Battleground (14 page)

Red Nicholson came up and touched Murdock’s shoulder.

“Sir, found another corridor that isn’t covered. Not sure where it goes, but it’s on the first floor.”

“Even if it goes out the front of this place, that’s better than facing those guns back there,” Murdock said. “Take three men and check it out, and leave one of them as a guide at each turn. Move out.”

Murdock began getting the sailors into some kind of order. Four of the men had found AK-47’s with some extra magazines. He put them at the end of the sailors to be a rear guard.

Commander Judd separated the 160 men into groups and
had officers with each bunch. Murdock approved, and they moved out.

Commander Judd walked beside Murdock. “You wouldn’t have an extra weapon, would you, Lieutenant? I feel naked.”

Murdock unsnapped his Mark 23 pistol and gave it to the commander. “That’s a forty-five auto with a real kick. Twelve rounds. Here are two spare magazines.”

The commander thanked him, and they hurried down the corridor that Nicholson had found. At the first turn they picked up Ching. A tough-looking security gate there stood open. Evidently Jaybird had opened more than the cell doors in the control room.

At the second turn, they found Magic Brown. He still lugged the extra twenty pounds of the .50-caliber sniper rifle and ammo. Another security door had been swung flat against the wall.

Thirty yards down a dark corridor, they came to Red Nicholson, who was waiting. Murdock moved up beside him.

“Looks like we’re working toward the front of the complex, L-T. Only trouble is we have a sandbagged machine gun set up on a tripod down there maybe fifty yards. He’s got good protection. Doubt if our 223s or our NATO rounds would hurt him.”

“How many men down there?”

“I’ve seen four. May be more. The weapon is aimed our direction like they know we’re coming.”

Murdock used his lip mike. “Magic Brown, get your bones up front. We need your talents.”

Commander Judd eased up beside Murdock. “Problems?”

“One heavy machine gun and a whole shitpot full of sandbag protection.”

Magic dropped beside Murdock. “You want the Fifty?”

“Amen.” He told the black man the situation. He saw Magic grin in the darkness.

“No fucking problem, L-T.” He pulled open the drag sack and unlimbered the big sniper rifle. A specially fabricated
ten-round magazine was in place with the five-and-a-half-inch-long rounds.

“Sir?” Murdock said, looking at the full commander.

The officer nodded, and moved out of the way. Brown angled the big weapon around the corner with the bipod out front. He adjusted the Leupold Ultra MK4 16-power telescopic sight and settled in to take a shot.

Murdock moved the others back ten feet, and Magic Brown began doing his thing. His first round took out the man sitting behind the old-style .30-caliber heavy machine gun. Magic could only see half of his head and one shoulder. The round smashed through the Kenyan’s left eye, and splattered half of his head down the corridor.

The booming sound of the .50-caliber round sounded like a 105 artillery round. Before the sound had echoed down the tunnel-like hallway, Brown had his second shot lined up. A foolhardy Kenyan had pushed his dead buddy out of the way and moved into the seat behind the weapon. This one looked around the side of the machine gun, and Magic fired again.

The perfect shot centered on the soldier’s mouth, and blasted his head off his shoulders.

Half-a-dozen rifle rounds whistled past Magic, and he pulled back to the safety of the wall for a moment, then leaned around and worked the bolt quickly three times, slamming three chunks of hot lead from the magazine into the sandbags and anyone foolish enough to get in his way.

He paused a moment, then looked around the wall and checked his target through the scope. A dim glow back-lighted the position. Magic spotted one man working slowly back toward the light. The heavy .50-caliber round made him drop what he had been dragging, and blew the soldier a dozen feet down the hall and straight into any afterlife he might have.

“About it, L-T,” Brown said.

Murdock motioned to Red, and the two of them aimed their weapons around the corner of the wall and sent full magazines of hot lead down the long corridor.

“Let’s go,” Murdock said. He rounded the corner, and
sprinted down the narrow hallway. He jumped over two sandbags, almost tripped over a body, and kept going with the First Squad of SEALs right behind him.

Murdock stopped at the light they had seen. It was an overhead ventilation shaft of some kind. There was no way to get up to it. Murdock waved them past, and Red took the lead. They came to a section with half-a-dozen doors off the main stem. They ignored them and moved ahead, weapons ready.

A pair of corridor-wide swinging steel doors blocked their path. Red edged up to them, and pushed one in four inches so he could look through to the other side. Machinegun fire blasted into the door but missed the inch-wide hole, and Red fell back swearing.

Murdock squirmed forward. “You hit?”

Red shook his head.

“Forties,” Murdock said. Red nodded. Murdock used the mike and told Adams and Lampedusa to get up front and break out their 40mm rounds.

They worked it systematically. One man edged the door open far enough to get his M-4A1 through, then fired a half a magazine of .223 whizzers down the hall. Meanwhile, the next man pushed his weapon through below that, and fired an HE 40mm round. As the lower man loaded a new round, the top man fired the last half of his .223’s from his magazine.

Then the lower man fired another grenade. They worked the ritual for six grenades. The last one was a Willy Peter phosphorous round that exploded with the impossible-to-put-out sticky phosphorus that could burn through anything but metal, including human bones and tissue.

No return firing had come after the second grenade.

Murdock held up his hand to stop the action. They waited. A groan came from in front of them. Murdock hoped that the WP smoke would drift out of the hallway ahead of them.

He nodded at Ron Holt, who lay on the floor, and Holt pushed one of the swinging doors open with his MP-5. There were no incoming rounds. Holt held the door open as
the First Squad raced over him and into the hall half filled with smoke.

They heard no firing from the front. Red Nicholson ran through the smoke, past three dead Kenyans, and to a door that swung half open. Fresh air billowed through the door, and outside he could smell the green countryside of Kenya.

A minute later, Murdock edged the door open wider. A bright moon bathed the landscape. He wasn’t sure where they were, but they were at an outside door.

“Holt, get your ass up front,” Murdock said into the mike.

“Right behind you, L-T,” Holt said, grinning in the darkness.

“Crank up that box of yours and see if the flyboys are still up there riding shotgun.”

Holt flipped two switches and took the mike. “Tom Birds, this is Water One. You still flying?”

The return came through at once.

“That’s a roger, Water One. Cruisin’ and snoozin’.”

“We’re almost out, may need some help.”

“Can do. Give us a call.”

“Time?” Murdock asked.

Holt punched the light on his watch. “It’s just after 2235, sir.”

Murdock took another look outside. “Road out there, and no inlet, so we’re in the motherfucking front of this asshole place. We need the back, and we need to get wet.”

Just as he started to push forward out the door, a chattering machine gun snarled and seven rounds jolted into the door slamming it all the way open.

The SEALs ducked back inside the building.

“Anybody hit?” Murdock asked.

“If somebody got hit he’s dead,” Holt snapped. They laughed. It was what they needed.

Murdock took a quick look out the door to the right where he had heard the machine gun. He saw it mounted on a three-quarter-ton-type military truck. Had to be a .50-caliber.

“Brown, get it up here. Got one more small job for you to do.”

2115 hours

RX Military Headquarters

Nairobi, Kenya

General Umar Maleceia stormed from one side of his large office in the military headquarters to the other. His dark green uniform shirt showed stains of sweat under the arms and down the chest. His eyes bulged as he stopped in front of his second in command, Colonel Jomo Kariuki.

“How could this happen? Our troops at the American Embassy have been slaughtered and the hostages have been taken away? How could you let this happen?”

“General, sir. They had fast jet fighters that attacked the embassy. Then they brought in large helicopters with troops in them, and the fighters flew cover. Two of our weapons carriers were destroyed.”

“These same jets shot down one of our MiGs?”

“Yes, sir. We now have only
tatu
, just three of the MiGs left.”

The phone rang. The colonel picked it up. He answered, listened for a moment, then held out the handset. “General, you better hear this.”

“What? What is it?”

Colonel Kariuki pushed the handset toward the general.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” Maleceia listened a moment, then had the man on the other end repeat the words when static interrupted the telephone conversation.

General Maleceia pulled the handset away from his mouth and threw it and the phone across the room.

“Attacking us again! They are attacking the prison where I have the rest of my hostages! How can I demand money and goods from America if I don’t have any hostages?”

Colonel Kariuki stepped back to be out of the rage pattern of his commander.

“Sir, we have five hundred seasoned troops in a camp just north of Mombasa. I can alert them now, and they can be at the prison in a half hour.”

General Maleceia seemed not to hear his advisor. He swept everything off his desk. He threw a portable radio across the room, smashing a window. He kicked over his desk chair, and then sat down on the desk hard, his hands over his face.

“General we can send in troops from the camp north—”

General Maleceia looked up with a killing stare, and Colonel Kariuki stopped.

“I know where our troops are, Kariuki. In a half hour the attackers may be gone. Why don’t we have more helicopters? Why not more than three jet fighters? I know. They cost hard currency, which we don’t have. Yes, send the jets down to blast anything they see that moves around the prison. If we can’t keep the hostages, at least we can kill them all.”

“General, the report is that there is air cover for the raid. It is probably the F-14s, the same type plane we think shot down our MiG. Sir, they are much faster, with better missiles and far better radar than our older MiGs. Our pilots wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Send them up now. They can be in Mombasa long before the troops can move across town in the trucks. Order it at once.”

“Yes, General.” The major went outside to his desk, where he made two phone calls. Three minutes later it was done. The three jets would be lifting off from their home base near Nairobi within fifteen minutes. They would be at Mombasa in another thirty minutes. It all depended how quickly the American raiders could rescue the sailors and
get them out of the area. It all depended. He had no hope that the troops in their trucks would be of any practical use.

If the jets got to the prison in Mombasa before 2245, they might have a shot at helping. The colonel gave a short sigh. If they weren’t shot down fifty miles from their target.

Tuesday, July 20

2240 hours

Indian Ocean Prison

Mombasa, Kenya

“Somebody has night eyes over there,” Brown said. He had just cranked out another .50-caliber round that didn’t find a home.

“Soon as I got off that first round, that damned truck jolted behind that offset in the front of the building. Can’t even see the bastard now.”

“But if we started sending men outside, he could pull out, fire off a dozen rounds, and slam back in hiding before you got off more than one shot,” Murdock said.

He turned to Holt. “Call in the Tom Cats. We need some help.”

Holt picked up the mike. “Tom Birds, got your ears on? This is Dry Water One.”

“Oh, yeah, Dry Water. We’ve got company. Two more Cats to help. What’s up?”

“Do a flyby at the front of the building. There’s a vehicle with a fifty-caliber MG that has us pinned. We’re at a door at the front near the west end of the place. Be right obliged if you could disassemble that fifty and not burn us out.”

“Roger that, Dry Water. How far are you from the target?”

“Eighty yards, Tom Bird.”

“Keep your heads down.”

Two minutes later two jets came in on a strafing run, their 20mm cannon spouting bright flashes in the darkness. The front of the building took a pounding as the birds followed one another, then slanted up and away.

Brown watched through his scope. “Close, but no hits. Tell them to move it about twenty yards left.”

“Tom Birds. Our spotter says no rubber duck. Adjust twenty yards your left for target.”

“Thanks, Dry Water. We’re a little blind up here.”

On the next run, four Tom Cats thundered out of the sky at twenty-second intervals, and blasted the small truck into two million pieces. Magic Johnson laughed and folded up his bipod.

“I’d say we’re free and clear, L-T.”

“Holt, get on the horn to the carrier. Tell them we’re moving out of the store with the goods. ETA the water, thirty minutes.”

“Got it, L-T.”

“Commander, get your men moving out and to the left. We’ll ride shotgun for you. Can your men march?”

“No food for three days, but we can move, maybe not up to SEAL standards.”

“We’ll go at your pace, Commander. Let’s do it now.”

They came out the door in a ragged line, formed into a column of ducks, and worked down the front of the building for another fifty yards, then angled toward the brush that hid the finger of Mombasa Bay. It was too long a line, and Murdock was worried.