Battleground

3

Lieutenant Blake Murdock heard the ringing. Some giant ship was about to ram his forty-two-foot sailing boat in the middle of the Bahamas, and there was no possible way to avoid the collision. He did everything he could think of to get away from the huge freighter rushing toward his fragile craft, but he couldn't, and the ringing came again and again and again.

Murdock jolted upright in his bed. Not the Bahamas. Coronado, California. The phone had provided the ringing sound effects for his dream. Thoroughly awake by this time, Blake reached for the phone. His voice wasn't up to speed, however. He garbled out a hello and listened.

"You sleep all day out there in Lotus Land, Lieutenant Murdock? Hell, it's almost noon in Washington. The birds are out, the sun is shining, and it's going to be one fine day. This is Don Stroh."

"Figures," Murdock mumbled.

"You been listening to the news? It's all over CNN. I don't know how those news-hounds get their stuff so fast. We've only had it since nine last night ourselves. You still with me, buddy?"

"Yeah. My body is awake, but my brain is still trying to outrun somebody in the Bahamas. What's all over CNN?"

"About one A.M. Sunday Mombasa, Kenya, time, a colonel who'd staged a military coup attacked and captured the frigate Roy Turner, which was tied up at a dock on a goodwill call."

"Yeah, now I'm listening. So?"

"Get your boys together fast. Uncle wants his ship back. Third Platoon will go in and get it. Be ready to load at North Island Air Station as soon as possible. Bring your sixteen men, personal gear, personal weapons, plus the fifty-caliber sniper rifles, and most of the ammo and goodies that you'll need."

"We have a hunting license."

"The best kind, straight from Uncle Sam himself. He wants this taken care of quickly and with the more noise the better. He's got a carrier task force steaming that direction — I'll meet you in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. You'll get a satellite printout of all we know about the situation."

"Who led the coup?"

"An old friend of yours. Remember Umar the Great?"

"Umar Maleceia, the huge guy? He was Kenyan, wasn't he. We put him through some tough sledding at the special training program we ran for certain of our allies."

"He loves you too. He pulled the coup. Start gathering in your chicks. I know this is Sunday morning. You don't fly out of North Island until four o'clock this afternoon. Gives you eight hours."

"I should have twenty-four. I think some of the guys went to Baja fishing."

"Hook them back and get them ready. I've got a hot lunch date, then I'm flying out of here. See you in Saudi Arabia."

They hung up.

Murdock flopped down on the bed, then popped right back up. The first thing he did was call David "Jaybird" Sterling, Machinist Mate Second Class and the Platoon Chief. He would know where most of the other fourteen men were. They'd get who they could, and send the strays over by a later plane. They'd done that before, but Murdock didn't like to do it.

He got Jaybird on the second ring. "Circle the wagons, we got a job to do," he told his chief by way of greeting.

"When?"

"We fly out of North Island at sixteen-hundred. We need sixteen live bodies. Spread the word. I'll be at the office in half an hour."

Murdock downed a cup of instant coffee, then drove to the SEALs' home base just south of Coronado on the Silver Strand in the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base. He called Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt, his 2IC, leader of the Second Squad, and caught him at home.

By 1000, eleven of the sixteen men were on hand working on gear for the trip.

"We're still five guys short," Jaybird said, coming into the commander's office.

"Who?"

"Magic Brown, Adams, Red Nicholson, Lincoln, and Holt."

"Put one man on each one and have them track them down," Murdock said. "If they can't find them by fourteen hundred, have them get back here. Who went to Baja?"

"Brown and Red Nicholson, both fishing nuts. Don't even know where they were going. Not much below Ensenada, I don't think."

Murdock scowled. "Yeah, The Matzalan Fish Shack. Give them a call. Nicholson liked the guy that ran it. He used to go down there every weekend. Remember, he used to talk our ears off about the good fishing down there? You might hook them at that Fish Shack."

"Where the fuck we going, L-T?" Operation Specialist Third Class Joe "Ricochet" Lampedusa asked as he came in the door when Jaybird left.

"It make any difference?"

"Hell, yes, we take mucklucks or suntan lotion?"

Half the crew brayed with laughter.

"Make it sun-tan lotion and desert cammies. Any other dip-shit questions?"

The SEALs razzed Lampedusa, and went back to work packing their gear and cleaning weapons.

Murdock watched his men. He had finished his packing and cleaning and oiling his weapon, an HK MP5SD4 specially custom-fitted for the SEALS. These were good men. He'd lost one on the last mission. He hoped he didn't lose any this time.

The Navy SEALs carried a ton of macho mystique with them that was becoming known more and more outside the service. Mostly they were famous for their training course — the six-months Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL regimen. Over the years, the name had been shortened to BUD/S. It was rougher and tougher than any other training course in any military force in the world.

Every man who came to the BUD/S training center in Coronado was a volunteer. Most didn't know just how tough the twenty-six-week training schedule would be. Physical fitness and training dominated the first part of the schedule. Some of that involved lifting eighteen-inch-thick telephone poles on the shoulders of seven SEAL trainees. They might hoist it overhead and hold it, hoist it partway up, or put it on their shoulders and do a five-mile run.

They trained with eight-man inflatable boats in the surf, learning how to get them through the Pacific Ocean breakers, and how to get them back in without dumping everyone into the water.

They took ocean swimming as a matter of course, doing five- and seven-mile swims in the open sea with and without fins, and with and without underwater breathing apparatuses.

By the time the SEALs came out of BUD/S training, they were so accustomed to the water that it had become their second home.

The basic lesson in all of the training was teamwork. SEALs operated in eight-man squads. Every man relied on every other man to protect his life. Teamwork became so ingrained in SEALs that in combat situations they functioned automatically, taking the right action and making the right decisions. If they didn't, one or more of the team could die.

Navy officers go through the same training as any other SEAL. They have no rank when they enter a BUD/S class. They lift the logs, run the killer obstacle course, work the boats, get sand and water thrown on them during exercises and classes, and generally accept all of the rugged training procedures the other men do.

There is one officer-related requirement. Any officer in any SEAL trainee class is expected to test better than the rest of the class. All this helps mold a strong bond between enlisted, and their SEAL officers, and to a large degree breaks down the "officer country" psychology of the military. A lot of regular Navy officers don't like this aspect of SEAL operations.

SEAL officers say when you're trusting your life to the SEAL behind you in a life-or-death firefight operation, it doesn't matter what rank or rate he has. All that matters is that he can do his job, protect your back, and run a successful mission.

One thing about SEALs that Murdock had always questioned. The SEALS, like all enlisted men and women in the Navy, carry a rating, a work specialty like Hull Technician or Machinist's Mate. These ratings simply don't apply in the SEALs' operations. They have an entirely different kind of job and specialty.

To the Navy, however, these men still must study their manuals and take tests twice a year for promotion in that job specialty. This also bugs most of the SEALS.

In training and after it, most SEALs move toward a combat specialty that interests them and suits their talents. One man may be an expert on weapons, another communications, one parachute rigging, and somebody else electronics. All are slotted in where they can do the most good and still maintain their basic job hitting hard with maximum firepower, killing the enemy, capturing the objective, and getting out without the loss of any men.

Losses. Six men from SEAL Team Seven, Third Platoon, had been wounded and one killed in the Firestorm mission. Murdock had taken a bad arm wound. Now all but one of the wounded had recovered during the two-month training period, and were back in service. One man was still in the hospital, and Greg Johnson had died of his wounds and was brought home.

That meant two new men who were qualified SEALs had been needed in the mix, and had had to learn to work with their new buddies. Murdock had brought in Torpedoman's Mate Third Class Les Quinley the first week back from China to replace Johnson. Quinley's explosive talents would come in handy.

Murdock wasn't sure when or even if Scotty Frazier would be out of the hospital and fit for duty. He'd waited a month. Frazier's "slight side wound" had turned ugly before he got to Balboa Park Naval Hospital in San Diego, and he'd been on the critical list for a week. After a month, Murdock talked to Frazier's doctor, crossed Frazier's name off the roster, and brought in a new man.

He'd picked Ted Yates off the available list. Yates already had his Trident, the badge of honor of the proven and tested SEALs who had seen covert-operations duty. He was twenty-four and a Bos'n's Mate Second Class. He would help lend a little maturity to the Second Platoon.

Now the men had trained together for a solid month, including an interminable week at the Chocolate Mountain gunnery range out near Niland. They'd slept on the ground and lived on MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, for six days.

It had been almost as bad as Hell Week during BUD/S training, when the new men were up continuously for four days and got only four hours of sleep. It was right after that tough week that a lot of the trainees laid their green SEAL helmet liners with the class number on them next to the quitting-bell post on the "grinder." They then were out of the program and went back to the regular Navy. Many times half a beginning class washed out. One famous class had had every man quit before the six months were up.

Sixty-eight miles south of Tijuana along the Baja California, Mexico, coastline, Eric "Red" Nicholson, Torpedoman's Mate Second Class, hooked a fish and let out a rebel yell. "Hell of a good bite," Red brayed. "Took that anchovy and dove straight down. Fucker is still taking out line."

"Not a yellowtail then," Martin "Magic" Brown, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, said. "Yellows don't sound that way. Bet you twenty bucks it's a bluefin tuna."

"No bluefins in the Ensenada Bay this time of year," Red said. He had his six-foot fighting pole lifted to an eighty-degree angle, and the bend was tiring out the fish below. A moment later, the line stopped whining off the spool.

Red grinned and lowered the rod slowly, reeling in as he went. Then he pumped up the pole gently and reeled down again.

"Gonna take you all day that way, Red. Hell, horse him in."

"You black guys don't know shit about fishing. I got it on a twenty-pound line, man. You playing with thirty. I got me enough yellowtail here to feed me for a month."

"Bluefin, dumb-assed honky, which is better eating anyway," Magic said. He changed bait, cast out into the bay, and let the six-inch-long anchovy run as far as he'd go before he tired. Every ninety seconds, Magic changed bait. They'd been doing that since dawn and had only two fish.

Magic saw the skiff coming out from shore. More fishermen. Maybe they would help churn up some good-sized blues. The skiff came straight at them, and Magic put his hand on a new toy he'd just bought, a new Para Ordinance P12-45. It held only ten rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, but it had a smooth, easy feel. Handguns for civilians are strictly illegal in Mexico, but he wasn't about to cross the border without some protection. He'd heard too many stories about Mexican banditos ambushing unwary gringos. Red kept working the fish. "I'm getting him up," Red shouted. "You got that gaff?"

"You said we wouldn't need one," Magic shot back.

The skiff came straight on and was fifty yards away. The voice came over the water clearly.

"Senor Brown. I have urgent message for you from a Mr. Blake."

"Oh, hell," Red said. "Shit, there goes the fishing."

Red had the fish showing color by then, and he got it close enough to the boat to identify.

"Yeah, a bluefin," Magic chortled.

Just then the frantic fish made one last surge for the bottom, and broke the line. "Oh, damn, Peter Pan," Red bellowed. "Knew I shouldn't have tightened up on that drag."

The skiff came alongside. An Indian-dark Mexican man in his twenties grinned at them. His English was better than most down that way.

"Sorry to hurt fishing. The man said you come home right away. Mr. Blake said you give me ten dollar."

Brown laughed. Sounded just like Lieutenant Blake Murdock, their ever-generous leader.

"What's the message?" Red said, handing the man a ten-dollar bill.

"He say get your ass back to base now. Big fly time tonight at eight bells. No, he say sixteen hundred, Si, sixteen hundred. What time that?"

"Not much time left is what it is," Magic Brown snapped. "Get that motor started there, sailor, and let's head for shore. We must have ourselves a piece of the action some damned place out there in the big fat world."

Jaybird dug Ross Lincoln out of McP's Bar in Coronado, which was run by an ex-Navy corpsman who had served in Nam. He was better at telling stories than he was at serving beer. Lincoln was in a bullshitting contest with him, and the loser on every head-to-head story had to chugalug a mug of beer without breathing or stopping. Lincoln had lost six times in a row. It took them two hours to sober him up, and by that time they had his gear and his weapons packed for him. "That leaves Holt and Adams," Jaybird said at 1200. "Holt took off Friday night solo. No idea where he is."

Lincoln looked up, holding his head. "Holt? Said something about a weekend with that bimbo he met at the Too Late Club. Francine, something like that. Said he gave her phone number and address as his next of kin."

Jaybird snapped his fingers an went to see Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt. He'd have the next-of-kin data for all his men.

Holt showed up an hour later. He couldn't walk. Two men from his squad had to go bring him in from the taxi. He'd be lucky to be sober by the time the plane took off.

Nobody knew anything about Adams. He lived off base the way the rest of the platoon did, and nobody had been to his digs.

"Isn't Adams the one who's always listening to those old songs from the fifties and sixties on KJOY?" Murdock asked Lieutenant (j.g.) deWitt.

"Yeah, Adams is a big bands nut. Always listens to that station."

"Isn't there a DJ on there who used to be a SEAL? Loudmouth Larry?" Murdock asked.

DeWitt checked his watch. "Yeah, he's the one Adams talks about. Don't know when his shift is, but I'll see what I can do." The officer vanished to a phone, and came back five minutes later.

"Loudmouth wasn't there, but I talked to another guy, Sawtooth, and explained the delicate situation. He said he can cover us. He'll do a dedication and tell baby-chick Adams to head back to the nest. If Adams hasn't passed out, he should hear it."

An hour later, they heard from Adams. He was on his way in.

Lieutenant Blake Murdock checked every man before the platoon boarded a truck for a run through Coronado and out to the U.S. Naval Air Station North Island. He'd read the six pages of background on the Kenya situation that had come faxed from Don Stroh and his buddies at the CIA in Washington, D.C. He didn't understand much more than what Stroh had told him on the phone. He put it simply to the men as they waited on the flight line for the long-range Air Force Starlifter transport jet to have its preflight check.

"We're going to Kenya, about halfway down on the Indian Ocean side of Africa. They've had an elected government there since they gained their freedom from British rule back in 1963.

"This is the land of Jomo Kenyatta and the famous Mau Mau uprising and slaughter of whites. Two days ago an Army colonel took over the country and has declared himself dictator. Army strength there is set at about twenty-six thousand, but with little air-power and not much of a Navy.

"We go in and recapture a frigate that the colonel hijacked about twenty-four hours ago. Our target is in Mombasa, the country's only port. We recapture the ship, free the crew, and get the hulk back to sea. Sounds like a walk in the park."

"Them Mau Mau were prime-assed killers in their day," Magic Brown said. "Hey, I'm no relation."

"Where we get supplied?" Jaybird asked.

"We'll land on a carrier that, with its task force, is steaming down that direction right now. We can get all the firepower we need from the carrier. We're taking four folded IBSs with us just in case. Everything else we get from the carrier's supplies and armory."

"How do you rescue a four-hundred-fifty-three-foot-long ship?" Kenneth Ching, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, asked.

"We'll be talking about that on the way over," Murdock said. "Looks like we're cleared to board. Let's move."

Ten minutes later, they had settled into the spartan facilities of the Air Force Starlifter strategic jet transport plane, the C-141. It had a top airspeed of 556 miles per hour, and four big Pratt & Whitney TF33-P-7 turbofan engines to do the job. It could also be refueled air-to-air if needed.

The big plane had a crew of five, and could haul 155 paratroopers or two hundred non-jumpers. That meant the sixteen SEALs were rattling around in the big plane. Most of them sacked out on the floor and on their equipment packs.

"You sure they got us a big enough plane?" Jaybird asked.

"They wanted to be positive we had room enough for all of your ego, Jaybird," Lincoln jibed.

"Speed is the factor, guys," Murdock said. "We can go almost a thousand miles in this bucket without stopping at your local Texaco station."

Murdock watched his men. He was a career Navy man. Annapolis, a ring-knocker, single, and thirty years old. He stood six-two and kept his weight at a solid 200 pounds. He'd done some Gulf War work, been a SEAL for six years, and had been leader of the Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven for just over two years. In that time they'd completed five major missions.

Murdock was the son of Congressman Charles Murdock, long-time member of the House Military Affairs Committee. He grew up in posh Fort Royal, Va. He went to Exeter, and then to Annapolis over his father's objections. His dad wanted him to go to Harvard, get into government service, and then run for his own congressional seat from Virginia when the old man finally decided to give it up.

Murdock wouldn't go for it, and earned his appointment to Annapolis instead. He almost got married once. Her name was Susan, a bright, vibrant girl who was Jewish, much to his father's discomfort. She was killed days before the wedding that was to take place right after his Annapolis graduation. It happened in a car accident as she was on her way to see him.

Now the SEALs were his life. He grinned. He had met a girl a few months ago in Washington, D.C., who had made him stop and think about getting serious again. But they had put it on hold. She'd hoped that in a year he'd have his fill of the SEAL excitement and be ready to settle down at some posh military job at the Pentagon. He snorted. Fat chance.

Murdock called his men together.

"At least we know our route. We'll be going over the Pole and drop in on London. From there we touch down at Cairo, probably for more fly juice, then on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Don't ask me about which countries we can fly over and which ones we detour around. Not my problem.

"In Saudi Arabia we'll pick up our old friend Don Stroh, who is our CIA control on these pleasure cruises. For you two new men to our little family here, we are currently on a string for the CIA. Any dirty little job they don't want anyone to know that the U.S. has a hand in, they give to us. Not sure that this one will be all that covert, since CNN had the story of the hijacking all over the airwaves about six hours after it happened.

"We'll be getting more details on the harbor at Mombasa, which I hear is a good one and over three miles long. Plenty of dock space courtesy of our British friends, who built up the port in the fifties and sixties.

"From Saudi Arabia we'll be changing planes into the more familiar C-2A Navy Greyhound, our old reliable COD Navy turboprop transport. The Greyhound will land us on our home base, some carrier now steaming south just off the Somali Republic coastline heading for the waters off Kenya. As usual, the carrier has its normal protective task force. Any questions?"

"Yes, Sir, L-T." It was Torpedoman's Mate Third Class Les Quinley, one of the replacements who'd come on board after the Chinese picnic. "Does this shit-bird bad-ass Kenyan colonel have a name?"

"Right, Quinley. He's Full Colonel Umar Maleceia. He was a major last time I met him at a special training program in the States. He was a student there. Which means the U.S. trained him in the latest and best in weapons, communications, and tactics. Which he is probably putting to good use right now. Anything else?"

"Sir?" An airman stood at the edge of the SEALS. He had a piece of paper in his hand. "Lieutenant Murdock. I have some correspondence for you from Washington."

Murdock nodded, and the airman brought the papers forward, gave them to him, and retreated.

Murdock looked at the top sheet, read a few lines of it, and groaned.

"Gentlemen, our mission has just changed. Our Colonel Maleceia has just expanded his operation. Two hours ago he attacked the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. Now we are ordered to defend and if necessary recapture the embassy if it falls. The estimate in this report is that the embassy can't hold out more than about twelve hours. So our first mission will be on land at the embassy in Nairobi, which is about three hundred miles north of Mombasa."

"Damn long swim, L-T," Quartermaster's Mate First Class Kenneth Ching said. The SEALs all laughed.