Battleground

7

Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt waved at his two most experienced men, Scotty Lincoln and Miguel Fernandez. Both had traded their usual weapons for MP-5 submachine guns. They had lots of experience training in the Kill House back in California. Both men wore NVGs, and flipped them down and nodded.

Fernandez went in the rear door first, angling to the right. He saw nothing move in the green-tinted world. It was a storeroom of sorts on the ground floor.

Before he could move, Lincoln bolted in and covered the other half of the room.

"Clear," Fernandez whispered into his throat mike.

A door led off to the right, and another one to the left. Lincoln took his side, and Fernandez went to the right. Fernandez dropped to the floor and looked around the doorjamb from ankle level. The room ahead was a meeting space, with tables and chairs. Something moved on one of the tables. A man lying flat. Fernandez stared at the figure through the night-vision goggles. The man lifted a weapon.

Fernandez hosed him down with two three-round bursts, and saw him take the 9mm rounds and roll off the table. Another form down the way sprinted for the far door, and made it before Fernandez could bring his weapon around.

He checked the rest of the room area by area. No more bad guys. "Second room right clear," he said into the mike. He came to his feet and sprinted for the next door. Three rounds came through it and he dove to the left, and skidded against the wall three feet from the opening.

He pulled a hand grenade from his harness, popped the safety pin, and threw it into the room. The explosion brought a pair of screams that trailed off. Then silence.

This time he looked around the side of the door about three feet off the floor. Inside was an office with two desks. Two bodies lay sprawled in the aisle between the wooden desks. A form lifted up beside a filing cabinet and fired three rounds from what Fernandez figured was an AK-47. The rounds missed.

Fernandez sighted in on the side of the cabinet where he had seen the Kenyan and waited. Almost a minute passed, but Fernandez held his sight. Then the Kenyan leaned quickly out from the steel filing cabinet, but before he could fire, Fernandez nailed him with three rounds from the "room sweeper," and the Kenyan slammed to the rear with half his throat shot away.

The SEAL ran into the room with his MP-5 ready, but he found no more living Kenyans. He hurried to the far door and looked around the doorjamb. He saw a figure lunge up from behind a line of file cabinets and throw something.

A grenade.

It hit once in front of the door, bounced true, and Fernandez tracked it through the open door on his nightscope. He caught the hand bomb, and in the same motion threw it back the way it came. He jolted against the wall outside the room, and a second later the grenade went off with a blast.

Fernandez heard no human sound from the room. He edged around the door again and looked. File cabinets against the walls, some down the center of the room. He saw a bloody head on the floor halfway along the files. A moment later he touched his mike. "Clear three right," he said. Lincoln's hurried call came just after his message. "We may have a problem in room two my way. I hit a staircase, and somebody is up there covering the whole damn room but gives me no target."

"Hang tight," Fernandez said. "I'm out of rooms and on my way."

A minute later, Fernandez slid to a stop beside an open door. Lincoln was by the other side. Fernandez checked through the door, and jerked back at once. Two slugs drilled through the air where he had been.

"He's got some night vision too," Lincoln said.

"What's in the room?"

"Stores, looks like lots of food and office supplies. No good cover down there. Except maybe that stack of what looks like boxes of paper halfway down to the left."

Fernandez took a look from head height. "Yeah." He put a slug into the boxes and jerked back. They never even wiggled. "Cover," he said. "You spray that stairwell top and I'll get to the boxes. That'll give me a good angle to shoot straight up the stairs and nail the bastard."

Lincoln pushed a fresh thirty-round magazine into his MP-5 and nodded. He poked out the muzzle and pounded off three rounds, then adjusted and nodded at Fernandez. Twelve rounds on full auto slammed into the top of the staircase as Fernandez charged the fifteen feet to the stack of cases of paper, then rolled to a stop below them out of sight of the stairway.

Lincoln kicked six more rounds up the top of the stairs. Then Fernandez added his firepower, with the advantage of the angle. He slapped twelve rounds out of his weapon, and heard a scream from up the stairs.

Fernandez saw a hand appear at the top of the stairs holding a grenade. Before it could be thrown, Fernandez drilled the arm with three rounds, and the small bomb dropped out of the Kenyan's hand and three seconds later exploded.

Fernandez looked back at Lincoln and nodded. He sent covering fire up the stairs until he felt Lincoln slide into place beside him.

"No response up above," Lincoln said. "Might just have solved our little problem."

Fernandez used the mike again. "L-T, we could use about four good men in here. The stairs is ours."

Moments later Adams, Lampedusa, Bos'n's mate Ted Yates, and Quinley ran into the room and found cover.

Quinley had a shortened pistol-grip shotgun with no stock or much of a barrel, and five rounds of double-aught buck.

"Quinley," Lincoln said. "You and me up the stairs. Side by side. You've got the left. Blast at anything that moves."

Quinley pulled down his night-vision goggles, and the two ran for the stairs and up them.

Quinley fired one round upward as they hit the bottom step. When they got to the top they dove to the floor and surveyed the scene. Just in front of them lay a green-clad Kenyan ranger with his head half blown off his shoulders. His AK47 lay just beyond his stiffening fingers.

Ahead they saw a long hall with lots of doors opening off it. "Shit," Lincoln said. "We got to clear every fucking one of those rooms." He touched his mike. "Bring up the troops," he said. The other four SEALs ran up the steps and went flat on the floor at the top.

"Rooms to clear," Lincoln said. "Two men to each room, just like in training. We do three rooms at the same time. Move out."

The first three rooms contained no enemy troops. The next three had two men in one who didn't get off a round before they had half-a-dozen 9mm slugs in their vital organs.

Fernandez looked at the last two rooms. The doors were farther apart. So far they had found only sleeping quarters for two to three persons.

Fernandez motioned to Quinley, and they took the far door. Lincoln and Adams had the near one. The other two pointed outward as security.

On signal they kicked in the doors and charged inside.

Fernandez saw it was a three-room suite. Maybe the ambassador's. The main room was clear. They swung open another door and found a bathroom. Adjoining it was the master bedroom. Once inside the bedroom, Fernandez swore. One woman lay dead on the big bed. She was naked, and her breasts had been sliced off. The other woman, a redhead, lay on the floor, naked as well, with several big-caliber slugs in her body.

"Gonna be hell to pay," Quinley said.

Fernandez nodded. "Hope to hell I get to do the collecting."

Lieutenant Ed DeWitt ran into the room, and shook his head. "The bastards."

He went out to the hall. At the end of it there was another corridor at right angles. There were only six doors on this side. Before they got into the line of fire from down the hall, DeWitt sent a three-round burst down it.

Two weapons answered him.

"One came from the second room on the right," Quinley said. He had been flat on the floor peering around the wall. "The other one was farther down.

"They don't have NVGs," Quinley added. "If they did they would have seen me."

"How in hell do we get down there and not get ourselves shot to hell?" Fernandez asked.

"I'll go," Quinley said. "Hey, I'm the smallest one here. I'll take fraggers and crawl down there along the wall. You guys give me some cover fire three feet high. I get to the second door. Must be open or they couldn't fire out of it. I cook a grenade for two seconds, then throw it in, and two seconds later, whammo."

"Could work," DeWitt said. He touched his mike. "Front side, we've got a holdup here on the second floor. We're working it out."

"Need any help?" Murdock asked.

"Negative, front side. Hang on."

They fired from the wall opposite the one that Quinley crawled along. Bursts of three rounds, then single shots, never in any pattern. Some shots went to the third and fourth doors too.

Quinley had almost gotten there when a rifle poked out the second door and slammed off six rounds well over his head. Most dug into the walls. Nobody got hurt. Quinley surged ahead before the door could be closed, and let the arming handle pop off a grenade, held it two seconds, then threw it into the second room.

The explosion came almost at once. Quinley jolted forward, came to his feet, and surged into the room with his MP-5 chattering. A few seconds later, he waved out the door with a thumbs-up. Three SEALs used assault fire and stormed down the hallway to the second door and rushed inside.

Lincoln led them. Now he checked the hall. They weren't sure which door the second sniper had used. DeWitt had cleared the first room, and Yates and Lampedusa cleared the third room. They had three ahead of them.

"It was either the fourth or fifth door," Quinley said. "Sure as hell wasn't the last one. All that's left is four and five."

"One man on each side of the hall," Lincoln said. "Same procedure. I'm on one side, Willy Bishop on the other. Same thing Quinley did. Give us some cover."

Two more SEALs ran into room two, and were ready for support fire. Lincoln nodded and dove to the far wall, and Lincoln took the near one. The SEALs laid down the covering fire. One weapon poked out of door four, but jerked back in when the fire concentrated there.

Lincoln had that side. By the time he got there the door was closed tightly. He fired three rounds into the locking area, kicked the door open, and sprayed the inside of the room with 9mm whizzers.

Return fire blasted through the door. Lincoln had fired from low and to one side. He tossed in a fragger grenade, and when it went off, he was up and charged inside. No shots came from the room.

DeWitt and the others cleared the last two rooms, and they relaxed. "Second floor clear," DeWitt said into his mike. "Nobody exited the joint," Murdock said. "Good work. You moving downstairs for the first floor?"

"Roger that."

The Second Squad went down the far steps quietly and with caution. They cleared three doors and found no one home. They went through the kitchen, the infirmary, a library, and six more offices. There were no more Kenyan rangers in the compound.

"Clear all," DeWitt said. "Where the hell are the hostages?"

"We found a door with stairs leading down," Willy Bishop said.

"Let's do it," DeWitt said.

The stairs were clear. In the basement they saw two small rooms had doors standing open. Big locked double doors led to what must be a larger room just beyond the smaller ones.

DeWitt tapped on the steel door with the butt of his MP-5. He waited. Three taps came back. DeWitt tapped again, three quick raps, then three slow ones, then three fast ones. Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot. SOS in Morse code. They heard a cheer from inside. More noises came as the doors were evidently being freed so they could be opened. One door swung open slowly, and a lone man stood there with a bandaged left arm.

"Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt at your service, Mr. Ambassador."

First Secretary Frank Underhill let the tears roll down his cheeks. "Thank God," he whispered, then pulled both doors open wide. "Thank God for the United States military forces."

"Hostages freed," DeWitt said in his mike. "Call in the choppers, Murdock. Time's a-wasting."

The SEALs had never received a warmer welcome. Every one of the hostages hugged the SEALS, and the women kissed them on the cheeks and didn't want to let go of them.

"The two women Colonel Maleceia took away?" Underhill asked. DeWitt took him aside and told him what they had found.

"The redheaded woman was our CIA agent. I'm sure she put up a fight. She'd know the time to pick. Damned shame. Both fine women, both of them." He paused a moment. "We're taking out our dead, of course."

DeWitt shook his head. "Sorry, but we don't have the capacity on our aircraft. We'll be back soon to claim them. We won't leave them here for long. You have the U.S. Navy's word on that."

The wounded were led up first. DeWitt picked out twenty people, including the wounded and the distraught, and kept them inside on the first floor until the big Seahawk chopper landed and the dust cloud blew away.

The SEALS spread out as security around the landed Seahawk as the civilians ran to it and climbed on board. Underhill declined to go on the first bird.

Just as the first Seahawk took off, Holt ran to Murdock. "Better listen to this, LT. I switched to the pilot's frequency."

"Roger that, Sweepers. You have two incoming blips about eighty miles out."

"Slowboy, we figure they're Kenyan jets. Arms unknown."

"Sweepers, just lifting off number-one Slowboy. Suggest you splash the bogies if they don't ID."

"Just had clearance from Home Plate to do that. No change in their course or speed."

Murdock frowned. Eighty miles. In the age of jet interceptors that was like bayonet fighting. Say the Kenyan jets were old, could only do only a thousand miles an hour. That was still seventeen miles a minute. In five minutes they would be here. He needed probably fifteen minutes to land, load, and launch each of the last two choppers.

DeWitt's voice came over the Motorola. "Hey, Boss, we've got three bad-guy weapons carriers heading our way. Not more than two blocks down the street. Can't be sure, but looks like they have fifty-calibers mounted on top."