Specter (9 page)

Murdock started to run toward the SEAL, crouched far over and moving with an easy, long-legged stride. Bullets struck the sand near Garcia, but he stayed in position, leaning into his submachine gun as he continued to mark down Yugoslav soldiers. When he saw Murdock, he lowered his weapon and grinned beneath his NVD goggles. His tactical radio, a small box strapped to his assault vest high up on his left shoulder, had been smashed open by a stray round.

“C'mon, L-T!” Garcia called. “You've got to—”

... and then Boomer was flung back, arms outstretched, subgun flying, as a round struck his chest with a vicious-sounding
thwack
.

“Oh,
shit
!” Murdock fired another burst, then dropped to one knee at Garcia's side. “Boomer! Boomer, can you hear me?”

The bullet had gone through the SEAL's upper chest, in the front, out the back, clean through his flak vest. There was a lot of blood, and Boomer appeared to be unconscious. With one arm, Murdock hoisted the wounded SEAL to his feet, then began staggering down the beach. Bullets hissed and thudded in the sand to either side, and something snapped at his left sleeve. The water! They had to reach the water! ...

But as the gunfire at their backs increased in manic intensity, Murdock didn't think they were going to make it....

The AC-130U Specter was the direct descendant of the Spooky gunships so beloved of ground troops during the Vietnam War. The Spookys had been C-47s, WWII-era cargo planes mounting a deadly trio of 7.62 miniguns pointed out their left door and windows.

So effective had they been in close air support of ground troops that the U.S. Air Force had expanded on the idea. The AC-130U Specter gunship was a very specially modified C-130 Hercules, an ungainly transport remade into the image of a special warfare warrior. The 130U model mounted a single 25mm five-barreled General Electric Gau-12U Gatling Gun. Fed by a two-canister automated loader system, the high-speed gun could deliver a rate of fire of either 3600 or 4200 rounds per minute. The Specter also mounted a 40mm cannon and a 105mm howitzer, and all weapons were linked to laser range finders, an infrared sensor, radar, low-light television, and a sophisticated fire-control computer. All three weapons were mounted in the aircraft's port side, like the broadside of some ancient war galleon. Forward, a soundproofed battle control center sported an impressive array of television monitors, computers, radar screens, and IR sensor displays.

It was there that Major Peter K. Selby, the aircraft's fire control officer, sat with two sensor operators, scanning banks of television monitors. Three particular display monitors showed what the gunship's weapons were pointed at. The images on the screens were indistinguishable from those of a black-and-white television set, save that each was centered on a set of crosshairs. Viewed in infrared, the scene below was day bright, unusual only in the fact that the engines of the Mi-8 Hip and an army truck parked nearby were glowing as brightly as a neon sign.

“Looks like they're having a damned party down there,” Selby said. “You got 'em sorted yet?”

“No, sir,” one of the sensor operators said. “Somebody's mad at someone, though. There's a hell lot of shooting going on down there.”

Selby nodded. He could see several groups of men moving across the beach, and the muzzle flashes from their automatic weapons were distinctly visible. A helicopter was parked on the highway near a line of trees, and there was a hell of a lot of activity along the coast highway.

“Any sign of antiair assets?”

“Negative, sir. Not so far. The Harriers have been circling for ten minutes, though, inviting them to come out and play.”

The Specter gunship, flying low and slow, would be an easy target for enemy aircraft. Escort for this mission was being flown by a pair of Marine Harrier IIs flying off the
Nassau.
Any sign of Yugoslav MiGs, SAMs, or mobile flak, and the Harriers would pounce like a couple of hawks.

“Okay, then we can probably assume we're clear.” Selby said. “Let's see if we can raise our guys.” Reaching to an overhead console, he switched on a radio, adjusted the frequency, then picked up a hand microphone. “Nomad, Nomad,” he called. “This is Night Rider. Do you copy? Over.”

There was no immediate answer. The angle of the scene revealed on the TV monitors slowly changed as the Specter gunship circled the battle on the beach at a range of over two miles, and at an altitude of eight thousand feet, just above the lowest layer of clouds. The Specter's infrared optics penetrated the overcast almost as easily as it penetrated the night.

“Nomad, Nomad, this is Night Rider. Do you copy? Over.”

“Night Rider! Night Rider!” sounded from an overhead speaker. The voice coming over the air-ground channel was scratchy with static, and Selby thought he could hear the thud and rattle of gunfire in the distance. “This is Nomad. Go ahead!”

It was a strange feeling to be talking to a man who was, at that moment, under fire. Selby had experienced the strangeness of this high-tech participation in battle before, during Desert Storm, and he'd never gotten over it. Here, aboard the AC-130, the only sound was the drone of the aircraft's engines, the hum of electronics, the low voices of the sensor operators. Except for the tilt to the deck, he might as well have been in an air-conditioned room in the Pentagon basement. The man he was talking to, just a few miles away, was fighting for his life.

“Nomad, we are circling your approximate position at eight thousand. Understand you might need assistance, over.”

“Night Rider, Nomad, that is affirmative,” the voice came back. “Wait one while we sort ourselves out for you.”

“Roger that. Night Rider, standing by.” He turned to one of the sensor operators. “Let's back off a bit and see if we can get a shot of more of the beach, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

The scene receded as the operator adjusted the lens magnification. Damn, there sure as hell was some kind of a ruckus going on down there. Selby could see dozens of men, and a lot of gunfire. But on infrared TV, all uniforms looked alike and there was no way to pick out the ones worn by Navy SEALs.

“There, sir,” Sergeant Zanowski, the senior operator, said. “Clear signal. There's another.”

Three ... no, five bright stars had appeared on the screen, three up on the beach, two more by the edge of the black water. There were two more now, also in the water. Each SEAL was wearing a standard survival vest strobe attached to his assault vest, but capped with an IR filter. Switched on, the light was invisible to the hostiles, but it showed up clearly to the AC-130's IR cameras.

“Nomad, this is Night Rider. I see seven lights on the beach or in the water. Confirm your ID with a flash, over.”

“Roger, Night Rider.”

The IR lights flicked off one by one, then flicked on again.

“Okay, Nomad, we confirm your position. Everybody else is a bad guy. Heads down! Here come the goodies!”

“Roger that, Night Rider.”

Selby reached for an intercom switch. “Colonel Carlotti,” he said. “We have Nomad on the screen and we have positive identification.”

“Very well, Major. You have my permission to fire.”

“Gunners, this is Major Selby. Hang onto your jockstraps, boys. We've got firing command! Sergeant Zanowski?”

“Locked in, sir. The computer has it.” The sensor operator grinned as he flicked off a row of switches, releasing the last of the armament safeties. “Firing phasers . . .”

The actual firing was done by the aircraft's computer.

“Blue Squad!” Murdock yelled. “Hit the deck and stay down! We've got incoming!”

“Yeah, big time!” Roselli added, and then the night lit up with fire.

At 3,600 rounds per minute, the high-velocity shells were shrieking out of the sky at a rate of sixty per second, each 25mm projectile traveling practically nose-to-tail with its neighbors in a solid stream of lead and high explosives. Fired at night, the rotary Gatling cannon seemed to be loosing a bolt of white-hot lightning. . . or the phaser beam of a popular TV and movie science-fiction series.

The beam slashed in from over the sea, illuminating the clouds as it burned through them, then passed above the heads of the SEALs with a shrill, air-shaking howl that was palpable. The AC-130's warload for this pass was HEI—high explosive incendiary—and where those rounds hit there was destruction, instant, accurate, and devastatingly total. Poplar trees shuddered, cracked, and exploded left and right; part of the seawall dissolved in hurtling chunks of broken concrete; portions of the highway buckled and vanished in a searing cascade of explosions that swept across dirt and wall and pavement in a deadly, sparkling dance. The Mi-8 helicopter, its rotors still slowly turning as it rested on the highway, seemed to crumple like a deflating toy, sagging to the side before on-board fuel reserves were touched off and the aircraft fireballed. Thunderous explosions lit up the night as brightly as that shaft of glowing fire raining down from the sky. The Hip's five-bladed rotor lifted up off the helicopter's rotor shaft and cartwheeled through the air; an instant later, the sky-fire brushed across the military truck parked nearby, and that vehicle added its touch of flame to the firestorm raging over the Hip's spectacularly dissolving framework.

And men died. They died as the stream from the sky touched them and shredded their bodies in whirling fragments; died as their uniforms burst into flames; died as bits and pieces of metal or chunks of stone or shards stripped from ricocheting bullets scythed through them like volleys of machine-gun fire. The noise was deafening, overwhelming, a thunderous cacophony piled atop the buzzsaw shriek of incandescent shells. . . .

Murdock lay facedown on the beach, covering Garcia's body with his own as Roselli lay nearby, refusing to look up into that hellfire from the sky. With the Specter gunship's fire computer-directed, it was accurate to within five feet of the chosen target across a range of almost one mile. With an eerie and terrible mathematical precision, the Specter drew a curtain of flame and death between the SEALs and their foes.

When the fire ceased, scant seconds after it had begun, the silence was more unnerving in a way than the noise and flame had been. The beach was brilliantly lit now by the Hip's funeral pyre, but all gunfire had ceased.

“C'mon, Razor,” Murdock said. “Help me get Boomer to the water.”

“What about his weapon?”

“Forget it. Give me a hand!”

“Right, L-T.”

Together, they half carried, half dragged Garcia toward the water's edge. They were met there by Doc and Magic, who'd swum back ashore when they realized that Murdock and the others were under fire. “I got him, L-T,” Doc said. As Murdock, Roselli, and Magic formed a half perimeter at the surf's edge, Doc broke out his medical kit and began working on Garcia's wounds. A terrible sound could be heard now wavering above the crackle of flames, a low, monotonous moaning sound, a chorus of many voices from many terribly wounded men. Murdock could see several Serb soldiers moving against the firelight near the seawall, but he held his fire. If the Yugoslavs could see the SEALs where they were gathered at the edge of the water, they were ignoring them. More likely, the fire had so ruined their night vision that they couldn't see a thing right now beyond the immediate circle illuminated by the fire. Besides, they must have all they could handle right now, tending to their wounded.

“That's all I can do for him now,” Doc said moments later. “We gotta get a medevac for him, stat.”

“Well, we can't medevac him from here,” Murdock replied. “Let's get him off the beach and into the water.”

They discarded NVDs and boots, automatic weapons and ammo, Kevlar jackets and most of their assault vest loadouts as soon as they were past the wave line and well into deep water, keeping only their knives, radios, and survival gear. They took turns, one man pulling Garcia along with one arm thrown across his shoulder and chest, while another swam alongside to make sure the unconscious man's head stayed above water. Where the air had felt chilly, the sea seemed almost warm, though Murdock knew that was an illusion. They struck out from the shore, angling slightly south to counter the south-to-north offshore current. A twelve-mile swim with a badly wounded man. They'd never make it, unless...

Roselli grabbed Murdock's arm and pointed. “Hey! L-T! Look! It's Gold Squad!”

Murdock was almost too tired to look, so drained was he by the brutal intensity of that short firefight on the beach. He let Roselli turn him in the water, however, until he could just make out the indistinct forms of more night-cloaked SEALs riding low in a pair of CRRCs.

“Lieutenant Murdock!” Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, Third Platoon's XO and the leader of Gold Squad, called. “Here!”

Hands grabbed at Murdock's arms. “No,” he said. “Get Boomer on board. . .”

“We got him, L-T. Come on.”

“Christ, Two-Eyes!” Murdock said as he was rolled out of the water and onto the raft. DeWitt's team nickname was drawn from his position as platoon “2IC,” the second-in-command. “I don't think those people like us.”

“From out here it sounded like you boys got quite a reception.”

“That's nothing to the reception we're gonna get at the debrief,” Murdock said. “You pick up Mac?”

“He's in the other raft, L-T. With the package. A chopper's on the way from
Nassau.
God, it's good to see you guys. You had me worried!”