Counterfire

12

Most of the SEALs slept in until 1400 that afternoon. Don Stroh had been around twice, and the third time he found Murdock up, dressed, and hungry.

“Breakfast at two in the afternoon?” Stroh asked. His round face had darkened a little lately from sunshine duty. His hair was thin and brownish, over ears that were too big for his head. Blue eyes danced as he escorted Murdock to the small officers’ club where they ate. Murdock had sausages and a stack of eight pancakes. Stroh had coffee.

“Reports are coming in from agents in Gaza City,” Stroh said.

Murdock went on eating.

“Good reports. Your team did a bang-up job last night.”

“Why we get the big bucks, Stroh.”

“Modesty won’t get you promoted, sailor.”

Murdock gave him the don’t-mess-with-me look, and Stroh chuckled.

“Always the tough SEAL. Like Arafat was just another walk in the park during business hours. Another day at the office. Well, your team totally demolished the Arafat GHQ. The word we’re getting is that there were thirty of the top leaders of the al Fatah and Tanzim groups in a conference in the building when the missiles hit. There are no known survivors. Four cooks and a group of guards are also listed as KIA.”

“We didn’t know about the conference. No Arafat?”

“He was supposed to be there, but was delayed by a malfunctioning aircraft somewhere.”

“Our group didn’t have much to do. The missiles took care of the matter rather well. We did nail three of the separate units.”

“Sorry about the SAS and their losing four men.”

“It’s a dangerous game we play. Usually some of the good guys get hurt. It just didn’t happen to be us this time.”

“The local command says there is no sense trying for the other three satellite buildings. Anyone who was there has been moved as of six A.M. this morning and all records taken with them. That’s a closed book. We take what we can get, which is about a ninety-percent completion of the mission.”

“So we’re released here and can go home?”

“No.”

Murdock scowled. “Just a plain unpregnant no? Why not? What more do they want from us? What are the new plans? Give me something more than just a two-letter answer.”

Stroh sighed and took a long draw on his coffee. He looked at Murdock over the rim of the cup. “I can’t tell you a lot more. You are on U.S. Navy TDY orders with an open end. The powers are interested in more than al Fatah. There are several more deadly groups around. This one was the easiest to take down, so it was first. My guess is that there will be three or four more hits. I don’t know if you SEALs will be involved in any or all of them. We wait and see.”

“Is that huge planning group going to be making the decisions?”

“Probably, but I’ve suggested that they cut it down to not more than ten people. Two from each of the three nations and four overhead from Israel. They might go for it.”

“Whatever, we’ll be here. I should get back for our after-mission debrief.”

He groused to himself on the way back to their quarters. Sure he loved this job, and he was doing something extremely worthwhile, but sometimes it was frustrating. The platoon could use some good solid teamwork training. He had new men, and they hadn’t been fully integrated into the procedures. Every man had to know instinctively what the man on his right and left would do in any firefight situation. That was the way they saved lives. That was the way they lived to be old SEALs who could muster out and flop around on the beach in the sun and not worry about anyone shooting at them.

Maybe after this current project, or three or four, from what Stroh had been hinting, they could get some time to themselves and spend it alone out in the California desert. Do some concentrated squad and platoon drills and firing sequences and realistic training. Some of the older hands were getting a little complacent. Murdock couldn’t put up with that because it would cost them a KIA on one of these shoots. He’d be damned if he was going to bury any more SEALs.

Senior Chief Sadler had the men working over their weapons and gear when Murdock came into the assembly room next to their quarters.

DeWitt nailed him when he came in the door. “So, does Brother Stroh have any good news for us? Like when we go home?”

“Not likely. Most likely we’ll get some more assignments while we’re here. Might as well tell everyone at once.”

Murdock called the men together and went over what Stroh had told him.

“So the nut of it is that we’re here, and we’ll be in more hits against some of the terrorist groups before we leave,” Murdock concluded. “We don’t know who or what or when, but we’ll be ready when it comes.”

There were a few groans.

“This is why we get the big bucks,” Jaybird said.

“What Navy are you in, sailor?” Mahanani brayed.

“Whatever Navy we are,” Murdock said, “we’ll probably be doing ground duty for the next mission or two. Most of the bad guys are on the West Bank, which, if you don’t know, is the west bank of the Dead Sea, which is between Jordan and Israel. So get out your slogger boots. Right now we do our after-action critique. Bravo Squad, what went right and what could have been better?”

They worked over the mission from top to bottom, and found little to pick on that could have been done better. One suggestion was that on swims of less than a mile, they didn’t wear fins. Usually they would be lost when the SEALs hit the beach anyway. A half hour later they had it all thrashed out, and Murdock looked back at DeWitt.

“Lieutenant DeWitt, didn’t I see you pick up some books on Israel and the Arab problem that first day we were here?”

“That I did, oh, great one, our Commander.”

“They enjoy that rank shit,” Joe Lampedusa whispered loud enough so everyone could hear.

“You’d enjoy it too, Lampedusa, if you’d ever get off the pot and go for second class,” Senior Chief Sadler snapped.

“Hey, easy on me. I might be wounded again. Anyway, I struck for second a week before we left.”

Murdock turned to him. “You did? Get out of here, find a computer you can use to send, and e-mail and check with Master Chief MacKenzie and see if you made it. Move, sailor.”

Lam grinned and ran for the door.

“Now, getting back to the important stuff. Lieutenant, how about a half-hour lecture on Israel, its historic place in our society, and how it got the Arabs just mad as hell?”

DeWitt stood, polished the new railroad-track bars on his shoulders, and grinned. “Usually a scholar of my standing doesn’t lecture before such a motley and unlettered crew as this. However, this one time, I’ll break with academic standards and try to enlighten you.”

“What the fuck did he say?” Ken Ching asked. Everyone roared with laughter.

DeWitt went to his bunk and brought back a book. “Actually I was going to lecture to you, but I figured I better just read some of this since I’m not sure if all of you know how to read.”

That brought a chorus of catcalls and hoots.

“Listen up: Occupying the southwest corner of the ancient Fertile Crescent, Israel has some of the oldest known evidence of primitive town life and agriculture. A more advanced civilization has been found from 2000 B.C., and the Jews probably arrived here around 1000 B.C. with King David and his successors. From there to about 590 B.C. Judaism was developed.”

“So, okay, these guys ain’t no Johnny-come-latelies,” Fernandez said. “You’d think they’d have their ducks in a row by now.”

“They did have a few troubles,” DeWitt said. “First the Babylonians, then the Persians, and then the Greeks conquered them. It wasn’t until 186 B.C. that the Jewish Kingdom was revived. For a hundred years things went well. Then Rome marched in and took over and put down the Jewish revolts of 70 A.D. and 135 A.D. During this time they renamed Judea Palestine after the first inhabitants of the area, the Philistines.

“The Arabs first took over Palestine in 636. The Arab language and Islam prevailed for several centuries, but there remained a stubborn Jewish minority with its own customs and religion. About the year 1000, foreign empires again started conquering Palestine, including the Seljuks, the Mamluks, and the Ottomans. Ottoman rule lasted for four centuries, until the British took over in 1917 pledging to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. By 1920 the land east of the Jordan River was detached and Jewish immigration began. Hitler and the Nazis spurred a flood of immigrants, and at the same time Arabs from Syria and Lebanon surged into the area, and it turned violent with fighting between Jews and Arabs. Then in 1947 the U.N. partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and a Palestine state, and Britain withdrew the next year.”

“We really having a test on all this?” Bill Bradford asked.

“Absolutely, and anyone not passing has to stay after school,” Jaybird yelped. That brought a laugh.

“Now we come to the fun part,” DeWitt said. “In 1948 Israel was invaded by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. That put twenty to thirty times as many Arabs in those countries fighting tiny little Israel, which had been a nation for only a year. Israel was not smashed, but she did lose some territory. Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip and Jordan took over a long chunk of former Israeli land on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

After one small stalemated war, Israel went into the Six-Day War in 1967 and smashed the whole neighborhood. They took over the Gaza Strip, occupied the Sinai Peninsula all the way to the Suez Canal, captured East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan Heights, and Jordan’s West Bank. The U.N. arranged a cease-fire.

“Since then there have been minor skirmishes and one-day wars, and raids that have left the whole area unsettled and volatile. Israeli Special Forces made the daring raid into Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 to rescue one hundred three hostages seized by Arab and German terrorists. It was a textbook raid, perfectly executed, planned in detail, and deadly where needed. We’ve studied it. We should do so again.

“In the next few years there was some improvement. Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, the later ending a forty-six-year state of war between the two. But terrorism and fighting by Arabs against Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continue to this day.”

“And we’re right in the fucking middle of it,” Jefferson said. “Bet you a buck we’re heading for the West Bank on our next mini-vacation to the Holy Land.”

“That’s enough culture for today, gentlemen,” DeWitt said. “I’ve checked with the locals. There’s a ten-mile course laid out to the north of us that we can use for training. If the commander has no objections, we’ll do it with full combat gear and weapons, minus the Draegrs. We move out in twenty minutes.” DeWitt looked at Murdock, who gave him a thumbs-up.

“All right, people, let’s shag ass.”

They took the first ten miles at a slow jog, covering a mile in exactly eight minutes. They had done the eight-minute jog so often that it was routine, ingrained into their muscle patterns and brain tissue until they could come within twenty seconds of the time nine times out of ten.

At ten miles, Murdock stopped them and let the men look around the Israeli countryside. They were in a semi-residential area, with some businesses but mostly houses. Even on this fertile plain along the sea, there was little room for farming. Houses had taken over, as they had so much of the world’s best farmlands.

Murdock turned the SEALs back. “Van Dyke will lead us out. I want a seven-minutes-to-the-mile pace for the first five, Van Dyke, then move back to eight minutes for the last five. Move out.”

When they puffed into the camp and on to their barracks, they found a delegation waiting for them. Colonel Ben-Ami didn’t look pleased with the wait. Murdock recognized three of the six men as ones from the first planning session.

“SEALs, good. Murdock, wasn’t it? Glad you’re back. We have a new assignment. Timing is not so vital, but we need to do some work. Can we all use your dayroom?”