Deadly Force

15

Luke Howard leaned over to Jaybird and whispered even though there was no need to. “You really think this is going to work?”

Jaybird shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. It looked pretty good on paper last night and this morning. We take this little boat and we plow downstream to the five-mile landing, five miles from the city center, where we hike inland about five hundred yards and we meet the rest of the SEALs. On a quirky deal like this a dozen things could go wrong. Like the bus could blow a tire or run out of gas or get stopped by the Army. So we play it as it goes and hope for the best.”

“They bringing the Bull Pups?”

“You bet, all six of them, and one of the EARs. The idea here is to destroy property and not build up any kind of a kill count. We use the stun gun if we have to.”

“These guys we have with us, can we rely on them? They didn’t get much training, bunch of rebels.”

“Loyalists, Howard. Remember they are the good guys. They know where the Army base is and how to get around town. We have four of them for good measure, and their long guns just might come in handy.”

Murdock moved to the back of the thirty-foot boat and slid in beside his men. “We do this by the book. The fewest enemy casualties possible, the greatest physical plant destruction practical, and then we haul ass as fast as permissible.”

A few minutes later the pilot of the boat slowed and angled into the right-hand side, where a rickety dock survived yet another landing. Two shadows slid out of the darkness and tied up the boat, then motioned, and the three SEALs and four Loyalists left the craft. The two men untied the boat, and and it powered back upstream to the hiding spot chosen. It would come on a radio signal from Murdock, who now carried one of the Loyalist radios.

The three SEALs watched the dark, silent houses as they went past. It was the edge of the city, and most people were inside. Murdock checked his watch. A little after 2100. Right on schedule.

Ahead he could see the school bus. He’d have to ask why the embassy had a school bus. They stepped on board, and the driver moved out at once.

“About time you AWOL suckers showed up,” Senior Chief Sadler growled. “Good to have the team together again. And some fucking action. We all ready?”

“You bring all the gear we need?” Murdock asked.

“We did. Six Bull Pups with plenty of rounds, and the EAR. Also thirteen eager and anxious SEALs ready to pop their britches if they don’t get some action. Gardner has been training our asses off.”

“Should be interesting tonight. First the motor pool on the edge of the base. Target practice really, from what the locals tell me. One of the rebels’ top men, Lieutenant Gabu, is with us. He’s our point man. Gabu, come meet JG Gardner and Senior Chief Sadler.” They shook hands in the gloom of the rolling bus.

“How much longer?” Gardner asked.

Lieutenant Gabu looked out the window. “Almost there. Two minutes.”

“Let’s get up and get ready,” Sadler called. The SEALs lifted out of the seats, adjusted their combat vests and weapons, and stood in the aisle ready to move out.

The bus stopped and Gabu looked at the men. “Alpha on me to the left, Bravo with Commander Murdock to the right. Let’s go.”

They ran out of the bus and spread out along a fence that wouldn’t keep a stray cow out of the area. Ahead a hundred yards the motor pool spread out. It consisted of three low buildings with a dozen trucks parked on this side and three buses next to the second building. Each squad had three Bull Pups. All of the men except the Loyalists had Motorola radios.

Murdock touched his mike. “We’ll go with the twenties. Impact on the vehicles, then WP into the two buildings we can see. As soon as we torch these two, Alpha Squad will chogie down the fence to get shots at the third building behind the big one. Bull Pups up and spread your rounds. Fire when ready.”

Two of the 20mm rifles fired almost at once. Murdock sighted in his weapon and aimed at one of the trucks. The round caught the front and tore the engine half out of the hood, but the gas tank didn’t explode. He fired again at the back of the truck, and the fuel tank went up in a sun-bright fireball that rained burning fuel on the two trucks parked beside it. He heard another fuel tank explode, and turned his weapon on the roof of the large building.

His first WP hit the side of the building and bounced off, making a bright fireworks display of spraying white phosphorus near the trucks. His second round vanished over the side of the building, and he soon saw the flames from the burning roof. The other 20mm rounds blasted into the two buildings, and quickly they were roaring blazes. Murdock saw a few men running around the building, but nobody looked like they were trying to put out the fire. Maybe the base had no fire department.

Then he heard a siren that could be a fire engine. He used the radio to get Alpha Squad moving to the third building. His Bravo men lay in the grass watching the fire. The bus had been driven a half mile away from the fence so it wouldn’t be involved. They waited as the buildings burned and the buses and trucks melted into each other. If there were any more vehicles inside the buildings, they would be toast by now.

He heard the crack of the 20mms down the way, and soon Gabu and Alpha Squad jogged back to the rest of them.

“Enough here,” Gabu said. “I love those twenties. When can I order up about two hundred of them?” He grinned. “Let’s go find the bus.”

It was parked on the side street where it was supposed to be. Gabu was the last man on. He talked with the driver, who circled back toward the base three miles from the burning motor pool. The bus eased up toward another fence not much stronger than the first one. Gabu got the men outside and pointed.

“Longer shooting this time. Six hundred yards to the administrative building on the right, then the post exchange and the mess hall and theater. No show tonight. I checked. On the other side are the officers’ quarters. Houses and barracks. We want all of them.

“Commander Murdock says the men who fired the twenties at the motor pool switch with a man who didn’t fire. Everyone gets in on the fun. Airbursts here won’t do much good, so let’s stick to the impact fuses and WP. Spread out again and fire when ready.”

Murdock handed his Bull Pup to Howard, who grinned, bellied down in the weeds, and pushed the muzzle through a hole in the fence, then sighted in. His first round came up short, but his next two hit the administrative building. With the range established, Howard put in WP rounds in his magazine and started the bonfires going.

Murdock looked up when he saw headlights along the fence. An inside-the-fence jeep patrol. He brought his MP-5 up and sprayed the jeep with nine rounds. He watched it come forward again, then hit it with nine more rounds from the thirty-round magazine. The jeep spun to the left away from the fence, hit a small ditch, and flipped over. One man crawled away from the machine. Murdock let him go. It wasn’t hunting season on federal troops. Not yet.

The six Bull Pups fired for only four minutes, but in that time they left twenty buildings burning furiously. The men formed up and jogged away from the fence. A half mile down a second road they came to the bus and piled on board.

“Is the fun over for tonight?” Jaybird yelled.

“Not quite,” Gabu said. “We’ve saved the best to last. For this one we have to do some footwork. The target is at the far end of the Army base, and carefully housed. We’ll have to move in, take out any guards, and then get to work. We’re going after the ammo dumps.”

There were some cheers.

“There are three of the underground bunkers that are now being used. I happen to know which ones they are. We have a ten-minute bus ride, so relax, fill your magazines, and get ready. We will probably run into some opposition on this one.”

It was fifteen minutes before the bus stopped along a road that had no houses on the off-base side. Just fields and a few cows. The men went through the fence and moved into a combat formation as they worked through plowed ground that was kept free of grass or weeds.

“Fire breaks,” Gabu said as he walked near Murdock. “They don’t want a grass fire to blow up their ammo.”

When they were a quarter of a mile off, Murdock, Lam, and Gabu went up on point. The rest of the platoon and the Loyalists spread out in a protective half circle behind the point men. The three passed an unused bunker, and Gabu pointed at two others just ahead. A guard with a submachine gun in his hands walked a beat outside the first bunker. A moment later they saw a second man walking his beat at the second bunker.

Lam pointed to the EAR and Murdock nodded. He waited until the two guards almost met at the far ends of each of their posts.

The familiar whooshing sound slashed into the calm night, and the two soldiers crumpled as if they had gone to sleep. Which, Murdock knew, they had.

“Now,” Murdock whispered, and the three ran to the bunkers and checked the doors. Both had locks. Murdock took a square of C-5 from his vest and cut it in half, then gave half to Lam, who ran with it to the far bunker door. Murdock and Lam pasted the puttylike explosive against the locks and then inserted timer/detonators. They had agreed on three minutes. They looked at each other through the pale moonlight. Murdock lifted his arm and snapped it down. They pushed the detonators to the on position, and the three men ran behind the bunkers.

The cracking explosions rolled off the other bunkers and raced toward the base buildings, which they could see still burning. The men ran around the bunkers, and saw both doors swinging open. Murdock used his flashlight as they went inside the first one cautiously, not knowing what to expect. Lam had a flashlight as well.

“Looking for C-4, C-5, or dynamite,” Murdock said. Lam found some to the side, and Murdock figured there must be two or three hundred of the quarter-pound bars. Lam and Gabu ran to the third active bunker and set a charge to blow its door off. Then Lam came back. They each took three pounds of the C-4.

“Timers set for ten minutes,” Murdock said. “We need plenty of time to get away from these mothers.”

Murdock stayed in the first bunker, put a timer/detonator into a quarter pound of the C-4, and set it on top of the three pounds of the explosive. He looked around. There were artillery shells, bombs, ammunition, rifles, more ammo, mortar rounds, and cases of dynamite. It should make an interesting bang when it all went off almost at the same time.

He set the timer for ten minutes, pushed it in to activate it, and ran out the bunker door. Lam stood there waiting for him. Together they hurried to the third bunker and saw Gabu coming out.

“Almost wish we could have stolen about half of these goods before tonight,” he said. “What the hell, maybe this will break General Assaba’s back and he’ll take off for Tanzania.” They ran back to where the rest of the SEALs and the Loyalists had held their defensive perimeter protecting the sappers’ backs.

“About five minutes,” Murdock said. “We should be hitting the bricks to get back to the bus.” This time it hadn’t moved once it let them off. There was no place to hide it.

The men hiked back toward the bus, then stopped and turned when Murdock called a halt. “About now,” he said.

The first blast went off a minute later. The concrete roof of the ammo bunker, with three feet of dirt on top of it, simply lifted off and canted to one side as the tremendous explosion slashed into the midnight sky. It was followed by a blast of air rushing into the spot where the air had been sucked up and shot skyward. Then came the return of the air in a hot blast that slammed half of the men to their knees.

Then the second and third tremendous explosions ripped through the night sky, lighting it like daytime for a half a second. Then the blackness closed in and the rush of air came and went again as the laws of physics held and the roof of the second and third bunkers cracked, then blasted skyward in a million bits of rock, dirt, and concrete. Most of the rocky rain came down well away from the SEALs and the Loyalists.

They all piled onto the bus and grinned and laughed and shook their heads in wonder.

“I’ve seen some big Fourth of July fireworks,” Miguel Fernandez said, “but nothing ever like this.”

The bus lurched forward, driving away from the Army base, taking a fifteen-mile detour around the big reservation, and then swung north and worked toward the river. They were twenty minutes ahead of schedule. The bus parked a quarter of a mile from the landing, and Murdock sent Lam ahead to check out the area. He took the Motorola, and five minutes later called back with a worried voice.

“Skipper, we’ve got some real trouble up here. I’d say there are at least forty, maybe more, Army regulars spaced around the road and alley and in every possible firing position that looks out on the rickety dock we landed on. Not a chance in hell we can get through there and on the boat without about half of us hitting graves registration. Any ideas?”