Counterfire

16

Van Dyke knew two terrorists waited for them at the car. There was no cover or concealment. He went to the ground silently, turned his head away from the car, and whispered into the mike, “Skipper, two visitors at car. Hold there.”

Van Dyke remembered a fringe of stunted brush on both sides of the narrow road where they’d parked the car. He lifted up and faded at a forty-five-degree angle away from the car and toward the brush. It would put him about thirty yards from the car. He watched every direction, made sure he didn’t make any noise when his feet hit the sand and stones. The men at the car didn’t move. He saw the cigarette glow again, and the cougher hacked four more times. Good.

Van Dyke made it to the fringe and stepped into the concealment. It was sparse. The two men should be watching the area in front of the car toward the border fence.

After five minutes of hard and careful movement, Van Dyke reached the dirt road forty yards behind the car. He slid in and out of the brush along the road as he advanced. He could see neither of the terrorists. One was near the rear wheel. The cougher must be at the front of the sedan. Which way would he be looking? Outward, toward the fence. That was what he protected.

Van Dyke moved faster then. He held his MP-5 at port arms, ready to bring it down and fire quickly. He wanted to do it all silently if possible. When he was ten feet from the front of the car, he could see the coughing guard clearly. He had one foot on the front bumper staring toward the fence. Van Dyke drew his KA-BAR fighting knife and held it in his teeth as he took the final six quick steps.

The terrorist guard turned just before Van Dyke got there, but he was too late. The butt plate of the MP-5 was already six inches from his skull and descending rapidly. It hit with a ripe-melon sound and the man collapsed. Van Dyke grabbed the fighting knife from his mouth by the blade, drew it back, and threw it at the smoker, who had turned at the sound the first man made when his head banged against the fender on his way down.

The chest was the perfect target and Van Dyke’s throw sailed true, turned over halfway, and the blade plunged six inches into the startled terrorist’s chest. It entered just below his heart. He tried to yell, but couldn’t. He held onto the door handle for a few seconds, then sagged as a large severed artery coming out of his heart pumped all of its blood into his body cavity, and sank to the ground, both hands grabbing at the big knife.

Van Dyke butt-stroked the unconscious man at the front of the car a second time, smashing in his skull, then dragged his body into the brush. When he got back to the smoker, he ground out the still-burning butt on the ground, withdrew his KA-BAR from the dead man’s chest, wiped it clean on his shirt, and pulled the body behind some low-growing shrubs.

Van Dyke used the radio. “All clear. I have a sedan leaving from this point to Ramallah in four minutes. Hustle, you guys.”

“All clear?” Sergeant Per asked.

“Clear as the midnight ride of Paul Revere. In a word, yes.”

“Be there in five,” Per said.

Van Dyke checked the car. They’d had time; they could have booby-trapped it. He used his flash and checked underneath on the muffler. No heat-sensitive bomb. Nothing wired under the hood to go boom when the starter kicked over. He picked up the dropped AK-47’s and pushed them into the car’s trunk. Van Dyke slid into the brush out of sight when he heard the five men coming.

“Friendlies coming in, hold your fire,” Ching called out.

“Welcome on board,” Van Dyke said, stepping out of the brush. “Let’s get this act on the road.”

Murdock looked north as the car turned around and headed back to the Army base at Rama. He wondered how the other ten SEALs were doing.

Jaybird, Jefferson, and Victor had slept most of the way to the target from the Rama Army Base. One of the Israelis with them nudged them awake.

“Close by now,” the squad leader said. He was Sergeant Jacob Epstein, and he told them he’d been on over twenty killing missions into the Palestinian territory. The SEALs could tell a bloodied trooper when they talked to one. Epstein said they were less than a mile from their parking spot. “Let’s get ready.”

The SEALs pushed magazines into weapons and charged rounds into the chambers. Their car edged to a stop near a pair of small buildings on a dirt street that ended in an open field. They could make out a security fence not far beyond the end of the road.

They had been briefed on their target. Their two six-man teams would go after the barracks for trainees, visitors, and workers at the learning center. The driver and squad leader told them there should be about 150 trainees and workers at the site. They should be mostly in the barracks. Epstein’s team would launch a surprise hit on one of the two units precisely at 0100. The other team would hit the near by second barracks in the complex. Both buildings were new and had been in use for less than a year. This secret facility had been exposed after a PLO prisoner captured by the Israeli forces had talked his head off in exchange for his freedom. He’d given them a detailed description of the facility, personnel, and scheduling of classes.

Both Jaybird and Jefferson had 20mm weapons. They would start the operation with white phosphorus through the windows on the ground floor, then HEs through as many windows as they could hit. There should be three or four other strikes by the combo forces in the main area of the camp at the same hour, so any opposition would have to choose what to defend.

The second sedan rolled to a stop not far away, and its six men got out. Jaybird and Epstein’s squad left its car and assembled near the fence.

Sergeant Epstein motioned them to the side. “We’ll cut this fence. Too close to use explosives. Cut it and get through at fifteen minutes after midnight. Gives us thirty more to get in position above the barracks for the 0100 attack. Everyone ready? We have ammo and plastique, right?” They all murmured their assurances.

“The other lads will cut the fence; we’ll follow them through,” Epstein said. “No quick triggers. We don’t fire until I give the order. Jaybird and Jefferson, you’ll start the party. Let’s move out.”

They worked through the fence cut, then to the left and up a slight hill past a dark and silent building to a cut-bank above the first barracks. It wasn’t as large as Jaybird thought it would be. Three stories and maybe a hundred feet long. Housing for fifty students, probably on double-deck bunks. Jaybird hoped they all were home when the party started. There was a good chance that the trainees would not have ammo for their weapons in the barracks.

He waited.

Victor fingered his MP-5. He might not shoot until they were closer or inside. The range was almost a hundred yards. He screwed on the silencer, thinking it might help inside.

The growl came from the right.

“Dogs, damn, fucking dogs,” Epstein said. “They use them for guard dogs. But usually they’re just packs of wild things. Might be only one or two or a dozen. We can’t fire our weapons at them. Knives?”

A dog lunged through the darkness directly at Victor. In a reflex action he lifted the MP-5 and drilled three silent rounds into the dog’s chest. The large dog angled to the left of Victor, pushed by the high-velocity 9mm Parabellums. It whined a moment, then rolled over and didn’t move.

“Nice shooting, Victor,” Epstein said. “I didn’t even know you had a silencer for that little squirt gun. There could be more dogs, so keep alert.”

They had moved up another forty yards when three dogs leaped at them without a sound. Victor got one; the other two went down with KA-BARs slicing into their throats and hearts. Jaybird pushed a big black dog off him where it had knocked him down. The dog gave a low growl, and Jaybird drove the KA-BAR into the dog’s throat and slashed it out.

“Damn dogs,” he said, wiping canine blood off his blade and his right hand.

The squad paused and waited for the other unit to catch up with them. Then they eased along the last quarter mile until they were at their two assigned firing points.

Jaybird checked his watch. He pushed the light on the dial and saw that they were ten minutes early.

“We wait,” Sergeant Epstein whispered to the men. The six men were spread out at five-yard intervals watching the target. There were still a few lights on in the rooms.

Three minutes later a ragtag unit came into the security lights at the back of the building. One man kept shouting something.

Epstein came past each SEAL. “He’s screaming for a medic. Claims he fell down and broke his leg and he needs attention.”

“He’ll have a lot more than a broken leg to worry about in about four minutes,” Jaybird whispered back.

The two Bull Pups would start the action with WP rounds into the ground-floor windows. Then move with HEs, or more WPs, on any targets the two SEALs could see.

Jefferson and Jaybird sighted in on their targets. Jefferson had the left side. Less than a minute later the word came in the earpieces.

“Twenties, give them hell.”

Jefferson had been waiting with his finger on the trigger. He fired. Jaybird’s round came out a moment later. The smoke rounds both went through windows on the ground floor. At once the rest of the squad began firing into the barracks. Jefferson and Jaybird put four more WP rounds each into the barracks’ ground floor, and at once could see the smoke of the fires they had started.

Men poured out of the building, caught the rifle and automatic-weapons fire, and promptly scurried through doors toward the front of the structures where they would be out of the direct line of fire. There was no return fire.

Jaybird got in one airburst before the screaming students found their way back into the burning building or out the front.

“SEALs hold here and continue firing at targets of opportunity. I’m taking the SAS and moving around so we can get some shots at the front of the place,” Epstein said. He scowled. “Jefferson, bring your twenty and come with us.”

They left at once, running down the hill and across a lighted area to the darkness and around the side of the building, keeping fifty yards away from it.

Jefferson got off a round as they ran. He saw thirty or forty men, clad mostly in underwear, milling around the front of the burning building. His first shot airburst over them and a third of them went down.

The Israelis fired automatic weapons, and what was left of the group scattered. Jefferson tracked a group of ten and lasered them and fired. Only four of them kept moving after the airburst that sprayed them with deadly shrapnel.

“Jefferson, put some HE into the front of the building. Windows if any are left.” The words came over the Motorola.

Jefferson fired two contact rounds. The first hit the window frame and smashed it inside as it blew. The second went in a third-floor window and exploded inside.

Jefferson watched a car race into the area and slam to a stop. He put a twenty-millimeter round into the car before the men inside could get out. The car exploded, then the gas tank went, and the whole thing was a funeral pyre blazing into the night.

“Move back,” the radio in his ear told Jefferson. He lifted off the ground where he had been firing from, and ran with the three SAS men back the way they had come.

Jaybird was still slamming twenties into the second and third floors. “You got any more WP?” he asked.

Jefferson said he had four. “Give me two and let’s light up the second floor,” Jaybird said. “Damn box isn’t burning fast enough.”

They fired the last four WPs’ and the phosphorus started more fires. Jaybird had a view of the second barracks. It too was now on fire, burning brightly.

“We’re done here,” Sergeant Epstein said on the radio. “Let’s hook up with the other squad and move back. Other squad, where the hell are you?”

“In your hip pocket in case you hadn’t noticed,” the radio chirped. “Be there in two. Going your way.”

The other squad jogged in out of the darkness, and they all left for the parking area.

“Scout out front?” Jaybird asked over the radio.

Epstein thought a minute, then the radio came on. “That you, Jaybird? If it is, take the lead. Keep within forty yards of us. Hard to see anything in this damn half-moonlight. Use your radio and keep us up to date.”

Jaybird said he would, and jogged ahead on the route back toward the cars. At first it was just a walk in the park. He kept his eyes watching forward, and nearly missed the movement to the right near the fence.

He dropped into the sandy rocks and used the mike. “Company. Something next to the fence behind me about twenty and twenty in front of you. I think I smell exhaust, so it could be a jeep or an armored rig. They have any?”

“No armored. Maybe a jeep. We’re down and waiting.”

“How about a star shell straight up? I’ll nail the bastards if it’s them. Couldn’t be any of ours, could it?”

“None of our people are within half a mile of us,” the whispered words said. “Star shell coming.”

Jaybird found some thick weeds to lie in with the Bull Pup aimed at the suspect. He heard the rifle report; then seconds later the flare blossomed two hundred feet above. He saw the rig at once, an open jeep with four men. All had rifles. He had already aimed, and he fired less than a second after the flare burst. The HE round hit the small vehicle in the engine area, blew it off its wheels, and turned it over, disintegrating the engine. His second round found the gas tank, and the whole thing went into a fireball that lighted the area for fifty yards around. He could see no movement. Then he did.

One man crawled away from the fire directly toward Jaybird, who switched to 5.56 and drilled six rounds into the crawling form. The terrorist flopped over once, then never moved again.

“Welcome to hell, bastard,” Jaybird whispered.

“Light or no, we’ve got to move.” The radio brought Epstein’s words. “We’ll circle and find you, then get away at a fast run. Moving.”

Jaybird saw them come out of the fringes of the light. He jogged out to meet them; then they angled for the fence, and the two miles they had to cover to get to their parking spot.

Jefferson and Victor pulled alongside Jaybird.

“Good shooting, little buddy,” Jefferson said.

“Yeah, but I’m down to one more twenty.”

“I’ve got four more in case we hit trouble. Glad to share.”

They kept running.

Just over twenty minutes later they hit the dirt and checked out the hole in the fence they had cut an hour ago. It would be a perfect trap for anybody watching for them.

One of the SAS men slithered toward it, used night-vision goggles, and tapped his mike three times.

“All clear,” Epstein said. “But we still go through one at a time, twenty yards apart. Move.”

Five minutes later they slid into the two cars and headed for Ramallah.

“Nice night’s work,” Jaybird said where he sat next to the driver in the front seat.

“Beautiful,” Sergeant Jacob Epstein said. “We’ve got to get some of those twenty-millimeter slammers if we have to steal them.”

“Amen to that,” Jaybird said. “I voted to have each of our men carry one, but seven is all we could wrangle.”

“Don’t make me jealous. Now let’s settle down and get some sleep before we hit home. I’ll let you know if we run into any trouble.”

It took Jaybird five minutes to get to sleep. He wondered what the rest of the SEALs were doing. Was it target practice like they’d had, or did some of the guys come up against some real opposition? He looked north, where more SEALs were in operation around the headquarters of this training complex.