Counterfire

17

They had a seven-man squad with four SEALs and three Israelis. Fernandez checked the scene. They had just hiked in two miles from their transport, and were on a small rise behind what they were told was the general headquarters building of the training complex run by the PLO with some assistance from Osama bin Laden.

Fernandez frowned. Ahead was a concrete-block building, two stories, with only one window on the rear and no rear doors. From his vantage point it looked like a fort. SEALs Donegan, Franklin, and Canzoneri dropped beside Fernandez.

“We going to take that place down?” Canzoneri asked. “Looks like the outside of a tank.”

Sergeant Menuhin slid into the dirt beside Fernandez. “Looks pretty tough, doesn’t it? But we take it from the front. We have ten minutes before 0100. By that time we’ll be in front of it with half the squad on each side. We have one of the twenties. You’ll fire it to start our operation. Then after five or six rounds inside, we throw grenades through the windows and charge in and clear it out room by room.”

“How many rooms?”

“Twenty-eight if our spy is correct. Shouldn’t take long. Your long-range artillery should soften them up considerably.”

“Who will be there this time of night?”

“It’s a combination office and living space for the top officials in the training division here. If we’re lucky, we can wipe out their top cadre and training officers. There are supposed to be twenty-two men quartered and working here. We better move.”

The Israeli Mistaravim had split his seven men into two details, one on each side of the block house. They expected no guards walking outside. It was a secure area. Fernandez and Canzoneri went with the sergeant and another Israeli around the right-hand side of the building.

The three with the sergeant walked toward the building as if they belonged there, especially in their Arab civilian clothes. They paused at the side of the building, and Sergeant Menuhin checked his watch.

“Two minutes to wait,” he said.

They took a quick look around the corner of the building, and saw four men leave the complex. All had on civilian clothes since that was what they wore when they went on raids. Menuhin let them go. He looked at his watch again, then saw two quick flashes of light from the far side of the building.

“Let’s move. We get out front far enough for Fernandez to use that twenty. Now.” They sprinted out thirty yards and went to the dirt in what looked like a parade ground. Fernandez put the first round through a second-story window, the second one through the front door, which he blew off the hinges. He tried a WP round on the first floor to the left, and by the time he got off one more WP round to the second floor left, men began pouring out of the building.

He lasered one round over the heads of a dozen, then shifted to his 5.56 barrel and with the rest of the shooters began picking off individuals who darted out of the building. They couldn’t get out the back.

Some return fire came. Fernandez saw muzzle flashes from the end of the second floor. He triggered a twenty into the room, where it exploded, and the firing stopped. He searched other windows for shooters, but found none. No more men came out the door.

“Move up,” Sergeant Menuhin said into the personal radio. “We go in two at a time. SEALs pair and you Army types take it. First team goes in and works down the left-side hallway clearing the rooms as you go. Grenades or gunpowder. Next team in takes the right-hand side and we do the same routine. When the first floor is clear and there isn’t a battalion out front firing at us, we work the second floor. SEALs, inside.”

Fernandez and Franklin hit the hole where the door had been, and darted to the left through a small lobby. They saw no one alive. Two bodies had been blown across a desk and another one was sprawled beside it. They ran to the first door in the hallway. Fernandez kicked it open and jolted to the wall beside the opening. No reaction. He looked inside. The lights were still on in the building. No one was in the room.

Franklin went to the next door on the other side, and turned the knob and pushed it open hard. Two rounds blasted through the opening. Franklin reached around with his MP-5 and hosed down the room with nine rounds. He looked in from floor level, and found two men in civilian clothes, both dead against the far wall.

They checked seven rooms on the ground floor left, found four empty, and killed four more terrorists before they reported the floor clear to Sergeant Menuhin. They had heard firing to their left, and soon Donegan and Canzoneri came on the radio reporting their section clear.

“Stairs center,” Menuhin said. “We’ll meet there and take on the upstairs.”

They met and moved up the stairs slowly. The sergeant poked his head over the top step and then jerked it down. Three rounds blasted through the space where his skull had been.

Donegan jerked the pin out of a grenade, let the handle fly off, and cooked it two seconds before he threw it down the hall. It exploded when it hit and they heard some yells. By that time the sergeant had a grenade ready, and he threw it farther down the hall.

When the shrapnel stopped zinging down the hallway, Canzoneri lifted his MP-5, pushed it over the top step, and sent three bursts of three rounds down the hall. He took a look.

“Nobody showing,” he said. “I’ll crawl to the first door left. Cover me.”

Canzoneri dropped to the floor and slithered forward, his MP-5 in one hand and a grenade with the pin pulled in the other hand. He kicked in the door.

Down the hall a head poked out of a room. Donegan chased the man back inside with a three-round burst into the door frame. There was no reaction from the first room. Canzoneri looked inside, then jolted into the room and fired two shots, and came out nodding.

Donegan took the next room. Before he could open it, two rounds slammed through the door. He jolted the panel open and flipped inside a grenade that exploded with a roar. Donegan rushed into the room the minute the bits of deadly steel stopped singing. He fired two three-round bursts, cutting down the man at the window who was trying to get outside.

They worked the rest of the rooms. Only two more were occupied, and the terrorists tried to give up, but the Mistaravim men gunned them down. The Israelis had seen firsthand what these terrorists could do in a crowded marketplace with a car bomb.

Sergeant Menuhin gave the men a thumbs-up and waved them down the hall. They encountered no more hostiles as they went outside and ran around the back of the building and up the slope nearly to the fence. Then they paused.

Menuhin gathered them around. “That’s our first objective. Now we have time to hit the secondary. It’s their training rooms, assembly room, mess hall, and kitchen. This one is supposed to be wooden construction, so our plan is to burn the sucker down. About a quarter of a mile more north. Let’s do it double time.”

They ran north along the fence, and found one place they had to zig down closer to some small single-unit buildings. Fernandez figured it might be officer country. They angled into the camp itself past two small buildings that were dark and closed.

Sergeant Menuhin stopped them at the corner of a concrete-block building. “Just past this is the area we want. Let’s get some of your WPs into the place if you have any left, Fernandez. Then we’ll hit what’s left with C-4 on one-minute timers. Spread out after the WPs, and don’t push in your detonator activator until you get word by radio.”

Fernandez went to the prone position and slammed one round through a set of windows nearest them. The WP exploded inside and a fire began. He had three WPs left. He spread them around the complex, then waved at the Israelis.

They all ran to the building, kicked in doors to get inside, where the bombs would do the most damage. Fernandez and Franklin found themselves in the assembly hall. It was big enough to hold two hundred. They found the basic roof supports and put bombs on them. They planted four bombs, then gave a ready to Sergeant Menuhin on the Motorola.

“Hold until I get everyone covered.” The SEALs waited, watching for anybody to come in and challenge them. Nobody moved.

Three minutes later the signal came. “Punch in the one-minute timers now, and haul ass out of there and back to the fence. We’ll group up there. Go.”

Franklin and Fernandez punched in the timers and ran for the door. They could smell smoke all over the big building. At the door they paused and Franklin looked out.

“Shit, we got trouble. Looks like fifteen fuckers out there with their automatic rifles, in a line of skirmishers, like they’re waiting for us to come out.”

“Fifteen to two,” Fernandez said. “And we have about thirty seconds to figure it out before those bombs go off.”

“Any twenties left?” Franklin asked.

Fernandez checked the magazine. “Empty,” he said. He pulled the bolt back a half inch. “Yeah, one in the chamber. What are they, forty yards out there? I’ll laser one over their heads and as soon as it goes off, we hose them down with everything we have left, then get our butts out of here.” Fernandez aimed the twenty Bull Pup and fired.

After that the two of them fired their weapons as fast as they could. Fernandez didn’t figure out if the twenty did the damage, or the automatic fire from the 5.56 and the 9mm rounds. About ten seconds later, he realized it had worked. Most of the fifteen were down, and not by choice.

“Go, go, go!” Fernandez bellowed.

They came out the door just as the charges blew behind them, giving them an added boost. Franklin’s magazine ran dry, but he didn’t have time to put in a new one. He and Fernandez set a new record for the two-hundred-yard dash as they pounded down the street, arms pumping, breath coming in desperate gasps. They rounded a building and slowed; both jammed in new magazines and then tried to figure out where the fence was, the boundary fence for the meeting.

“Nobody behind us,” Fernandez said.

“We shot the shit out of them fuckers, but we got to keep going. To the right up that slope to the right in the dark, that’s the fence. Come on.”

Five minutes later they lay in some tall weeds on the slope next to the fence. Two of the Israelis had shown up. One used the radio and guided in Sergeant Menuhin, who brought along Donegan and Canzoneri.

They were halfway back to where they had left their car when Franklin moved up to Fernandez and hit him on the shoulder. “Hey, we walk through any water anywhere? I got some strange wet squishing in my left boot.”

Sergeant Menuhin heard the words and stopped them. He used his pencil flash and looked over Franklin’s left leg.

“You took a round about halfway up your thigh, Franklin. Didn’t you feel it?”

“Hell, we was running so fucking fast I couldn’t even feel the ground. One of them bastards shot me?”

“Looks that way, went right on through. Let me put a bandage on it and a pad on both sides. I won’t even take your pants off. Hold steady now.” The Israeli wrapped the wound with a white bandage that stood out in the darkness.

“Oh, yeah, now I can feel it,” Franklin said.

“Can you walk, little buddy?” Fernandez asked him.

“Can an eagle fly? Let’s get moving.”

“Better have a shot of morphine, sailor,” Sergeant Menuhin said. “That leg could go out on you at any time.”

“No way, Sarge. I’m fine. Lets chogie.”

The Israeli frowned. “Chogie?”

“Yeah, haul ass, get out of town, move it.”

Menuhin grinned. “Yeah, okay, we can always carry you if you pass out. Let’s chogie.”

Fifty dark yards farther along the fence, Canzoneri stopped the squad.

“Hey, I feel naked. We don’t know what’s out front. I’m moving out as a scout. That way we won’t all get clobbered if they’re waiting for us.”

The sergeant nodded, and Canzoneri jogged out thirty yards until he could just barely see the shapes behind him. “I’m at thirty, let’s move,” he said on the radio.

When they passed the headquarters building, they could see the fires still burning. A few men idled around. Nobody was trying to put out the fire.

“Fuckers planned everything but a fire department,” Franklin said.

Canzoneri found nothing to hinder their movement along the fence. Twenty minutes later they came to the cut-open place. He stopped the squad and watched the area for five minutes. Nothing, no trap waiting for them.

“Yeah, the hole in the fence looks like a virgin, but better spread out to twenty yards between you and then run like hell through it. I’m first. Hey, this scout shit is okay.”

Fifteen minutes later the seven men squeezed into the sedan they had left parked less than three hours before. It was just after 0315.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Franklin said. “I need a two-hour nap.” He frowned, then his face twisted and he groaned. “Damnit, Sarge, you still have that little shot of morphine? I think I need it now.”