Direct Action (22 page)

When Murdock emerged from the troop compartment, he saw Razor and Magic pulling the deadweight of a blood-soaked Syrian out of the turret hatch. He had been the only one inside the vehicle.

The rest of the SEALs were stripping the other Syrians of their equipment. The bodies were then dragged off into the trees. The weapons and equipment were tossed into the troop compartment.

“Okay,” Murdock said, anxious to be on the road. “Who knows how to drive a BMP?”

It was not outside the conceivable range of skills possessed by a SEAL platoon.

“I drove a T-62 at Aberdeen Proving Ground one time,” said Higgins.

Jaybird came out of the trees, wiping the blood off his hand onto his trousers and grinning triumphantly. “I drove a BMP at National Training Center,” he announced.

“Well, what the fuck are you waiting for, an invitation?” Razor Roselli growled impatiently. “Get in and drive the motherfucker already.”

Jaybird did just that. It had been a while since enemy vehicle familiarization training at Fort Irwin, and it took a minute to get reacquainted with all the controls and instruments. Then he worked the engine’s pneumatic starter, and the six-cylinder, three-hundred-horsepower water-cooled diesel roared to life.

Murdock went over to the turret first, but the entire compartment was drenched with blood and splattered bits of flesh. He had no idea how to operate the 73mm gun and Sagger antitank missile system anyway. At least that was how he rationalized his decision.

Instead he jumped into the vehicle commander’s hatch located directly behind Jaybird. Lying across the seat was a padded wool Russian armored vehicle crew helmet. It smelled like it had been worn continuously and not washed since World War II. Not inconceivable, since the Russians had worn the
same model helmet fifty years back. Murdock put it on anyway; otherwise he wouldn’t be able to hear over the vehicle intercom system.

Hanging on a hook was a microphone that also looked like it dated back to World War II. In good Russian fashion there were diagrams denoting the function of the switches and dials, for those who couldn’t read. The communications switch was set on radio. Murdock turned it to what looked like intercom. He keyed the microphone and, a little apprehensive at the prospect of mistakenly transmitting to the entire Syrian Army, tentatively asked, “Jaybird?”

“Yes, sir?” came the reply.

Murdock was able to look back over his shoulder and see into the troop compartment. The rest of the SEALs had climbed in. They had closed the clamshell rear doors and were in the process of opening the four troop-compartment roof hatches to let in some air. Razor Roselli gave him the thumbs-up to let him know they had everyone and were ready to move.

“Let’s go, Jaybird,” Murdock said over the intercom. He’d jacked his seat up until his head was sticking out the hatch. If you stayed down inside the vehicle you couldn’t see squat out the thick glass vision blocks.

“Where to, sir?”

“Swing this thing around and head south. Take the first real road you see on your right. That’s the one that heads up into the mountains.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Because it was a tracked vehicle, the BMP was steered by a clutch-and-brake system. Each track had an independent brake. So to make a left turn, the driver locked the brake on the left track while allowing the right track to continue to roll. The longer the brake was held down, the tighter the turn. It took a little getting used to.

Jaybird shifted the transmission into first gear, locked the brake on the left track, and released the clutch on the right.

The BMP lurched around 180 degrees, on a dime. A large dime, but still a dime. It lurched around so quickly that Murdock’s head went clanging off the side of the hatch opening. Smelly or not, he was grateful for the padded helmet. He could hear the SEALs and equipment spilling around the inside of the troop compartment, and decided not to look back.

As the BMP finished its turn, Jaybird popped the clutch on the left track and headed them straight down the road. A heavy tank rides very smooth, but a light armored vehicle takes bumps surprisingly hard.

Fourth gear on the BMP topped out at around thirty-five miles an hour. In a rare flash of prudence, Jaybird decided not to shift into fifth gear or get anywhere near the top speed of fifty miles an hour until he got the hang of the vehicle.

“This is the turn,” Murdock said into the microphone.

Jaybird waited just a bit too long before downshifting and braking the right track. The BMP went right past the turn. Jaybird turned anyway, and the BMP went up and over a grassy embankment and made a teeth-shattering drop back onto the road.

The BMP bounced nicely, and this time Murdock’s head hit the front of the hatch ring.

“Take it easy, goddammit!” he shouted into the intercom.

“Sorry, sir,” came the reply. Jaybird straightened the BMP out and headed up the road.

Murdock looked up ahead, and could see the road snake up into the mountains. He felt better than he had all afternoon, and was almost enjoying himself. If you considered staying alive the ultimate expression of luck, then theirs had been pretty good. But with all the trouble they’d had staying alive, it could have been a lot better. Murdock thought he could feel everything turning around.

The BMP climbed steadily upward. Hot shit, Murdock thought.

1550 hours

North central Lebanese mountains

“Careful, Jaybird,” Murdock cautioned over the BMP intercom. “We slip off this road and we’ll all be playing harps.” He chuckled to himself and keyed the microphone again. “And Razor’ll be ramming his up your ass for the rest of eternity.”

“I get the picture, sir,” Jaybird replied over the system. “Thanks.”

The road zigzagged along the sides of the switchback ridges. Fortunately, the steep slope meant that Jaybird couldn’t get the BMP much over twenty-five miles an hour. Murdock was glad that at least nature was able to exert some influence over Jaybird.

Murdock turned around in his hatch and looked out over the valley. Razor had been right. He could almost picture the Syrians down below beating the brush for them. At least the sun was starting to drop into the west. It felt like the longest day of the whole fucking year.

All the SEALs were hanging out of the troop compartment roof hatches. The BMP was not a large vehicle. It was designed to tightly accommodate eight small Russian infantrymen sitting
four back-to-back in the troop compartment. To give an idea of the fit, the Russians were in the habit of donning their gas masks and sliding the hoses out the roof hatches in order to get some air. Staring at the steel wall while the BMP bounced up and down was almost guaranteed to induce vomiting.

Now the road was on a long, straight uphill run along the side of the mountain range. The right side of the road sat snug against the sheer side of the mountain. The left side was a long drop into the canyon below. Of course there were no guardrails. Just short of the top, the road made a hard right turn in the opposite direction, still heading up. That put the mountainside on the left, the drop on the right. It would continue that way right over the top and down the other side of the mountain.

Jaybird made the turn very slowly, jiggling the right-track brake and left-track clutch on and off so the BMP turned a few degrees, stopped, turned a bit more, stopped, and then moved slowly forward. When the turn was accomplished, Murdock reached out and gave Jaybird a complimentary tap atop the helmet.

Then Murdock looked out and saw one of the Gazelle helicopters sweeping up the valley. It seemed the size of a golf ball in the distance. Then Murdock was looking down at fluttering rotor blades as the Gazelle rose toward the mountains, following the road.

The SEALs disappeared into the troop compartment, which was good because the group included a few fair-haired and fair-skinned types who weren’t about to pass for Syrians.

Murdock picked up the microphone. “Jaybird, there’s a helicopter coming up to take a look at us. Just be cool and keep driving at a steady pace, like we’re going someplace we’re supposed to.”

“Roger that, sir.”

The helicopter approached cautiously. Murdock could make out the sand, brown, and blue camouflage, and the red, white, and black Syrian bull’s-eye roundels. He saw the clear bubble
front, the skids, the protruding tailpipe, and the finned fan-rotor tail. Murdock took no comfort from the fact that the copter was an antitank variant, armed with six French HOT heavy wire-guided missiles with a four-thousand-meter range; three tubes mounted in-line on each side of the cabin.

Murdock gave a friendly wave. The Gazelle moved up even with the BMP, but far enough off to the side to keep the rotor blades away from the side of the mountain. Murdock could see both the pilot and copilot/gunner looking over at him.

Murdock stood up higher in the hatch and pointed to the BMP’s whip radio aerial mounted on the roof of the vehicle at the left rear. Then he pointed to the earpiece on his crewman’s helmet, shaking his head and stretching his arms out in a gesture of helplessness. As if the reason why he wasn’t talking to them was that his radio was broken.

He could see the helicopter crew talking in their microphones.

It was a cold November day in the mountains, yet Murdock could feel the perspiration trickling down his back. Something tapped his right leg. He looked down, and Razor Roselli’s face was looking up at him.

“Everyone’s got their gear on,” Razor shouted. “You want us to shoot the motherfucker down, just let me know.”

Murdock was still smiling and waving at the helicopter. “No shooting,” he said through his teeth. “Just stay ready and keep out of sight.”

Razor gave him a reassuring tap on the leg and disappeared back into the compartment.

Murdock pretended to speak into his microphone, as if giving it another try, then pointed to it and shook his head sadly. He decided it was time to ignore the Gazelle, so he gave a final wave and shrug of the shoulders and turned back to his front.

After a very long minute the Gazelle began a slow, sweeping turn away from the mountain and back toward the valley. It
grew smaller in the distance, but wasn’t losing any altitude. Murdock noticed that the BMP had almost reached the top of the mountain range.

Then, off in the distance, the helicopter made another turn. It was in a stationary hover, and its nose was pointing directly at the BMP.

A small puff of gray smoke appeared in the sky beside the helicopter.

Murdock screamed into the microphone and the troop compartment at the same time. “Stop! Everybody out! Bail out, bail out, bail out!”

1620 hours

North central Lebanese mountains

With his drag bag in one hand and the AKM in the other, Murdock leaped from his seat right over the side of the BMP. He’d been counting in his head the whole time, and was up to thousand-six, thousand-seven.

He hit the ground and rolled to his feet. Thousand-nine, thousand-ten. Jaybird Sterling was in front of him, trying to get up off the ground. Murdock shifted his gear in his hands, grabbed Jaybird by the belt, and lifted him up bodily.

The SEALs in the back of the BMP didn’t bother with the rear doors. They poured out the top hatches while the BMP was still rolling.

Razor Roselli actually saw the missile coming in at them. He grabbed Professor Higgins and threw him off the road. Higgins slid down the gravel slope face-first, with Razor and DeWitt close behind him.

Doc and Magic went out the other side of the BMP, which faced the side of the mountain. There was nothing they could do but run down the road.

Now Murdock and Jaybird were running up it. Thousand-thirteen,
thousand-fourteen. The explosion picked them up and threw them face down onto the road.

The Gazelle’s pilot had been careful to pull back out of cannon and machine-gun range before he allowed the gunner to launch the HOT missile. HOT time of flight to three thousand meters was thirteen seconds. To four thousand meters max range, it was 17.3 seconds.

When armor-piercing shape-charge warheads are tested, they leave holes in steel over a yard deep but less than an inch in diameter. Very much like a stream of water coming out of a hose and boring a hole in mud. But when a fast-moving missile with a shape-charge warhead hits steel, the dynamic impact effect is quite different.

The HOT hit with a blinding flash and blew a hole in the top of the BMP large enough for a man to climb through. The shape charge jet went all the way through the vehicle and out the floor. The forty rounds of 73mm cannon ammunition, two thousands rounds of machine-gun ammunition, and four Sagger missile reloads chain-detonated in rapid succession. White-hot flame blasted out all the hatch openings. The diesel fuel ignited in a fireball.

Murdock rolled in the dirt in case he was on fire. This time Jaybird dragged him to his feet, and they were running again. After a thirty-yard sprint up the road, they were able to get off it and into a wall of boulders that spread up into the mountaintop. After a short climb, they threw their weapons over the top of a boulder and scrambled over themselves. They landed in a sizable crevice in the rocks.

Explosions blow up and out, so Razor, DeWitt, and Higgins had been spared the force of the blast. But now flaming metal and debris was raining down all around them.

“Across the slope,” Razor shouted. “We gotta get up the road. Cut across the slope.”

Magic and Doc weren’t far from the BMP when the missile hit. Magic could feel the heat right through the soles of his
boots. His head hurt. The back of the heavy drag bag had cracked him across the skull when he hit the ground.

They crawled down the road away from the flaming vehicle. Magic looked over and saw Doc’s trousers smoldering. He leaped up, pinned Doc down, and threw dirt on him to put it out. It was only then Magic realized that his clothing was smoking too. He rolled off Doc and threw handfuls of dirt over himself.