Under Siege (2 page)
Authors: Keith Douglass
North Korea
Angry black waves and nasty currents tore at the sixteen men as they swam through the frigid dark waters just off the coast of North Korea. Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock took his turn towing the deflated IBS—Inflatable Boat Small—as they eyed the crashing waves breaking against the deserted shoreline. At least it was supposed to be deserted. He knew you could never tell about the North Koreans.
Most of the Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, swam underwater, where forward movement was easier. Only three SEALs were on the surface to keep the cumbersome deflated Rubber Duck angling in to the beach. The SEALs wore their cammies and combat vests. Rubber suits would have kept them warmer, but they slowed down and hampered their mission on land. They were used to going on missions in their cammies. Usually they dried out before the work was done.
“Beach patrol.”
The words jolted into Murdock’s earpiece and the SEALs came to a stop just outside of the breakers.
“Looks like a Jeep and two men,” Lam said. Joe Lampedusa, Operations Specialist First Class, reported from his position on the surface twenty yards ahead of the others. The signal came through the SEALs’ underwater/dry land Motorola personal communications radios with a range of
five miles. The men below the water heard the warning and one by one came to the surface showing only their faces as they gathered around the Duck.
“Moving past,” Lam said. “The driver and the one guard look bored as hell. Should be clear here in five. Suggest we charge in quickly now before he makes a return swing.”
“Move it,” Murdock ordered, and the SEALs surged ahead into the breakers, letting the four-foot walls of water catch them and drive them forward like water-soaked logs. One by one they washed up on the wet sand and lay there without moving. The next few waves rushed over them and receded.
Murdock; Luke Howard, Gunner’s Mate Second Class; and David “Jaybird” Sterling, Machinist’s Mate Second Class, shepherded the bulky Rubber Duck through the breakers and then ran with it up the open beach to a smattering of trees and brush twenty yards inland. They pushed the black bulk into the trees and broke off branches to hide it from the roving beach patrol.
By then Lieutenant (J.G.) Christopher Gardner, leader of Bravo Squad, had the rest of the SEALs prone on the beach, forming a defensive formation aimed at a small road fifty yards farther from the surf.
“Lam, is this the right beach?” Murdock asked on his mike.
“Right as rain, Commander. I have both landmarks: that small shack to the north and a pair of tall, scraggly trees to the south. A one hundred percent affirmative on the right op landing. Hold it, Commander. That Jeep rig is returning. No way they can miss us. Be here in two.”
“We have to take them out,” Murdock said. “How many silenced weapons do we have?”
“Four in Alpha,” Jaybird said.
“Three in Bravo,” Gardner reported.
“Bravo take the driver, Alpha gunners get the guard. Get ready.”
They all could then hear the Jeep coming over the crash and roar of the surf. It powered down the hard wet sand just out of reach of the foaming breakers in their rush up the beach. The Jeep materialized out of the soft night air when it was fifty feet away.
“Now,” Murdock said. Seven silenced weapons seemed to fire all at once with their soft chugging sounds, and then more rounds came. The first volley blasted the driver off the rig into the sand and nailed the passenger in his seat with four shots to his chest. He dropped his rifle and it spilled out of the rig onto the wet sand.
The vehicle continued on its way for twenty feet, then the softer sand on the driver’s side of the rig pulled it to the side and it headed straight at the oncoming waves.
“Make sure, Jaybird,” Murdock said into his mike.
Jaybird lifted up and ran to the North Korean soldier who had been driving. He kicked the silent form twice, then hurried to where the second man had fallen from the rig into the water. A moment later Jaybird ran back to the group lying in the sand.
“Splash two,” he said.
“As you know, the op plans for us to move a little over two kilometers to the package,” Murdock said. “Not supposed to be any NK army units in the area. So let’s choggie. Bravo will take the lead in a column of ducks ten yards apart. Lam out front by a hundred. Alpha to follow in the same pattern. Howard and Jaybird are rear guard. Move it, now.”
Lam jogged out to the road, turned north, and put a hundred yards between him and the lead man from Bravo. Then they settled into a short-hike mode. Murdock nodded. The men were responding well. They’d had a two-month training schedule after the last mission, and had integrated one new man into Bravo and kept the rest of the men sharp. All of their slices, burns, cuts, and bullet holes from the last mission had healed.
Murdock led out the Alpha squad behind Bravo’s last
man by twenty yards. He was six-feet-two and a solid 210 pounds, with dark black hair that he had let grow longer to a businessman’s cut. Half of his men had longer hair than the Navy liked, but it was tactical. If he and four men had to go undercover into some enemy land, they couldn’t all have shaved heads or close-clipped “whiteside” haircuts that would pinpoint them in an instant as military men. Murdock’s dark green eyes showed flecks of brown, and his rugged face held more than one scar from his work on the live-or-die missions in the SEALs. He had nearly seven years with the SEALs and no thoughts of getting into politics as his congressman father often urged him to do.
Now this small task that Don Stroh had called Quick and Easy. A typical Q&E operation. Stroh was their handler from the CIA and worked closely with the head of the CIA, Wally Covington, and the Chief of Naval Operations. Most of their assignments came directly from Stroh with the orders from the president and the CNO, which made the local NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE big brass mad. The orders did not come through regular Navy channels.
The package they went for was code named Kimchee. He was a CIA spy who had worked North Korea for two years, but now was compromised and had to be brought out with some important information that he obtained about the production progress of the North’s nuclear weapons program. He had no way to communicate the data. For two days the North Koreans knew about him and had started a search. Murdock’s orders were to bring out Kimchee and his wife and two daughters. That’s why they brought the rubber boat into shore.
Lam moved ahead of the SEALs like a shadow’s ghost, always watching, working forward so silently not even the chirping crickets could hear him. He paused and studied the area ahead. The coastal plain had fields covered with rice stubble less than an inch off the ground. With the famine in North Korea, they were eating everything they
could grow and sometimes even the leaves and bark off the trees. Two houses showed two hundred yards inland. Neither had lights on. It was just past 2200. Time for most farmers to be in bed. Lam had positioned himself near a tree at the side of the road.
“Hold it,” he whispered into his mike. Ahead on the road he could just make out a military checkpoint. There were two large trucks blocking the road. He couldn’t see any men until he lifted his thermal imager and scanned the area. Six white blobs showed on the black screen as the imager picked up the body heat of the soldiers. He radioed Murdock about the NK troops.
“Suggest a half mile to the left before we work on north,” Lam said.
“Agreed,” Murdock said. “We’re moving now. Stay out of trouble up there. They must have radios. We need surprise to get the package out.”
“Roger that, LC. I’m moving now. I’ll wait for you to hook up with me out a half.”
In his spot right behind Murdock with Alpha squad, Jaybird swore softly for two minutes. “What in hell did Stroh mean ‘Quick and Easy’? This his idea? No army units in this remote area, he said. He sure as hell hit that one right in the balls. Stroh owes us another one.”
Murdock chuckled as he led the men ninety degrees away from the road into the harvested rice paddies. “Charging Stroh with it is one thing, collecting is something else entirely.”
Five minutes later, Lam stepped out from behind a tree and surprised J.G. Gardner. The officer lowered his weapon and shook his head.
“Damnit, Lam. I almost drilled you that time. Give me some warning before you do that.”
“Sorry, J.G. From here we go directly north. I saw some flankers they had out about a hundred, so we should be okay. Still keep it as silent as yesterday’s obituary.”
Lam worked north, watching everything, taking nothing for granted. He paused at a road for five minutes watching it. He’d stopped the men behind him. Now he grinned and spoke into his radio mike. “Yeah, LC. We’ve got some heavy trucks coming this way. Hold another five and they should be here and past. They don’t know we’re here, so we’re safe and sexy.”
“Holding, Lam,” Murdock said.
“Lam, that blonde you had out last week didn’t mention a word about your being sexy,” Jaybird said. “You putting us on?”
“Everyway but loose, oh nude one. How many buildings have you climbed drunk and naked now?”
“At ease, you two,” Murdock said, his voice tone just short of a laugh. “How many trucks, Lam, and do they have troops in them?”
“Here they come: six transporters, each with about twenty men. Going, going, gone. Take five and then follow me.”
Lam led them slowly over the rice paddies, down foot paths, and past a small house or two. Once they strayed too close to a building and a dog barked at them. Omar Rafii Yozman Second Class, an expert with knives, faded into the soft night air and found the dog. He used one of his throwing knives and hit the barking animal in the throat from twenty feet. The barking stopped. They continued to move and five minutes later came into the target area. It was a settlement of ten houses along the main road. All were dark except one. The small structures had roofs made of rice straw thatched a foot thick. Most of the houses were built of cheap bricks with white stucco on the outside. They had doors but no windows. Eight feet off the ground the sides had rectangular panels a foot high and two feet long. Rice paper covered the frames that could be slid open to let out the charcoal fumes.
“That one with the lights on, third one from the edge of town to the north, is our target,” Lam said.
“Check it for outside guards,” Murdock said.
Lam faded into the night. Murdock tried to watch him but soon gave up. The man moved like a ghost on an air cushion.
Lam came back five minutes later. “Didn’t see any guards, but my guess is there are some there.”
Murdock frowned. “Let’s move up so we can throw rocks at the side door. We might get a reaction.”
They did. Luke Howard had the best arm in the platoon. He threw egg-sized rocks at the door hitting it four times. Nothing happened. Howard threw rocks again, this time breaking one of the rice-paper windows. The side door jolted open. A Korean civilian bellowed something at them, made some angry gestures, and fired an automatic rifle haphazardly into the night. He missed everyone. He shouted again and slammed the door.
“Gotcha,” Lam said. “In the splash of light from inside, I spotted a guard to the right. If there’s one, there may be more. Rafii and I can take them out. Okay, LC?”
“That’s a go, Lam. We’re getting short on time. So any speed …”
Lam and Rafii vanished into the gloom. They crawled up to within twenty feet of the house and watched. Lam saw the guard again, and pointed to himself. He motioned for Rafii to go around the house the other way.
Lam moved cautiously through a patch of grass and weeds toward the guard. At fifteen feet, Lam paused near a small shrub and stared around it. The guard had his rifle across his chest, his arms folded over it, and his head lolled back against the side of the house. He was sleeping. Lam drew his KA-BAR knife, with its six-inch honed, sharp blade, and slid forward on his belly another five feet, then lifted up and with silent steps rushed the guard.
Lam held the knife straight out in front of him like a sword, driving it into the guard’s chest between his ribs and through the side of his heart. The guard came awake, his eyes went wide, and he tried to call out, but Lam’s hand had clamped over his mouth. Lam stared at the soldier as his body’s vital functions began shutting down, then his head slumped to one side and he slid to the ground.
Rafii came around the building shaking his head. Lam looked at the torn-up paper window high above. Just below it were three-foot-high ceramic pots the Koreans used to store large white radishes preserved in mustard. Lam eased up on top of the large barrel-like pot and stood. He looked through the torn-up window, then quickly jumped down and waved Rafii back. Fifty feet from the house he used the radio.
“Trouble here, LC. I saw at least two army guards inside and a civilian. They have a man stripped naked and tied to a chair. He’s got knife slices all over his body and his face is mashed up.”
“Pull back. We need to get them outside. Come back at least forty, then throw a fragger at that side door.”
“Roger that.”
Two minutes later, Lam threw the grenade at the door. It fell short and shredded the boards with shrapnel. The second grenade hit just below the door and blew it off its hinges. Submachine gun fire blasted through the opening, but missed Lam and Rafii.
Murdock put his thermal imager on the open door. He saw a white figure inside the house, then it vanished only to show again a moment later as the person crawled on his hands and knees out the front door. Murdock used a silenced MP-5 and took him out with two rounds. They waited. Nothing else happened.
“Rafii, can you get a flash-bang inside that door?”
“I was an outfielder, not a pitcher, but I’ll give it a try.” His second flash-bang went inside the building. He and
Lam rushed inside as soon as the last piercing sounds faded.
“Left,” Lam said. He went through the outside door into a small room, then through another door into the main room. Two North Korean soldiers rolled on the floor holding their ears. Lam shot one and Rafii drilled the second. A civilian held a pistol and tried to point it at the intruders but he couldn’t see. Rafii shot him twice.
