It could send and receive UHF satellite communications, or SATCOM, capable of reaching literally anywhere in the world. It also used UHF line-of-sight, to talk to aircraft and direct air-strikes, and VHF, or FM, the band used for tactical communications by most of the world’s armies, the same band the Motorola MX-300 walkie-talkies operated on.
Changing bands was as easy as flipping a switch and deploying the right antenna. The radio’s power could be adjusted anywhere from ten watts maximum down to 1 watt to reduce the probability of enemy interception. It could also be switched to automatic frequency hopping in the VHF band. The encryption system was embedded in the radio, and the crypto keys could be changed daily by simply punching in a new set of numbers.
The radio could transmit in a number of modes: voice, data, video. A special interface could even link it into the worldwide cellular telephone system.
The capability was incredible, but it also allowed everyone in the chain of command to contact and supervise you to an extent that Murdock did not care for at all. The Vietnam ploy of turning off the radio or pleading poor reception was no longer a viable option if you could talk in real-time with the admiral in Coronado or the President at the White House from the middle of the Lebanese hills.
If it had been a straight SEAL mission, Murdock would have been transmitting code words to mark his progress at each step in the operation, from landing onward. But as he’d told the CIA, if they weren’t going to provide him with any external fire support, then he didn’t need to be talking to them every five minutes — no matter how much they might want him to.
Higgins unfolded the satellite antenna, which was just a collapsible wire facsimile of the familiar dish. The radio set told him when the antenna was in line with the communications satellite overhead.
A signal sent straight up to a satellite was hard for an enemy to direction-find, but not impossible. Especially if you were dealing with a paranoid dictatorship like Syria, which had the best signals-interception and direction-finding equipment money could buy. So the SEALs would send their message by data-burst. Instead of talking over a handset, Murdock wrote out his message and Higgins typed it into a small keypad. Previously agreed-upon code words were used to reduce the length of the message. It went something like this, but in a continuous line of traffic with STOP where any periods would have been:
E70: Phonetically, Echo Seven Oscar, 3rd Platoon’s call sign for that day.
SWITCHBLADE: Target destroyed.
ZEBRA-1: One friendly killed in action.
SEATBELT-1: Request immediate helicopter extraction. No change from mission brief.
PENGUIN: Landing zone is secure.
857682: Their current location, in map grid coordinates.
END.
Murdock reviewed the message in the keypad’s liquid crystal display and nodded to Higgins. Higgins pressed a button and entered the message into the keypad. Another button automatically encrypted it. Then he pressed the SEND button and the message went out over the air in a compressed burst of less than a millisecond in duration. Now there was nothing to do but wait for confirmation and any return message to come back from the aircraft carrier.
24
Saturday, November 11
0503 hours Aboard the U.S.S. George Washington Eastern Mediterranean Sea
The huddle of men packed together in the dull gray intelligence center of the George Washington was becoming both more hyper and more despondent, if such a thing was possible. The coffee they’d consumed by the gallon had done its own small part to jack up the general mood.
Don Stroh of the CIA couldn’t sit down in his institutional Navy chair for more than a minute before springing up to pace. He wouldn’t call it pacing, though, just a continuing process of checking in with the line of Navy communicators at their consoles, or talking to the ship’s bridge or Combat Operations Center on the phone.
Paul Kohler, his CIA counterpart, had gone through what seemed to be about five cartons of cigarettes, based on the contents of the ashtrays. The fastidious young sailors in the room, high-IQ types one and all, appeared to be on the verge of donning breathing apparatuses.
The Army major from the 160th was sitting with his legs crossed and reading a paperback novel, to all intents and purposes the very picture of professional calm. But that crossed leg was bouncing up and down so fast it might have been hooked to an electrical current.
Miguel Fernandez, the lone SEAL, was catching up on some sleep. His feet were up on the worktable, his head thrown back, and every minute or so he let loose with a few seconds of loud honking snores. Whenever it happened the others threw him looks that were pan disgust, pan envy.
One of the communicators suddenly shot forward in his chair. “Message just came in,” he announced excitedly.
They all practically climbed over each other to reach the terminal and read Murdock’s message off the display.
“… They did it!” Paul Kohler whooped, sounding very much like Razor Roselli.
Miguel Fernandez, whom the platoon called Rattler in honor of his favorite cuisine during desert operations, stared at the screen and wondered which one of his friends was dead.
Don Stroh had a handset up to his mouth, and was passing the news over a satellite link to the operations center at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
The major was on an internal ship’s phone giving the word to his pilots waiting in the ready room.
Stroh put down the handset and picked up another one that connected to the ship’s Combat Operations Center. “Is it still there?” he asked. “Okay, thanks.” He hung the phone up. “We’ve got a real problem.” He turned to the communicator. “I want you to send, ‘WAIT ONE STOP STAND BY FOR MESSAGE END,’” he ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir,” the sailor replied.
A Russian Sovremenny-class destroyer had shown up in the area about a half hour before, attracted to the Washington and trying to discover what she was doing. Intelligence photographers shooting through night-vision equipment had been lined up on her rails the whole time. The Russians had been going through one of their we’re-a-great-power hypernationalistic phases lately, and had been causing more mischief than they had in years.
The presence of the destroyer meant the Washington couldn’t launch the helicopters without permission.
“If only we’d gotten that message an hour ago,” the major lamented.
“The COC says we can lose her,” said Stroh. “But the Navy can’t do that, get back into helicopter range, and go to flight quarters all before daylight.”
“Then we have to launch anyway,” said the major. “Screw the Russians.”
Fernandez was glad the major had said that because otherwise he would have had to. And one of the facts of life was that majors got more favorable hearing than first-class petty officers.
“We can’t do that without permission from Langley,” said Kohler.
“Well, fucking get it then,” Fernandez blurted out. Heads turned and all eyes fell on him, and he added rather lamely, “Sir.”
Well used to SEALS, Don Stroh only chuckled. “I’m going to do just that, Miguel.”
The communicator handed him the handset to Langley, and he explained the situation in detail. After Stroh finished he listened for quite a while. His face darkness. “I’d like to point out, sir,” he said, “that if any SEALs are captured, the mission will be even more compromised than it would be by the sighting of a few helicopters. Any number of cover stories could explain that away.”
Fernandez’s stomach turned to ice.
Stroh listened some more. “Yes, sir, their equipment is sterile, but that won’t matter if the Syrians get a chance to go to work on them.” More listening. “Yes, sir, we will stand by, but allow me to remind you that our launch window is closing rapidly. Yes, sir.” He gave the handset back to the communicator. “They’re going to get back to us.”
“The fuck!” Fernandez said fiercely. “The dirty work is done, so now no one gives a
shit anymore.”
One of the Navy intelligence officers seemed on the verge of having words with Fernandez, then perhaps thought better of it.
“I can launch at any time,” the major said. “I’m willing to launch right now,” he added pointedly.
Don Stroh just shrugged helplessly and shook his head.
The minutes ticked off. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The tension in the room was unbearable.
“Sir,” the communicator said, giving the handset over to Stroh.
“Yes, sir,” Stroh said into the handset. There was conversation on the other end, and Stroh finally broke in to protest, “Yes, sir, but we have no idea what the situation on the ground is right now … sir, I don’t care where the order came from, this is murder. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I understand perfectly.” Stroh gave the handset back to the communicator. “We don’t launch while the Russian ship is here,” he told them. “So that means the earliest we can launch is after dusk. Tonight.”
“They got to sit out there all day?” Fernandez shouted.
“Well, screw that,” said the major. “I’m launching right now. I’ll take the responsibility.”
Fernandez could have French-kissed him — and an officer at that.
Another phone rang, and it was handed over to Don Stroh. “Yes? Yes, Captain? You did? Very well, thank you.” He hung up. “The Captain just got a flash message from Washington. No Army helicopters will be launched until End of Evening Nautical Twilight. Tonight.”
“Those bastards don’t miss a trick, do they?” Fernandez asked bitterly. If they had turned the major down he’d been considering pulling his pistol and making some demands. Now even that wouldn’t work. “I’ll tell you something. You all better make out your wills, ‘cause you do this to Razor Roselli and I wouldn’t put odds on your life expectancy once he gets back.”
“I’d be glad to have Razor take a shot at me, as long as we get him back,” said Stroh. He sounded completely worn out. “Be that as it may, now we have to sit down and put together a message to the SEALS.”
25
Saturday, November 11
0535 hours North central Lebanon
The light on the keypad blinked. Murdock and Razor were both huddled over the tiny display.
“What the fuck took them so long?” Razor whispered in Murdock’s ear. “They bring in Shakespeare to compose the fucking message?”
Murdock reached over and hit the button to review the message.
They watched eagerly as it ran across the narrow strip window of the display:
UNABLE TO LAUNCH AIRCRAFT STOP CANNOT LAUNCH IN DAYLIGHT STOP REMAIN HIDDEN OR ESCAPE AND EVADE AT YOUR DISCRETION STOP WILL LAUNCH ON ORDER ANY TIME AFTER EENT 11 NOV STOP SORRY STOP ORDERS STOP GOOD LUCK END
Razor couldn’t believe it, and reviewed the message again.
Murdock felt like he’d been kicked in the balls.
Razor took a moment to regain his composure, then whispered, “Well, this has to be the best fucking I’ve ever taken, bar none.”
“I think I’m finally starting to get a handle on the drawbacks to working for the CIA,” Murdock whispered back to him.
“Fuck ‘em,” Razor whispered. “We’ll get our own selves out.”
“Acknowledge the transmission,” Murdock told Higgins. “And don’t tell them to go fuck themselves.”
“Roger that, sir,” the Professor replied. “I’ll keep it professional.”
With that, as might be expected sitting in the Lebanese woods with dawn approaching, it was back to business.
Murdock crawled to each man and gave him a whispered briefing. They were SEALS, so no one went hysterical. At first some of them thought Murdock was playing a really bad joke. Then there were a few whispered oaths, followed by a general shrugging of shoulders, as if all that could be expected from the powers that be was a good hard shot up the ass anyway. The SEALs knew what kind of situation they were in but, since they were SEALS, it was the kind of situation they expected to find themselves in.
Murdock briefed them because they needed, deserved to know. And because, as usual, they picked his morale right back up. Jaybird Sterling wanted to know if it meant an extra day of combat pay. Murdock said only if it went past midnight the next day. Jaybird then asked if the lieutenant would take that into consideration in his planning, since he was thinking of buying a motorcycle.
Then Murdock, Razor, and DeWitt pulled a poncho over their heads, turned on a flashlight, and broke out their maps for an impromptu conference.
“Let’s get the hard stuff out of the way first,” said Razor. “We have to leave Kos here.”
Murdock started. He knew it would eventually come down to that, but it would have taken him a while to bring the subject up.
“He’s too big,” said Razor, “and we’ve got too many people hurt and sick to carry him, move fast, and still keep good security. If he was alive we’d take him, no matter what. But you don’t die for the dead. Kos would understand.” He paused again. “I’ll handle the boys.”
“All right,” said Murdock. The fact that you got paid to make the tough decisions didn’t make them any easier.
DeWitt closed his eyes and nodded.
“Okay,” said Razor. “Now, which way do we go? Right now we got our backs up against the mountain range to our west. Not a damn piece of cover on the whole mountain range. We’re coming from the east, the bad guys are following us from that direction. So east is out. I guess we can go either north or south.”
“South is Israel,” said DeWitt.
“It’s not the U.S.-Canada border,” Razor said dubiously. “There’s mine-fields, fences, and a shitload of people with guns. Just to get to their security zone in south Lebanon we’d have to go through a lot of Hezbollah country. Plus it’s a long goddamned walk.”
“Let’s not get off the track here,” said Murdock. “We just have to hide out for twelve hours or so.”
“So they say,” Razor retorted.
“Looking on the bright side,” said DeWitt, “the Syrians are going to think that anyone slick enough to pull off what we did would be long gone by now.”
“If we were Israelis, we would be,” said Razor. “Good thing they don’t know what a stupid bunch of dicks we really are.”
“A few klicks south the forest disappears and we’re back in open country,” said Murdock. “I vote we head north, stay in the woods. And we get moving right now, make as much distance as we can before daylight.”
“This is a vote?” Razor inquired.
“It’s a vote,” Murdock confirmed.
“Then I vote we go north.”
“Don’t look at me to disagree,” said DeWitt, grinning in the red glow of the flashlight. “I’m just the j.g.”
“We love you all the same, sir,” said Razor, trying to lighten the mood like a good chief.
26
Saturday, November 11
0520 hours North central Lebanon
The SEALs found a small depression in the ground and scraped out a shallow hole with their knives, piling the dirt onto a poncho. They laid Chief Boatswain’s Mate Benjamin “Kos” Kosciuszko into the hole, covering him with earth, then pine needles and branches. They sprinkled CS crystals around to keep the animals off. The rest of the dirt was carried away and scattered.
Murdock took several GPS readings at the grave site, and everyone recorded the coordinates on their maps in case there was ever an opportunity to recover the body.
In the meantime, another SEAL family would be told that there had been a diving accident and the body lost at sea. An empty casket would be buried with full military honors.
They left him and patrolled away. That was the way it was.
No beating of breasts, no inability to function. The SEALs just got a little tighter, a little colder. Kos Kosciuszko would be mourned when it was all over. Violent death was not an unanticipated event among SEALS. A great many earmarked money in their wills for a final party that they would not attend.
They headed northeast. Although still within the cover of the woods, this meant they had to cross numerous ridgelines that steadily increased in elevation. These all ran east-west, and the constant up-and-down climbing was both exhausting and time-consuming. It was known as going cross-compartment. Murdock wanted to spend as little time in the ridge valleys as possible. The low areas were where people walked, and eventually trampled paths. And the SEALs wouldn’t walk anywhere they expected to meet anyone else. The same was true for the tops of hills or ridgelines. Whenever you passed over them you were completely exposed. It was better to walk halfway up and then traverse around, no matter how long that took.
Running parallel to the ridgelines were a whole series of dirt roads that connected the mountain and highland villages to the Bekaa Valley highway. One of them was the cross-mountain paved road they had originally taken such pains to avoid.
Crossing that road was a particular problem. It forked into two separate directions, and crossing the nearest and most heavily wooded portion would require crossing both forks, which was tactically unwise. The SEALs had to patrol far out of their way to find a section where there wasn’t too much open area on both sides of the road. Another consideration was that the crossing site couldn’t be within view of anyone driving further up or down the road. This usually meant crossing at a curve or bend.
Jaybird found the right spot just as the first halo of dawn began to light up the horizon. The SEALs followed their danger-area SOP. Great care was necessary because it was exactly the sort of place they would pick to set up an ambush. As they approached, Murdock designated near-and far-side rally points where the unit would re-gather if split up in either the crossing or a firefight.
Higgins and Doc secured the right and left flanks of the crossing point. Jaybird sprinted across first, followed by Murdock to secure the far side.
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