaf or branch.
Murdock signaled the others behind him to wait, and he and Jaybird watched to the front.
"We got any more of these shit details?" Jaybird asked.
"Two, from what I hear."
"When the hell are they sending us home?" Jaybird asked with a touch of a whine. "We creamed that little Jap general in the Kurils, now we're stuck on the fucking carrier for a month. Nothing is happening over here. Why don't they send us home so I can get in some snowboarding up at Big Bear?"
"You'd break your damn neck. Jaybird. Face it, you love all this shit. Don Stroh says we got to hang tough. If nothing pops in another month, the CIA agent boss man says he'll get our asses back to Coronado."
"Him and his promises. Does that CIA jerk ever treat us right? He's hung us out to dry too many times."
"True, like in Iraq," Murdock agreed.
"Hey, WESTPAC has two SEAL platoons jerking off in Hawaii. Why can't one of them replace us here?"
They both grinned in the dark. Jaybird beat the commander to it. "Because none of them motherfuckers can replace us, nobody in the whole shit-assed Navy can come anywhere near to replacing us."
The SEALs laughed softly. Their platoon had been handpicked by the CIA to be "on call" for the intelligence agency to do its dirty work around the globe. Whenever the CIA wanted some covert action, they called on Murdock and his Third Platoon out of SEAL Team Seven at Coronado, California. His platoon had even been taken out of the command of NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE. That was the mother hen of the SEALs on the West Coast. That made the commander of the unit furious. But the Chief of Naval Operations himself had approved the move, so it was done.
Lam appeared as silently as he had left. Murdock swore the kid was half Apache.
"Other side," Lam said. "A place where the woods and brush grow to within ten feet of the buildings and the guards move around there every three minutes. I timed them."
"Go," Murdock said. He gave a moving-out arm swing, and the SEALs caught it back down the line and were on the march silently.
Five minutes later, Murdock settled in just in back of the brush that came close to the target building. Now they could see that the structure had no windows, was two stones high and made of wood.
A Korean guard with rifle slung over his shoulder muzzle down walked his post around the building. As he came opposite the brush, Kenneth Ching whispered something in Korean. The man stopped and turned, evidently curious.
Harry Ronson charged out of the brush and hit the soldier with a solid body tackle right on the numbers, and they both went down. Ching moved in and clamped his hand over the Korean's mouth. The two SEALs hauled the terrified Korean into the brush, gagged him, and tied his hands behind him with plastic cuffs.
The same pattern held for the other two exterior guards. When all three were stashed a safe distance from the building. Ken Ching and Murdock positioned themselves on either side of the door. Ching jerked the door open and Murdock threw a flashbang grenade into the room. Ching grabbed a surprised Korean soldier who had started out the door and pushed him inside and slammed the door shut.
The six thunderous explosions of the flashbang tore through the enclosed structure, immediately followed by six shatteringly brilliant strobe lights. The sound and light were designed to make the soldiers inside temporarily blind and deaf, but not to injure them.
With the last strobe of light, Murdock, Ching, and Ronson raced through the door into the brightly lighted room. They found four more guards. Two had been sleeping, two others eating. Now all were on the floor holding hands over their ears and with their eyes tightly closed.
It took four minutes to get the Koreans on their feet and propelled outside, where they were bound by their wrists and taken away from the building.
As this took place, Joe Douglas and Bill Bradley had planted four heavy charges of TNAZ explosive in four vital parts of the building. Murdock liked TNAZ because it was fifteen percent more powerful than plastic explosive C-5, and it weighed twenty percent less.
Douglas came around the building and gave Murdock a thumbs-up. Murdock had told him to set the timers for ten minutes. They were ticking away.
"Let's get the hell out of Dodge," Murdock said into his lip mike. The SEALs left their captives in the brush and began to double-time back the way they had come.
About eighty yards away from the structure, Murdock stopped the men and they turned to watch behind them.
The explosives went off within a few seconds of each other, and the two-story building erupted in a roaring, blasting explosion that sent wood soaring into the sky and a huge fireball that surged upward over the treetops. Then all they could hear was the sound of the flames consuming what was left of the building.
To the left and the right they heard truck engines start, and the rigs converged on the fire. Murdock motioned to three of the men with grenade launchers. They each fired two rounds out as far as they would go back beyond the burning building. The first to hit were HP, the next WP.
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