“Piece of cake, Skipper,” Ostercamp said.
“Jaybird, get out to the door and grab Lam on his next round. We’re about ready to get out of here.”
Five minutes later Murdock had Alpha Squad inside the building and all the other SEALs crammed into the APC. He and Kat set the timers for five minutes on the eight charges, then ran for the carrier and jumped on board. They had left the driver bound and gagged in the far section of the warehouse, which shouldn’t be damaged too severely by the bombs.
The door swung up, and Ostercamp drove the rig onto the pier, and soon into the streets. Four minutes away from the dock, Kat called for them to stop. They looked behind them toward the top of the freighter, which they could see over the buildings.
“Four minutes and thirty seconds,” Kat said. Less than a minute later the sky over the docks turned a bright red and a loud clap of thunder rolled toward them. The shock wave bounced the APC a foot down the street, and they could see windows shattering all around. The first explosion was followed by another, which Kat said must be three or four more of the charges going off at the same time.
Another shock wave battered them. Then the sound came and rolled over them with a roaring blast. To the rear they could see flames and smoke coming up in the red glow.
“Yes,” Kat shouted, and pumped her fist in victory.
“Eight down, one to go,” Murdock said. The rig moved ahead. Train translated as the officer told them where to go.
Murdock warned him that if he led them into a trap, he would be the first to die. They passed a squad of eight soldiers running toward them, then past and on toward the fire. Soon they met two trucks heading for the docks, both loaded with soldiers. They saw little other military force.
A short time later the APC came to a compound with guards and barbed-wire concertina along the top of the fence.
An officer waved them through a gate, and almost at once through a truck door and into a building much smaller than the one they had come from. When the outside door closed, Murdock popped open the rear hatch, and the sixteen SEALs poured out with their weapons ready to fire.
They found four men in white lab coats working over a warhead on a table. Already they had stripped away the rocket thrusters and taken off the guidance system.
Train shouted at them in Arabic to raise their hands and to be quiet. Colt Franklin, Yeoman Second Class, another Arabic speaker, repeated the message and waved his Colt M-Al at them.
Murdock and Kat ran to the table. He pushed the men away and turned to Kat.
She frowned, then shook her head. “This isn’t a real warhead from the missile. This is a copy. It looks like a replica they made to practice on. We’re at sea here. We have to find out what they did with the real missile warhead.”
“Colt, on me,” Murdock called. Colt ran up and looked at the warhead.
“This is a practice bomb,” Kat said. “We need to make these guys tell us where the real one is.”
Colt growled at the four men in white lab coats. He lined them up and brought up his Colt, as if to spray them with bullets. Then he began shouting at them in Arabic. All looked frightened. One man began trembling, then gave a short cry and crumpled forward in a dead faint.
“You are all dead men in ten seconds if you don’t tell me where you sent the live nuclear warhead,” Colt bellowed at them in Arabic.
Another man wavered, but retained his feet. The man beside him lifted one hand. Colt moved in front of him, thrust the muzzle of the silenced carbine into the soft tissue under the man’s chin, and pushed upward.
“I know where the bomb is,” the Libyan said. “I am in charge here. I can tell you. These men know nothing.” He spoke in Arabic. Colt translated for Murdock.
The rest of the SEALs had scattered out, covering the three doors into the building and working as security on the place.
Murdock stared at the tallest of the Arab scientists and waved his submachine gun.
“Tell me where the bomb is and how to get there, or all four of you are corpses,” Murdock barked. Colt translated.
The tall Arab frowned, then spoke rapidly. Colt waved at him to stop as he told Murdock.
“He says another APC like this one came an hour after the bomb arrived here, and a colonel took control of the bomb and left with it. He said he was taking it to the headquarters of the Fourth Tank Battalion at the edge of town. I know where it is.”
Murdock held up his hand. “Dobler, tie up these three, save the tall one for the APC. Put the Libyan captain from the APC with these three and tie him. Then load up. We’re going for a ride.”
The scientist used a hand beeper and opened the door as they approached it in the APC, and then they were out and through the ring of soldiers around the place. Now there were more of them. It looked to Murdock as if they were standing shoulder to shoulder around the facility.
Now they met more military cars and trucks heading for the docks and the fire there. Train did the translating and gave the directions to Ostercamp.
The APC would do thirty miles an hour down the open streets. Ostercamp wound it up to top speed. It took them over an hour to work their way through the jumble of streets and cars and carts. The capital city had almost two million people, a third of the population of the whole nation. At last they came out of the city to a coastal plain, and soon saw the flags of the tank battalion ahead.
Murdock stopped the rig. “Ask him if he knows where inside the camp they would have the warhead.”
Train did the questioning. “He’s not sure. He was here twice, and both times they took him to a building near the back gate. It was guarded and held sensitive material for their nuclear program, which was in its extremely early stages.”
“Let’s give it a try,” Murdock said, and the rig moved forward.
It didn’t even stop at the guarded gate, just clattered through and took the first right, then a left down a street filled with more than a dozen tanks. Murdock couldn’t see them well enough through the firing slot to know what kind they were. Russian most likely.
They came to a small building with barbed wire, concertina, and razor wire on the fence around it. Six soldiers walked in front of the building and down one side. There was only a small drive-in door here.
On the trip, Murdock had had Colt put on the Libyan Army fatigues and the hat. They still had the rifle as well, and now Colt pushed open the rear door and stepped out, followed by the scientist in his white lab coat.
Colt jabbered something at the guards, who parted at the front gate and opened it for the two to walk inside. As soon as the two were out of the line of fire, silenced weapons opened up on the guards, dropping all six of them before they could get off a shot. The SEALs swarmed out of the rig, dragged the guards past the fence and behind cover, and then drove the APC inside the building.
Colt held two men under his gun as the scientist looked at the device on a table under bright lights. He nodded. Kat hurried over and checked it.
“Got it, Commander. This is the real thing. They have stripped off the guidance and propulsion, must be ready to re-configure it for an aerial drop.”
“Do it,” Murdock said. Kat went to work on the warhead.
“Trouble,” DeWitt said from his position at a small window at the front of the building. “About twenty men moving up on the front of the place. They are in an attack mode going from cover to cover. They’ll be at the fence in a few minutes.”
“We need two minutes more on the device,” Murdock said. “Take five men and open up on them. We want to keep the APC. It’s the best transport we’ve ever had to move around with in enemy territory.”
Ed took five men, jolted through the front door and to cover inside the fence, and began firing at the approaching Libyan soldiers.
Vincent “Vinnie” Van Dyke set up his H & K NATO-round machine gun and covered the street itself. Anything that moved caught his attention. Lampedusa trained the laser sight on the Bull Pup rifle and sent two aerial bur
sts from the 20mm rounds over the troops moving up. Five or six of them turned and charged to the rear.
Paul Jefferson, Engineman Second Class, used the 5.56 barrel of his Bull Pup and began picking off the Libyans as they tried to move forward.
Ed DeWitt’s sub gun was outranged, so he had taken Fernandez’s sniper rifle, and now made every round count. Within three minutes of their first rounds, the SEALs had stalled the attack from the front.
“Keep up the pressure,” DeWitt said on the Motorola. “Don’t let them get the idea they can move an inch forward.”
Inside the building, Kat hesitated before strapping on the explosives. “Maybe we should take this one with us,” she said. “We’ve never had one of these and our nuke guys would go nuts over taking this one apart.”
Murdock decided at once. “We can’t take the risk. Too damn heavy to carry if we have to ditch the vehicle. Blow it up here. Let’s see if there’s a rear door to this place.”
There was: two doors that opened outward, large enough to let the APC squeeze through.
“Get everything on board,” Murdock said. “Kat, set up a blast for inside here with a five-minute timer. Give them something to think about.”
Two minutes later the rig was loaded except for the five SEALs out front.
“Ed, bring them home,” Murdock said on the personal radio. “Time to haul ass out of Dodge.”
Murdock cracked the back doors and looked through an inch-wide space. He scowled and eased the doors closed.
“I want all of the Bull Pups up here right now, and get out your twenty-millimeter. We’ve got a fucking tank staring down our drawers back here.”
Lampedusa, Ron Holt, Jack Mahanani, and George Canzoneri trotted up to the back door.
“The tank out there is at a forty-five-degree angle to us so we can see his treads. I want four rounds on the front of those treads to try to blast them off. The twenties are contact detonation, so belly down and as soon as I open the doors, blast that damn tank.”
The men loaded a round in the chambers of the 20mm barrels and flattened out in front of the door.
“Now,” Murdock barked, and pushed open the doors. Almost at once the four twenties fired, and then in ragged order they fired again and a third time. By then the tank had begun to turn, but before it had moved a foot, the front of the left track curled off and the big tank spun round in a circle facing away from the SEALs.
Murdock closed the door before the tank’s machine gun could be brought to bear on them.
“Everyone in the rig,” Murdock bellowed. “We’ll head out the front door and take our chances with the riflemen.”
Kat set the timer on the bomb for five minutes, and they pushed the scientist toward the front door. Then they all squeezed into the APC, barreled through the front door, and raced away, then took a hard right down the street. In seconds they were away from the riflemen, who had begun to move forward again.
They took some rifle fire on the armored rig, but the rounds bounced off.
“Where the fuck to?” Ostercamp called from the driver’s seat.
“No damn river here that we can jump into and swim right past them at the port,” Murdock said. He tried to remember the maps he had looked at. Then he had it. The coast wandered a little south to the east of Tripoli. If they headed due east they should be able to find the water, jump in, and call in the Pegasus well before daylight.
“East, Ostercamp,” Murdock said. “We want to head east and maybe a little north to find the wet.”
“Great, Skipper. Which way is east?”
“Lam, ride shotgun with Oster up there,” Murdock said.
“Black as the inside of a whore’s heart up here, Skipper,” Lam said a moment later. “Hey, got a clue. We take a hard right at the next road. Looks like it goes to the east. Some traffic, so that’s a good sign. None of them are tanks hunting us, which is a better sign.”
“Anybody wounded?” DeWitt asked. Nobody responded, so DeWitt relaxed a little.
“Bunch of lights up front a mile or so,” Ostercamp said. “My guess is it’s a roadblock.”
“Move up until we’re sure,” Murdock said. “Then we take it out with the twenties. Ed, work the top hatch with your Bull Pup. That scope should help you ID the roadblock if that’s what it is.”
The Bull Pup was the SEALs’ latest weapon, still under development for the Armed Forces by Alliant and not set to be issued to the military until 2005. The SEALs and Don Stroh had talked the company out of six of the weapons and the needed ammunition.
The top barrel of the weapon fires a 20mm round that can come in armor-piercing, ball, or with a proximity fuse for airbursts. The weapon has a laser beam that, when fixed on a target, sends back the range data, then fuses the round for the number of rotations needed to reach that target and explode in the air. The rounds also will detonate on contact. The weapon comes with a six-shot magazine. The 20mm rounds cost $30 each. The bottom barrel on the weapon is a standard 5.56mm kinetic round with a thirty-shot magazine.
DeWitt pushed back the top hatch and leveled in the weapon, which was lighter than the old M-16 Army rifle. He checked through the six-power scope and video camera, but couldn’t be sure what the lights were. A quarter of a mile later he had it. Two trucks parked across the road.
“We have a roadblock,” he shouted to the men below, then aimed with the laser and when he had a spot on one of the trucks, fired, then adjusted his sight and lasered the second truck and fired. They were three quarters of a mile away.
He saw the first hit over the truck. The round exploded twenty feet in the air, blasting shrapnel in all directions. He saw two men go down, and two more dead on the ground. The second round hit in the same general area and exploded in the air.
Then he concentrated on hitting the trucks. His first round slammed into the engine and it exploded, setting the truck on fire. The second truck was driving away from the first one. DeWitt’s third round jolted through the rear of the truck and exploded in the driver’s compartment, shredding the soldier and dumping the truck into a ditch well off the road.
Ed dropped down into the APC. “Looks like we have a clear path ahead through the roadblock.”
When they drove through the roadblock, Ostercamp had to make a small detour around bodies in the road and the still-burning truck. If any of the men manning the spot were still alive, they had fled in terror.
“Still heading east?” Murdock asked Ostercamp.
“Yes, sir, if my small pocket compass is working and not picking up too much metal. At least we’re getting out of the clumps of towns. These Libyan suburbs?”
“Must be. Keep us moving.”
Ten minutes later Ed dropped down from the open hatch. “I’ve been scouting ahead with the scope. Looks like we have some real trouble. Two tanks are rumbling along toward us. No way we can hurt them head-on with the twenty. Might be time to give up our horse and get back on our feet.”
“Anywhere we can pull off the road and let them go by without their seeing us?” Murdock asked.
DeWitt shook his head. “Not around here, Skipper. No trees, no brush, no ravines. We’re into flat almost desert country.”
“How far away?” Murdock asked.
“I’d say a mile and we’re closing at about sixty miles an hour. Thirty theirs and thirty of ours. That gives us about a minute until we slam into each other. What the hell are we going to do, Skipper?”
8
Murdock heard DeWitt’s warning and shouted at the driver. “Stop this thing and put it crossways in the road. Everybody out, take your gear.
“Kat, set your timer on a bomb for three minutes and let’s all haul ass. Move, move, move. We’ve got about forty-five seconds left. Go to the left of the road. Move.”
Ostercamp stopped, then pulled the APC crossways in the narrow road. The back hatch on the APC burst open and bodies flew out of it in all directions. Kat put a timer/detonator in three charges of TNAZ and set the timer for three m
inutes. Then she jumped out of the rig, charged across the road to the left, and kept running. Most of the SEALs were fifty yards ahead of her.
Jaybird had slowed, and waved as she came up. They sprinted together the hundred yards to where the SEALs had all gone to ground behind whatever concealment they could find.
Behind them on the road, the two tanks lumbered forward in the darkness. The lead tank came within thirty yards of the APC and slowed, then stopped. The top hatch opened and a man leaned out, staring ahead.
Slowly the tank crept forward until it nudged the Russian-built APC.
Three minutes on the timer elapsed. The TNAZ blew with a resounding crack like an artillery shell going off. The APC shattered into scrap metal flying in all directions. The lead tank jolted backward from the blast, then tipped to one side until it rolled over.
“Let’s move, people,” Murdock said into his Motorola. The SEALs stood and jogged away from the blast at a right angle, putting all the distance they could between them and the pools of fuel burning in the roadway where the APC used to be.
A mile from the blast, Murdock called a halt and looked at his compass. “East is to the right,” he said. “Lam, out in front fifty, keep us to the east, and we should find the wet.”
“How far?” somebody asked.
“From five to fifty miles,” Murdock said. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll never get there just talking about it.”
They moved out in their usual diamond formation, with Lam in front by fifty yards, then Murdock and his Alpha Squad, with DeWitt and Bravo right behind them. Ron Holt, with the SATCOM radio, walked behind Murdock. The SEALs maintained a five-yard distance between each other in the best combat tradition. A lucky grenade, mortar round, or burst of enemy fire would get only one or maybe two men. If they were bunched up, shoulder to armpit, a lucky round could wipe out a whole squad.
They were in the country now, with few buildings. It was the coastal plain, and semiarid, but here and there they came to cultivated fields. Murdock could not figure out what they were growing. It looked like some kind of grain, but he wasn’t sure. They swung wide past a village that was dark and quiet. Only two dogs greeted them as they hurried by.
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