Direct Action

48

During BUD/S, Hell Week begins at 2100 hours on a Sunday night and continues nearly nonstop until Friday evening. Most of Thursday is spent in the demolition pit. The pit is one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet deep, surrounded by barbed wire and filled with mud. Two heavy ropes stretch across. Completely exhausted by constant physical exertion and lack of sleep, the SEAL trainees spend the day crawling under the barbed wire, over the ropes, and through the slimy mud while explosives are detonated all around them. Anyone inclined to crack under the strain of prolonged loud noise and explosive concussion does so in the pit, not on an operation.

The mortar fire ended. The tubes in the valley fell silent. Less than a minute later the last bombs fell on the ridge.

It took Razor Roselli a few seconds to get used to the quiet. He was still hearing explosions in his head. “Sound off,” he whispered into his microphone.

“Jaybird.”

“Magic.” Lieutenant Murdock was beside him without a radio. “Sit tight,” said Razor. The oldest trick in the book was for artillery or mortars to fire a mission, then, just when you were brushing the dirt off your uniform and congratulating yourself on your survival, resume firing.

It didn’t happen.

Murdock leaned over and whispered in Razor’s ear. “Let’s get out of here before the smoke clears and the Syrians show up to take inventory.”

“Right,” Razor whispered back. “Okay, we’re moving. Magic, you’re on rear security. Jaybird, take the point. I’ll help the lieutenant. Doc?”

“I’m listening,” Doc Ellsworth replied over the net.

“We’re coming in. Try not to shoot us.”

“Never happen,” Doc replied. “At least not as long as Jaybird owes me money.”

Jaybird quickly got out in front. Murdock slung an arm over Razor’s shoulder and limped along. Every time he put his foot down, the pain was like an electric shock. The blood had soaked into his trousers. Now it stuck to his skin and the wounds whenever he moved. It hurt. Bad. Especially when climbing rocks. He was seriously regretting his decision on the morphine. He’d talk to Doc once they got back to the LZ.

Behind them, a great many automatic weapons opened fire with a loud roar.

“They’re finally making their assault,” Murdock whispered to Razor.

“Chicken-shit sons of bitches had to sit down and call in a mortar prep before they went after four guys.”

“Take it as a compliment,” said Murdock.

The SEALs were well beyond where the Syrians were assaulting, but that didn’t mean they were out of danger. It was like being beyond the target line on a rifle range. You could still get shot even if they weren’t aiming at you.

Green tracers skipped off the rocks and made bright trails in the night sky. Rounds that had gone long were hitting the ground all around the SEALS. They couldn’t stop. All they could do was hurry along and let fate throw the dice.

But that didn’t keep them from flinching every time a close one went by.

“I hate this,” Razor muttered quietly. “At least when you’re shooting back you’ve got something else to think about. With this shit you just have to walk along and wait to catch one.”

Murdock was well into that stage that every SEAL experiences first-hand during Hell Week. Normally, when the body hurt, the brain reacted to the pain. But whoever hung on to become a SEAL discovered that you could tear the brain loose from the body and just keep going. That’s all you had to do — just keep going. The brain eventually got tired of you not paying attention to all those signals to stop and take it easy. After a while it gave up and came along for the ride.

Jaybird was waiting for them in the rocks. “Doc’s right over there,” he said, pointing.

Murdock and Razor shuffled by him. Jaybird waited for Magic. You always counted your people off as you walked into a position. One or two bad guys might attach themselves to the back of your file and try to walk right in with you. SEALs had been known to pull that trick on others, so they were very careful not to fall for it themselves.

Razor positioned everyone in an all-around security perimeter. But he weighted most of his firepower to the northeast, where he expected the Syrians to be coming down the ridge very soon. Ed DeWitt and Doc covered the southern axis of the ridge, just in case some Syrians had been quietly moving up while all the shooting was going on. DeWitt was there because he could only shoot one-handed, Doc to protect the only remaining PRC-117.

Razor briefed everyone on how he wanted the LZ evacuated. SEALs worked it systematically; they didn’t just haul ass for the helicopters. Everyone knew their sectors of fire and order of withdrawal.

“Echo Seven Oscar, this is Hammer-One, over?” said the voice in Doc’s handset.

“This is Seven Oscar, go,” Doc replied.

“Hammer-One is two minutes out, over.”

“Roger,” said Doc. He, like the rest of the SEALS, could hear the Syrians moving down the ridgeline. “The LZ isn’t hot now, but it’s going to be when you come in. So hurry it up if you can, and heads up. Over.”

“Roger,” the pilot replied coolly. There wasn’t much to say after that. “Hammer-One, out.”

Doc spoke into his MX-300 microphone. “Two minutes.”

“Pull your tape,” Razor told them over the net. The SEALs had sewn strips of thermal tape onto the front, back, and sleeves of their Syrian camouflage jackets. The tape would show up in the helicopter door gunners’ night-vision goggles and make it easy for them to pick out friend from foe if the extraction got messy. Until now the thermal strips had been concealed by green ordnance tape. The SEALs ripped it off.

“I’ll initiate fire,” Razor informed them. “I want to hold them as far back as we can. Take it easy and make your rounds count, we ain’t got many left. I don’t want to be down to throwing rocks before the birds come in.”