Firestorm sts-5

by Keith Douglass

  Blake laughed. "You're a dreamer, Dad."

  "Oh, somebody else said to give you a big hello. Jeannie Reilly."

  Blake grinned. "Little Jeannie. Haven't thought of her for years. What's she doing now?"

  "She's a lawyer, working for State. Damned good, from what I hear. Graduated second in her class at Harvard Law a few years back."

  "Little Jeannie. We were quite a pair in high school."

  "Always figured you two would get married." The congressman darted a quick look at his son. "Wonder if it's too late for anything to develop there."

  "Way too late, Dad. Now I really do need to get back. We have four separate missions two hundred miles apart and the coordination is vital. Thanks for coming."

  Lieutenant Blake Murdock shook his father's hand again, walked him to the door and waved, then closed it behind the congressman.

  Murdock headed for the nuke table. It was well past time that they settled on the type and numbers of weapons for each man and what kind of explosives they would carry. Then there was the timing they would need. When would they insert into the Taiwan Strait from the submarine? When would they get picked up again by the undersea craft?

  The serious business of getting the detailed planning for each of the four missions moved along.

  9

  Friday, May 15

  0010 hours

  USS Intrepid

  Taiwan Strait

  Ten minutes past midnight, the Third Platoon had finished its work. The details down to the smallest item had been planned, checked, critiqued, worried, and at last approved for each of the four attacks. Murdock had alerted the galley an hour before, and on command they brought in a midnight dinner of steak, spaghetti, three vegetables, bread and coffee, and big dishes of ice cream.

  A well-fed SEAL is a well-fed SEAL, the saying goes. They headed for their bunks shortly after they ate with an 0900 chow call.

  Murdock hit his sack and watched Dewitt drop off to sleep almost on command. The man could sleep anywhere, anytime. Murdock wished he could.

  His mind kept churning over the preparations they had made. They had the right weapons. Mostly HK. No U.S. made guns to leave a telltale trace.

  His men were ready. With them helping on the planning, it made for a more cohesive unit when they hit combat. Besides, he had a lot of combat experience in those men. He was pleased with the makeup of his new platoon.

  The two old hands in new positions had done well in their first taste of combat in their new slots. Jaybird Sterling had been good. The three new men in the platoon had also performed well. It had turned out to be a small warm-up for the real mission. Nobody had intended it that way. It was just the way it had worked out.

  Murdock turned over in his bunk. Tomorrow morning they would do what little rehearsal they could on the nuke attack. They would have plenty of explosives along to do whatever job needed to be done. It would be a play-it-by-ear since they had no intel at all on the inside of the facility. They would fight their way in — that was a given. Some rocket-propelled grenades might come in handy for that job.

  They would carry the potent TNAZ explosive as well. It was Trinittroaze Tidine which had replaced plastique C4. It had 15 more bang and 20 less volume and weight than the C4.

  He turned over again.

  Before he knew it, his mental alarm went off and it was morning.

  He had a quick breakfast at the officers' mess and beat everyone but Jaybird to the training room. The rest of the troops poured in quickly. Among them was Joe Ricochet Lampedusa with a large bandage on his arm. It was the first time they had seen him out of sick bay.

  Murdock called him and Dewitt over to one side.

  "Lampedusa, you won't be going on this mission. That slug dug in deeper than we thought."

  The seaman scowled and nodded. "About what I figured. Damn, I'd like to be along."

  "Not a chance, Richochet," Dewitt said. "We'd lose you on the first swim and we could have three or four more depending on how it goes."

  "Understood. I just don't like it."

  "You want to get flown back to Balboa Hospital or stay here? We could use you here for our contact. We'll need new supplies and gear for our second night's work."

  "Yes, sir. I'd like that. Whatever I can do here. I want to stay with the program."

  "Fine. See me after this rehearsal."

  They had a full commander who was the resident expert on nuclear warheads. He told them what the Chinese might have.

  "We know it isn't highly sophisticated. We also know that it works. What we don't want is to set off one or all of their nukes in that cave. It could blast the whole island apart and spread radiation across half of China.

  "We figure that their triggers are put in place just before arming. That would be done in the plane. Yes, we also have about decided the best bet is that they have an airdrop device. So we treat it with care. If they are plutonium-powered, the problem is greater. The big program here is not to subject any of the devices to what we consider a triggering force.

  "True, we don't know just how much that force is, but we have a ballpark figure of five thousand pounds of TNT."

  "Sir, how much of this is speculation and guesswork and how much is fact?" Murdock asked.

  "Damn few facts here, Lieutenant. We go with what we know and build on that. Best we can do. Best anyone can do. I don't know your plans, but they could change once you get on-site.

  "Any more questions?" the commander asked. There were none. Murdock thanked the three-striper and he left. It was evident that the rag-tag bunch of SEALS made him nervous.

  Murdock took over the meeting again.

  "Schedule We chow down at 1200 hours. We make final assembly of our gear for both hits and chopper out of here at 1800 hours. Gets dark in this latitude about 1900 hours. This carrier is steaming on its regular circuit around Taiwan as it's been doing for months. The mainland won't even notice. The chopper will get us to our meet point with the same sub we were on before. She'll be our base cps for both missions.

  "We leave the gear on her for the second hit, then get out our IBSS and head for that little nuke island. The sub will get us within five miles, then kick us off. We motor into the nuke island and take it down. Any questions?"

  "Yeah." It was Jaybird. "How close can the sub come to the nuke island in case we run into trouble? A couple of rounds into those IBSS and we're fucking swimming."

  "Covered. The sub can come in submerged within a mile of the island if they get a signal from us from a homing sonar."

  1900 hours

  USS Dorchester

  Taiwan Strait

  The big Sea Stallion CH53D put them down within two feet of the submarine's aft deck, and the fifteen SEALS tugged out their equipment and hustled it into a hatch. The last bits out were the IBS bundles. The SEALS at once began inflating the boats and stowing their gear inside. "Time?" Murdock asked Dewitt.

  "It's 1905. We're about five minutes ahead of sched. The boat commander said as soon as the chopper leaves he'll start moving toward the island. We're about ten miles off it now. He can come into five miles on the surface without wetting his drawers."

  "Good, let's check the boats."

  The big chopper edged away from the submarine, then churned gently away from the mainland heading back to the carrier. The submarine got under way nosing toward land.

  "We should be on station in twenty minutes," Murdock said. "Let's double-check everything again." They carried four rocket-propelled grenades. They had two sets of cutting charges that would use their shaped form to cut through six inches of steel.

  Half the men carried the HK MP5SD4 for close-in work. One man in each squad used the HK HK21A1 machine gun with 7.62 NATO rounds. Magic Brown and Red Nicholson had the Mcmillan M89 silenced sniper rifles, as did two men in the Second Squad. Doc Ellsworth carried his favorite toy, a fully automatic shotgun with a five-round magazine.

  Fifteen minutes after the chopper left, the men boarded the two IB
SS and checked equipment. Fins and rebreathers were stowed. They would motor straight into the beach a hundred yards from the front gate of the facility.

  "Time," an officer on the conning tower called. The SEALS unlashed their IBSS and the big boat began to slide under the water. In a matter of seconds they were floating, the nearly silent IBS motors powering them away from the rear of the submarine and the turbulence caused by submerging.

  The SEALS wore black Nomex flight suits under their combat webbing, which was loaded with tools of their trade. They also wore American Body Armor operations vests. They had pouches on the front for loaded magazines. A waterproof pouch was in back for each man's encrypted Motorola MX walkie-talkie. There were grenade pouches with room for more goodies.

  Each man wore a headset and earpiece inside his left ear. A wire went down his neck and plugged into the Motorola unit in his harness. A filament mike perched just under his lower lip. A touch on the transmit button brought a tsk-tsk through the headset.

  Murdock listened for the series of signals. All of his men were hooked up and tuned in. They wouldn't use the radio until they had to. He checked the azimuth and corrected the boat slightly as it powered gently through the swells toward Mainland China.

  They were doing something no U.S. military unit had ever done, invading modern Mainland China. They'd better do it right or there would be hell to pay, and a chance at starting World War III.

  Murdock pulled down his night-vision goggles from his forehead. He had a Litton single-lens version. You could use it with one eye and keep the other eye available for normal night vision. He studied the lime-green view and found the other IBS ten yards to port. He powered closer to it until he could see it through the China night without the NVG.

  It would take them the best part of an hour to travel the five klicks at five knots. There was no other choice. The submarine couldn't risk moving in any closer. Radar might pick it up. There was little chance that even the best radar could pick up the IBS. They lay low in the water and the movement wasn't fast enough to cause a blip on the radar screen.

  Later, Murdock heard the surf before he saw anything. It sounded like a moderate set of breakers. It was a sand beach, and they would leave the IBSS inflated and ready for a quick exit.

  Murdock moved his IBS closer to the other one and with hand signals indicated that he would go in first, followed by the second boat.

  A minute later he could see the outside of the swells. They were larger than he had guessed and they broke rather sharply. He watched them through the NVG a minute, and decided he had to charge straight over the top of the breaker and try to keep the boat right side up. All of their equipment was tied down if the inflatable did flip.

  Then they were riding the top of the swell. It rose and rose, and then he saw the white curl, and a moment later they came crashing down a four-foot breaker of foaming seawater. The bow of the IBS nudged under the sandy water, then righted, and the breaker slapped it forward like a roller coaster taking that first high plunge.

  He turned off the motor and the swell drove them up the beach. When the wave receded, the men jumped out, carried the boat high into dry sand, and pushed it behind a small mound covered with sea grass.

  They untied the equipment they needed, checked and cleared their weapons and charged them with a live round, then watched the other boat come in.

  It came over a swell, got turned sideways, and barely managed not to be flipped. It came in backwards, and the men picked it up and dashed up the beach. They were all thankful for the many hours of IBS training they had done through the breakers on the Silver Strand beach near Coronado.

  Not a word was said. They had to move to the right. Hand signals grouped the men into the two squads. Murdock led his men out first. They would bypass the main gate by fifty yards and set up their firing positions. The Second Squad would set up on the near side to put the gate in a cross-fire.

  When he was in position with his men ready, Murdock tapped his mike three times. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

  It was over a nervous minute later when Murdock and the rest of First Squad heard the answering tsks in their earpieces. Magic Brown and Red Nicholson had leveled in on the front gate through their Litton M92 Starlight 3-power scopes. Both had selected targets and sighted in on them.

  Murdock had checked the gate through Magic's scope moments before. Four guards walked in front of a steel-bar gate near a small gatehouse. Twenty yards behind it was another gate manned by two soldiers.

  Murdock tapped Brown and Red on the shoulders and their weapons chugged out a greeting to the Chinese. Murdock saw one of the guards at the gate go down as he watched through his NVG. Then the other one crumpled. The third guard started forward to help his buddy, but he slammed backwards from another round. The fourth guard was caught with another silenced round from the Second Squad shooter before he could move.

  The snipers turned to the second gate. Only Magic had a shot. He jolted one round into the guard just outside the small guard building. That brought out his partner, who took two rounds from Second Squad gunners.

  At once the squad came to its feet and moved cautiously toward the gate. Two men guarded the rear. Murdock ran ahead, checked the four guards, then ran on to the second gate. It was a simple lift bar. He raised it and his fourteen men darted through, past a double barbed-wire fence and another that looked electrified. They were inside.

  They had studied the enclosure from the satellite photos for hours. Their best guess was that the concrete building to the left of the main gate would be the one covering the entrance to the massive underground nuclear production facility and storehouse. The men ran that way, their soft-soled boots making no sound on the concrete paving.

  Just then a small jeep-like truck came rolling around the far corner of the complex, the twin beams of its headlights stabbing ever closer to the fifteen SEALS.

  10

  Friday, May 15

  2028 hours

  Tayu island

  Just off Mainland China

  The four SEALS with silenced sniper rifles needed no orders. They opened fire as soon as the headlights flashed their way. The first four shots took out the headlights. Six more shots through the windshield killed the driver in his seat. The utility vehicle went out of control and jolted into the concrete wall of the building and stalled.

  Jaybird Sterling raced the thirty meters to the jeep and checked inside. There was only the driver, and he was greeting his ancestors.

  Jaybird darted back to the unit and the men moved ahead cautiously. The compound door to the windowless, concrete slab of a building showed directly in front of them. It was not guarded.

  The SEALS in their black flight suits and with blackened faces blended in with the shadows around the big building.

  The large truck door was designed to lift and roll back into the structure. There would be no chance there. At the lower right-hand corner of this door was a man-sized opening with an electronic control panel next to it filled with Chinese characters.

  Murdock eyed the door again, then spoke into his mike with a whisper. "Cutting charge," he said.

  Gunner's Mate Second Class Greg Johnson ran up beside Murdock and knelt.

  "Small door, three sides, go," Murdock said.

  Johnson and Fernandez ran to the door unrolling the lead-sheathed triangles of high-velocity explosives. The point of each triangle focused the shaped charges' powerful force into a thin line. It could blow a pencil-wide slice through four inches of steel. It took thirty seconds to position the charges around the door and set the electronic detonator.

  Johnson came back with the trigger in his hand and nodded at Murdock.

  "Fire in the hole," Murdock whispered, and Johnson pushed the button.

  The strips of shaped charges around the door exploded with a cracking sound like a stick of dynamite does when it's hung on a string from a tree and set off. In one moment the door was solid. Then a fraction of a second later the steel door had been cut out an
d blasted inside the building.

  Four SEALS surged through the opening, Murdock in the lead and angling to the right. His MP5 covered his section of the room ahead. It was a lobby, a reception area with a bench along one side, a desk in the middle, and ten meters behind it a pair of polished wooden doors. Only one man was on duty. He had been blasted off his chair behind his desk.

  He came to his knees and fumbled at his belt for a handgun. Murdock sent a trio of 9mm slugs into him, blasting him backwards into a quick death.

  Two armed men surged through one of the wooden doors and were cut down by Jaybird and Ron Holt with their silenced MP5S. Jaybird's three-round burst caught the first Chinese soldier in the throat and worked upward into his head, spraying brains and blood against the polished wooden door.

  Holt's rounds took his victim in the chest and drove him back against the door, where he dropped his rifle and slid down to the floor. Murdock stared at the two doors. Which one? A crap shoot. He charged the door on the right. The First Squad followed him and according to the plan, the Second Squad dispersed around the room behind what cover they could find to secure the area against any opposition.

  Murdock led his seven men into a corridor that slanted downward. It was a death-trap box if anyone challenged them with machine guns from the other end.

  They sprinted downward for thirty meters, then came to a branch. Chinese signs designated directions. Kenneth Ching was a step behind his L-T.

  "Supplies, maintenance to the left," Ching called. "Production and storage to the right."

  Murdock waved them to the right. The eight men charged along the corridor for another thirty meters, then came to an open area with a guard station. They faded back in the poorly lighted tunnel and looked out. There were six soldiers visible. A machine gun had been mounted above a sandbagged position. The wooden barricade looked temporary. Behind the sandbags they saw a vehicle also with a mounted weapon on it.