Battleground (19 page)

“Should be dark right about 1900,” Murdock told Jaybird.

“That gives us the run up to the ship in the dark, so we should be invisible,” Jaybird said. “Hope that Kenyan Navy patrol boat isn’t snooping around.”

“We’ve got the SATCOM, Holt?”

“Right, L-T, up and running.”

“We’ve got two Hornet FA-18’s for air cover if we need them. Rather do this quietly, but you never can tell.”

The whispers stopped. A brisk wind gave them a small chop to the ocean now, but it didn’t slow them down. It meant they held on to the handholds a little tighter.

“Remember, the rail is only twenty to twenty-four feet off the water, depending on what part of the ship we hit,” Murdock said. “We have the blind spot on the port side from amidships aft for twenty feet.

“Nobody on the bridge or the flight deck on the fantail can see us. But then I don’t expect these Army guys to have a Navy-type watch.”

Soon they passed the little town called Likoni on the left-hand side of the channel. It looked about the same. They were quiet now, and darkness was complete. They throttled back to twelve knots to make less noise, and less of a wake in case anyone watched for them.

At twelve knots, it would take a little longer, but their approach had to be quiet. They figured about three and a half klicks to the pier where the
Roy Turner
was berthed. Another twelve to fifteen minutes, maybe five more than that.

The second IBS trailed Murdock’s boat by twenty yards. Ed DeWitt was ready with his squad. They would go up the stern onto the chopper flight deck and secure it, then work forward.

Silence was the key. Even the grapple hooks they would throw over the rails had been wrapped with rope to cushion the sound when they hit metal.

The mission looked to be on schedule and on track to Murdock. Another ten minutes and they would be there.

Then Murdock’s boat engine went dead.

Ken Ching swore and bent over the thirty-five-hp outboard trying to get it started. DeWitt idled his boat up beside them.

Ken Ching swore again. He tried ten times. It wouldn’t start. Murdock had been checking his watch. He waved to DeWitt. The other boat came up and bumped them. The men held the two craft together.

“Hey, sailor, give a guy a tow?” Murdock asked.

“Sure, if that means I have salvage rights, law of the sea.”

“We’re in port.”

“Oh.”

A minute later DeWitt’s boat growled along on full throttle towing the second IBS. They were making about five knots.

“Makes us thirty minutes late getting on-site,” Jaybird said.

Murdock nodded. “If they don’t know we’re coming, thirty minutes don’t mean squat. Let’s see how it plays.”

1920 hours

Dockside
Roy Turner

Mombasa, Kenya

Gunner’s Mate First Class Pete Vuylsteke eased up and looked down the passageway. Nobody. It was dark outside. They hadn’t heard anyone in their section of the
Turner
for an hour. Probably gorging themselves on the chief’s mess stores.

He lifted up from the ladder and ran across the passage that led to the quarterdeck and into the aft section of the ship. He heard Perez and Tretter right behind him. They went down a companionway, up two more ladders, and came out where he wanted to be.

He flattened out on the broad deck aft of the stack on the superstructure. They were in the open on the top of the ship, and with a minimum of movement they could cover either side of the frigate.

They had brought their weapons. None of them were silenced, and if they started shooting, they had to be able to defend themselves until they could get down to the roof of the hangar, where they could take a flying dive into the bay.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” Perez had said. “I’m getting too fucking tired of sitting in the bilge. My ass hurts. At least we’ll be in the open.”

They had talked it over all afternoon, and when it had
started getting dark outside, they’d worked up to the top deck. It was so easy, they wondered where all the Kenyans were.

They spotted some of them prowling the weather deck.

“Damn poor place for lookouts,” Tretter said.

“What the hell, they’re shit-kickers, not sailors,” Vuylsteke said. He grinned. “Hey, you guys know that, by rules of the sea, I am now the Captain and commanding officer of the
Roy Turner.
”

Tretter snorted.

Perez laughed. “Be damned, you’re the senior man, all right. Okay, Captain, what the hell we doing next?”

Before any of them could answer they heard the growl of a truck with lights off edging onto the pier.

“Oh, shit, reinforcements. Tretter, can you kill the driver with your AK?”

It was a fifty-yard shot at most. Tretter cranked in a round, sighted on the right-hand side of the glinting wind-shield, and fired. The round slammed through the windshield, but missed the driver. Tretter’s second round punched through the man’s chest, and the truck stalled.

The two shots from the ship brought a yell from a ranger on the deck below near the frigate’s torpedo tubes. Vuylsteke aimed the shotgun at him and fired. The load of double-aught buck didn’t spread as much as smaller pellets, and six of the thirteen slugs hit the ranger in the chest and slammed him halfway over the rail, where he hung like a ripped rag doll.

They saw no one else on deck. They had the high ground. The only way anyone could get above them would be to climb the mast.

“We just started the shit hitting the fan,” Perez said. “Now the fun begins.”

They saw a line of men come out of the shadows where the truck had stalled and walk forward.

“Two more rounds in the radiator to kill the truck,” Vuylsteke said. “Then nail some of those troops coming up the pier.”

The men in green were out of range of the short guns, but
they wouldn’t be long. The three sailors also had the bag of hand grenades. Perez had counted them the night before, twenty-one in all. They could do a lot of damage.

The sailors began taking return fire from the troops on the pier. They edged back so the superstructure would protect them. Tretter moved up now and then to send off a pair of shots into the growing line of men.

“Close enough yet?” Vuylsteke asked.

“Not for the sub-gun, the shotgun, or the grenades. But we can all use our long guns.”

“How far can you throw one of them bombs?” Vuylsteke asked.

“I used to play some baseball, outfield. Hell, guess I can get it out there sixty yards.”

“Give one a try,” Vuylsteke said. “Remember, you’ll get a bounce on that concrete.”

Perez grinned and pulled the pin from the smooth round M-67 grenade, then lifted up and threw it like a baseball with plenty of body in it. He dropped down at once.

Vuylsteke lifted up to watch the bomb. It went about thirty yards down the pier, bounced another ten yards, and went off while it was still in the air.

“An air burst,” Vuylsteke yelped. “Must have cut down half a dozen of them bad guys down there.”

“Take a shot,” Perez said, tossing two grenades to Vuylsteke. He pitched one, not as far as Perez’s had gone, but the troops had moved up ten yards and he saw them scatter when they heard the bomb hit the concrete. It came down before it exploded, and he heard a dozen men yell in pain and confusion.

“Aft,” Tretter bellowed.

Perez turned, holding the sub-gun, and hit the trigger. Two green-clad Kenyan rangers had just come past the 76mm gun mount. Perez squeezed the trigger on the little jammer and spewed out ten rounds before he let up. One of the rangers went down, the other dove the other way. Tretter nailed him with a round from the AK-47.

“Get their weapons and ammo,” Vuylsteke said.

“Good idea,” Perez said, and ran bent over to the two
dead men and brought back their two AK-47’s and six magazines of rounds.

“Tretter, keep watch fore and aft. We’ll entertain the troops below.”

Each one threw a hand grenade, and before it exploded they had the AK-47’s up laying down a deadly field of fire at the string of rangers who had stopped moving forward. They were still less than halfway down the side of the frigate.

Murdock and his SEALs were three hundred yards away from the softly lit
Roy Turner
when they heard firing. Jaybird looked at his commander, who held up his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture. They kept moving at five knots.

“Hand grenades,” Murdock said. “Somebody’s got a shooting gallery going up there.”

A few minutes later, they heard the flat crack of rifle fire.

“AK-47’s, you can bet your bippy,” Holt said.

They all huddled low in the black rubber boats. The motors had been muffled down to a quiet rumble. Now the firing onshore blocked out any sound the motors made.

They had worked out the debarking earlier. DeWitt would power them up to the port side of the frigate midships. They would throw up their grappling hooks, and get four men up ropes quickly to the weather dock. Those would cover the other four coming up.

DeWitt would take his powered IBS to the stern, send his men up grapple-hook ropes there, and work forward.

“Who is shooting at who?” Jaybird asked.

Murdock shook his head. “Whoever it is is doing us one hell of a big favor. All eyes will be on the dock, leaving us home free.”

They were thirty yards from the ship when two dark-clad men ran out the quarterdeck door. They didn’t look into the harbor; rather they looked up at the superstructure and fired shotguns that way.

“Take them,” Murdock whispered. Two men with silenced M-4A1 carbines rose up and fired three-round bursts almost at the same time. The two Kenyan shotgunners
slammed against the bulkhead and dropped. One began to crawl away. Another three-round burst stopped him.

On the aft deck of the superstructure, Vulysteke saw they were running short on hand grenades. They had kept the Kenyan troopers back so they couldn’t get on board the
Turner.

“Check the port side,” Vuylsteke told Tretter. Tretter edged across the flat deck, and looked down on the water side.

“Jesus H. Kerist.” He rolled back, and couldn’t talk for a minute. “Hey, coming on the port side, not twenty yards off, two black rubber boats. One’s towing the other. Sure as hell they’re SEALs. I’ve seen them suckers train. They’ll be on board in two or three minutes.”

“Good, let’s beat back these green guys a little more,” Vuylsteke said. “Maybe we’ll get our asses saved after all without a swim.”

They used the AK-47’s, with hand grenades thrown in to mix things up. There was no heavy-weapons response. Vuylsteke thought that strange, but they kept up the fire for another three minutes.

Tretter took another look to port.

“Yeah, four of them up ropes, and more down on the fantail. Damn, we got SEALs moving all over.”

“Let them know we’re here so we don’t get shot,” Perez said.

Then they heard the soft chuffs of the silenced weapons. A minute later, all three sailors were on the port side watching the SEALs. One looked up at the superstructure.

“Hey, you SEALs,” Vuylsteke bellowed. “Look up here.”

They waited a minute. The SEALs hosed down three Kenyan rangers who ran out of the quarterdeck door.

“SEALs, damnit, you’ve got some help up here,” Perez screamed. “Three Americans up here.”

One of the SEALs swung his weapon upward and looked that way.

“Don’t shoot, we’re Americans. We’re crew on here who were on liberty when she was taken,” Tretter brayed.

The SEAL hesitated. “Yeah? Who is Beavis’s buddy?” the SEAL asked.

“Butthead, who else?” Vuylsteke yelled. “Now, don’t shoot us. There’s about two hundred troops out front on the dock. We’ve been trying to hold them off.”

“Stay low and keep the topside free of any rangers,” Jaybird Sterling called. “We’ll mop up down here.” He touched the mike at his throat. “L-T, we’ve got three friendlies on the top of the superstructure just aft of the stack. Evidently crewmen who got back on board. They say there are about two hundred more troops out front near the pier.”

“Roger that. We’ll clean up on board. Get two men topside and harass those troops with some fire.”

Jaybird motioned to Lampedusa, and they scurried up a steel ladder that clung to the side of the ship below the 76mm gun mount.

Topside they found the three sailors, and kept low to the deck.

“Fucking glad to see you guys,” Vuylsteke called.

Jaybird slid to the deck beside him. “Glad we’re here. Where are those troops?” Vuylsteke pointed them out. About half of them had rushed into the shadows of the warehouse adjacent to the pier. More crowded around the pier just down from the bow of the ship.

The SEALs and the sailors all had found cover to use to hide behind so they could fire at the few Kenyan rangers who moved gradually down the pier toward the ship.

“Wish we had the MG,” Jaybird said. “You guys got rifles?”

“AK-47’s courtesy of our Kenyan friends,” Tretter said. “We still got a dozen hand grenades.” He threw one toward the Kenyans, and they edged back as the bomb went off just out of range.

“Let’s discourage them,” Jaybird said. He had a carbine for the mission, and unscrewed the silencer. “Better range,” he said. Then he began sniping at the men on the pier.

Soon there were five weapons firing at the Kenyan rangers. They looked confused, not sure whether to storm
the boat and leap on board, or stay where they were and fire back.

Return fire against the ship was light. Vuylsteke decided they didn’t want to risk hitting their own men who were still on board. Gradually the Kenyan soldiers edged back away from the ship. More of them ran for the deep shadows in front of the warehouse.

“Let’s give them something to think about,” Lampedusa said. He unhooked a Willy Peter hand grenade from his harness, pulled the pin, and threw it as far as he could toward the rangers. The grenade went off with a spectacular starburst of furiously burning white phosphorus. Half of it reached the troops spread out on the dock, and they screamed with pain as the unstoppable phosphorus burned through cloth, flesh, and equipment. More than a dozen Kenyan rangers took off, running for the safety of the warehouse across the pier.