Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (7 page)

Don Stroh stepped into the big room and the men started yelling at him in Arabic. He grinned and shook his head.

“Don’t know that lingo, but I hope you aren’t saying bad things about me. Otherwise I chop off your eating privileges.” The CIA man looked at Murdock. “How did it go?”

“We’re getting a start. What are we going to be doing in Syria? They starting a war or something?”

“ ‘Something’ is right, but we can’t talk about it yet. We’re still tying down the exact location of the target.”

“Target? Why not use a laser bomb?” Jaybird asked.

“Anonymity, my small friend. We don’t want to advertise that we did this little deed. We don’t want anyone to know who did it. Therefore we can’t have anything on us or with us that might tie the act down to the U.S.”

“Weapons?” Murdock asked.

“The last day you get weapon training. All will be with European-made guns. H and K will be fine, but nothing U.S.-made.”

“We going in by ourselves?” Rafii asked.

“We’re still working on that. There will be a field team
of CIA people with you; we just don’t know how many or where they will originate.”

“They the brains and we’re support?” Lam asked.

“On this one we’ll need all the brains we can get. But you will be backup and support. Nobody lays down a field of fire like you guys do. Our people understand that and welcome you.”

“About damn time,” Jaybird said, and they laughed, cutting the tension in the room.

Don Stroh turned back to Murdock. “No lie, four albacore tuna per pole?”

“Earlier in the year. Down to about one and a half to two per pole last week. Of course that’s no guarantee. The best fishermen will get six or eight and most tourists will get none or maybe one if they’re lucky.”

“I plan on being lucky. Maybe when we get back from our Syrian vacation, I can take a run out to San Diego.”

“Hopefully. What’s up for tomorrow?”

“At oh-eight-hundred you get Syrian law and customs for two hours, then language for two. In the afternoon more Syrian customs and how to fade into a Syrian crowd. Then two more hours of language. After chow call at seventeen-thirty you get three more hours of Arabic. Then you hit the sack and dream in Arabic until the wake up call at oh-five-thirty.”

“We’re back in boot camp,” Lam said.

“Say that in Arabic, sailor,” Stroh barked.

“I can’t, not yet. Give me three more days.”

“Good, now study those Arabic/English books you got this afternoon.” Stroh smiled. “Hey, I wouldn’t have yelled and screamed to get you guys on this assignment if I didn’t think you could handle it. Our CIA guys wanted to go in by themselves. I convinced them they needed some real fighting types along.”

“Thanks a bunch, Stroh,” Jaybird said.

“No thanks needed. See you tomorrow.” Stroh hurried out the door.

“Is that guy for real?” Fernandez asked.

Murdock said the same line in Arabic. Then pointed at
Fernandez. “Repeat what I said. It’s Arabic for what you just asked.”

They kept working on the language and the book until Murdock called a halt at 2300.

“Lights out, men. We’ll hit it again tomorrow.”

The Arabic language and customs and culture lessons went well the next three days. Then the last day they went to the range and met their new tools.

Murdock looked at the weapons on the folding table and smiled. He picked up a small submachine gun that could be fired with one hand. It was less than eleven inches long, spit out 9mm Parabellums and could chatter off seven hundred rounds per minute.

A CIA arms specialist nodded at Murdock. “Dandy little weapon. Made in Peru, called the MGP-15. We like it without the folding stock for easy concealment. Magazine takes thirty-two rounds and is interchangeable with the Uzi magazine. We can provide you with one per man if you want them.”

They had their pick of weapons. The standard H K MP-5 was on the table in a configuration that fired. 40-caliber Smith and Wesson rounds.

Murdock looked at the display. There were no long weapons on the table. He dug out Stroh. “What’s with all of these short-range weapons? Does that mean that we’re parachuting in?”

Stroh gave Murdock one of those “I can’t tell you” looks, then took a deep breath. “Actually we’re not sure yet. Getting into Syria can be a big hairy problem. Their airports and ticketing agencies are notorious for being hard to crack. We could even go over the Golan Heights and use cars to motor into the capital. We’re just not sure yet. We have four agents inside Syria now who will be working with you on this project. It’s high profile and top secret, if you can use those two ideas together. You find out about it tomorrow morning on your last day here. Our director will give you the briefing with the chief of naval operations sitting beside him.”

“Does sound high profile. So, do we get some automatic rifles to look over or not?” Stroh pointed at another
table that had a waterproof plastic cover. Two men took off the cover. The table held twelve different automatic rifles. None of U.S. make.

“Yeah, okay. I’d say we should go with the MGP-15 from Peru. I want each man to have one. Will we have any need for sniper rifles?”

“I don’t know that much about the situation there,” Stroh said. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Okay, let’s go with two H and K PSGI sniper rifles. The 7.62-NATO-round and 20-round magazines. We’ll want them with the sound suppressor.” Murdock looked over the table of automatic rifles. The rest of the SEALs came up and checked out the group.

“We might as well go with the AK-47,” Jaybird said. “We know what it can do and it has a big enough slug to drop a lot of people in a rush.”

Murdock looked at the others, who nodded. Bradford picked up a rifle that looked a lot like the M-16. It was a Taiwan copy, only it didn’t have the carrying handle on top.

“Doesn’t feel right,” he said, putting it down. “Let’s do the AKs.”

Stroh had men uncover the third table. It had more than twenty different small hideout weapons on it.

“I want every man to have an ankle hideout,” Murdock said. “Pick the size and caliber you want. I’d go with the revolvers for reliability. No matter how much dust and dirt you wade through, the revolver is going to revolve and fire on demand. A sleek little automatic might jam up on your just when you need it.”

Murdock picked the Astra Cadix from Spain. It had a two-inch barrel and in. 22-caliber there were nine chambers to hold rounds. No safety, so he’d keep the ninth chamber empty. Beat five full chambers on a six-gun.

Two of the men chose the Welby RIC with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel and packing six chambers of. 45 heavy-hitting slugs. When they all had made their picks, the men behind the tables gave each 250 cartridges for his hideout weapon. They would pick up the rifles and sub guns the next day along with the ammo.

Stroh looked at the language coach, Marwan Jablah. “Now, gentlemen, if you will follow me to the classroom, we’ll get back to our language study.” Jablah said it in Arabic and all but Jaybird understood the thread of what he said. Jaybird grinned and followed them.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were devoted to Syrian culture, everyday customs, and the use of money.

“In Syria we use the Syrian pound, currently worth about fifty cents compared to a dollar. Two Syrian pounds equal one U.S. dollar. Remember that if you get to haggling with a merchant. And haggle they will.” He had said all of this in Arabic. They had learned the words for haggle and pound before. Now they understood the system a little better. At 2200, Jablah closed his book. He reverted to English.

“Gentlemen, it’s been interesting working with you SEALs. You do things most men just dream of doing. I hope our sessions here have been a help in giving you some tools to use in completing your mission in Syria, and in saving your own lives. I wish you good fortune, long life, and that all of you will return from this mission alive and well.”

Murdock shook the man’s hand, then turned to Stroh. “Come on, CIA big shot. Tell us what we’re going to be doing over there.”

Stroh wouldn’t budge. He shook his head, put on his game face, and waved Murdock off. “Tomorrow morning is your briefing. Then you’ll fly out tomorrow afternoon. Now get a good night’s sleep and be ready for what’s going to be facing you in the next week.”

Jaybird snorted. “Hell, Stroh, we figured out that much. You won’t tell us anything else, so I’m putting a Jaybird double whammy on you, so you won’t catch a single fish the next time you come out to Lotus Land.”

Murdock and the five other SEALs, wearing their Syrian outfits, sat in the conference room in a large office building and waited for the admiral to appear with the CIA director. Don Stroh hovered over the six like a mother ruffed grouse, reminding them to sit up straight, not to speak unless spoken to, and to leap to attention when the admiral came into the room.

“Stroh, we been doing that stand-up thing for a hundred and fifty years,” Jaybird said.

“Just don’t forget.”

Stroh wiped his forehead with a linen handkerchief, walked to the door, and came back. The conference room was one he seldom was in. He wasn’t in high strategy sessions that went on around the twelve-foot polished oak table. Pens and pads of paper and glasses of water perched at each place around the table, waiting to be used. Bradford had used his already, sketching Jaybird in his Syrian outfit. It was in ballpoint pen but a remarkable likeness.

“Teen-hut!” Jaybird barked. The SEALs jolted to their feet and stood stiffly at attention. Two men walked into the room. One a civilian, short, thin, with a nearly bald head and piercing eyes that swept the room, concentrating on Murdock. He smiled and Murdock gave a curt nod.

“As you were,” came the gruff voice of the most recent chief of naval operations, Admiral Alonzo H. Hagerson. The admiral was six-four, had played tight end for the Navy football team and turned down three pro contracts to stay in the Navy. He was considered by all who knew him as a team player with a sharp temper and a wary stance on anything not Navy.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” Admiral Hagerson said. “You’ll be standing up and running enough before long.” The director of the CIA sat as well but Hagerson remained standing. He moved to a display pull-down immediately behind the conference table. Don Stroh remained standing at the back of the room.

Hagerson reached for the pull-down, then stopped and turned and looked at the SEALs. “SEALs of Third Platoon SEAL Team Seven, I welcome you to Washington and Arlington. I’ve asked you to do some difficult work in the past two years. Now it’s time to go to the well once more. The Navy and I appreciate your efforts, and are contrite when you suffer losses. Welcome.” He turned back to the chart and pulled it down. It was an eight-foot-wide map of central Syria, showing the capital, Damascus, half of Lebanon and Haifa, Israel. The map also extended out into the Syrian Desert almost to the Jordan border.

“We have a tremendously dangerous problem with Syria. Have you men ever heard of the E bomb?” He looked over the SEALs. “Commander Murdock, what is it?”

“Sir, that would be the electromagnetic pulse, an EMP, similar to that generated by an atomic detonation.”

“Yes, quite right. Only now we, and some others, have taken the idea a step farther. Mr. Stroh. Would you ask Professor Ingles to come in.”

A moment later a tall man with gray hair and a ramrod in his back marched into the room and to the front.

“Gentlemen, let me introduce Professor Dr. Conrad Ingles of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an advisor to the President’s Board of Science. Professor, would you sketch in for us the basics of the EMP and the FCG?”

Professor Ingles went to the center of the room and faced the SEALs. His dark hair showed touches of silver, but his eyes concentrated on the six men with a thirty-year-old’s intensity. “It all started back in 1925 when physicist Arthur H. Compton was studying the atom. He demonstrated that firing a stream of highly energetic photons into atoms that have a low atomic number causes
them to eject a stream of electrons. This is the Compton Effect and it was fundamental in breaking into the secrets of the atom.

“In 1958 scientists detonated a hydrogen bomb high over an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The explosion resulted in a burst of gamma rays that, when striking the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, released a tsunami of electrons that spread for hundreds of miles. This force blew out streetlights in Hawaii and radio navigation was messed up for eighteen hours as far away as Australia.

“The scientists latched on to this EMP, electromagnetic pulse, development in an attempt to harness this energy and make a new class of weapon. We have made adequate progress in this field, although most of it is classified. The general thinking is that our best minds are now using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. What worries many of us is that some small nations, or even terrorists, could take an idea that the U.S. has discarded and make out of it a practical, cheap flux compression generator.

“This has been described as a poor man’s E bomb. It is amazingly simple. It consists of an explosive-packed tube placed inside a slightly larger copper coil. It works this way. An instant before the chemical explosive is set off, the coil is energized by a bank of capacitors. This creates a magnetic field. The explosion in the tube starts at the rear and moves forward. This makes the tube flare outward so it touches the edge of the coil. That creates a short circuit.

“The propagating short has the effect of compressing the magnetic field while reducing the inductance of the coil. What happens then is that the FCG produces a rampaging current pulse, which breaks before the final disintegration of the device. This can produce ramp times of tens of hundreds of microseconds and peak currents of tens of millions of amps. The pulse that shoots out makes a lightning bolt look like a flashbulb.

“This pulse radiates in all directions. It can make fluorescent
lights and television sets glow brightly even though they are turned off. Electric wires will are and short out, and telephone lines will melt. Laptop computers will overload their batteries and fail, and every bit of data on your computer and the set itself will be totally destroyed. Internal combustion engines with electronic ignitions will stall and roll to a stop. Aircraft with electronics will flame out and crash to the ground. Even ships with electronic and computer steering will turn to toast and the ship will go dead in the water. Only dieselengine cars and trucks will be able to run.