Counterfire

23

“Let’s get these guys out of here and in a friendlier spot,” Murdock said, looking at the three Israelis on the cots.

“Chained down,” Ebenezer said.

“Bolt cutters, who is packing?” Murdock said on his Motorola.

“Yo,” somebody said, and a moment later Fernandez came into the room and worked on the chains. He cut the loops in the medium-thick chain and had the men free quickly.

“Clothes?” one of them said. They all wore only underwear shorts and T-shirts. The SEALs searched the room and found the Israelis’ clothes in a big wooden box.

Each man asked for a weapon. Jaybird gave up the spare MP-5 he had carried. Bill Bradford gave up his sub gun, glad to get rid of the weight. He gave the Israeli six extra magazines. Jefferson handed over the .45 auto he carried under his left arm and four filled magazines.

“How you doing?” Murdock asked Bradford. Mahanani had redone the bandage and given him a shot of morphine.

“I’ll make it, Cap. You just point me in the right direction.”

Murdock talked with Ebenezer. “We have the three men. You want to go after the target they came after?”

“Absolutely. We’ve accomplished our main, let’s give this a try. Plenty of time before we head back to the boat.”

“Where are the reserves they should have here? Will there be a counterattack of some kind?”

“Doubt it. We wasted enough out there on guard duty so the rest are hiding their tails anywhere they can until daylight.”

“Where is this turncoat?”

They talked with the three Israelis. Two spoke good English.

“His name is Najjar Hanieh. He had been a shoemaker, but he had such a perfect drawing skill that they used him to illustrate and draw diagrams for their terrorist plans. He has a small shop in the business area and lives behind his store.”

Ebenezer held up his hands a minute. “Names. This is Commander Murdock and Lieutenant DeWitt. These three lucky men are Adir, Yehudi, and HADERA. That’s enough to remember. Adir, you know how to find that little store?”

“With my eyes closed.”

“DeWitt, you take the lead with Adir and your squad. Alpha will back you. Let’s move.”

They left the area like ghosts in the night. In ones and twos, slipping from one building to another, they worked two blocks to the main business street. Halfway down it they went into an alley. Murdock held his men at the mouth of the alley, spread out in a defensive position. He didn’t believe that the Arabs here would roll over so easily once they saw a little blood.

DeWitt and his squad led the Israelis into the alley, and were almost to the back door of the turncoat’s shop when gunfire sounded ahead of them and they dug into the dirt of the alley, behind one old truck parked there and in some building offsets.

The squad returned fire, aiming at the muzzle flashes less than fifty yards ahead.

“Cover us,” Ebenezer said. Then he and Adir lifted up and dashed ten yards ahead and behind a building. Then they ran up to a smaller one beside it. All were made with common walls. The shorter one had a door that Ebenezer kicked in. He ran inside. Adir charged along right behind him.

“This is the right place?” Ebenezer asked. They were in a storeroom, and saw steps leading to the left.

“Let me go first,” Adir said. He slipped up the steps quietly and tried the door at the top. It was unlocked. He edged it inward and called softly.

“Najjar. Najjar, wake up, we are your friends.” His Arabic was excellent. He repeated the words again, and this time they heard some sounds inside. Then steps came toward them.

“Adir? Everyone said you were dead.”

“We’ve come to take you out of here. Get ready to travel. You have ten minutes to get your clothes together and what you can carry in your pockets. I’ll handle the briefcase filled with terrorist plans and targets that you promised me.”

Najjar struck a match and studied the face in front of him for the time it took for the match to flame out.

“Yes, I can come. They told all of us that the three Israeli spies had been caught and were beheaded.” He paused. “Yes, I am glad to see you. Wait.”

In the alley outside, Ed DeWitt kept up fire at the gunmen at the far end of the alley as long as they fired back. When they stopped, his men stopped.

At the other end of the alley, Murdock looked at the street and buildings. There could be a company of Palestinian Authority policemen out there. But were there? He figured not. There’d been no advance hint that anyone was coming. The Israelis said they had been captured two months ago. The PLO would tend to let down their guard after two months. But who were the gunmen at the other end of the block? How did they know that the attackers would come here?

Then he knew. Somehow they’d found out about the three spies being rescued, and they must know who the spies had come to rescue in the first place. Now all that mattered was how many men the Arabs had been able to throw together to stop them. It wasn’t a good feeling. He got on the net and told the others what he had figured out.

“So we play it carefully from here on. We double-check every building before we go past it. Better exfiltrate out this way on the alley with the prize, but keep a rear guard to get off some last rounds. How is our man doing?”

A dog ran across the street, but didn’t pay any attention to them. A cat screeched on a fence and then jumped off. Murdock’s radio came on.

“Skipper,” DeWitt said. “We’re in contact and the man is getting dressed. Should be out in a minute or two. Wilco on the getaway. Will be your way in about five. Yes, here they come now. We’ll lay down some cover fire, so don’t be alarmed.”

Murdock heard the firing from familiar weapons, but little counterfire. Where had the gunmen gone? He told Lam to recon out toward the water to see what he could learn. “Don’t go more than a block, and be careful.”

Two minutes later Bravo Squad came up and spread out. Lam called in.

“Looks free and clear up here, Cap. Had one car, but it turned off and is gone. Few lights on, no streetlights. Nobody on the street. I’d say it’s a go up here for a block. I’ll wait. This is still about a hundred yards to the water.”

“Roger that.”

Murdock looked around at the dark shapes. “Alpha Squad up front, our visitors in the middle, and Bravo bring up the rear. Spread out at least five and let’s move.” Murdock took the point and led out, checking every building, every window as they faded along the dirt street toward the Dead Sea.

Nothing.

The hairs on the nape of his neck stood up. What? Where? He scanned the buildings again. He felt like he was in a huge trap and the killer hammer was jolting down to squash him.

Lam came out of the gloom. “Still looks good ahead, Skipper. Some traffic to the south of us, two whole cars.”

“Could they be moving men and guns south to block us?” Murdock asked his head scout.

“Possible. I can take a run down that block and check.”

“Do that, and we’ll move south on this street. Last one before the highway, then the sand and the water. Go. Don’t get yourself shot, and report back on anything. If all is well, we’ll meet you a block south of here on the wet sand.”

Lam gave a curt signal with his hand and vanished into the night. Murdock kept the platoon moving. He was halfway through the block to the east when Lam called in a whisper on the radio.

“Trouble, Cap. I’d say about twenty men with long guns. They have formed a blocking line from the near side of the highway down to the water’s edge. Look like some of them have uniforms, maybe the Palestinian Authority guys.”

“Thanks. We’ll change plans and go the way you went. Ed, you hear that? Reverse march and lead us south down that street we just passed. Go south, be careful. Put out a scout. We might be able to go around that bunch up there. If not we’ll be in a tough firefight.”

“Roger that, we’re reversed. Fernandez is out as scout.”

Murdock acknowledged the call, then went to find Bradford. He was beside Ching, who’d grabbed his combat vest and was holding him up by one arm.

“I can make it, damnit!” Bradford growled.

“Sure you can. Now just keep going this way for another block; then we get a rest or you can pack me a ways.”

Murdock fell in behind them and watched their rear.

Ed came on the radio. “Okay, I get the picture better now. Lam is with me. We’re maybe fifty yards from the end of the picket line out to the west. We keep going here without a sound, we should outflank them and be gone.”

“Let’s get south of them, then get some protection and hit them with the twenties,” Murdock said. “Otherwise they’ll be chasing us all the way down the sea. Jaybird, how many twenty rounds left?”

“Five in the magazine and five more.”

“I’ve got seven left. We can discourage them to hell and back with those rounds. We’ll move down out of range of their guns, say five hundred yards, laser them and let fly. Now let’s get past the end of their line without a damn whisper. Go, Ed.”

The line of SEALs, with ten yards between them, moved agonizingly slow as the men worked their way across the silent dirt street and in back of the buildings on the continuing street. The Israelis and their Arab guest were in the middle, with Alpha Squad bringing up the rear.

They were almost across the exposed area when a dog charged out of the darkness and attacked Luke Howard, the third man from the end. Luke heard it coming and swung his sniper rifle like a club. The heavy butt of the weapon pounded into the side of the dog’s head, and it went down without a whimper.

The last two men stepped around the dog, and Murdock did the same, giving a little sigh of relief when he was behind the building. They moved faster then, still as silent as a ghost company. One more block and they ran out of buildings. Fernandez angled them east toward the water. They were still thirty yards from it when they crossed the blacktopped highway in a rush, then melted into the darkness of the shoreline.

“How far?” DeWitt asked.

“Two hundred yards more due south,” Murdock said. “Jaybird, back here with me for the shoot.” Murdock had spotted a building with a light in a second-story window on the cross street where the Authority guards had set up their ambush. He kept track of it as they moved, and when he figured the building was five hundred yards away, he called a halt. Jaybird had been walking beside him for the last two hundred.

“See that light, first one on the left? Laser on that. We can move right after we see how we do.”

They both fired. The two twenties went off in airbursts with a cracking roar. Some small-arms fire followed from the line of troops, giving both Jaybird and Murdock new targets to laser. One of the next two rounds was a WP, and Murdock stared a moment at the perfect circle of death dealing smoking white phosphorus before it fell to the ground and brought screams of agony from the shooters below.

Murdock heard the two SEAL sniper rifles join in the fight as the long guns found the range from the muzzle flashes.

Jaybird put one contact round on the highway twenty yards in front of where they figured the troops were, and he saw the flash and the swath of shrapnel that tore into the thin line of Arabs. Four more shots each with the airbursts, and Murdock called a cease-fire.

“Enough, let’s chogie out of here. Who is helping Bradford?”

“Ching,” DeWitt said. “I’ve sent four men ahead to the checkpoint we saw on the highway. They will take it down and bring back a vehicle to transport Bradford.”

“Good. Any more casualties?” Murdock asked. Nobody replied. “Ebenezer, how are your four friends holding up?”

“All doing well. The prisoners were treated fairly well. Their captors said they were being held to trade with Israel for some Arabs in jail.”

Gunfire sounded to the south of them. The SEALs and guests had closed up to four yards separation, and Murdock had moved to the front along with Lam.

“Our MP-5’s,” Lam said. “No other weapons fired that I could hear. Our boys must have won the day.”

Ahead a quarter of a mile, Senior Chief Sadler went to ground in the shallow ditch of the highway, and with the other three SEALs drilled the checkpoint with a deadly hail of hot lead.

“Don’t harm those two vehicles,” he had warned his three men. Victor, Mahanani, and Jefferson all kept their rounds away from the two sedans. Two guards had been on duty near the pull-down barrier when the shooting started. Neither one left the area, both down with multiple bullet wounds.

They had planned to come at the roadblock from two directions, but now Sadler changed the order. “We’ll all move up on this side until we can see behind the barricade and the small building. Watch for any movement.”

They ran forward, bending over to make a smaller target. There were no rounds fired at them from the checkpoint. They went to ground again and watched the structure. One of the sedans had a large wet spot under it.

“Damn, a ricochet must have hit the gas tank,” Sadler said. “Six rounds each into the little shed over there. Might be one more of them on the floor.”

They fired, then all lifted up and charged across the highway and thirty yards to the checkpoint. Sadler kicked in the door to the small building and fired six rounds.

“All clear roadblock,” he said on the radio. Victor ran to the undamaged sedan and looked inside. The keys hung in the ignition. He got in, fired up the engine, and without lights drove back up the highway north until one of the SEALs there waved Victor to a stop. He turned around carefully, then opened the rear door and helped Bradford slide into the rear seat. He was groggy again. He was in need of help, and it should be soon. As agreed, Jefferson climbed in the front seat to ride shotgun. They rolled down all the windows.

Murdock came alongside. “Drive down about a mile and a half to where we left the boats. Blast your way through that other checkpoint. It might not even be operating this time of night. Stop at the boat, let Jefferson find it, and wait for us there. We’ve got to make some decisions here soon.”

Murdock went back to his men and led them down the side of the Dead Sea on the hard ground. He took out the long-range radio the Israelis had given him and turned it on, then pushed the send button.

“Grounded, calling High Bird,” Murdock said. He let up on the transmit button and waited. No response. He tried it three more times, then checked the batteries and switches with his penlight.

“Lieutenant Ebenezer up front,” he said on the Motorola. “Get out your long-range radio and see if you can contact High Bird.”

Ebenezer came jogging up a minute later. “I tried it five times, but I get no response. These sets should reach back to Rama Army Base easily. Are they off the air, or did we ruin both of these radios?”