Both SEALs stared straight ahead without saying a word.
DeWitt's scowl was so deep it hurt his cheeks. "Get the hell out of here. You two will be toeing the mark in every fucking jot and tittle or you're booted out of SEALs. You two read me?"
"Yes, sir, JG," the two men roared in unison.
"Good. Dismissed."
Fernandez ran for the door. Douglas let him go ahead, trailing behind, but wanting out of the compartment fast.
Ed DeWitt slammed his palm down on the nearby table. Nothing. He had gotten absolutely nothing out of them. He still had no idea what the problem was. It was the kind of situation that could split a squad in half and cause somebody to get killed. He'd watch them closer than ever the next few days.
Captain Irving Olson, Commander Air Wing on the Monroe, sat in the CIC watching the display panels around him. He had ten F-18's out looking for targets of opportunity along the roadways leading to the front lines. So far they hadn't found much.
"Home Base, this is Buzzer Sixteen."
"Go, Sixteen."
"Got me a convoy coming south. Must be twenty-five, thirty miles north of the old DMZ. I'm out of ammo. Even used up my last Maverick on what I figured must be some kind of an Army headquarters just north of the old DMZ. These trucks could use a good hosing down with twenty mike. Anybody in this area?"
"Come home if you're dry, Sixteen. I'll vector somebody else up that way. The trucks using lights?"
"Home Base, they use them until they hear an aircraft, then go dark."
"Roger that, Sixteen."
"Home Base. This is Buzzer Ten. I'm north of the DMZ about ten. What part of the DMZ has those trucks, middle, east, or west?"
"Buzzer Ten, this is Sixteen. Almost due north of Panmunjom. Follow that road up north and you can't miss them. My guess is about twenty trucks. Good hunting."
CAG Olson rubbed his forehead. The damn headache was back. Too much coffee, no sleep, too many planes in the air. He tried to think when he'd slept last. From 0400 to 0600 way back yesterday. He checked his watch. Just after 0300 now. Hell, he hadn't even been up twenty-four yet.
"Sir," one of the techs said.
CAG Olson thought he heard something.
"Captain, sir, the radio needs you. Buzzer Ten is calling."
The CAG shook his head to clear it, and grabbed the handset. "Yes, Buzzer Ten, Home Base here."
"What a sight, Captain. Like a string of pearl lights. I've got them. Head-on for the first go-round. I've got a full load of twenties. I'll make it a damn sharp angle and get a better concentration of hits. I'm moving and their lights are blinking out. Got them."
"Go, Ten." CAG Olson held the handset so tightly he felt his fingers go numb. He put it down, eased up, then changed hands, and took it back.
Buzzer Seven landed on the big carrier; then Buzzer Thirteen set down. Olson still had eight out there on a hunting trip.
"Oh, yeah, CAG. This is Buzzer Ten. I buried the first one in line and then some more so they can't get around him. Two of the bastards are on fire. Makes for a better target."
"Scratch them all, Ten. You have any Mavericks left?"
"Yes, sir, two, but I can't find any tanks."
"Use them on the trucks. Hunt some more when you splash those."
"Roger that, CAG. I'm around again, going in for a run. Damn but those burning trucks are a big help down there."
Captain Olson shook his head to fight off drooping eyes and checked the displays. He still had seven birds out there.
"Home Base to Buzzers. Anybody need a drink? Talk to me."
The reports came in with percentages of fuel left. Everyone was in good shape. They were so close to the front that there was little fly time between takeoff and action.
"Home Base, Buzzer Twelve. How wide is the penetration of the NKs on the east side of the line?"
"Five to ten miles on most of it."
"Okay, then those must be friendlies down there. I'll get further north. Thanks."
CAG held on. It would take another two hours to shepherd the last section of the flight to targets and back home. His job. He'd do it. Yeah. Then tomorrow the Tomcats would head out. Sleep? Maybe sometime next week. He reached for the caffeine pills. Two more wouldn't hurt. His eyes went wide as he gulped them down with a shot of cold coffee. He held up the cup, and somebody took it and refilled it. The techs just came on fresh at midnight. Bright and eager and so damn young. But they were good at their work.
The speaker broke into his thoughts, and he hit the handset and went back to work. Gunner's Mate First Class Miguel Fernandez ran to his sleeping compartment and rushed inside. It was for six men, and the other five bunks were full. At least Douglas was in another compartment. He stripped to his underwear and slid into the bunk.
For a moment his teeth chattered. They did that when he was so angry he couldn't control himself. That damn Douglas. The asshole could get them both kicked out of SEALs.
He hadn't worked all the way through BUD/S and been ground down until he wanted to scream and ring the bell at least fifty times, just to be slammed out of the SEALs because of some stupid shithead like Douglas. Couldn't the JG see what was going on?
No, he couldn't. He didn't know.
Fernandez loved the SEALs. He'd tried four times to get in, and had finally made it. No way he was going to fuck up and get booted. No way.
That first week at BUD/S had been so shocking and traumatic that six men rang the bell and quit. The next week ten more decided the price was too much to pay.
The shock of BUD/S was overwhelming. First there were the extensive physical tests that had to be passed just to get in the fro nt door. He had shuddered when he looked at the list, but he had worked hard and passed. He'd had to swim five hundred yards breaststroke or sidestroke in twelve and a half minutes. Then rest ten minutes and do forty-two push-ups in two minutes.
After a two-minute rest he'd had to do fifty sit-ups in two minutes. Two minutes more of rest, then do eight continuous pull-ups without a time limit. Next came a ten-minute rest before he went on a 1.5-mile run wearing combat boots and trousers. He'd had to make it in eleven and a half minutes.
He had trained for six months before he attempted the physical tests, and just barely passed them. Then he went through six weeks of physical training and orientation to the Naval Special Warfare way of life before the real SEAL training began.
That was the beginning point. The BUD/S six-month course was carefully designed to test the physical and mental capacity of the candidates. They ran everywhere they went in the loose sand around the Coronado, California, base.
The First Phase of BUD/S training was mainly conditioning, with more soft-sand runs, full-out sprints, swimming, a little trick called drownpoofing, calisthenics, and martial arts. Always there was the mental hazing, taunting the candidates to quit and ring the bell. Forcing them to complete harder and harder physical workouts.
SEAL training concentrated on mental stress and water. If the men couldn't take the hazing, the physical exertion, being in classes and swims and runs for twelve hours a day, then they would never last six months to become SEALs.
Water was the clincher. Early in the training the SEAL candidates were put in a ten-foot-deep pool. It was done to be sure that the men were comfortable in and under the water and didn't panic.
Fernandez remembered this torture especially. He'd never been a strong swimmer. Now he had to be. The men had their hands tied behind their backs and their ankles bound together. Then they had to sink to the bottom of the pool and come back up. This was done repeatedly; then they had to do somersaults in the water and retrieve a diving mask off the bottom with their teeth. This was all done while tied hand and foot. About ten percent of the candidates for SEALs never get past this waterproofing.
Hell Week, all the training including going in and out of the Pacific Ocean's breakers in the small inflatable boats, had been one long and continuous strain for Fernandez. Early on he'd been yelled at b
y all the instructors, called spic and greaser and wetback. He had learned to let it all roll off his back and grin.
The tough training, and the working closely together, had bred SEALs out of mere sailors. They had learned to support each other, to rely on each other, to trust their lives to the hands of the men working with them. Working as a team became second nature.
Now, after all of his hard work in getting through BUD/S and his two years in SEALs, he wasn't going to be rooted out of the team by some snot-nosed, shit-faced Douglas prick. Before Fernandez went to sleep he made up his mind about one thing. He would never react to any of Douglas's remarks or looks. He'd ignore the jackass. He'd stay a SEAL no matter what happened to Dirty Dog Douglas. That decided, he slept.
10
USS Monroe
Yellow Sea off Korea
Murdock came awake groggy and unrested. He checked his watch. Past 1020. His feet hit the deck and he groaned. When was he going to learn how to wake up bright and alert? He could do it on patrol or a mission where it counted. Without a mission it was groggy time.
Murdock made it to the officers' mess in time to eat, and sat there a target of opportunity when Don Stroh walked in.
"How goes the war?" Murdock asked as Stroh sat down with his usual two cups of coffee.
"Can't tell yet. The Eighth Army is glad the Monroe's fifty-eight planes are set up to make ground attacks. Been a big lift for the Air Force guys." He paused. "Didn't catch you when you got in last night. How did it go?"
"Wet. We got in, did the job, and got out without anyone wounded. That's good news for us."
"Great. I guess by this time you've figured out that you SEALs are firemen on this mission. Bound to be a lot of small fires to put out on a dumb-assed war like this one. Fact is, it isn't even a war. The President and the Congress haven't said it is. What we're doing is responding to an attack on a treaty ally, and supporting this ally with all of our capability." He frowned. "Well, not with all of our capability. No nukes are going on this one."
"Good. Now what is that little twitch under your right eye all about? Usually it means something is afoot."
"Afoot? You're kidding. I haven't heard that word since I was in the seventh grade in Connecticut. Mrs. Ambrose always used it. We got tired of hearing it."
"So, Stroh, what?"
"Hate to tell you. I told Eighth Army it was an Army job for a team of sappers. Some bird colonel said they had tried three times. It's a bridge across a river. No way around this river for ten miles each way."
"The NKs have tanks on the far side and they own the bridge and want to bring the tanks over when they get their resupply, right?"
"Yeah, you hear something?"
"Just the wheels grinding around in your head. Stroh. Why can't the Army blow up a bridge?"
"High ground. The NKs have the high ground on the north side. It's two hundred feet above the south side of the river. They just blow away any try our guys make for the bridge. They control a quarter of a mile with their machine guns and some fancy quad-fifties they have."
"I thought the Air Force had smart bombs."
"Oh, yeah, they do. The Navy has laser-aimed bombs too, but somehow they won't do the job right. The Army doesn't want to blow the bridge into kindling. Just disable it so the NKs can't get across it."
"Then when the Eight Army decides to go north, they want to have the bridge repaired for their tanks in quick order."
"Something like that."
"You have pictures?"
" 'Deed I do. young man. Plenty. Some marked with where the Army tried to get their charges anchored before they got blown away last night."
Murdock took the sheaf of eight-by-ten glossy photos and worked through them. They showed the bridge, its supports, the river below, the banks on both sides. '"Can you do it?" Stroh asked.
"Give me a couple of minutes here, sharp stick. Lots of things to consider." He picked out one shot of a side view of the bridge and another from almost overhead.
"We can give it a try. See this section right here?" Murdock pointed to the lead-in to the bridge from the concrete roadway behind it.
"Yeah, it's on the far side of the bridge."
"It's the only place that can be blown out without damaging the structure of the bridge itself. We blow out that twenty-foot approach and the tanks got nowhere to go."
"Yeah, but what about our tanks that want to get across?"
"Easy. Send a tank out there with an engineering team to put up an emergency twenty-foot bridge. Those guys can do that in about three hours. Then shoot over the tanks and you're on your way."
"You sure this will work?"
"Hell, no, Stroh. Nobody gives guarantees these days. It could blow down the whole damn bridge. It's a risk."
Stroh emptied his second cup of coffee. "Easy talk, but how the fuck do you get over to the far side of the bridge to blow it? The NKs have that whole structure zeroed in with machine guns."
"We go in and they never see us."
"How?"
"I have to give away all my secrets?"
"Damn right. If I'm to get a go from General Reynolds."
"We go in upstream a quarter or half mile, come down the flow, and get out under the bridge. We go up underneath the bridge where the NKs can't see us, set the timers, go back to the water, and go underwater downstream another half mile and get out on the south side."
Stroh looked at the pictures. Slowly he nodded. "All right. You have the right explosives?"
"TNAZ."
"Right. Let me talk to the general. I'll get a go from him, but I'll warn him that the bridge should be fit for use, but it might not. It's a better risk than using smart bombs."
Without a good-bye, Stroh stood and hurried out of the mess. Murdock ordered another plate of hot cakes, and made it into the SEALs' assembly compartment just after 1120.
Jaybird had the platoon working over equipment. Murdock scowled remembering thai he still hadn't gotten any higher rate for Jaybird. He was sitting in a senior chief petty officer's slot and still was first class. Murdock was going to twist some tails somewhere. The guy deserved a higher rate and more pay.
"'What gives, Cap? Do you have that gleam in your eye again?"
Murdock grinned. It was hard to fool Jaybird. "Not sure. Might have another job to do tonight. If it's a go. Don is talking to General Reynolds now over at Eighth Army. Just never can tell. How are we fixed for line?"
"What kind and how long, sir?"
"Man-weighted for at least a hundred feet. We'd have to have at least six of them."
"Nothing like that in our gear. I'd wager we can pick up some line like that from the big boat here."
"Hope so. Why don't you check it out as a possible."
"Right, Cap. Rope work. Yeah, I like rope work. At least a hundred feet? No sweat, Cap. I'm on the phone."
Murdock still had the envelope of pictures. He pulled Ed DeWitt to one side and showed them to him. Ed looked up.
"So, a bridge?"
"Yeah, look at that first on-ramp-type section before it comes to the first bridge main supports."
"Okay, not all that sturdy. We gonna blow it?"
"Could we blow that section away and not damage the integrity of the main span?"
"Yeah, should work. We'd have to get the juice in the right spots. Yeah, I'd say it would work." He looked up. "Stroh must have caught you. He was here looking."
"In the mess. He's talking with General Reynolds over in Eighth Army now. They want the bridge taken out, but so they can use it later."
"Engineers could throw a tank-proof span over that twenty feet in two hours."
"Yeah, I gave them three hours in the dark." "How we get in?"
"Wet. Come down the current underwater. Get out right under the span. Then use ropes over the upper areas and go up the lines."
"How far is it from mud to beam up there?" Ed asked.
"Sixty, maybe seventy feet?"
"My guess is about sixty-five. We'
d need a hundred and thirty feet of half-inch line."
"We can get by with three-eighths-inch if it's nylon braid."
Murdock called in Lampedusa, Bradford, and Jack Mahanani. They looked at the bridge and listened.
"So they control both sides of the land and we go in wet, right?" Lam said.
Jaybird came back from the phone. "Hey, yes. What's a Navy without some line? We can get whatever we want. They said a hundred feet in nylon would be easiest to use and get through the water. We can pick it up whenever we need it."
The phone rang and Franklin picked it up.
"Commander," he called, and held up the handset.
Murdock took the instrument and listened. "Right. We'll be ready to get out of here just before dark and move in and pick up a friendly local guide. We can get supplies we need here. Right."
Murdock hung up. Everyone had stopped talking and looked at him.
"Gentlemen, get your gear ready, we've got a wet job to do. We'll use the rebreathers and the water is going to be muddy. We'll shove off from here in a helo about 1700."
DeWitt kept looking at the photographs. He had one out that showed the top of the bridge and the slope above it.
"Cap, looks like there's about a hundred yards from the crest of the hill back there to the bridge. That area must be under fire from the south side. Be fine if we could have some 105's or some fifty-calibers warm up those areas on call. Give the NKs something to think about besides somebody playing with their bridge."
Murdock grunted. "Yeah. Good idea. Get in touch with Stroh and have him put you in contact with the commander in that sector. Set it up so all we need to do is use the SATCOM and ask for the rounds to start. Make it on call. We're not sure when we'll be getting in there. My guess is it would go best after midnight."
"Sounds good. Give the artillery a chance to zero in some firing concentrations to use when we call for them."
Then the platoon gathered around and they began to plan the mission.
"Everybody going, or could eight men do the job?" Jaybird asked.
"Security, we need everyone to give the guys on the ropes some security," Les Quinley said.
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