Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (25 page)

“You must be an American,” the younger woman said, trying to get her ears working.

“Yes, miss. Now please, hurry with us. We don’t have much time.”

Five minutes later in Benyamin’s house, the older woman told them what she knew.

“Yaron never really told me everything about the cave. It was a hideout, an emergency shelter and bomb shelter if we were ever attacked. We didn’t have time to get all of us up there, but he and Ronen went. My Yaron said we should stay here. I don’t know who told the Syrians that Mr. Kugel was staying with us.”

“Your last name might have helped, ma’am,” Murdock said. “How can we find the cave?”

“I’ll draw you a map, but Benyamin will have to show you. It’s not easy to find.”

“How far is it?”

“Maybe five miles north. The Syrians are still in this whole area.”

“I’ve got fifteen men to help us get there,” Murdock said. “Please draw the map quickly so we can get moving. If I have a map, and we get separated, I’ll still have a chance to find it.”

“Six men in town know about it. I think two or three of them may be up there.” She drew a map with a ballpoint pen on a piece of lined paper and gave it to Murdock. It showed north and south, a settlement, two roads, and some hills. Benyamin had changed clothes, into jeans, hiking boots, and an old leather jacket and felt hat. He carried a rifle, and a box of shells showed out of his pocket.

“Let’s go,” he said. “You two Kugels keep hidden. We’ve got a basement storage under the rug. Better get down there now. There are candles and food and water. The Syrians are going to be searching every house. They lost a few men up there. They won’t be happy.”

Benyamin’s wife smiled. “I’ll take care of the womenfolk. You men get moving. It’s a good hike.”

Ten minutes later the three men topped the small hill where the fourteen SEALs waited. Lam worked up to within four feet of Gardner before the JG knew he was there.

“Damnit, Lam. I never heard a sound. How do you do that?”

“Show you sometime. We’re moving north. We’ve got a line where our boy might be stashed.”

“Column of ducks, platoon, moving north,” Gardner said on the Motorola. “Let’s go, Lam. Get us caught up with our leader.”

The platoon worked north with Lam out front. They had gone less than a quarter of a mile when Lam came back from his scouting position.

“We’ve got something up front I don’t like, Skipper. Come take a look.”

Murdock, Gardner, and Benyamin eased up a small hill and looked over the top. Seventy-five yards below they saw Syrians.

“A pair of bloody tanks,” Gardner said.

“Looks like they are in reserve or maybe getting repaired,” Lam said. “Must be more than a dozen men down there. Trouble is there’s a cliff on the far side of them we don’t want to climb, and on this side there’s a good-sized river we can’t cross.”

“Yeah, bottleneck,” Benyamin said. “This is one of the best routes north, and those two tanks are plugging it in case of a breakthrough by the Israeli Army.”

“So we take them out,” Murdock said. He used the Motorola. “Everyone up front. I want the twenties on line at this rear slope. Move it.”

“Twenties?” Benyamin asked. “You have twenty-millimeter weapons?”

Murdock held out his Bull Pup. “This one, Ben. It has a twenty on top and a 5.56 below. We can even use this for airbursts.” He explained how it worked as the SEALs moved into position.

“What I wouldn’t have given to have had one of those thirty years ago,” Benyamin said.

Murdock checked the seven Bull Pup shooters, then talked with Benyamin again. “We do need to go through here, to get farther north to find the cave?”

“Absolutely.”

On the Motorola, Murdock said: “Two rounds each, airbursts. Three men on left of the line, hit around the left-hand tank. Rest of us the other one. Sight in now and use airbursts and fire when you hear my round.” Murdock sprawled on the ground, lined up his target for the laser, and pulled the trigger. The round slammed out of the muzzle and almost at once, six more 20mm fragmentation rounds lanced toward the tanks.

They sounded like seven giant firecrackers exploding one after another and some on top of each other. All were airbursts showering hot, deadly shrapnel on everyone and everything below. Four men around a campfire died before they could move. Three others coming into the clearing from some brush went down and tried to crawl away. The second seven rounds stopped them dead where they lay. A small tent to the left side caught so much shrapnel that it teetered and then fell. One man struggled out of the tent only to have Bradford nail him with a round from his sniper rifle.

“Hold,” Murdock said. “Drop anybody with sniper, and MP-5 anybody who moves,” Murdock said. Four rounds sounded, then silence claimed the land.

“Lam, let’s take a look,” Murdock said. They ran down the first fifty yards, then flattened and watched. They saw nothing move. Both men got to their feet and without making any sounds came to the site. Murdock counted twelve bodies. The tank hatches were open. He dropped a fragmentation grenade in one and Lam put one in the second tank, in case any Syrians had been hiding inside.

“Clear front,” Murdock said on the radio. “Bring the troops through.”

When the SEALs had checked over the bodies and found them all dead, Murdock and Lam tore the uniform shirt off one man and cut it up into strips they could feed
down the fuel filler on the two tanks. When they smelled the fuel soaking the wicks, they moved the SEALs north and then lit the wicks and ran upslope as well. They were less than fifty yards up the small valley when the first fuel tank exploded. That set off the high explosive tank rounds inside the shell, blowing the machine into several large pieces of junk. The other fuel tank blew a few seconds later.

“Scratch two tanks and crews,” Murdock said. He looked at Benyamin. “Remind you of your army days?”

“Nothing quite this dramatic. Mostly hit-and-run in those days. We’ve got about four miles to go; we better hustle before the Syrians come to check on their tanks.”

Lam soon found a trail through a harvested wheat field in the valley. He talked to Murdock and Benyamin about it.

“Wasn’t made by Israelis,” Benyamin said. “Has to be Syrians using this as a major route for ground troops to keep away from the planes that have been bombing and strafing trucks coming down from Lebanon with supplies and troops.”

“They probably come at night to avoid the planes,” Murdock said. “So we better get off the trail and into the fringes of brush along the edge of the valley.”

“And we better see them before they see us,” Lam said. He led them to the right, away from the trail.

Ten minutes later he called a warning. “Troops on the move in the valley; everyone better hit the dirt.”

The growing moon played tag with scudding clouds now as Murdock watched the middle of the two-hundred-yard-wide valley. Soon he heard a motorcycle idling along. Then the machine came out of the gloom. An officer, Murdock figured. Behind him, moving at a fast march, came a string of troops, two abreast and not more than arm’s length apart. One well-placed twenty would kill forty of them. Murdock didn’t count, but Lam did. He came on the horn.

“Cap, I figure there were over two hundred in that batch. All had their rifles, some sub guns. Reinforcements for the front?”

“You got it, Little Beaver,” Murdock said.

“Little Beaver? Who the hell is that?” Lam asked.

“Long before your time. Old comic strip from the forties called Red Ryder. A Western hero with Little Beaver, his ten-year-old Indian companion, who was always saying, ‘You betchum, Red Ryder.’ ”

“Thanks for that, Skipper,” George Canzoneri said. “I couldn’t have lived another hour without that vital bit of folklore and history.”

“You’re welcome, Zorro.”

“He was Mexican, I’m Italian.”

“Close enough,” Murdock said. “Lead us out again, Lam. I’m putting Benyamin up there with you. He says somewhere near the spot it gets tricky.”

“Roger that.”

It was almost forty minutes later when Lam called a halt.

“Skipper, you better get up here. I’m out about fifty ahead on another little rise at the edge of the valley. It peters out in another half mile, Ben tells me. Something you need to check out.”

Murdock, Gardner, and Sadler made the short hike. They bellied down in the grass and looked over the crest of the little hill.

Below them about two hundred yards they saw a huge splash of light in the otherwise dark countryside. They could hear a number of diesel engines purring along that must be running generators. Lights had been strung on poles down a company street of at least ten twenty-man wall tents. Inside, ten folding cots could be set up on each side. A medium tank, like the two they had destroyed, sat with the muzzle of the 75- to 80mm cannon aimed south toward the Israeli lines. Murdock spotted three jeeps, two six-by-six trucks, what had to be a mess tent and a cook tent, and others on the opposite side of the company street, probably for offices and officers. It was just before 2200 and Murdock saw twenty men moving around, with no obvious direction or hurry.

“Ben says he thinks it’s a regimental or divisional rear headquarters. He knows the area. It’s about eight miles
west of the major north-south highway, with a good paved road in this far.”

“That will be a problem,” Gardner said. “Do we have to go around them?”

“No, we won’t go around them,” Lam said. “Ben says this is close to the place where they had the secret cave and their stash of goods and arms. Now take a close look to the left in that open space opposite the tank.” He pulled down his binoculars and handed them to Ben. “Three men have been stripped naked and tied to poles dug deep into the ground. Ben tells me that’s one way that they execute deserters and killers in their ranks. Justice is quick if not always just.”

“Who are the three men?” Murdock asked.

“That’s the problem,” Lam said. “Ben took my glasses and worked down to within about thirty yards of the poles. He got a good look at them and came back. He says he knows all three men. Two are friends of his from Karmi’el, the other one is the guy we’re looking for, Ronen Kugel.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Lieutenant (j.g.) Gardner asked nobody.

“We start earning our big bucks,” Murdock said. On the Motorola he called up Jaybird, Bradford, and Sadler. “All we have to do is wade in there and bring Kugel out without his hide sporting a dozen rifle bullet holes,” Murdock said. He looked at Ben. “Are they tied up there to be shot in the morning, or is this some kind of torture?”

“Most likely a torture. You know how hot the sun gets here in the daytime, and it don’t look like rain.”

“We’ve got to get all three of them out of there tonight. Did it look like they were wounded or hurt?”

“Not that I could see. No big wounds or broken bones.”

“Let’s pull down the reverse slope ten,” Murdock said. When they were down, they gathered around Murdock just as the other three came up. Lam took them up to look at the problem. When they got back down, Murdock started it. “We have to rescue those three men. How do we do it? Assets?”

“We have seven twenties and can put down most of them away from the prisoners,” Sadler said.

“We can call in the chopper who has a gunner with two fifty-caliber MGs,” Jaybird said. “We use it to stage an attack on the north side of the camp. Pull most of their men up there.”

“Then we take out the ones around the prisoners with silenced shots,” Bradford said. “Get within thirty yards in the brush and shoot them with silenced rounds, then
charge in and get the prisoners off their posts and up this hill.”

“Then the bird drops down, grabs us, and takes us back near that town,” Lam said. “We drop off our three Israeli guests and then charge over the MLR home free.”

“We could hit the far tents with twenties to mark the target for the chopper,” Gardner said. “They wouldn’t know where the airbursts came from. It just might work.”

“A real attack would include ground-based machinegun fire and rifle fire,” Jaybird said. “How can we fake that?”

“We can’t unless we send a squad up north and then fire into the same area as the twenties hit,” Lam said. “Then they would have some direction of the fire and they’d send out a company to chase down our squad. We don’t want that.”

Murdock rubbed his right hand over his face. He needed a shave. “If we hit them we have to be ready to bug out of here fast. That means having a chopper on our PD almost at once. So we need two choppers. How long from Haifa to get to where the other chopper should be, Jaybird?”

“Half an hour tops.”

“Let’s pull back a quarter click and leave Ben and Lam up here as our OP. Bradford, as soon as we get situated, get that antenna zeroed in. How do we talk to Stroh in Haifa?”

“TAC Two. He should be waiting for us.”

Fifteen minutes later they were in a secure area with two guards out and Murdock made the call.

Stroh wasn’t pleased with the plan.

“Look, they have your boy naked and tied to a pole. He may have been tied out there all day today or for two days, and be half-dead already. If the sun is out tomorrow, he could be dead by sixteen-hundred. You want that?”

“Hell no, but two forty-sixes?”

“We need them. Get that other one in the air pronto, have it meet the first one, and then they come across the MLR when we tell them to. Both of them with fifty-caliber door gunners. We’re about six miles north of
Karmi’el. When we know they are ready to cross the MLR, we’ll start our firefight down here and lead them in. Be sure we can talk to them on TAC One or Two.”

Murdock let up on the send button and waited. He snorted and pushed the button again.

“You want this scientist back or don’t you? He’s worth a dozen forty-sixes, you know that. Now, stop squirming and worrying about what your boss is gonna say, and fly that other bird over here, now.”

Another silence. This time Murdock waited. At last the speaker came on. “Yeah. Okay. One more forty-six with door gunners and fifty calibers. On the way. I’ll have them coordinate with you on TAC Two when they are in position at Zefat.” There were several seconds of dead air. “Murdock.”