“God is Great!”
Then someone with their wits about them screamed, “Get them!”
The whole mob seemed to shake themselves awake and ran shrieking down the road.
19
Saturday, November 11
0301 hours Vicinity of Baalbek, Lebanon
The Mercedes was just taking the curve when the rocket hit. An RPG shaped-charge warhead was capable of penetrating thirteen inches of solid steel. If it had hit the rear of the car straight on, no one inside would have survived. But as the Mercedes swung into the turn, the rocket hit at an angle near the right rear taillight. The plasma jet cut across the trunk and exited just behind the right rear passenger door. The door blew off, as did the trunk lid. The trunk armor contained most of the blast, but the plates still buckled and a great deal of energy was released.
Kos Kosciuszko was just starting to feel better. The explosion blew the rear seat off its mounting and threw him and Ed DeWitt toward the front of the car.
The Mercedes spun across the road like a top and smashed into a low stone wall. The Halon fire-suppression system activated. That was all well and good; the Halon kept the fuel tank from exploding and the ammunition and explosives from cooking off. But Halon gas, while wonderful on fires, is hard on human lungs.
The driver’s air bag and the steering wheel to hold onto had left Professor Higgins in the best shape. The other side of the car was pinned against the stone wall, but his was clear. He held his breath as the high-pressure gas filled the car and dragged a stunned Magic Brown, and Ed DeWitt, who had ended up in the front seat, out his door. Kos Kosciuszko was already sitting out in the road, fully conscious but with a quizzical look on his face, as if wondering how he had gotten there.
Murdock was watching the whole scene, horrified. “Hit the brakes,” he shouted. They were going back, if only to account for the dead. No SEAL had ever been abandoned on the field of battle, and Blake Murdock was not going to be the first to do so.
Doc Ellsworth threw the Mercedes into reverse and screeched back to the wreck. Murdock, Razor, and Jaybird piled out.
They were all sitting in the road, bloody but blaspheming so fluently it couldn’t be that serious. Magic Brown was puking his guts out onto the road. Ed DeWitt was just coming around. The Professor was dragging what weapons and ammo he could find out of the wreckage. Murdock was first amazed and then overjoyed to find them all alive.
Rounds were cracking overhead. Jaybird opened up with his machine gun to keep their pursuers at a distance. Razor picked up DeWitt while Murdock threw Kos Kosciuszko into the undamaged Mercedes.
Then there was a quick flash in the distance. Murdock counted off in his head: “Thousand-one, thousand-two.” The shock wave and the loud rumble of the blast arrived at the same time.
0303 hours Baalbek, Lebanon
The Syrian soldiers thought they had driven the raiders off by superior force of arms, causing them to abandon their vehicles. Once they were sure the intruders were gone, they celebrated their victory in traditional fashion by firing their rifles into the air. Some were striking heroic poses atop the armored cars.
Since he had pulled his fuses a little sooner than DeWitt, Murdock’s armored car went off first. But it didn’t matter; the blast immediately set off the mercury switch in DeWitt’s vehicle.
The power of an explosion is determined by both the mass of the charge and the velocity of the explosive. When black gunpowder is ignited, it changes from a solid to a gas relatively slowly, but few substances on earth do so faster than TNAZ.
The armored cars contained the blast only for microseconds, and then their steel broke into hundreds of thousands of high-speed fragments and added to the devastation.
The insides of the armored cars had been lined with sheets of zirconium, courtesy of the CIA. The same metal was used in cluster-bomb warheads to create an incendiary effect. When the zirconium ignited it added a fireball to the blast.
The warehouse and everything and everyone in it blew apart.
Unbeknownst to the CIA, the Syrians had housed the counterfeiting workers and technicians next to the warehouse, reasoning that it was easier to protect them there than transport them across Baalbek every day. The firefight at the warehouse had woken everyone up and caused all but the least prudent to hug their floors.
Those few who were looking out their windows died first when the shock wave caved in the front of the barracks. Then the building collapsed. Some of the others would eventually be dug out alive.
Pieces of wood, metal, and burning paper fell back to earth. The smoke settled, and the warehouse was just a mound of debris. An eighty-thousand-pound T-62 tank lay upside down. The turret of the BMP that had fired at the SEALs could be seen in the branches of some nearby trees; the body was nowhere to be found.
The houses surrounding the warehouse were flattened to one degree or another, depending on how shielded they were from the blast. The roads were blocked by trees and debris. The shock wave shattered windows in a mile radius around the warehouse.
Needless to say, everyone still living in Baalbek was wide awake. It was going to take quite some time to figure out what had happened, and even more time to get organized.
0304 hours Vicinity of Baalbek, Lebanon
“Hoo-yah!” Razor Roselli screamed in exultation.
“Get in the car!” Murdock yelled.
“Eat that, motherfuckers!” Razor shouted down the road.
The explosion had temporarily silenced the incoming fire, and Murdock wanted to take advantage of it. “Get in the fucking car! Doc, get in the back and check ‘em out. Jaybird, drive.”
Murdock had tailored the assault force so they all could fit into one Mercedes in an emergency. They did, just barely, and it was madness: Jaybird behind the wheel, Murdock and Razor crammed in the front seat, the Doc stretched half over the front seat with a flashlight trying to sort out injuries from the packed mass in back. Magic Brown was fighting to get his head out a window so he could puke some more. The smell of sweat and fear and adrenaline was obscene.
And in the midst of it all, Razor Roselli was as happy as Murdock had ever seen him. “We did it!” he exclaimed. “We fucking did it.”
“Excuse me, Chief,” said Jaybird Sterling. “But if you take a second and look around you’ll see that half our crew is at least half fucked up, and I’m not sure how long this car is going to hold together; most of the warning lights on the dash are lit up.”
“Fuck you, Jaybird,” Razor responded. “We fucking won. We finally rammed one up their ass, and it’s gonna be a long time before they forget it. The mission’s accomplished. Nothing that happens now is gonna change that.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Chief,” said Jaybird, “I’d like to cap the mission off by living through the son of a bitch.”
“Like I keep telling you, shitbird,” said Roselli. “You picked the wrong line of work.”
“Is everyone through now?” Murdock demanded. “We’re going to live through it, but if we don’t get our asses up into the hills with an hour window of darkness, we’ll be walking out.”
“Oh, I’d really hate that,” Magic Brown groaned from the back seat, having just finished with the dry heaves. “Make haste, Jaybird, make haste.”
“Doc, what’s the score?” Murdock asked impatiently.
“Mister DeWitt’s left arm is broken,” Doc Ellsworth replied in a tone of clinical detachment. “Simple fracture, not compound, which is pretty amazing considering the way Razor threw his poor ass around.”
“Hey, I got him out,” Razor protested.
“Kos has half the skin on his back and ass ripped off,” the Doc went on. “He’s also got no pants; I don’t know where the fuck they are. He’ll be sleeping on his stomach for the next month or so. I wouldn’t want to live with him while he heals, but outside of a general pissed-off mood, he’ll be okay. The Professor’s got a golden ass as usual; not a scratch. Magic’s got some superficial lacerations,
probably glass from the windshield, and he’s sick to his little tummy.” It was a fair example of SEAL corpsman bedside manner.
“Fuck you, Doc,” Magic groaned.
“Can everybody move if they have to?” Murdock demanded.
“I’m fine,” Ed DeWitt insisted through clenched teeth.
The Doc slid a clear plastic splint onto DeWitt’s arm, inflated it with a tiny pump, and tied the whole thing across his body with an Ace bandage. “I don’t think anyone has any major internal injuries, but it’s not like I’ve got a lot of room to work in here. They’ve all got whiplash and torn muscles to one degree or another. If I don’t get some muscle relaxers into them now, they’ll be all twisted up and stiff as boards inside the hour. Mister DeWitt gets a shot, everyone else get a couple of pills. Other than that, we won’t know until we try, and I’d just as soon we didn’t have to.”
“Thanks, Doc,” said Murdock.
“Thanks, Doc?” Magic Brown said as he burped vomitus around the car. “You call that a diagnosis? I’d rather crawl my ass up and consult with the old guru on the mountaintop.”
“Be my guest, asshole,” the Doc replied calmly. “Piss me off any more and you won’t get any drugs.”
“Aw, you know I was just shittin’ you, Doc,” Magic said, instantly subdued.
What a mess, Murdock thought. He didn’t share Razor’s jubilation at the accomplishment of the mission. He had to get his men home. All of them. That was his responsibility. And the time, the goddamned time. It was now 0325. They were running out of time, and couldn’t afford any more trouble.
There was an explosion behind them.
“What the hell was that?” asked Razor.
There was a general shrugging of shoulders, and then Higgins said quietly, “I rigged a charge to the car on my way out. They must’ve tripped it.”
There were a few low, respectful whistles.
“That was very thoughtful of you, Prof,” said Murdock. He was really quite impressed. He hadn’t thought of it. “Consider yourself attaboyed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
From the darkness of the back seat there arose a chant. “Lieutenant’s pet, Lieutenant’s pet.”
“We’re back in fucking kindergarten again,” Razor said, disgusted.
The siren and all the lights were shut off. They no longer wanted to call any attention to themselves. Especially since now out in the open country any lights could be seen for miles. Jaybird was driving with night-vision goggles on.
The Mercedes crossed over the Bekaa highway and continued northeast. They drove around and past the small village of Laat, and the former Lebanese Air Force base located north of Baalbek.
There was a drop in elevation; the road dipped lower into the Bekaa Valley proper, although the valley itself ranged in elevation from sixteen hundred to two thousand feet. Baalbek was around 3,800 feet above sea level.
The SEALs crossed the Litani River, which supplied the valley with its water. Fallow plowed fields broken up by stone walls stretched out for miles out in the moonlight, with hardly a tree to be seen. Only a quarter moon, but enough to see by. Small streams and wadis, dried-up streambeds, crisscrossed the road as it headed for the mountains in the distance. The road rose steadily up into the foothills.
The road forked, and they took the right. There was a left turn onto a dirt track coming up soon. They could have followed the paved road all the way over the mountains, but it ran right through at least one sizable village and the risk was too great. The dirt track went up into the forest at the base of the mountain range and simply stopped. That was where the helicopters would come in.
Murdock was intently studying his map. There was another stream that crossed the road, and then the turn.
“Here it is,” Jaybird said abruptly. He’d already made the turn before Murdock could lift his head up.
“Wait a minute,” said Murdock. It was too soon. But it did look like the dirt road. Maybe he’d missed the stream in the dark.
They drove about five minutes and the road stopped in the middle of a grove of low-slung olive trees.
Murdock felt like doing some yelling, but that wasn’t how it was done. Besides, he was responsible — it was his screw-up. “Turn around and head back,” he said calmly. More time lost.
“Jaybird Sterling,” Doc Ellsworth chortled from the back. “The human compass.”
Jaybird burned with humiliation, but had the sense not to say anything.
They got back on the paved road and found the real turn about a quarter mile farther up. Just to be sure, Murdock checked the exact position on his GPS set.
The dirt road was slow going. It was narrow, and had been cut to the sides of hills and stretches of poor soil where crops would not grow.
They drove another quarter of a mile, and Jaybird came to an abrupt stop that caused everyone to lurch forward. “Rocks,” he said in response to the inevitable razzing.
Several large rocks sat on the road, having fallen down from the hill that bordered the right side of the road. They weren’t boulders, but there was no room to drive around them or get off the road.
“Back up fast!” Murdock ordered.
Jaybird rammed the Mercedes into reverse.
“Okay, stop,” said Murdock, after they’d gone back about thirty yards.
“You think it’s an ambush?” Razor asked.
“Don’t know,” Murdock replied. “But we can’t go back and we don’t have time to screw around. Jaybird and I will go out and move the rocks. Everybody but Ed get out and cover us.”
Murdock and Razor took a minute to go through their moves. Nothing complicated, just on the order of: If this happens, I want you to do that; or if that happens instead, I want you to do this.
Then he and Jaybird trotted up the road, weapons ready. Not that that would do a lot of good if the two of them ended up in the killing zone of an ambush.
Murdock sniffed the air and let his senses pull in all the available information. It didn’t feel wrong, and he’d learned to trust that.
He and Jaybird rolled the rocks out of the way. Nothing happened. Murdock just hoped they wouldn’t run into many more. They couldn’t afford the time.
Everyone packed themselves back into the Mercedes. Jaybird kept it slow. There were more rocks, but small enough to either go over or around.
A half mile further and the road curved around the side of another hill. As they rolled around the curve Jaybird hit the brake again. The road was completely blocked by an enormous mound of mud and rock.
20
Saturday, November 11
0345 hours North central Lebanon
Murdock got out of the car to take a look. After the door slammed, there was a moment of stunned silence.
“It’s the karma,” Doc Ellsworth said confidently. “Jaybird and all those negative vibrations.”
“I told you I was thinking positively, goddammit!” Jaybird burst out.
“Someone’s going to get shot in about a second,” Razor Roselli warned.
Murdock got back in the car and unfolded his map.
“Why the fuck wasn’t this in the satellite photos?” Magic Brown demanded. “We checked the whole route out.”
“It was the rain,” said Kos Kosciuszko. “The whole hillside is eroded. They must get mud slides all the time in the winter.”
“Will everyone shut the fuck up for a second and let me think?” Murdock requested. He turned his flashlight on the map. They couldn’t go around the slide. Going back would lose them time and distance, and even so, the nearest alternative road went right through a village. They couldn’t afford another firefight. It was time for one of what Razor liked to scornfully call the lieutenant’s encounter groups. “All right,” said Murdock. “Give me some ideas.”
“We could drive around all night and not get any farther than we are right now,” said Higgins.
“We can’t bring a helo into this place,” said Jaybird.
“They could dr
op a caving ladder,” said Magic, but even he didn’t sound too convinced.
“We couldn’t even put Mister DeWitt on the hoist,” said Doc. “Not with his arm.”
“That’s not it,” Razor said impatiently. “The ground is as flat as a pancake and wide fucking open. There’s a village within half a klick. As soon as the helos popped over the mountains everybody and his uncle would be shooting at us.”
“We’ve got to assume that there are people chasing us,” Higgins broke in.
“Either moving right now or in the process of getting their shit together,” said Jaybird.
“We left so much fucking wreckage behind us, it’s not going to be that hard to figure out our route,” said Kos Kosciuszko.
“Oh, they’ll show up soon,” said Razor. “And pissed off to boot.”
“We’re too close to Baalbek as it is,” said Doc.
“We’ve got to do some walking,” said Ed DeWitt, giving voice to what was on everyone’s mind.
“Can you walk?” Murdock asked him.
“I’d do anything to get off everyone’s lap back here in this sardine car,” said DeWitt.
“I guess we walk,” said Magic.
Everyone seconded the motion. There was nothing else to do.
They opened up the trunk and removed their equipment. There were four nylon packs that had the same rough shape as guitar cases, only narrower. These were snipers’ drag bags. A sniper occasionally had to move with his weapon over very rough terrain, sometimes crawling on his belly, and sniper rifles and optics had to be treated gently. Thus the drag bag. It was padded with foam, had shoulder straps like a pack, and could also be pulled along behind the sniper over rocky ground, hence the name.
Three of the bags contained Heckler & Koch MSG-90 semiautomatic sniper rifles in 7.62mm NATO. The other held a MacMillan M-87 bolt-action sniper rifle in.50 caliber, the same as a Browning heavy machine gun. All had been brought along at the insistence of Master Chief MacKenzie, who was looking more and more prescient as the night wore on.
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