Counterfire

21

A fraction of a second after the star shell bloomed over the Dead Sea, the SEALs could see a medium-sized patrol boat heading toward them from a little over two hundred yards away. Two trigger fingers squeezed and two twenty-millimeter rounds blasted out of the short barrels heading for the slow-moving PLO craft.

Murdock steadied the telescopic sights of the Bull Pup on the craft after the recoil, and watched as his round punched into the cabin of the boat and exploded. At nearly the same instant another round hit lower down on the side of the boat almost at the waterline, exploding with a furious blast of metal and water.

“One more twenty round,” Murdock said, and sighted in again after working a new round into the chamber. His second shot hit near the bow two feet over the waterline, and blew a large hole in the port side just under the water. Jaybird’s second shot hit the cabin, blasting into junk anything left after the first round. The craft slowed, and then coasted to a stop. She was dead in the water.

“Waste any personnel in sight,” Murdock said. The sniper rifle cracked once, then twice, then again.

“Two terrs down, one went over the side,” Fernandez said.

The two rubber ducks slowed and stopped about fifty yards off the stalled patrol boat. It was listing badly to port. The bow deck was almost at the water level. A sudden burst of rifle fire came from behind the cabin. Ten SEAL weapons answered it.

“Don’t think we nailed him, Cap,” Jaybird said. “Too much cabin there protecting him.”

“Jaybird, put an AP round right at the waterline, now,” Murdock said. “Eb, will a ship sink in this water?”

“Oh, yes, quite a few down there. Depends how deep it is here, but there should be no trace.”

“Good,” Murdock said, and sighted in on the waterline about amidships and fired an armored-piercing round. Jaybird’s hit first, and the explosion seemed to continue inside the craft. It heeled over more to port then, and came to a twenty-degree list. Murdock’s AP round hit about midway along the forty-foot craft, just as the parachute flare sputtered and went out.

In the sudden darkness, they could now see a small fire burning in the cabin area. It grew larger. An explosion deep inside the patrol craft made it shudder. Then the flames leaped higher as if fueled by diesel or gasoline. The large explosion came a moment later, shattering the upper structure of the boat and dumping it on its side. The stern settled; then water sloshed over it and without a cry or a whimper, the patrol boat sank by the stern and nothing was left on the surface but a few boards and an empty one-man life raft that had automatically inflated.

They heard no splashing after the boat went down. Murdock moved the two ducks into the area, looked around a minute, then hit the Motorola. “Let’s move on north. Anybody hit by that counterfire?” Nobody spoke up. They settled into their eighteen-knot trip to the north.

They had figured a run of about an hour and ten for the trip north to a landing spot where they could hide the boats. Now they were ten minutes behind that schedule.

“Let’s move a little closer to shore and watch it,” Murdock said on the Motorola. “Looks like there won’t be anyplace to hide these ducks. My suggestion would be, as soon as we see any sign of those small farms, that we stash the boats and do the rest on foot.”

An hour into their run they spotted lights ahead. Just a few, as if in scattered houses. The closer they came, the more evident it was that they had reached the small farming operation. Murdock wondered where the farmers found fresh water, but knew they did.

“Lam?” Murdock asked.

“Yeah, the farmers are at it here. Looks like it’s walk time. Not much activity over there.”

They had seen two cars or light trucks move along the roadway next to the Dead Sea. Now they saw a few more cars driving around. Murdock checked his watch. A little after 2130. Not even bedtime for farmers.

“Let’s hit the shore,” Murdock said on the radio. “We’ll beach the ducks and hope to be back here ready to use them again before anyone finds them.”

They landed, pulled the ducks up out of the water, and knelt down waiting. Lam came back five minutes later.

“Just a few farms right along here. Nothing that reaches out to the highway and north for maybe two miles. Then we’ll have to be more careful.”

“Right,” Murdock said. “Lam out front by a hundred. Everyone have on his ears? Radio check, Bravo?” All eight men checked in, even Eb. The seven men in Alpha came on the horn.

“All right, Lam, take your hundred. We don’t want any surprises. We’re plenty early, so there’s no rush. If we get to the palace by midnight it should be about right.”

Lam moved out ahead of the troops. He had his MP-5 with the silencer on it for quiet work. He moved along the bank of the Dead Sea where it was solid ground, keeping every one of his senses alert. He could smell the salt mist coming off the sea. To the far left, away from the water, he noticed the “green” smell of growing things. Vegetables, from what they had been told.

A dog barked. The damn Arab habit of keeping dogs around to sound the alarm. The platoon should be far enough away from the farms to avoid the dogs. Unless there were packs of wild ones running around here too.

Lam moved up another five hundred yards and paused. Something to the left. The roadway curved closer to the water here, and when a vehicle came along it toward him, Lam went to the ground and became a dark blob. The lights swept past and were gone.

Lam reported how the road curved closer to the water, and moved ahead. Another two hundred yards and he saw a building to the left with lights on. It looked to be near the road, and Lam studied it carefully. He moved up slowly for a better look, then used his 7-&-35 field glasses. Yes, a checkpoint on the road. He could see two armed men standing just outside the structure. Now, did they have any motion or vibration sensors stretched across the road and on down the beach to the water?

Lam walked across the spot where he figured any such sensors should be. Nothing. He moved back and forth across the point several times. No response. He used the radio and reported the checkpoint to Murdock.

“Looks like just a check on the road,” Lam said. “Should give us no problems.”

Two more cars came at just the wrong time, and the SEALs had to wait for the cars to pass before they ran through the narrow strip of land between the water and the highway. Then they were past that and moving up to the checkpoint.

Lam had waited for them there, and hustled them past it before he moved out ahead again by two hundred yards.

There were a few small buildings well across the road and into what looked in the dark like green fields. There must be fresh water from somewhere to irrigate them. He saw no activity, and most of the small houses didn’t have lights on.

Two minutes later Lam went down on his stomach in the sandy, dry ground and stared ahead. This one was more than a checkpoint. A splash of light showed in a large square ahead where some type of building hovered near the road. A lift gate extended across the width of the highway, and two cars had been stopped and uniformed men inspected the rigs. He heard the talk, but didn’t know Arabic.

“Cap, better come up and take a look and leave the troops down there. We’ve got a bigger post across the road.”

Two minutes later, Murdock bellied down beside Lam and used his binoculars. He swore softly.

“Fucking roadblock won’t bother us, but look at the wire that extends out into the brine. No telling how far it goes. It’s a good old-fashioned double-apron barbed-wire fence. Four feet high in the middle on steel posts and with razor and barbed wire. Then slanting-up aprons on both sides, also of razor wire. Not a thing of beauty to get across without making a hell of a lot of noise.”

“Or getting wet,” Lam said. “Trouble is, the wire might extend twenty feet into the water. At least until it rusts off in the brine.”

“How far are we from the town?”

Lam had been watching the growing brightness of the lights ahead. He’d figured about a mile before he found this blockage. He told Murdock.

“We either get wet now or take out the roadblock.”

“Getting wet is best; then we still have surprise at the palace. I’ll go check on the end of the wire. Hell, we’re not afraid of a little bit of water.”

Lam ran to the wire where it vanished into the blackness of the Dead Sea and wiggled it. Solid. He stepped into the water and eased out three feet. The muddy bottom sloped gradually. He probed with his foot and hit the wire a foot under the water. Lam stepped on the wire construction, and it sagged to the bottom of the sea in the salty mud. With his hand he searched where the four-foot upright should be, but there was none. Just the tapered-down end of the typical double-apron defensive fence. He went back the way he had come to where Murdock lay in the sand.

Ten minutes later, the SEALs had waded around the end of the barrier fence and were wet only to their waists.

“Easy,” Jaybird said. “Why didn’t they have some noisemakers on the fence? Some old beer cans tied together works great, or here in Muslim land some Coke cans would do the trick.”

Murdock now went with Lam on the point. They came to a half-fallen down building that at one time might have been a bathhouse for a retreat or hotel. Now it was almost collapsed and shattered by the elements. They used it for cover for a moment. Murdock took out his NVGs and scanned ahead. The light green landscape showed him no bodies, no movement. He saw two cars parked ahead on the other side of the road. Houses were now in regular rows of blocks across the highway. They had at last come to the town, Murdock decided.

They saw the lights in front of them twenty feet later. The four-foot-high beams of light from giant searchlights daggered across the black sand of the Dead Sea and vanished in the darkness well out into the wetness. Murdock saw the source of the light at once. A pair of huge searchlights that sat about fifty yards inland. They evidently were aimed down a street so they had an unobstructed shot at the beach and the water.

Murdock and Lam went to the sand again and watched, but could see no change in the steady beam of the lights. No rotating, no flashing on and off, just a steady beam that would immediately bathe anyone in their light the nanosecond a crossing was tried.

“Around the bitches,” Lam said. He pointed. “We can get across the road here, go down a block inland this side of the lights, walk around them, and come back to the wet on the other side.”

Murdock checked it out with the glasses. He could find no roving guards along the light beam, and nobody working the other end of the lights. He did see three submachine gun guards walking around the pair of giant, smoking searchlights as the arcs gave off their smoke and odor.

“Move up,” Murdock told the troops on the Motorola. He explained to them on the air what they would do and why. By the time they were in position a block from the light, Murdock and Lam had already crossed the street, walking and fading down the dirt street with occasional houses on both sides.

The rest of the platoon filtered across the road, then into the houses, and detoured around any that had lights showing. Murdock and Lam went fifty yards beyond the smoking-arc searchlights and dropped down to study the area for guards.

“Dogs,” was all Lam could say before two large animals came out of the darkness and without a sound hurtled through the air with snapping jaws searching for their victims’ throats. Murdock rolled to the left and clubbed one of the animals with the butt of his Bull Pup. He hit it in the neck and it went down, then sprang up. Murdock got out his KA-BAR and on the next lunge of the animal, he drove the blade into the dog’s throat and slashed it sideways. Blood flew, and Murdock rolled away from it as the dog came down hard where he had been. It gave a short whine, then turned over and died, half its throat torn away.

Lam had spun to his back, jerked up his knees, and lashed out with both feet as the slightly smaller dog snarled and dove on him. Lam’s boots caught the animal in the chest and lifted the dog and threw it over his head. That gave time for Lam to draw his KA-BAR and slash twice at the animal’s head as it charged him again. The blade tore across a cheek and through one eye, and the dog bleated in pain, dropped its long tail between its legs, and ran into the darkness.

“Watch for dogs,” Murdock said on the radio. “Stay in place while we finish our recon.”

It took them ten minutes to be sure there were no human sentries around the back side of the lights. They floated across the danger zone and filtered back through the streets to the wet. Murdock had no way of knowing where the palace was except that it was facing the water. So they would stick with the salt brine until they found the target and could recon it.

Another block and the lights from ahead increased in brilliance by a factor of four. They moved up as close as they could and not be in the splash. This well-lighted place had to be the palace. Huge floodlights bathed the beach and water in front of the palace. They also highlighted guards. Three worked a fifty-yard post in front of the palace and in a foot from the Dead Sea. Another rank of guards passed each other on the dry sand, and a third line of four more guards hovered around the chalky whiteness of the building that had to be the palace. It was three stories, pure white in the glow of the floodlights, with a large portico-type rear entrance and what could be thirty windows facing the sea.

Murdock brought up Eb and he checked the situation.

“Yes, about what we figured, only more guards. If we try to take out one or more, the rest collapse on us and we’re in trouble. Too damn many to go around. From the lighting pattern, I’d guess all four sides of the palace have guards, about the same number and positions.”

“What the hell can we do now?” Lam asked.

“The oldest one in the book,” Murdock said. “Joshua used it in the Battle of Jericho several thousand years ago.”

“Diversion,” Eb said, grinning.

“Let me check around two more sides just to be sure,” Lam said. Murdock nodded. Lam vanished to the left, still in the dark, heading round the left side of the palace as it faced the water.

“Will he be all right?” Eb asked.

“Best man I have for land warfare. He’s got elephant ears and a sixth sense that has pulled us out of more than one tough spot. Yeah, he’ll be all right.”

Murdock used the Motorola to fill in the rest of the men on what they’d found, what Lam was up to.

“Jaybird, Sadler, and DeWitt, front and center,” Murdock said in the radio mike. Moments later the four men lay in the sand looking at the searchlights.

“Suggestions,” Murdock said.

“Yeah, diversion,” Jaybird said. “Shake them up, move about half of them off their usual position. Something that will last for a while.”

“Like a firefight?” DeWitt asked.

“Bombs and a firefight. Bombs to start it off. Maybe a fire. An old building with a WP into it. Then a firefight over their heads to pull them back down this side of the lights.”

“Possible,” Eb said. “Not a chance we’re going to get past them without a fight of some kind. That would bring out the reserves. We’ve heard he has fifty men guarding him here.”

“Just what we need,” Murdock said. He scowled. “We can get half the force to the south, then use airbursts on those left, and put five or six twenties through the windows. Any idea where the boss sleeps or works?”

“Not a clue. We can’t get a man inside here. It has proved impossible for three years.”

“Could we burn it down?” Senior Chief Sadler asked.

“We’ve heard that a lot of the palace is made of stone, some marble. But the interior should burn like a torch.”

Murdock frowned as Lam materialized out of the darkness and slid in beside them.

“About the same all the way around. Lights and more men. Must be twenty, twenty-five that I saw.”

“No diversion,” Murdock said. “No good place for it, wouldn’t work. Too many guards. DeWitt, bring up the troops and spread them along this side of the lights. Some will be across the road and in behind some of those houses. Ten yards apart, at least. Where’s Fernandez?” He used the radio. “Fernandez, get your weapon up here.” He looked at the rest of them. “Spread out, ten yards, let’s lock and load. We’re going to put down one central guard with the silenced sniper rifle. When half a dozen guards rush to his aid to find out what happened, we’ll put two laser rounds over them, then take out the rest of the guards in a weapons-free. As that’s starting, Jaybird and I will plaster as many twenties through the windows as we can. WP, AP, anything that we have. If we can reduce that guard force enough, we can assault the fucker and get inside and track down our man.

“DeWitt, you have the rest of the platoon in its spaced-out positions?”

“Not yet, Cap. Hate to tell you, but we’ve run into one small problem over here. Better hold off your sniper fire.”

“What the hell is it?”

“You better come over just across the road and have a look, Commander.”