Counterfire

22

Murdock dropped beside Ed DeWitt where he lay in the dirt beside a house that looked out on the side of the palace. Directly in front of them not twenty yards away, a palace guard made a turn at the end of the post and walked back toward the brighter lights.

“You’re right, Ed. No way to hide the facts of the matter. Ebenezer, you on?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Have you noticed anything different about these guards?”

“Look routine, sir.”

“I’m at the side now and Ed and I have seen at least four guards who are women.”

“That too is routine. They use women in combat. Nothing new for them. They can kill us just as easy as a man can. They pull the trigger on a submachine gun and you die just as quick.”

Murdock frowned. He didn’t like killing women. He had done it two or three times, but only in extreme situations. Like this one. He touched his mike again.

“Listen up, men. We have some women guards walking posts out here. They are soldiers just like the men. We’re nondiscriminatory when it comes to them. We snuff them along with the other guards. Fernandez, pick one guard and drop him with your muffled shot. Now.”

Murdock scanned the guarded area ahead. Slightly to the left he saw a guard stumble and go down. A cry went up from two guards, and five or six of them rushed to see what the downed guard’s trouble was. Jaybird’s lasered shot exploded directly over the group of eight men and women, blasting shrapnel into four of them, killing two and putting the other two down.

At once the rest of the SEALs opened up, pinpointing the guards in the glaring lights. Murdock and Jay turned their weapons on the palace. Murdock’s first 20mm round hit the wall, missing the window on the first floor. The WP round sputtered and showered the wall and grounds with the brilliant display of the exploding phosphorus. His next three rounds went inside. He had alternated high-explosive rounds with WP, and worked his way along the windows on the left front wing on the first floor. Jaybird took the right.

Murdock stopped firing the twenty and looked at the guard force. Half of them were down and not moving. There were still more than fifteen running around looking for cover. Half a dozen more men came around the side of the palace. Murdock put an HE round in front of them, spraying the 20mm into a deadly hail of shrapnel that slammed four of them to the ground.

Jaybird and Murdock put the 20mm rounds of HE and WP into the big building. Murdock could see two fires burning through the windows. He checked the grounds again. He could see only three guards still shooting. A moment later their weapons went silent.

“Frontal assault,” Murdock ordered on the radio. “Assault fire on the run. Let’s get out there and get inside. Move. Now.”

He stood with the rest of them and ran forward. They formed a long curved line from the side, bending it so they all could fire at the palace without hitting each other.

Some counterfire came from the palace, but not as much as Murdock had expected. It was one of those killing missions where he knew he would take casualties.

They fired a deadly rain of hot lead as they ran forward. It was only forty yards across the sand to the front of the palace. Every window in the place had been shattered. Lights came on and went off inside. Murdock fired one 20mm round at the large double doors at the center of the first floor, and they jolted open.

Ed DeWitt and Guns Franklin stormed through the big doors into the darkened interior. Ed saw dim movement to his left and drilled the shadow with three rounds. He heard a moan and a body falling. Lights showed down a hall.

Ed used his NVGs and checked the rest of the entrance room.

“Clear entrance,” he said on the net.

Six more SEALs charged inside. Murdock and Jaybird ran into a hall on the right. They kicked open doors and found lights on, but no people. A submachine gun with a higher voice than the MP-5’s chattered its deadly sound. Murdock figured it came from the second floor. They kept opening doors along the hall and clearing rooms. Four more SEALs backed them. They found no people, only offices, living rooms, and a well-equipped recreation room with a beautiful pool table.

They came to an open stairway at the end of the hall. Murdock and Jaybird went up the steps in surges, covering each other as they moved. Jaybird peered over the top of the steps. He smelled fire and found smoke on the second floor.

“Right wing, first floor clear,” Murdock said. “One man stay there to keep it clean. Rest move up.”

“Left wing first is clear,” Ed DeWitt said. “Found four men, all wasted. One computer wing, which we will demolish with a quarter pound of C-4. Moving to second floor. Watch out for friendly fire, we’ll be opposite each other.”

“Ed, take the second, I’ll take some men to the third,” Murdock said. He motioned and Jaybird, Ching, Lam, and Bradford went with him up the stairs to the third floor.

Again, they smelled smoke but saw no fire. The rooms here were smaller, mostly bedrooms. In one room they found two women sleeping. They came up bleary-eyed and groggy. Murdock bound their wrists together with plastic strips and told them in Arabic to stay where they were.

The rooms became larger as they worked toward the center of the building. At the middle of the floor, the room’s door was locked. Murdock kicked it hard, but it didn’t open. He moved to the side and waited. Two hot lead slugs bored through the door and dug into the wall opposite. Jaybird put four 5.56 rounds into the lock area, and one of the big doors creaked and swung inward. More rounds slammed through the opening as the SEALs hugged the wall out of the line of fire.

Ching held up a flash-bang grenade and Murdock nodded. They both threw the small nonlethal bombs into the room about the same time. When the series of piercing high sound blasts and then the blinding flashes of light subsided, the four SEALs charged into the room.

It was a huge bedroom and office. One side had ceiling-high windows that looked out on the Dead Sea. Now they lay shattered all over the room. To the left in the bedroom side stood a huge king-sized bed with a canopy. A nude woman sprawled on her back on the bed, her body lathered with blood from hundreds of glass cuts from the shattered windows.

A man lay on the floor, his hands over his ears. He wore only white pajama bottoms and he too had been slashed by the glass, but not fatally. Lam jerked his hands away from his ears and bound them behind his back. He was not The Knife.

“Eb, third floor center,” Murdock said. “We’ve got a live one to question. Send Ebenezer up here.”

The rest of the room was sprinkled with the exploding window shards. The office held four computers with twenty-six-inch screens. Murdock blasted all four and their screens with a dozen rounds of 5.56.

No one else was in the room. “This isn’t our boy. We move down the hall,” Murdock said.

Lieutenant Ebenezer came in and went to the Arab who lay on the carpeted floor. He spoke sharply to the man, who groaned and turned away. Ebenezer kicked him in his left kidney, and the Arab howled with pain. Ebenezer told him to sit up. He did, and Eb began questioning him.

Murdock and his team moved down the hall. As soon as they left the big room, an automatic weapon fired at them from the end of the hall. Bradford swore and dove back into the big bedroom. He leaned against the wall and felt his side. His hand came out red with blood.

“Fucking A-rabs, dirty sonsofbitches, goddamned fuckers.”

Ebenezer heard him, went over, and saw the blood. He looked inside Bradford’s cammy shirt and put on a pad, then wrapped gauze around Bradford’s chest inside his shirt.

“That’ll stop the bleeding. You hang with me here. We’ll talk with our small Arab friend over here.”

Bradford swore again, then hit the radio mike. “Cap, Bradford. I picked up a slug. Not helping much for a while. Sorry.”

“Take it easy there. Can Ebenezer help?”

“He has. Go get ’em.”

As soon as the fire came from down the hall, all three SEALs returned with counterfire and drove the gunman back into one of the rooms. But which one? Lam lay in the hallway, his MP-5 covering the hall and the doors. He provided Murdock and Ching with the cover they needed as they checked on four more doors with windows looking out at the broad expanse of the Dead Sea.

All were elaborate suites, but had no people in them, Murdock found out. At the first sound of gunfire, the whole complex must have been evacuated. With a few exceptions. Where was the man with the machine gun?

Murdock kicked open the last door and stopped. Three men stood there; none held weapons, but a submachine gun lay nearby on the floor. He and Lam stormed through the door at the same time. The three men didn’t move. Behind them stood an oversized bed with a solid wooden canopy.

“Stand aside,” Murdock said in Arabic.

“No, we protect our master with our lives,” one of the men said.

Murdock waved his weapon at them. “Stand aside, or I’ll shoot.”

A voice in Arabic rumbled from behind them. Slowly the three men dropped to their knees, turned, and put their heads on the foot of the bed and waited.

For the first time, Murdock saw the man in the bed. He looked nothing like the pictures they had of El Cuchillo. This man was thin, not well, with a festering sore on his cheek. His eyes were dull and slow-moving. One hand, more skin and bones than flesh, lifted and pointed at them.

“You have come at last,” he said in Arabic with the same rumble of a diseased voice.

“Ebenezer, down the hall to the last door, quickly,” Murdock said.

The Israeli came in the door with his MP-5 sweeping the room. He took in the scene in a second, dropped the muzzle, and rushed to the bedside. He turned in surprise and looked at Murdock, who nodded.

“I’d say that’s our man, but he’s been hiding behind this facade of vigorous activity to cover himself.”

“And I speak English,” El Cuchillo said. “I am The Knife, but I am about as dangerous as a half-blind kitten.”

“You have killed many of my countrymen,” Eb said. “You have been a terrorist drenched in blood, yet you show no remorse.”

“I am a soldier in the Army of Allah. I do only his will.”

“You are a murdering bastard who should die slowly,” Eb said.

He stared at the old man, whose eyes were deep-set, with brittle white skin stretched tightly across his face by the protruding bones.

“You killed in Munich in 1972 and outraged the world.”

“A soldier in Allah’s Army.”

“You butchered women and children in eight distinct car bombings in Israeli town markets.”

“The work of Allah continues.”

“You killed two good friends of mine in Haifa.”

The old man shrugged.

Lieutenant Ebenezer lifted his MP-5 and slammed three rounds into the pasty-white legs that lay on top of the white sheet. The old man screamed, but the sound came out as only a whisper and a gargling, frothy rumble. Tears crept down his cheeks. He shook his head a moment, then looked up.

“That didn’t hurt me a bit. I am Arab, I am a soldier of Allah.”

Two of the guards kneeling at the foot of the huge bed lifted up in protest. Ebenezer swung the MP-5 around and shot both of them in the chest. They slammed backward in sudden death.

“You are like vermin on the face of decent human beings,” said Ebenezer. “You are gutter trash, the spawn of pure camel dung.”

Murdock understood a little of the Arabic. He moved back and used his radio.

“Report in. DeWitt, what’s happening?”

“The palace is clear. We found four more bodies. Took out three more guards. Found a locked room in a structure behind the main building. We’re not sure what’s inside. Could be an explosive bunker or a magazine of some kind. Holding on that. You find anything?”

“We have The Knife. He’s an old, old man. Eb is questioning him.”

“How old?”

“Old and sick, looks like he could be eighty-five, maybe ninety. Skin and bones, in bed and dying.”

“What about the locked room?”

“Hold, we should be down shortly. Post your guards. We don’t want to be surprised.”

Eb stared at the ancient one on the pillows.

“Why the deception about your still being an active terrorist?”

“Often the fear of a potential act is as effective as the act itself.” The old voice came in spurts, raspy, shaky, and it was hard to understand every word. When he finished the sentence, he closed his eyes and took deep breaths. A tremor of pain darted through him and his face contorted, then relaxed. His dazed eyes sought out the Arabic speaker.

“Why don’t you kill me? I’m ready. Allah is waiting to welcome me. He tells me I’ve suffered long enough.”

“I won’t do you any favors, El Cuchillo.” Ebenezer looked away and in a fraction of a second, the third guard at the foot of the bed lifted up and in one soaring movement, hurled himself backward at the Israeli officer. Eb looked up to find the body coming at him. He jolted to one side, jumped out of the way, and triggered a three-round burst at the guard.

Two of the rounds burned into the man’s neck, spilling him to the side, cutting his right carotid artery, which pumped blood out in a huge spurt with every heartbeat, jetting the raw red blood eight feet across the room.

The third round in the burst missed the guard, slammed over the bed, and hit the old terrorist in his forehead, hammering him back onto the bed, spreading blood, brains, and chunks of his brittle skull over the pillows.

Lieutenant Ebenezer’s eyes went wide. He lowered the weapon slowly, went forward, and took one last look at the man.

“I think we’re done up here,” Murdock said. “Let’s go see what Ed has found downstairs.”

Murdock stopped by the first room they had entered on the third floor, and saw Bradford standing and taking a few steps.

“How you doing, Bradford?”

“Not the best, Skipper, but I can walk. Hell, I’m about five minutes from fit for duty.”

“Let’s go downstairs and find DeWitt.”

Murdock held his arm as they went down the steps. That put a strain on the shot-up side, and Bradford winced with every step but didn’t utter a sound.

They found DeWitt with most of his squad at a building attached to the main house but with a separate entrance.

“No windows and only one door,” DeWitt said. “Figured it had to be something special. Nobody has gone out or tried to get in since we found it. Big padlock on the door hasp.”

“Easy. Put about six rounds around the hasp and blow it out of the wooden door,” Jaybird said. The others stood back as the big mouth of the platoon went to work. It took him only three rounds before the hasp spun out of the wood and the door hung ready to open.

Murdock nodded to his second, who reached out, stayed against the wall, and swung the door open. Nothing happened. The inside was dark. DeWitt shone his flashlight past the doorjamb from the ground level and into the dark room.

They heard some jabbering from inside. Lieutenant Ebenezer pushed up beside DeWitt and shouted something into the darkness.

An answer came back, and Ebenezer grabbed the flashlight and charged inside the room. A moment later he found a light switch and turned it on.

Murdock and Jaybird had surged in right behind Ebenezer, their trigger fingers ready.

More shouting, and Murdock tried to get his eyes used to the sudden light after the darkness. He saw three cots with men on them. Ebenezer was embracing them one by one, and shouting in a language not English or Arabic.

He turned, and his face billowed with a smile.

“These men are Israelis, we thought they were dead. They are a special Mossad team sent in two months ago to find a man ready to flee this land and bring with him some vital information.”