Firestorm

10

The four SEALS with silenced sniper rifles needed no orders. They opened fire as soon as the headlights flashed their way. The first four shots took out the headlights. Six more shots through the windshield killed the driver in his seat. The utility vehicle went out of control and jolted into the concrete wall of the building and stalled.

Jaybird Sterling raced the thirty meters to the jeep and checked inside. There was only the driver, and he was greeting his ancestors.

Jaybird darted back to the unit and the men moved ahead cautiously. The compound door to the windowless, concrete slab of a building showed directly in front of them. It was not guarded.

The SEALS in their black flight suits and with blackened faces blended in with the shadows around the big building.

The large truck door was designed to lift and roll back into the structure. There would be no chance there. At the lower right-hand corner of this door was a man-sized opening with an electronic control panel next to it filled with Chinese characters.

Murdock eyed the door again, then spoke into his mike with a whisper. "Cutting charge," he said.

Gunner's Mate Second Class Greg Johnson ran up beside Murdock and knelt.

"Small door, three sides, go," Murdock said.

Johnson and Fernandez ran to the door unrolling the lead-sheathed triangles of high-velocity explosives. The point of each triangle focused the shaped charges' powerful force into a thin line. It could blow a pencil-wide slice through four inches of steel. It took thirty seconds to position the charges around the door and set the electronic detonator.

Johnson came back with the trigger in his hand and nodded at Murdock.

"Fire in the hole," Murdock whispered, and Johnson pushed the button.

The strips of shaped charges around the door exploded with a cracking sound like a stick of dynamite does when it's hung on a string from a tree and set off. In one moment the door was solid. Then a fraction of a second later the steel door had been cut out and blasted inside the building.

Four SEALS surged through the opening, Murdock in the lead and angling to the right. His MP5 covered his section of the room ahead. It was a lobby, a reception area with a bench along one side, a desk in the middle, and ten meters behind it a pair of polished wooden doors. Only one man was on duty. He had been blasted off his chair behind his desk.

He came to his knees and fumbled at his belt for a handgun. Murdock sent a trio of 9mm slugs into him, blasting him backwards into a quick death.

Two armed men surged through one of the wooden doors and were cut down by Jaybird and Ron Holt with their silenced MP5S. Jaybird's three-round burst caught the first Chinese soldier in the throat and worked upward into his head, spraying brains and blood against the polished wooden door.

Holt's rounds took his victim in the chest and drove him back against the door, where he dropped his rifle and slid down to the floor. Murdock stared at the two doors. Which one? A crap shoot. He charged the door on the right. The First Squad followed him and according to the plan, the Second Squad dispersed around the room behind what cover they could find to secure the area against any opposition.

Murdock led his seven men into a corridor that slanted downward. It was a death-trap box if anyone challenged them with machine guns from the other end.

They sprinted downward for thirty meters, then came to a branch. Chinese signs designated directions. Kenneth Ching was a step behind his L-T.

"Supplies, maintenance to the left," Ching called. "Production and storage to the right."

Murdock waved them to the right. The eight men charged along the corridor for another thirty meters, then came to an open area with a guard station. They faded back in the poorly lighted tunnel and looked out. There were six soldiers visible. A machine gun had been mounted above a sandbagged position. The wooden barricade looked temporary. Behind the sandbags they saw a vehicle also with a mounted weapon on it.

Ron Holt carried one of the RPGS. Murdock motioned him forward. Holt put the shoulder-mounted launcher in place and flipped the arming switch, then zeroed in on the machine gun emplacement and the truck behind it. He gave Murdock a thumbs-up sign. Murdock held up his finger and motioned sharply to Holt.

He fired.

The blast of the rocket in the tunnel was like a swarm of angry bees. If left a fiery trail for twenty meters, then exploded on the sandbags and the truck. The vehicle's gas tank blew up in a gushing ball of fire that sent two guards still alive running. Magic Brown and Red Nicholson brought the two down with their silenced sniper M89s.

A siren wailed somewhere ahead.

The fire effectively blocked the tunnel. They could feel the heat, but they were far enough away to avoid any problems.

Murdock gathered his troops.

"Now we're alive and with sound. They know someone's here. When that fire simmers down, we charge past it. There will be a reception committee somewhere on the other side. First two men through are Ronson with his machine gun and Magic. Charge past the heat, hit the deck, and give us some protective fire down whatever is ahead. This damn tunnel has to end soon."

They heard sporadic gunfire from beyond the flames, but no rounds came near them.

Murdock looked at Ching and Horse Ronson. "You both still have the juice?"

They nodded. They carried the new explosive, the TNAZ that had more punch than C4.

The fire burned lower. Murdock hadn't heard any shooting from beyond the flames for five minutes. "Let's go," he said.

They charged the flames. Brown and Horse Ronson roared to the front, shielding their faces as they burst through the open area past the still-flaming truck and into the smoky darkness as the tunnel continued beyond.

The air-conditioning sucked the smoke away from Murdock and his men as they continued down the passage. It was larger here and they could see bright lights ahead. Brown and Ronson flopped to the sides of the tunnel and looked for targets. They saw none. They didn't fire.

Murdock and the others caught up with them and nodded. He put Ronson on point and they moved down the corridor silently, black-on-black heavily armed figures coming out of the smoke.

Sixty meters ahead the down-sloping tunnel ended in a huge natural cavern. It was set up as a manufacturing layout, with assembly tables, overhead wires and beams, and what looked like a "clean" room at the far end.

The SEALS saw no one. Either a shift had finished work or there was no work in progress.

Four Chinese guards with automatic rifles surged from behind the clean room and opened fire.

The SEALS dove behind whatever cover they could find. Magic Brown caught one of the Chinese with a round to the chest and he quit the fight. The other three advanced behind the workstations on the floor of the big cavern.

The flat crack of the AK47S on full auto-fire sang through the cave. The gunners were forty meters away and advancing. Murdock checked his men. He used his mike. Radio silence was no longer required. Who had the best arm? They hadn't brought any grenade launchers.

"Horse, you have any fraggers?"

"A shit-pot full."

"Toss a pair down that way to discourage the bastards."

Horse sent the first four-second-fuse hand grenade over the top of the assembly tables heading for the three Chinese. It landed short, bounced once on the concrete floor, and air-blasted fifteen feet from two of the shooters. Both went down with multiple shrapnel wounds in the face and neck. The last Chinese tried to run for it the way he had come in.

Magic Brown tracked him and fired. He missed. His second round connected and the runner tumbled into eternity.

Murdock listened to the silence for a few seconds, then looked at Ching. The Chinese SEAL shook his head.

"Hell, I don't know. No more signs. We want the bomb storage, right?"

Murdock nodded. He scanned the area ahead. Two tunnels led out of the assembly area. Both had heavy doors on them. He chose the one on the right.

Doc Ellsworth carried their other RPG. Murdock brought him to the front of the unit.

"Blow that door into fucking hell, Doc. Then we'll see where it leads."

Doc grinned. Although he was a medic, he carried all the arms and had the killer instinct of every other SEAL. He'd been through BUD/S like the rest of them. At times he was too gung ho and Murdock had to hold him back.

He sighted in, checked his back-blast area to make sure it was clear, and fired. The round went downhill to the heavy wooden door. It bounced off the concrete and slanted up ten feet to hit the door to the left of center.

The explosion was magnified in the cavern. For a few seconds Murdock couldn't hear. Then the sensation came back. Already he had the troops moving. They charged the door, kicked aside some splinters, and surged through into another tunnel. This one was not finished with concrete. It looked more like a miners' tunnel, but was high enough and wide enough to be used by small trucks.

They worked along the tube for fifty meters and came to a guard station. It was not manned. Another thirty meters ahead they came into another huge natural cavern. It was more than fifty meters high and three times that wide. It had formed in the shape of a large oval, and there was no way out of the large cave besides the way they had come in.

In the center of the big cavern there was a small structure that looked like the top of an elevator shaft. Around it were what seemed to be worktables of some sort. There were a dozen small electric forklifts that could be used to move a nuclear bomb.

The rest of the cavern was empty. The floor had been paved only along two strips, one leading to the elevator-type house, and another leading away from it, circling around and coming back to the access tunnel.

Murdock could find no armed protection. His men stayed in the mouth of the tunnel for cover. Murdock used his sectioning method of examining the area. He sectioned it off and checked every possible place that could hide troops or offer cover. He found none. He had returned to the mouth of the tunnel, and was just about to order his men forward, when a section of the floor just behind the elevator shaft opened and two machine guns with gunners on them lifted to the surface. Two more sections came out, and twenty armed soldiers stood with their weapons pointed at the cave entrance.

A voice came over a loudspeaker in Chinese. Ching had moved up beside Murdock, and translated the words quietly as the voice sounded.

"Idiots. Don't you know that your presence here and any powerful explosion could activate one or more of our nuclear devices? How stupid can you be. You must be from Taiwan. Yes, they are this stupid. Lay down your arms and surrender. If you try to resist, you will be crushed immediately."

Murdock used his radio mike. "Snipers get in position. When you're ready give me a signal."

The four men moved forward to the very front of the tunnel and got into places from which they could fire.

"Take out those machine guns first. The gunners, the ammo men, then the troops. We've got a thirty-meter range. Our MP5's will help. As soon as the MGS are down, bring up our HK 21A1's and settle the matter."

Murdock got four single tsks on his radio.

"Go," he said. Four silent rounds jolted through the cavern and knocked both the gunners and loaders away from their machine guns.

The MP-5's opened up on the rifle troops. They fired back, but had no real targets. The 9mm whizzers from the MP-5's kept the Chinese troops prone until the HK SEAL machine guns got in position. The rifle fire from the Chinese slackened, then stopped. No one moved in the defensive position.

When all firing stopped, there was a pause as some air-purification device sucked the smoke and cordite smell out of the air. The Chinese voice spoke again.

"You are not easily discouraged, but we have ways of handling that, Ching translated.

"You have five minutes to clear this facility. At that time doors will close sealing in this complex. It will then be flooded with enough poison gas to kill everyone inside within sixty seconds after inhaling it. There will be no escape. If you don't leave, you all will die. You have five minutes starting now."

"The voice is bluffing us about flooding this area with poison gas," Murdock said. "Unless it's contact gas, it would take hours to get enough gas in here to kill anyone. Forget it. We move on the shaft in the middle. Fire only at a definite target. Now. Go, Go, Go."

The eight men of Third Platoon lifted off the deck and stormed the small shaft in the middle of the cavern. It was only thirty-five meters away. There was no opposition. Not a shot was fired.

Murdock came around the side of the shaft, which was made of heavy steel plates, and looked at the front. It was an elevator, and evidently fully operational. The door stood open.

"Sign says safe occupancy by no more than ten people," Ching said.

"Ching, Brown, Doc, we're going for a ride down. The rest of you spread out and keep this thing operational. If it's clear down there, we'll send it back up for reinforcements. Bring down two more men and leave Holt and Nicholson up here for security. We want to be sure we can get back up this shaft."

Murdock waved the men on board. Ching studied the control panel.

"Only two operational buttons, L-T. One is down, the other up."

"Let's go down, Ching, and see where the hell this goes to and what the cluster-fuck in July is down there."

Ching pushed the button. The door closed and the elevator started down.

Murdock nodded. Now they would see what the Chinese had developed in their nuclear weapons program.