Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (15 page)

He stood in the tank, his head and shoulders out of the top hatch, staring with his binoculars into the night ahead of him. At first he had been surprised to see others using field glasses at night, but he soon learned that the lenses not only magnify the images in the distance, but intensify what light is available. He had begged his section chief for night vision goggles, so he could see what was out there. The colonel said tanks didn’t fight at night, so he didn’t need the expensive NVG.

Major Rahman had been a career soldier in the Syrian Army. He was due for a promotion to light colonel, and this fight would seal his advancement-but only if his platoon performed well and drove the hated Israelis far, far into their lands. His son would soon join the army. He had attended a military secondary school and then gone to the military academy and would graduate in two months as a second lieutenant. Yes, he was proud of his son who had wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He would apply for the mechanized service and should wind up commanding a tank within six months.

In that time the Syrian Army could be in Tel Aviv! He savored the thought, then listened to the radio speaker in his ear.

“Red Sector. Be alert. We have reports of platoon-sized line crossers with anti-tank weapons in your area. No contact, but be on the alert.”

At once the major dropped down and closed the hatch, locking it in place.

“Watch out the ports, we may have visitors,” he snapped at the crew. Nothing could go wrong tonight and in the morning. Absolutely nothing. His whole future depended on it.

Ten minutes later the radio came on again. “The alert is canceled in the Red Sector. The line crossers turned out
to be a small herd of cattle that frequent the zone. Stay alert. We have an hour and twenty minutes to our attack time.”

The darkness of time crept so slowly forward. Seconds seemed like minutes and hours. Every five minutes Major Rahman checked his luminous-dial wristwatch. When it was 0555, the major roused his crew, put them through a checklist, and made ready to start the engines. Daylight was due at 0559. He was ready. He adjusted the earphones on his headset, locked down the hatch, and waited for the call on the radio.

0600 and no call. Then it was 0603.

“Tankers, start your engines. You have a twenty-second warm-up, then we will push off and attack.”

It was his section chief and Rahman knew the voice. They were starting. He said a quick prayer to Allah, then heard the engines start and labor a moment, then settle down to a steady purr.

“Tanks, forward. Attack now. Go with Allah.”

The tank surged forward along with the other three in his group. No obstacles lay directly ahead, only the gentle downslope of the valley. Further on stood an abandoned shack and outbuildings that they would mash down as they charged forward. The four tanks were on a line now moving ahead at ten miles an hour as programmed. Major Rahman knew there were two companies of infantry behind the four tanks. His tanks would blast any defenses and plow through them and the infantry would mop up any resistance left.

It was almost full daylight now, and he could see well out his viewport. The last quarter mile of the buffer zone was coming up and so far they had seen no opposition. He scanned the landscape just ahead of him. A small ravine emptied into the valley from the left, just inside the border of Israel, but he saw no problem. The land ahead had been scraped down to bare earth, leaving no cover or concealment for any soldiers. The major was sure that machine guns had been set up to cover the area with over-lapping fields of fire. The machine guns wouldn’t hurt the
tank, and his job was to find and silence the guns so the soldiers could move ahead.

The end tank in the row had surged ten yards beyond the others and the major was just ready to use the radio to call him back into line when the tank suddenly tilted sharply forward, diving nose first into a deep ditch.

“Tank trap, all halt,” the major yelled into his radio throat mike. “All reverse and hold.” He watched the number four tank try to back out of the pit. Only a third of the tank showed, the rest was tracks down into the ditch, which must have been ten feet deep. It was cleverly camouflaged to hide from their air surveillance cameras and forward observers. It probably ran along here for a half mile. The major used the radio on TAC 2 and called the infantry captain behind him.

“Lance, Footloose Two, come in.”

“Yes. This is Footloose Two.”

“This is Lance One, we’ve hit tank traps. I need twenty men up here to check out the position of the ditch, how deep and how long and where it ends. On the double.”

“Yes sir, Major, three squads on the way. They will probe forward, find the ditch, and set the camo on fire to show its length.”

“There will probably be defensive fire,” Rahman said.

They tried to pull number four tank out of the trap. Number two fastened chains on it and dug in to reverse. They lost two men to snipers as they chained the tanks together. Then after five minutes of work, the number four tank dug enough of the side of the tank trap away that the other rig could help it get out of the trap. They lost another man as they unhitched the chain.

By then Major Rahman had the length of the trap. He could see the flaming canvas that covered the ditch. It extended for almost a half mile to the left and a quarter of a mile to the right. He chose the right end and turned and charged that way, leaving the advance across the tank traps to the infantry. He told them he’d meet them back on their sector straight ahead. Now he was behind schedule. Rahman cursed the Israelis. There had been no sign of a deep tank trap so close to the border. Now a quarter
of a mile down, around the end, and back to his sector. He would be at least fifteen minutes late. He led the four tanks down past infantry that had moved across the tank trap and pushed slowly forward. They also were without any tank support.

There were six tanks stacked up ahead of him at the narrow access across the tank trap. He was standing up in the hatch now, head and shoulders outside, watching everything. There didn’t seem to be much Israeli infantry in the area. He dropped down. No use taking a chance like that when he didn’t have to. He checked out the port and saw he was now number two in line to get across. His sergeant was moving the unit nicely.

Then right in front of him thirty yards a tank took a direct hit and exploded. He felt his own rig stop and veer to the right, away from the crossing. A round exploded where they had been moments before. Tank rounds. The damned Israeli tanks had come up and waited for a good target. He yelled at his sergeant driver.

“Get us out of here. Move us, hard right and rear, go.”

Another tank round slammed into the dirt just ahead of them and the sergeant braked one track and skidded the tank back to the left and then to the right as he powered away from the danger. They worked quickly behind a small mound and for a moment they were safe.

A little more than two thousand feet overhead David “Cool Hand” Eleazar slanted down with the F-18, brought another tank into the crosshairs of his sights, and then pressed the button. The eight-foot-long Maverick air-to-ground missile, with three hundred pounds of high explosives, jetted away from the undercarriage and lanced in at the target. The lead tank in the platoon of four didn’t have a chance. The missile exploded with a thundering roar where it hit just in back of the hatch, smashing it flat on one side and detonating the thirty high explosive rounds for their long gun. The whole tank shattered, sending parts raining down on the other three tanks that raced away from the spot, heading in any direction where they thought there might be safety.

Inside his tank Major Hosni Rahman never heard the
missile coming. He had just gained the safety of the hill so the Israeli tanks couldn’t see him, when his world ceased to exist and he flashed into the nothingness of a dreamless sleep and a world without light or thought or anything but the blackness of an eternal void.

Northern Military Command

Haifa, Israel

Israeli Air Force General Menuhin stared at an eight-foot-high map of the border with Lebanon that hung on his office wall. It was an extremely large-scale map with villages, hills and ravines, buildings, and the bunkers, machine guns, tank hideouts, and the strength of all the frontline Israeli troops committed to defending the home border.

Jagged red lines had been drawn on the board showing incursions by enemy tanks.

“They have to be Syrian tanks,” an aid said. “Lebanon doesn’t have any tanks of this type.”

Other markers on the board showed where tanks had been destroyed or disabled. Eighteen of the invading tanks had been taken out of action.

“One platoon of armor in the eastern section has penetrated almost ten miles,” a colonel said. “They have no infantry with them and our planes have cut them down from four to two. We have a section of our tanks moving up into that area and they should contact the enemy within ten minutes.”

“Our MLR has been overrun in six places, and the ground troops are moving behind tanks in a slow advance on half of the front,” a colonel with infantry patches on his shoulders said. “We have lost about five hundred men so far, dead and wounded, but all have been carried back to our new front lines, where diesel trucks have been picking them up and returning them to hospitals in the rear areas.”

“General, we have a real air war going on out there,” a bird colonel with wings on his blouse said. “We brought up thirty fighters, but Syria has put over fifty in the air to support their tanks. Another thirty of our F-14s and F-18s
have been sent up, but won’t be armed and ready for another hour. Then it’s fifteen minutes from Tel Aviv up to the front.”

“Where can we stop them?” General Menuhin asked.

“We need control of the air. So far our F-14s have shot down eight of the enemy and we have lost two. We need to sweep the planes out of the picture.”

“Do we know where they fly from?” General Menuhin asked.

“We think they come from an airfield called Dimashq, in Syria about twenty miles south of Damascus.”

“Have two of our F-14s follow any returning Syrian planes and report where they land. Then put twenty F-18s on a raid to take out as many of the planes on the ground as possible and to disrupt the air base by hitting hangars, fuel dumps, launching facilities. Do that before nightfall. Go.”

The air force colonel hurried out of the room.

“Gentlemen, we have about half the radios that we usually use. That restricts us. We must get more radios into the field to contact the infantry and tank defenders. Eleazar, get on a radio to Tel Aviv and have them dig up all the radios they can find that we can use, and have them flown up here within two hours. Go.”

General Menuhin moved to his desk and drummed his fingers on top. “Now, what else can we do? Fly in reserves from the south, anywhere south. We need more men in the front line to blunt this charge. One captain told me he had a hundred and forty men to defend a stretch of the MLR three hundred yards across. At dawn he found three tanks coming at him and behind them more than a thousand Syrian troops stumbling over each other eager to die for Allah. He had to pull back. He lost twenty men, and now is in a holding position on a wooded hill where the tanks can’t come and where the Syrian Army is unwilling to charge up the hill. We need more help for heroes like this one. Who can rattle out the most troops by chopper the fastest?”

Nobody volunteered. He looked around his staff. “Major Almon, you get the job. Get a chopper from here down
to Tel Aviv and start rounding up troops. Cooks, medics, artillery-anybody who can carry a rifle. Get a thousand men up here with weapons and three hundred rounds of ammo each before dark. Go.”

The general picked up his phone, scowled at the high whine he got from the line, and slammed it down. “When in hell are they going to get the lights back on and the phones fixed? Damn pulse bomb is causing a lot more problems than I figured it would.” He shook his head and went back to the map where men and women had been moving the markers. He saw another incursion over ten miles into Israel along the eastern border.

“We’ve got to stop them before they get any farther.”

On the Shiloh

Off Haifa, Israel

Murdock looked up, surprise washing over his face. “Stroh, how the hell did you get here?”

“The same way you did. Only I had to borrow a flown-in army radio in Haifa and call Tel Aviv. They put me through to the embassy, where they patched me into a SATCOM and I called my chief in D.C. and he called the
Shiloh.
Somebody on board sent a chopper into Haifa to get me and here we all are.”

“Why? The pulse bomb has been dropped. The Syrians or somebody must be invading Israel. They have their hands full, but I don’t see how we can help.”

“An invasion for sure. The Syrians made two tank thrusts. One went down the coast road and penetrated over ten miles. The other one went down the east side of Israel next to the Sea of Galilee. Almost no opposition for ten miles.”

The rest of the SEALs crowded around in the compartment they’d been given to use while on board.

“Don’t see how that involves us.” Jaybird said.

“You will.” Stroh sat down on the edge of a bunk and frowned. “The drive came fast, almost none of the Jews in the area could get away. On the eastern thrust, the tanks and infantry quickly overran a kibbutz where ten American college students were staying for the summer. One of the girls was on a web site chat room with a friend and the friend in New York found out exactly where she was and who was with her in their talk. Then the whole thing
fried when the pulse went out and the girl in New York knew something bad had happened. She called her father who is some biggie in the city and he called his senator and the senator … you know the rest.”

“So we go in and bring them out,” Lam said. “No big deal. Ten of them, six of us. We can get sixteen in a sixty, can’t we, Jaybird?”

“Maybe, if nobody breathes. If they don’t bring their two torpedoes along. They don’t have any firepower. We’d have to use MGs in the doors. They can leave the sensor operator on board the ship to lighten the load a little.”