Flashpoint

2

Paul Jefferson knew what a gun muzzle in the back felt like. This was the real thing. He didn’t have a clue who held it.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, muthafucka? I’m here on security just the shit like you is. Take a good look at me. Hell, I’m black as a burned-out hutch. Get that stick outa my back.”

There was a soft laugh, then the man whose speech had a trace of English accent came again.

“Oh, yeah, you’re good at acting, too. Now, turn your ass around real slow, so I can watch your bastard eyes as I gut shoot you and see you learn what real pain is. Now, turn slow, slow, and don’t get near that weapon in your hideout. Easy, now.”

Jefferson turned with short, shuffling steps until he faced the man. He was six inches shorter than the SEAL, but the Ingram with a long magazine made him just as tall and twice as ugly. He wasn’t black, but he wasn’t white, either. Some kind of Iranian, maybe.

“Now, shithead, how many of you American SEALs here, a whole platoon?”

“Like I said, I’m on guard duty here for some special friends. We don’t got to tell you bastards nothing.”

The gunman slammed a pistol down across Jefferson’s head, and he staggered back a step.

The pffffftttt came softly. The short Iranian in military cammies standing in front of Jefferson staggered to the left. Something blasted out the side of his head and took bone, blood, and gray matter with it. The small desert animal sounds shut off at once when the silenced weapon spoke. The terr collapsed to the left, dropping the Ingram from dead fingers before he hit the ground.

“Jeff, you all right?”

The whispered words came from the front, where a dark figure crouched near a stack of missile boxes.

“Oh, yeah, dandy now that this dude is dead. Mahanani?”

The big Tahitian/Hawaiian rushed forward and touched the dead man’s throat for a moment, then grabbed the Ingram and with one hand, and dragged the corpse back between the displays.

“What took you so long?” Jefferson asked.

“Playing with this bang-bang shit is not my forte,” Mahanani said. “You do the missiles yet?”

Jeff shook his head, and they both worked bombs into unlikely places where they wouldn’t be seen come daylight.

“Look at these things,” Mahanani said. “A whole damn stack of Stingers. Even these with the two-point-two-pound warhead can bring down a fighter or a commercial airliner. They’ll do Mach one for three miles. Damn, where do these fuckers get this kind of shit?”

“Buy them or steal them,” Jefferson said. “We done here?”

“Yeah, I come up to you just at the right time. I saw another guard, but I went around him.” Mahanani looked closely at Jefferson. “Man, you been under a gun before. He really spook you?”

“He said he knew I was a SEAL. How the hell he know that? Who was he?”

“Iranian, from the looks. I’ve seen them before. Now, let’s get those last missile stacks over there. Shit. Look, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Almost ten feet long, with twenty pounds of warhead. They’ll do Mach two at least and reach out for ten to twelve miles. Man, where do they get this shit?”

They heard AK-47s stuttering to the north of them. An MP-5 answered on full auto.

“Getting hot in here, brother,” Mahanani said. “We better do these two and split.”

“I’m with you, buddy.”

They put two quarter pounds of TNAZ on the inside boxes of the missiles. The blast would create a sympathetic reaction and should explode each of the Stinger warheads. Their propulsion systems also might ignite, and they could take off like twisted snakes in a circus.

The two SEALs moved away from the missiles, working straight back for fifty yards, and joined the other men who had finished planting their bombs.

Ten minutes later, all the SEALs were there.

Lampedusa had come back from a scouting mission. He talked to Murdock a few minutes, then the leader gathered them around him.

“Any casualties?” He paused and looked around in the darkness. Nobody spoke up. “We ran into more security than we figured. I’d say at least a company is working up the street. They won’t think to look for bombs, but we’ll need to blow them as soon as we get back a safe distance. So our job is half done. Better shag it out of here.

“Lam has found our new home. About three hundred yards over, there are some small dunes that get up to fifty feet. Highest ground around here. We’ll get on the far side and work out our firing positions. Squad order, ten yards apart. Soon as we get into position, Canzoneri is gonna blow them. Let’s go do it.”

Ten minutes later, they had their firing spots picked out and customized as much as possible. They would fire over the top of the dune from the safety of the reverse slope as necessary and have a clear run for the beach, which was now about 600 yards behind them. The tide would change that one way or the other.

“Okay, Canzoneri, you ready?”

“All set, Commander.”

“Then do it. Any sequence you want.”

“I’ll start down where the troops were and work up toward us. We should be clear back here.”

Canzoneri took a black box from his combat vest and lifted a two-foot telescoping antenna and looked at Murdock. The commander gave him a thumbs-up.

Canzoneri pushed the toggle switch, and at once the far end of the display line erupted in a series of explosions. They were followed by sympathetic detonations that lit up the countryside for half a mile.

The SEALs ducked below the dune.

Canzoneri walked the explosions up the display half mile. As one died down, he triggered the next one.

“Incoming!” somebody shouted.

One of the missiles launched itself and made a winding trail a hundred feet into the air, then slammed straight at the SEALs but kept the altitude and went all the way into the Gulf of Oman, where it detonated.

Now they could see other missiles bouncing across the land. In flashes of light they saw the tents burn away, saw one six-by truck explode, and the fuel from the tank set two other trucks on fire.

The jet fighter went up in a huge mushroom cloud as the aviation fuel exploded, showering blazing JP-3 over a hundred yards of displays.

Two minutes after Canzoneri triggered the first bomb, the last section exploded in a roiling gush of flames and nearly white-hot light. The 105 artillery shells detonated with withering karumph sounds and dirt, tents, and displays flew every which way.

“Holt,” Murdock bellowed. “Get your big ears on, we’re hauling ass now. Move it, everyone. Straight for the wet. We get SATCOM going before then. We’re bound to have company soon.”

“Captain, we’ve got some trouble.” It was Jaybird.

Murdock caught the message in his earpiece. “What, Jaybird?”

“Spotted a vehicle with lights on patrolling behind us. He made two circles, then stopped and conferred with three men in front of his headlights.”

“So?”

“I used my glasses and I saw him use a radio, a handi-talki type. My bet is he called for some more troops or maybe some air support to work this area.”

“Possible. We keep moving, we should be wet before they can find us. Holt, where’s the damn SATCOM?”

“Need to stop a minute and get the antenna aimed,” Holt said. “Take about two minutes. Can we do that?”

“Hold it, troops,” Murdock said on the radio. “Move to the reverse slope of this small dune so we’re out of sight of the blast. For a few minutes it’s SATCOM time.”

They stopped behind the dune. Jaybird crawled up so he could watch the smoke and destruction of a few million dollars’ worth of useless rubble. Holt aimed the antenna and passed the handset to Murdock.

“Set for voice, Commander.”

He hit the Send button. “Floater, this is Petard. Read me?”

They waited a moment. It stretched out. He sent out the message again. On the third try, someone replied.

“Petard, this is Floater. You’re early.”

“Change in plans. Blew the field early. We nailed the whole half mile. Nothing left out there but smoking rubble. They had the army guarding the place. Total destruction. Rounds still exploding. On our way for a swim. Time is 0115. Need a wet pickup in thirty minutes.”

“Understand. Stay dry if possible for now. Will reply in five.”

Murdock gave the handset back to Holt. He still marveled at the SATCOM system. The SATCOM radio worked with the Milstar satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles over the equator. It was officially the AN/PRC-117D, and it weighed fifteen pounds and was only fifteen inches long and three inches square. It had voice, data, or video transmission capability and could squirt out an encoded message in a hundredth of a second, foiling any enemy trying to triangulate its position. It could broadcast at a strong 10 watts of power for longer range or drop down to.1 watt for short distances and dangerous situations.

“Commander, we may have some trouble,” Jaybird said. He had taken the NVGs to watch the blast scene. Murdock went up to the top of the dune and looked over. Murdock saw a line of four six-by trucks on their side of the destruction. One truck stopped every hundred yards and dropped off ten men, then moved on.

Lam moved up to the top of the dune with the other NVGs. “Three trucks, twenty men to a truck, about sixty of them,” Lam said.

As they watched, they saw the men fan out in a line of skirmishers in a perimeter defense pointing at the SEALs. The Iranian soldiers went prone and some began digging in with entrenching tools.

“Too little, too late,” Murdock said into his mike. “Nothing to guard anymore.” Murdock took out his field glasses and scanned the ruins before him. He saw the shells of six trucks, both the blown-apart jet fighters, and skeletons of other equipment that had all been blasted and burned beyond any possible use. He looked at Holt.

“Holt, how long has it been since their last transmission?” Murdock asked.

Holt checked his wristwatch with the timer. “Two minutes, sir.”

“Yeah, it goes fast when you’re having fun.”

Nobody heard the visitors until they were almost overhead. Then two Iranian jet fighters thundered across the scene. They came in at less than three hundred feet and scattered the smoke and ashes in the display. They made sharp turns and returned with throttles back for a slower look, then raced away to the north.

“They must have been baby-sitting the display, watching for any kind of an air attack,” Murdock said.

“Commander, we’ve got company,” Senior Chief Dobler’s heavy voice said on the Motorola.

“Where and how many?” Murdock asked.

“Coming around the end of the display. Still about five hundred yards away, but they’re heading straight for us. Two armored personnel carriers.”

“I see them,” Murdock said. “Must be doing thirty miles an hour. Bradford, you see them with your fifty?”

“Lined up in my sights with armor piercing, Cap’n. Locked and loaded.”

“Take them.”

The heavy crack of the big .50-caliber McMillan M-87R sniper rifle blasted into the darkness of the Iranian coastal desert. The first round was followed by four more. The second heavy AP slug bored through a chink in the front armament and splashed the radiator and continued into the engine itself before it exploded, shredding wires and lines, dumping the vehicle to the side, dead on the sand.

The second vehicle came closer. Two .50-caliber rounds on the driver’s section made the rig veer to the left, but it kept coming. The fully tracked vehicle looked like a small tank. Inside, it could carry eight to ten fully equipped combat infantrymen.

Men sprayed out of the downed machine. They were 300 yards away.

“Let’s take them down,” Murdock said.

Up and down the line of SEALs, the carbines spoke along with the two machine guns and sniper rifles. Within ten seconds, the last of the ten Iranian soldiers spun and died in the sand from the accurate fire by the SEALs.

The second rig kept coming, angling now directly at where the firing had erupted against it. The rig had one exterior-mounted machine gun. Murdock figured it was a 12.7mm, which could do the SEALs a great deal of damage.

“Make up some impact bombs with your TNAZ,” Murdock said into the lip mike. “Tape the impact fuses around the quarter-pound chunks. We need to blow that sucker’s tracks off.”

The AP carrier continued for the center of the SEALs’ line but slowed and stopped when it was fifty yards off. Bradford had fired five more times at the rig but couldn’t find a weak spot that his rounds would penetrate. He saw three of them bounce off the slanted armor.

“What the hell’s he doing?” Jaybird asked on the Motorola.

“What would you be doing?” Senior Chief Dobler asked.

“Hell, I’d be wanting to know what was behind these dunes. Who my enemy was and his strength and weaponry.”

“About what he’s up to,” Murdock said. “Maybe waiting for some help. He could call those jets back to make a strafing run. Now they know where the target is. Spread out, twenty yards between us. Holt. Get your electronic ass up here.”

Holt had the SATCOM ready to go when he slid in beside Murdock and gave him the handset.

“Set for voice,” Holt said.

Murdock took the mike and let out a deep breath. “Petard here. We’ve had visitors. Now more are showing up. Your five minutes are wasted. Time we got wet. Any air support over here? Come back.”

The transmission went out in a thousandth of a second in a burst that was impossible to trace.

To Murdock’s surprise, an answer came back at once.

“Floater says no chance of any friendly air. Get out of there as soon as practical. Wet pickup will be ready in thirty.”

As they spoke, Murdock saw more Iranian army troops come from in back of the ruined display, form up into twenty squads of spread-out infantry, and begin a slow march toward the dead armored personnel carrier only fifty yards from the SEALs’ cover.

“More company,” Lam said. “Looks to be about a hundred and forty of them, all small arms, no heavy stuff or MGs. They have five hundred yards to go to get to the armored rig.” He could barely see them through the pale darkness.

Just then, the Iranian jets paid another call. This time they were only 200 feet over the ground. The SEALs felt the wind whiplash around them as the jets sucked the air after them.

Murdock scowled. “In about fifteen minutes, we’re going to have more trouble than we need. A hundred and forty troops with a mad on, one machine gun on that AP carrier, and those two damn jets rigged for air-to-ground fire.”

Jaybird grunted. “Yeah, but then that’s about our usual odds. Looks fairly simple to me. We take out the ground troops when they get close enough. Hell, they’re in the open. Then we blast that junior-sized tank with TNAZ and hightail it for the wet.”

Murdock lifted his brows with wonder. Jaybird was always the optimist. Just then, the Iranian jets came blasting over again, evidently taking one more look before they started shooting.

“Net check. You homies spread out? I want twenty to thirty yards between your SEAL bodies. Sound off.”

All fourteen men responded. Murdock looked up. The Iranian troops were within 200 yard of their position. The armored personnel carrier started its engine and began to move forward slowly. Just then, he heard the Iranian jets. Something had to give. In another two hours it would be daylight.