Firestorm

23

Four SEALS dove behind heavy wooden boxes to avoid the rounds from the two Chinese soldiers ahead. Murdock rolled once and came to his feet behind some crates.

"Watch your fire," Murdock said into his mike. "Don't hit any of the missiles."

They had been cautioned to use single shots, not burst fire, while inside. Murdock looked out from his protection and saw that the Chinese had taken cover as well. Murdock nodded at Holt, who was beside him. Holt leaned around the boxes and blasted down the aisle as Murdock jolted ten feet ahead to another set of wooden boxes. He passed a missile and hoped that none of their shots ricocheted and penetrated the warheads holding the poison gas.

He made it, then laid down fire toward the place where they saw the Chinese, as Holt moved up on this side and Magic Brown surged forward on the other side of the eight-foot-wide aisle. There had been no more firing from the Chinese. "Ching, talk to them," Murdock said to his mike.

All firing stopped. Ching's voice bellowed into the open space of the warehouse with its three-story ceiling. "Soldiers. You are surrounded. Come out with your weapons held over your heads. You can't escape." There was no response. Ching repeated the lines in his best Mandarin.

A moment later a roar came from down the aisle. Three Chinese soldiers surged from behind wooden crates, firing automatic weapons and charged forward.

Murdock and Magic Brown chopped down the three before they ran twenty feet.

"Clear here," Murdock said. "Check the rest of the facility."

Murdock and Holt worked the right side of the hundred-by-hundred-foot complex. They found no more defenders.

"Clear left," Murdock heard in his earpiece. Ronson.

"Clear center," Doc Ellsworth reported by radio.

"Clear right," Holt said.

Quickly they checked the far front and then the back. There had been only five defenders, all accounted for.

Ching checked the Chinese casualties. "One is still alive," he reported on his radio.

"Question him," Murdock said. Murdock went up to where Ching knelt by one of the three soldiers. Blood came from the man's nose and mouth. His eyes were glazed, but Ching shook him and he spoke slowly.

Ching asked him several questions in Mandarin. The man answered them, then almost lost consciousness, but Ching shook him and he went on talking. Then his eyes glazed again and a long deep breath came out of him and he died. Ching looked up. "These are all regular DF-15 missiles in this building, with a range of nearly four hundred miles. They go on the Luda-class destroyers. These do not have poison gas. The poison-gas missiles are the smaller DF-11. He said they won't come from the assembly plant until tomorrow night. The gas missiles make the workers and the soldiers extremely nervous."

Murdock sent outside for Bishop. He checked the missiles and confirmed the dead soldier's words.

"Just plain old HE type, Skipper. No room for any poison gas in these babies. They sure will make a big bang, though."

"You're certain?"

"Yes. As certain as I can be without exploding one of them."

"Check every one of them. Do it now and quickly. If they all are HE, then rig enough of them with TNAZ so the whole complex will go up with one big bang. Use two-hour timers so we'll be long gone. Get with it."

They checked the dead men again. SEALS don't take prisoners. They made sure they were dead with a quick, silenced shot to the head of each of the five Chinese.

Murdock could hear firing outside. He hit his send button. "Dewitt. What's going on out there?"

"Company. Four guys drove up in a funny little rig that looks like a rip-off of a jeep. We nailed three of them. One got away. The jeep looks good for transport if we need any."

"We'll need some. The gas missiles aren't here. Hide the rig somewhere and dump the bodies in the bay. We'll be out soon." Murdock watched Bishop working the TNAZ. "Know what we used to do for sport on the Fourth of July back in Tennessee?" Bishop asked.

Murdock shook his head.

"We'd take sticks of twenty percent dynamite and blow up outhouses. Mostly outside of town a ways. Lots of folks in the country still used outhouses. Damn, you could just see the shit flying all over the place."

Bishop taped the last of the TNAZ onto the nose of a missile and set a timer.

"Should do it, L-T. Primed four of them. The explosions inside here will trigger sympathetic detonations of all the missiles in the place. Be a damn nice bang."

Murdock led his men out of the building. They paused at the small door and checked. Murdock couldn't see the men of Second Squad. Then he found them. Three were behind the jeep rip-off. Two more were by some wooden boxes on the dock. The others scattered in defensive positions and behind cover.

He started to go out when he heard the whine of a motor and an Army truck that looked like a six-by-six ground around the corner and troops spilled from it.

"Save the truck, take out the men," Murdock whispered into his lip mike.

Murdock let four men from First Squad slip out the door and hide just behind the fence. All had their weapons aimed at the eight men who had dropped off the truck.

"Magic, take out the driver," Murdock whispered into his mike. Five seconds later Magic's silenced weapon fired. Then all the SEALS cut loose with their silenced weapons.

Four of the Chinese soldiers died in the first volley of shots. The others dove to the ground, not sure where the deadly rounds came from. Lieutenant Dewitt's men smashed the life from the last four Chinese in seconds. The driver of the truck had fallen half out of the cab, and the rig had stopped.

"Save the truck," Murdock radioed. "Drive it behind the far end of the building. We'll get it later."

Ross Lincoln was their truck, jeep, motor, and transport expert. He ran to the truck, pulled the driver out, and climbed aboard. It took him a few moments to find the switches and accelerator. Then he started the truck and drove it out of sight behind the end of the missile building.

The SEALS dropped the dead Chinese into the bay and then grouped on Murdock, who led them back down the ladders to their rebreathers, fins, and gear bags.

"Time to swim," Murdock said. "The two Luda-class destroyers that launch their missiles are down the dock about four hundred yards. Let's suit up and get down that way. Pick up those drag packs with the limpets. If we can't find the poison-gas missiles, at least we can take out their delivery system."

Jaybird frowned in the Chinese darkness. "Skipper, these little poison-gas missiles still have over a hundred miles of range. Taiwan is only ninety miles away. Why don't they just fire them from here? They don't need the ships to launch them."

Bishop snorted. "Jaybird, it's a safety factor. They launch them poison-gas hangers from land, and one of them misfires or blows up on the pad and that one sets off a few others, they could wipe out half a million of their own people. If they launch at sea and there's an accident, they lose only one destroyer and a few hundred men."

The SEALS swam just below the surface, staying in close contact with each other. By the time they were halfway there, they knew that the destroyers had lots of security around them.

At two hundred yards the SEALS surfaced and checked out the targets. Floodlights blazed from several points lighting up both the destroyers and the water thirty meters out on the water side. There were six walking sentries on the dock guarding each ship. The whole area was fenced off with a chain-link eight feet high. The SEALS saw two dogs on leash walking the area next to the fence.

They stowed their Motorola radios in their watertight compartments, and had to rely on whispers and hand signals.

"Wonder how good their security is in the water?" Murdock said to Jaybird, who treaded water beside him.

"I'd bet there's little to none," Jaybird said. "The same attack plan we worked out?"

Murdock nodded. "Get them moving."

Jaybird signaled to four men with the limpet mines. They swam away. Two men would place two of the big magnetic mines on the hull of the destroyers three feet under water.

Murdock had thought of shooting out the floodlights, but decided that would only alert the Chinese. The men with the mines would plant them, then set timers for twenty minutes, and the SEALS would swim like crazy to get out of the area before the blasts sent shock waves through the water that could seriously injure anyone close enough to them.

Murdock looked at his watch. He allowed them ten minutes to swim in and place the limpets, and then five minutes to swim back. They came back right on time, and the platoon turned and swam back toward the missile warehouse.

They swam silently on top of the bay while waiting for the explosions to go off. The explosions were late. Murdock looked at the men who had set the timers. They hand-signaled that they were set for twenty minutes.

Then a deep rumbling explosion shattered the night. It sent shock waves through the water that the SEALS could feel. Then the blast blew out of the water into the air, and they heard a shattering roar. The same thing happened three times more, and the SEALS gave a silent cheer and swam faster toward their dock.

This time they kept on their rebreathers and all of their gear and carried their fins and equipment bags. They hoped to be back in the water as soon as they blew up the missile-assembly building.

"Where the fuck was that warehouse, Jaybird?" Murdock asked as they climbed the ladders up to the dock, then ran across the open area to where the big six-by-six Chinese Army truck sat.

"Half a klick right up this main drag out in front of the warehouse," Jaybird said.

The men crawled into the truck, found bench seats along each side, and dropped their gear on to the floor and primed their weapons for a fight.

"The place is a large warehouse with a fence all the way around it," Jaybird said. "Leastwise, that's the way it looked in the satellite photos."

They could hear sirens now. A car with a flashing red light on it tore past the warehouse heading down the dock toward the damaged destroyers.

"Let's go," Murdock called to Lincoln in the cab. Horse Ronson had set up his HK machine gun so it aimed out the back of the truck just over a low tailgate. The other men had their weapons free of water and with a round in the chamber, locked and loaded.

Murdock sat beside the tailgate. They were still in an industrial section. The street was narrow, and here and there trucks were parked along it next to buildings.

A small truck with siren wailing and red light flashing came racing down the street toward them. Lincoln pulled to the side and let the rig go by.

"Seems to be an emergency down at the docks," Jaybird said. The men laughed.

"Coming up on what looks to be a checkpoint of some kind," Lincoln yelled through a sliding panel into the cab. "What the hell do I do?"

"Turn right at the next street," Murdock said. He leaned around the side of the truck and saw the floodlights and two Army rigs pulled up across the street a block ahead. He felt the big truck turn and careen down a side street barely wide enough to let it scrape through between buildings. Just as they turned, Murdock saw one of the small rigs at the roadblock jolt forward. Was it going to chase them? he wondered.

"Go up two blocks and then to the left for two more blocks and then left again," Murdock yelled. "Maybe we can get around the roadblock that way."

Before they turned the second time, the Army rig from the roadblock raced up behind them. Its headlights blinked and then a siren gave a short angry snarl.

"Do it," Murdock said to Ronson. He triggered his 21AI and sent a stream of 7.62mm NATO smashing into the Army rig's windshield and engine. Four five-round bursts sent the small truck slewing sideways into a thin wall and out of sight crashing through the front of a business building.

The SEALS' truck rumbled on, made the next two corners, and surged back onto the main avenue they had left before when they saw the roadblock.

Murdock looked down the street behind them and saw where the roadblock was. Now there was only one rig there, and no one seemed to be looking their way.

"How much farther?" Murdock called to Ross Lincoln.

"Just ahead, Skipper. Maybe fifty yards. What the hell do you want me to do with this rig? I can't just drive up in front."

"Turn down the first cross street next to it and get us away from any street lights. We work best in the dark."

Murdock looked around the side of the truck. He saw the warehouse ahead. It was lit by floodlights. The one fence they had seen in the photos turned into two fences. The place looked like Fort Knox. There seemed to be one layer of security after another. The only thing he didn't see were tanks and a regiment of Chinese infantry ready to defend the place.

Then Lincoln called out again. "Trouble, L-T. Looks like some kind of a half-track weapons carrier coming around the far corner of the warehouse. What the shit am I supposed to do now?"