Flashpoint

20

Murdock and the rest of the SEALs slept in. Some put in twelve hours in the rack, some eight. Murdock came to the surface after ten and had a shower a big meal and was surprised to find that it was almost noon. He checked with Senior Chief Dobler.

“Weapons are all cleaned and oiled and equipment is repaired or replaced. Most of the men are up to regs and ready to go. Two are still snoring, but I’ll move them along. You heard anything from Don Stroh?”

“Haven’t given him a chance. Figure the men need a short break before we head out on another one of these small fires to put out.”

“Holt asked me if he should turn on the SATCOM. I told him to wait and ask you. Sure as hell, Stroh is going to be yelling at you.”

Murdock grinned. “I’m about to leave him off my next fishing trip.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “Hell, we might as well find out what the spook wants. It won’t be good. Where’s Holt?”

Five minutes later, Holt had the SATCOM zeroed in on the satellite. A minute after he turned it to receive, the set spoke.

“Roamer, this is Home Base. We need to talk. You awake yet over there?” There was a pause.

“Oh, yeah, Home Base,” Murdock said. “Awake. You sound rushed.”

“We’ve been handed a new assignment. You’re moving north to the Caribbean. The carrier Jefferson is floating around up there somewhere off Cartagena, a Colombian port town with a lot of shipping. We’ve got a COD warming up on deck. It will be at your location at 1300 to move you.”

“North? Shipping?”

“Right. I’ll be on the Greyhound so we can chat all the way up across the Pacific and a flyover of part of Panama. I think you’ll like this one.”

“Don Stroh, sir! You know we always love the assignments we get. We take all of our goodies?”

“Everything you took in with you. All your gear, ammo, and TNAZ.”

“Thirteen hundred. We’ll be ready.”

“Any more wounded?”

“We’re full strength again and raring to go.”

“See you then.”

They signed off. By then, half the platoon had gathered around the radio. “So, we’re moving. Senior Chief, roust up the rest of the men and we’ll have a quick talk.”

The Navy COD, officially a Greyhound C-2A, took off from the small field at Camp Bravo near Cali at 1310. The COD is a Navy acronym for carrier on board delivery plane. It can land and take off from the larger carriers and is routinely used to deliver VIP personnel, mail, and important equipment and goods needed in a rush by the Navy.

It was derived from the E-2C Hawkeye aircraft. It cruises at 300 mph, with a ceiling of 33,500 feet, and can haul thirty-nine troops or twelve hospital cases on litters. It has a range of 1,200 miles loaded, carries two pilots and a flight engineer, and is powered by two Allison turboprop engines.

Stroh talked to the men as soon as they loaded and before they took off.

“We’re going to the Carrier Jefferson somewhere in the Caribbean Sea north of Cartagena, Colombia. There you will get more specific details about your missions. Roughly, it’s a three-part assignment. You’ll go ashore in the harbor and destroy any way practical the four tons of powdered cocaine loaded on two freighters due to sail in two days.

“Then you will destroy a pair of warehouses where more than a thousand barrels of ethyl ether is being stockpiled by the Medellin drug cartel. I understand ether burns well and when vaporized is volatile and extremely explosive.

“After that, you will get some sort of transport to the small town of Plato, where the Medellin drug cartel has just built a new airfield for its drug trade. Planes come in from Bolivia and Peru bringing in coca paste. There are several processing plants in this area as well as more stockpiles of finished coke ready to be sent out to the States by plane. Planes, trucks, processing plants, and stockpiles will be your targets.

“If you have time and personnel, you will proceed by your own devices to locate and eradicate from one to three of the top men in the Medellin cartel. They are supposed to be at the airport facility there for a planning meeting now that they own Colombia and have their government in power. Any questions?”

Just then, the turboprop engines turned over, and conversations inside the COD were limited. The flight engineer came back and told Murdock that they would have a two-and-a-half-hour flight.

They landed on board the Jefferson fifteen minutes sooner than that, and Murdock saw his men put in quarters and their equipment spread out in an assembly compartment.

“Commander Murdock?” an officer who walked up asked.

Murdock saw a short, thin lieutenant commander in a tailored uniform.

“Yes, Commander.”

“I’m Lieutenant Commander Kenney, your liaison with the ship. You have the highest priority I’ve ever seen, Commander. The admiral says that anything you want, you get. Right now I can arrange a meal for you and your men. You have your quarters. There were some indications that you might need arms or explosives and ammo. All I need is a list.”

“Thanks, Commander. You’ll work with Senior Chief Dobler. We have an appointment with your XO in forty minutes. First we need to do some planning and figure out what we’ll need. Sit in, if you like.”

Murdock called his key people around a small table and they made notes on pads of paper as they talked.

First the coke.

“Can’t blow it up or burn it,” DeWitt said.

“How can we melt it the way we did down by Cali?” Jaybird asked.

“Fire hoses,” Senior Chief Dobler said. “The goods will be packaged in plastic to protect it from the salt air and any spray or leaks. We’ll need to slice it open and soak it down using the firefighting hoses and pumps on the ship.”

“If we get the time,” DeWitt added.

“So, we soak it down and melt it,” Murdock said. “Sounds like the only way. Not even sinking the merchant ship at the dock would do it. The goods would just float.”

They moved on the ether situation.

“Talk to Canzoneri,” Murdock said. “Find out how much explosives we’ll need to set the stuff on fire. If it’s in a warehouse it will be best, one big bonfire nobody will be able to put out.”

Dobler went to find Canzoneri.

“This Plato deal is going to be a tough one. First we have to get down there,” Murdock said. “Stroh tells me it’s about eighty-five miles south of the port city. They just said do it, not how we get there. Any suggestions?”

Jaybird swore under his breath. “The sombitches did it to us again. We’re on the Caribbean, right. At this port city. So after we do the bonfire, we get into our rebreathers and fins and swim out a half mile where we meet a Sea Knight after dark for a ladder pickup and transport to Plato with our resupply of ammo and explosives the Sea Knight brings us.”

Murdock looked at the others. “Any more suggestions?” Nobody said anything. “Well, it’s a long swim up the river that runs through Plato and out at the port we’ll be in. The resupply with the Sea Knight sounds like a good plan. How else could we get down there?”

“Long walk,” DeWitt said.

“At Plato we have production vats, ethyl, stored coke. Why not do a few of their small transport planes as well?” Murdock looked at his watch. “Okay, the four of us are going to see the admiral. I told him I was bringing my staff, so look important.”

“Oh, hell, yes,” Jaybird said. “Admirals are always kissing up to me.”

They arrived at the admiral’s compartment early but were let in by a master chief. His brows went up when he looked at Jaybird with no rank showing on his cammies and Senior Chief Dobler.

“The admiral will be right with you.” He indicated a conference table with five chairs. The SEALs sat.

A moment later, Admiral Tennant came through a door from another section of the large quarters, and the SEALs jumped to their feet.

“At ease. I’m Admiral Tennant. As you were.” The admiral smiled. “Glad to see you men. I know a few ex-SEALs. You do good work.”

Behind him came a captain and Lieutenant Commander Kenney, their liaison. The admiral motioned to the second man.

“Gentlemen, this is Captain Wilson, the Jefferson’s XO. You know Commander Kenney.”

Senior Chief Dobler and Jaybird stepped back from their chairs, offering them to the other two officers.

The admiral gave a curt wave with his hand. “No, SEALs, you sit. We do too much sitting around here, anyway. You’ll be on your mission soon enough with no chance to take it easy.”

The SEALs sat.

“Now, Commander, you’ve had some time to consider your assignment. Your suggestions.”

“If you have a Pegasus in the task force, it could take us in to within half a mile of shore, and we’ll go in underwater to the first objective. If no Pegasus, a Sea Knight could take us within a mile and we’ll drop out and swim on in.”

Murdock looked up. The XO nodded.

“We have a Pegasus, an eighty-two-footer. That would be the least intrusive.”

Murdock then outlined in broad strokes their plans to wash down the cocaine in the freighters and be gone before the Colombians knew what was happening. “We understand there are two tons of cocaine on each freighter. That’s over a hundred million dollars’ worth in street value. That’ll hurt them.”

“What about the ether?” the admiral asked. “It’s in a guarded warehouse in the port area.”

“Ether is highly volatile, and if we can get one or two barrels of it burning, it can cook off the rest in a huge bonfire nobody could put out,” Ed DeWitt said.

The admiral looked at DeWitt a moment. “What else?”

“Then we’d need some help, Admiral. Our plan is to go back to the water and swim a mile offshore. We’ll contact the carrier by SATCOM before we leave dry land and ask for a meet a mile off with a Sea Knight chopper. We’ll go up the rope ladder from a hover position. Then the Sea Knight can take us about eighty-five miles upriver to Plato, where the rest of our mission is located.”

“Ladder access. What if you have wounded who can’t climb the ladder?”

“We carry them up or rope them up, Admiral,” Senior Chief Dobler said. “No problem; we’ve done it before.”

“When the Sea Knight comes, it would bring a preordered resupply for us of ammo, weapons, and explosives,” Murdock said. “Some MREs would be good, too.”

Captain Wilson cleared his throat. “After you do your work there, how do you get back to the water?”

“That one we didn’t have time to work out. We could float down the Magdalena River. But that would be at least a ninety-mile trip with a lot of chances to be discovered.”

“You’d need the Sea Knight and some fighter cover, same way you got out of Bogota,” Captain Wilson said. “Will the President authorize it?”

“He did before,” Murdock said. “We think he will again.”

“If the chopper came in due west of Plato, there would be only about sixty miles of territory to cover, and it’s less built up than the north.”

“Noted. What about the Colombian navy?”

“As you know, Admiral, Colombia has only four corvettes in the one thousand five hundred — ton class,” DeWitt said. “They have one larger patrol boat of a hundred and eighty-five feet, and about forty patrol and riverboat craft. We consider the navy’s threat to us as insignificant.”

The admiral peaked his fingers and looked at his men. “Any questions of the SEALs?” he asked. They shook their heads.

“All right, Commander. We’ll go with the Pegasus and the Sea Knight. The CAG isn’t here, but I’m sure he can spare one for a while. On the resupply and trip to Plato, give us a two-hour lead time so we can get your resupply on board and make your meet on time. We’ll want another two hours for the trip in from the west coast toward Plato. Commander Kenney will coordinate your need for weapons, ammo, and supplies. Anything else?”

Captain Wilson cleared his throat again. “Commander, I hear you have a new army rifle. Is it as good as I’ve heard?”

“Senior Chief Dobler can fill you in on that, sir,” Murdock said.

They looked at Dobler. “Sir, it’s called the Bull Pup, at least for now. It’s a dual-barreled weapon of about fourteen pounds. It has one barrel for 5.56mm rounds and another one on top to fire 20mm explosive rounds that are aimed and fuzed through a six-power scope, video camera, and a laser range finder. The laser is spotted on target, responds to the computer inside, and arms the round with the exact number of revolutions the spinning bullet needs to reach that spot.

“The rounds can be set to explode on contact or with a delayed fuze to shoot through sheet metal or light wooden walls. The rounds cost thirty dollars each. It carries a six-round magazine. The weapon is now under testing by the makers and will not be available to the army until the year 2005. We ordered specially made models because it’s such an advanced design.”

“So it will give a rifleman an airburst with a 20mm round,” the captain said. “That’s like shooting around a corner or over the back side of a building or hill.”

“We have found it’s tremendously effective, Captain,” Murdock said.

“I’d like to see one, Commander,” the Captain said.

“I’ll arrange that, Captain.”

The admiral stood and the rest of them came to attention.

“Thank you, gentlemen. We didn’t touch on the timing. It’s now about 1600. Your orders said at the first possible moment before those two freighters sail. Can you do it tonight?”

“Yes sir. We’d like to leave here so we can hit the port at first dark or as close to that as we can,” Murdock said.

“We’re about fifty miles off the Colombian port of Cartagena,” the captain said. “That’s about an hour and a half in the Pegasus so you don’t get shaken to pieces. Commander Kenney, you better get cracking on that materiel these men need.”

“Yes sir.”

“Work with Senior Chief Dobler,” Murdock said. The admiral looked at Murdock, then turned and left the compartment.

Two hours later, Murdock looked around the tightly efficient cabin of the Pegasus. The eighty-two foot craft had been specifically designed to insert and recover SEALs and other covert forces. It could rev up to 45 knots and had a range of 550 miles. A crew of five ran the boat. It wasn’t designed as a fighting craft but did carry mounts for 12.7mm machine guns and one Mark 19 40mm grenade launcher. The boat jolted along through the darkening Caribbean Sea at a little over thirty knots, cutting down the slamming into the light chop on the water.

They were ready. Murdock had made one last check on Canzoneri to be sure that his leg wound hadn’t opened up. It looked to him to be healing well. Mahanani gave the petard expert an okay for duty. Murdock told the corpsman to check the other wounded. Murdock’s wrist took a new bandage. Dobler’s round through his thigh was coming along well, not giving him any trouble. Jaybird’s shot left forearm was starting to heal. All ready for duty. They all settled into the boat.

Murdock had brought along three extra MP-5 submachine guns. They would be in drag bags with their explosives and other gear that they wouldn’t need at once. Their first job was to get into the water, then swim to shore and find the right ships in the harbor.

It was nearly 1930 when the SEALs rolled off the Pegasus and dropped into the warm Caribbean Sea. They had their buddy cords tied on and the eight two-man teams sank to fifteen feet, checked their compasses, and headed for the port city of Cartagena, Colombia. They had a little over a half mile to go.

At the entrance to the harbor, they all surfaced, and Murdock and Lam studied the situation. The brightly lit Navy Station showed to the left. To the right they saw the docks with six merchant ships tied up. Two of them were bathed in floodlights and were being loaded with huge cargo containers.

Murdock motioned for them to swim that way, and they went underwater again, using their rebreathers so they wouldn’t show any line of bubbles behind them.

The next time they came to the surface, barely breaking the water, they were at the first in a line of freighters. They could read the names: The Montrose, a Bolivian flagship, and The Mary Jane, registered in the the Bahama Islands. Murdock read the name on the bow of the big freighters and waved his men around them. They found the ones they wanted two down. The Winddriven and the Alpha Marie were the targets. They lay side by side and were dark. Evidently, the loading was finished.

The plan was for each squad to take one ship, to move up the side of the ships on ropes anchored by rubberized grappling hooks on the rail, then to capture any crewmen and guards on board, and then to wash down or otherwise ruin the two tons of cocaine on each ship.

Murdock sent DeWitt with his Bravo Squad to the Winddriven, and he moved up to the Alpha Marie. He had his men fasten their drag bags on the hull to the ship with large magnets with hooks on them made for that purpose. The waterproof bags rested just below the waterline so no lookout could see them.

The platoon leader threw the first grappling hook attached to quarter-inch nylon line that could hold more than a thousand pounds on a straight pull. On the second try, the hook caught. Murdock tested the hook by putting all his weight on the rope. It held. He passed the bottom of the line to Jaybird and began to go hand over hand, walking up the side of the ship and pulling upward on the rope. His MP-5 submachine gun was strapped over his back.

He had just cleared the side of the ship and climbed over the low rail when a shadow appeared in front of him. The shadow turned into a man with a submachine gun pointed directly at Murdock’s chest.

“Well, look at this. Froggy, froggy, what have I captured here? Make a move at that weapon, and you’ll be dead in a five-round burst.”