Ambush sts-15

by Keith Douglass

  “Some strange tracks, Skipper,” Lam reported on the radio. “Not sure what they are, but they ain’t here now.”

  “Roger that. Keep your ears open.”

  They moved ahead. Five minutes later the third platoon went to ground as a roaring, clattering armored personnel carrier stormed out of a wadi to the left and charged into the center of their line of march.

  The desert-cammy-clad men dove into the sand and watched the machine storm toward them. It had no forward lights, but the Libyan moon was full, giving reasonable night vision. Tran Khai, Torpedoman Second Class, and Jack Mahanani, Hospital Corpsman First Class, had to surge up from the sand and sprint ten yards to get out of the direct path of the growling giant.

  There was no reaction from the men in the armored carrier. Either they didn’t see any of the SEALs, or they discounted them as a friendly patrol. The rig continued in a straight line to the highway, then turned and headed south along the road.

  “Radio check, Bravo,” the JG whispered into his mike. All seven men responded. “Okay here, Skipper,” DeWitt reported.

  “The driver wasn’t using night vision goggles or he would have spotted those two runners. We lucked out on that one. But it could mean tighter security around this special facility than we figured.”

  A half-mile march farther into the desert, they came to shifting sand and dunes twenty feet high. Lam moved the men closer to the road, but kept a hundred yards away.

  Murdock figured they were still two miles from the facility when Lam called.

  “Skip, we’ve got some trouble. Better come up and take a gander. I’d guess it’s a blocking force up front.”

  Five minutes later, Murdock and Lam bellied up the side of a sand dune and peered over the top. They had heard voices, metal on metal, and even Murdock could smell the spicy aroma of food.

  “Lunchtime for a twelve-hour shift,” Lam said.

  In a small wadi near the road, a field kitchen had been set up, complete with mess tent and a cook tent. Still in line at the serving table were a dozen troops in field gear and with weapons slung over their shoulders. They all wore steel helmets.

  “How many?” Murdock asked.

  Both men stared through their NVGs, which turned the night into a green dusk.

  “Thirty, maybe thirty-five, depending how many are in the mess tent,” Lam said.

  “Agreed. If they’re eating, they won’t be on patrol. Might be a good time for us to move.”

  As he said it, an armored personnel carrier roared up thirty yards downwind from the kitchen, and a dozen men poured out of the rig. They yelled and shouted and raced each other to the chow line. None carried mess kits. They would eat off metal trays.

  On the way back to the rest of the troops, Lam and Murdock worked out their plan. They would move a half mile to the side of the eatery, and pound past as quickly as they could, then swing back toward the highway.

  It took twenty minutes for the maneuver; then they worked south again five hundred yards off the highway. They were in their usual field formation, a diamond for each squad, with Lam out in front of Alpha Squad.

  There was no warning. They were marching along, knowing they were coming closer, when three white flares burst over their heads turning the black night into midday bright. At once rifle fire stuttered from the darkness in front of them.

  2

  At the first crack of the flares high overhead, the SEALs dove for the ground hunting any cover they could find. There was none. No orders were needed. The SEALs automatically returned fire. Four men with Bull Pups aimed the 20mm lasered airburst rounds at the muzzle flashes in the darkness. Four seconds after the first rifle fire aimed at them, the SEALs had returned the first shots. Two seconds later four more 20mm airbursts thundered into the dark of the Libyan desert. Only one enemy rifle fired after that. The flare continued to burn for thirty seconds, which seemed to be a lifetime.

  The SEALs had stopped firing when the enemy guns went silent.

  “Hold for the flare, then we move up to where those guns fired from,” Murdock ordered in his mike.

  The flares fizzled out and glorious darkness reigned again.

  “Let’s go check our work,” Murdock said. The SEALs lifted off the sand, formed into a line of skirmishers, and with weapons trained to the front, walked forward. The squad of Libyan soldiers lay sprawled in a wadi only two feet deep, but usually enough to offer total cover for the men. They didn’t count on the airbursts.

  One Libyan was still alive. Colt Franklin, Yeoman Second Class, grabbed the man and spoke gently to him in Arabic. Murdock hurried up. “Ask him why all the security.”

  Franklin did, and the man shook his head. “Said he has no idea. He just does what the officers tell him.”

  “Ask if he knows what is in the large house a few miles south.”

  Again the Libyan shook his head. “He says some important people but he doesn’t know who.”

  They went on questioning the man, who was badly wounded. He told them about the defenses, where the most troops were, and how the fence was electrified in some sections.

  The man cried out in sudden pain; then his whole body shook for a moment before his head rolled back and both hands fell to his sides.

  “He’s gone,” Murdock said. “Check the weapons, bring along anything that might help us. Should be some Kalashnikovs here. Sounded like them when they were firing. Then we haul ass before somebody else shows up.”

  They looked around in the darkness, found six rifles that looked new enough to take — they were the older AK47, but potent and with a better range than the MP-5’s some of the SEALs carried.

  Murdock put the men on a jog for a mile on south from the point of contact, and they soon heard a chopper swing over the area of the fight and land.

  “A chopper out here means trouble,” DeWitt said on the radio.

  “True, and we’ll see if we can give it some trouble as soon as we see it up close,” Murdock said.

  Another half mile through the sand along the roadway, and Lam called a halt and showed Murdock the lights ahead.

  “Must be it,” Lam said. “Lit up like a call girl’s switchboard.”

  “Lights we can turn off,” Murdock said. “They already know somebody is coming to visit. Hope they didn’t kill the prisoner when they heard the firefight.

  “We’ll do it the way we laid it out,” Murdock told the net. “Bravo will be the main assault force on the west side. Alpha will do the diversionary attack on the east side and hopefully draw off the firepower that way. We need to get close enough to blow the gate on the west side, or the fence nearby for access. Any questions?”

  “How do the twenties come in?” Lam asked. They were all in a line, looking over the top of a sand dune a quarter of a mile from the compound.

  Ed De Witt spoke up. “Bravo will take out the gate guards and the gate itself with the twenties from two hundred yards. Then we move up half our squad, with the other half working the twenties on any force that appears to challenge us. Once we’re inside, the twenty-shooters charge forward and join us.”

  “On the other side of the compound, Alpha Squad will be shooting up the fence and that side of the big house,” Murdock said. “We’ll use our twenties on anything that moves over there. Probably can’t get through the fence with the twenties, but we’ll use charges and blow a hole big enough for ingress.”

  “Questions?” DeWitt asked the radio net.

  “How do we find the guy once we’re inside?” Fernandez asked.

  “We have two Arabic speakers,” DeWitt said. “They will question anyone we find alive. He’s in the big house somewhere. It can’t have more than twenty rooms according to the blueprints we saw. Two stories, no basement.”

  “We don’t use the EARs?” Jaybird asked.

  “No, we don’t want to knock out our CIA man and have to carry him back to the water,” DeWitt said.

  “Let’s do it,” Murdock said. “Alpha on me. We have fifteen min
utes to get into position and start our diversion. Five minutes after our first shot, Bravo will attack. Let’s move.”

  It took Alpha twenty minutes to get to the other side of the fortified house and to set up for their ambush. They settled in ten yards apart. They had three of the Bull Pups for this mission, and Bravo had four. Murdock checked the perimeter fence with his NVGs and then gave the word to fire. They hit the fence and caught one interior guard walking his post. The twenties boomed in the night and exploded on contact. Murdock’s first shot blew the side door off the house. A jeep rolled around the corner, then retreated behind the safety of the house. The SEALs didn’t aim at any windows to keep from hitting the prisoner inside.

  Half a dozen rifles began returning fire, but the SEALs had set up in a gully three feet deep for top protection. The jeep driver decided to try to get from the house to the storage shed. It was halfway there when a 20mm round blew the vehicle off its wheels and dumped it upside down against the building.

  A moment later Ed DeWitt opened fire on the main gate. The first round knocked out the guard post there; the next three hit the rollback electrically operated gate and closed a circuit somewhere. The heavy gate rolled open and stayed there. A squad of six men ran around the barracks, and was cut down by shrapnel from a pair of exploding twenties on the front of the barracks itself. One man limped away, but was dumped into the dirt by a sniper rifle shot. For a moment all was quiet at the front of the place. DeWitt could hear firing at the other side.

  Then an engine roared and an armored personnel carrier stormed around the barracks, headed for the main gate. It slued to a stop, then straightened itself until its big automatic cannon swung out toward the gun flashes.

  “Kill the lights,” DeWitt told his radio mike. Miguel Fernandez, Gunner’s Mate First Class, swung his H & K 7.62 sniper rifle around and began taking down the searchlights one by one.

  “Franklin, put enough WP in front of that tank to blind him. Now. Six, eight rounds, and let’s hope there isn’t a lot of wind.”

  The first 40mm grenade from the Colt M-4A1 landed beside the tank, exploded with a spray of white phosphorus that turned into a dense smoke. The second and third rounds hit in front of the armored personnel carrier. It was like the heavy hitter had gone away, until they heard the sound of the cannon going off and three rounds slammed into the ground twenty feet behind them, spraying deadly shrapnel the wrong way to hurt the SEALs.

  DeWitt used his 5.56mm rounds from his Bull Pup to kill two more lights, and the whole front of the compound went dark.

  “Let’s move up,” DeWitt said on his mike. “Split and half go up on each side of the gate. Leave forty yards between us for the big gun to shoot into. Move it. Now.”

  They went forward at a trot, weapons on their hips ready to fire. Sporadic shots came through the front gate aimed where the SEALs used to be. They didn’t fire now so they wouldn’t give away their location. They went a hundred yards; then the smoke eased away from the armored personnel carrier.

  “More smoke,” DeWitt said on the net. “Both of you, three rounds each.”

  Franklin and Ostercamp both fired, and the personnel carrier rapidly vanished again. The SEALs were running now, flat out for the front gate.

  “Assault fire,” DeWitt called, and the eight weapons opened up. The twenties fired, the sniper rifle, the G-11 with caseless rounds, and then the 5.56’s on the Bull Pups chattered. There was little return fire. No SEAL was hit.

  They stormed toward the gate with the smoke covering it, and jolted through. DeWitt had been making a bomb with a quarter pound of TNAZ as he ran. He inserted a timer and set it for five seconds. The armored machine leaped out of the smoke at them suddenly, and DeWitt raced the twenty feet to the side. He pushed the bomb into the tread of the machine and pressed the activator on the five-second timer. Then he ran forward.

  Five seconds on these timers could be tricky. Sometimes they went off at four and even three, sometimes seven or eight. This one blasted on four seconds, and the last of the SEALs through the gate had just cleared the machine when the TNAZ exploded. It blew the tread all the way off the vehicle and dumped it on its side.

  A squad of three Libyan soldiers surged around the far end of the house, their rifles up. Tran Khai, Torpedoman Second Class, splattered the trio with a dozen rounds from his G-11 submachine gun, and they spun away dead before they hit the ground.

  “Front door,” DeWitt said on the radio.

  Canzoneri got there first. He had two TNAZ bombs ready, and pasted one on each side of the door lock, activated ten-second timers, and rushed away to the side of the building.

  The explosion blasted large sections of the door inward, leaving a gaping hole where it had been, and also blew away two feet of the front wall.

  As planned, DeWitt went in first, diving to the left. Fernandez dove in to the right a moment later. Lights were still on in the house.

  “Clear, right,” Fernandez said.

  “Here too,” DeWitt said.

  Two more SEALs charged through the door and down the hall they knew was there. Two enemy riflemen came into the far end of the corridor, only to be met with a hail of SEAL lead that put them down and crawling back around the corner. DeWitt guessed that the prisoner would be held on the second floor. The stairs were in the center of the house off the hallway. He and Fernandez rushed past doors the others would clear, made it to the stairs, and started up. A stutter of a submachine gun came from the top of the steps.

  DeWitt took a round to his left arm, and jerked back out of sight. Fernandez hadn’t started up the steps yet; now he undid a fragger hand grenade from his webbing, pulled the pin, and leaned around the wall far enough to throw the bomb to the top of the steps. It hit, bounced once against the top wall, and exploded.

  The two SEALS stormed up the stairs, their weapons aimed ahead and fingers on triggers. There was no response. At the top of the steps they found two soldiers dying of their wounds. They kicked away their weapons and charged to the first door along a hall that had four. DeWitt kicked in the door. The room was empty.

  Fernandez took the next room, tried the doorknob. Locked. He rapped on the door, standing to the side against the wall. Four rounds blasted through the light door. Fernandez stepped back, unpinned a grenade, and held it ready. Then he kicked in the door and threw in the grenade in one move, and dodged behind the hall wall again.

  When the shrapnel from the grenade stopped flying, DeWitt charged into the room. His Bull Pup chattered off two three-round bursts; then Fernandez ran into the room and found it clear, with two officers who must have just been getting up from their beds. They wouldn’t have to worry about sleeping ever again.

  The two SEALs rushed out of the room and to the next door. Before they could try for it, a dozen rounds blasted through the door. “Might be our man inside,” DeWitt said. “No grenade.” The door was locked. DeWitt kicked in the door and leaped to the safety of the wall. Twenty rounds whistled through the opening and into the wall opposite it. DeWitt checked around the door jamb from the floor level. Just one man in the small room. He had his officer’s jacket neatly hung on a chair back with the gold star on the shoulder boards polished bright.

  DeWitt flipped in a grenade and when it exploded, the two SEALs moved to the last door on the hallway. It was double and had a nameplate on it they couldn’t read.

  No response from inside. Fernandez kicked in the door and barely got out of the way to the wall, but no gunfire came from the room. Fernandez checked the room from the floor level. He grunted, stood, and walked into the room.

  There were three civilians standing there, all holding their hands in the air. On a chair facing them sat a man in a rumpled business suit. On the dresser lay a medical kit with six syringes and a dozen small vials of fluid.

  The man in a white doctor’s coat said something, and indicated the man sitting in the chair.

  “Franklin, get your ass up to the second floor, last room, we need your Arabic,”
DeWitt said on the radio.

  DeWitt stepped forward and looked at the man in the chair. It was Cullhagen; he’d seen the man’s picture. He was a bear, almost six feet four and 250 pounds. Dark curly hair spilled down into his eyes and he had a three-day beard. He seemed to be dazed, probably drugged. Franklin ran in a few moments later before DeWitt could talk to the man.

  “Ask them what they’ve done to this man,” DeWitt said.

  The doctor looked up at the Arabic question and responded briefly. “He says questioning him, that’s all.”

  “What drugs did they use?”

  In response to that question, the doctor hesitated, then pointed to the tray and showed them one vial. Franklin looked at the label, and shook his head. “No idea what it is.”

  “Ask him how long for the man to recover from the drug.”

  The doctor held up his hands and said he didn’t know. DeWitt hit the man in the jaw with his fist, jolting him backward against the wall. “Ask him again.”

  Franklin did. The doctor cowered back and mumbled an answer.

  “He said about four more hours.”

  “We don’t have four hours. There will be choppers and troops all over this place within an hour.” DeWitt looked at the vials on the dresser. “Ask him which one of these drugs will bring him out of the other drug state.”

  Franklin did, and the doctor lifted his brows.

  “Tell him if he tries to use the wrong one to kill the prisoner, I’ll tear his tongue off, gouge out his eyes, rip off his balls, and make him eat them. Tell him that exactly.”

  As Franklin repeated the words to the Libyan doctor, the man’s frozen smile faded and a look of stark terror replaced it. He began to tremble, then sagged against the wall.

  “Search all three,” DeWitt bellowed. They found a small automatic, three small knives, and two pills.