13

Basra Naval Base
Basra, Iraq

Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt led out his Bravo Squad, moving silently through the dark waters of the bay, angling for the pair of Corvettes berthed end to end along the pier. They had decided to use four charges of TNAZ on each side of the sterns of each ship. They would do the dark and unmanned ship first.

Jack Mahanani led the way to the silent vessel with Quinley, Ostercamp, and Jefferson. They all had rigged the charges with magnets so they would clamp solidly on the steel hull wherever they wanted them. Ostercamp and Quinley planted their two charges each at the ship’s waterline thirty feet in back of the stern on the port side next to the dock. They dropped below the surface just as two sentries walked by on the pier.

Mahanani and Jefferson put all four of their charges at the waterline and about twenty feet back from the stern. They would plant the charges, gather at the stern of the dark ship, and when all were ready, would go back, insert the timer detonators, and start the timers.

DeWitt, Adams, Fernandez, and Franklin moved quietly toward the lighted Corvette. Three sailors moved on the deck. The SEALs went underwater and came up against her hull. They surfaced without a sound. Two went on each side of the stern of the ship and planted their TNAZ bombs at the waterline. Just as DeWitt checked the ship, he found a sailor looking down at him.

In the stern of the Corvette under the chopper landing pad, there was no more than five feet of freeboard. The sailor leaned down. DeWitt surged upward out of the water, reached up, grabbed the Iraqi sailor’s arm, and jerked him over the side before he could cry out. When the two splashed back into the water, it made more noise than DeWitt wished for. Then he was underwater with the wiry Arab, trying for a choke hold, then simply holding the man under the water until he began gulping in mouthfuls of water, probably hoping that it was air.

DeWitt’s experience holding his breath underwater made the difference. He came up with his nose and mouth barely out of water and gulped in glorious air, then went back down and dove with the body of the dead seaman deep under the hull, where he snagged his clothing on the propeller.

He surfaced, gasping, directly beside the stern. The other SEALs watched him. He gave them a thumbs up and they swam quietly back to the stern of the dark Corvette.

“Everyone here?” DeWitt whispered. He counted seven heads. “Okay, let’s go and set the timers for thirty-five minutes and then get back to that unused pier. Murdock may need a little more time with his targets.”

Murdock had split his squad into three teams. Dobler and Holt would do one of the old patrol boats, Sterling and Bradford would take out the second patrol boat hulk. Murdock, Lam, Ching, and Ronson would work on the thirty small patrol boats.

They had a longer swim to the old patrol craft. The teams set the charges on the hulks and waited for Murdock to come back to them.

Murdock and his three men swam another hundred yards to the small docks that moored the patrol boats. There were fifteen in a row on one side of a wooden dock and fifteen on the other. He could see no sentries or guards.

Then a soldier on a bicycle rode down the dock, looked out over the water for a moment, then rode back and disappeared. They had decided to put half of the quarter-pound chunks of TNAZ on the fuel tanks of twelve of the small boats. They picked ones spread out through the group. Once pasted to the fuel tanks, Murdock told them to set the timers to thirty minutes and activate them. They did and swam back to the patrol boat hulks. Their men came out of the shadows of the ships.

“Timers set when we saw you coming,” Dobler whispered to Murdock. The eight men swam silently back to the deserted pier. As they passed the manned Corvette, they heard sounds on board. They couldn’t understand the words, but it was evident that a search was under way. By the time they were past the ship, it blossomed with all lights available and a dozen men scurried around the ship, seemingly searching for something.

Murdock and his men made it back to the pier, met with Ed and his squad, and talked it over.

“Lots of activity on that Corvette,” Murdock said.

“I got spotted by a sailor, but I pulled him overboard,” DeWitt said. “They probably missed him and are searching. Maybe it’s time we get out of here.”

Murdock nodded, and the platoon took to the water. When they hit the current of the river, they grinned in the darkness.

“That’s a five-knot current,” Murdock said as they floated down the river.

DeWitt swam alongside him. “You still have your watertight Motorola?”

“Safe and sound. We get down a couple of miles, we’ll hit the shore and give them a try. Can’t hurt.”

Just then, a machine gun from the near shore slammed bursts of five rounds of hot lead into the river. The bullets zapped into the water just behind the swimmers, and they dove underwater and swam forward faster.

When they surfaced, they heard the machine gun firing, but now well behind them.

“Somebody getting nervous, or did they see us?” Senior Chief Dobler asked Murdock.

“My guess is the nervous gidgets, a bunch of rookies who have never been in a fight before. Now they get nervous and think they see something.”

They heard the first blast behind them, a resounding explosion that reverberated through the night air. Murdock could imagine the Corvette losing its stern and sinking into the bay. Then, in rapid succession, they heard eight or ten more blasts through the silent Iraqi night. The men gave a soft cheer. If everything went right, Iraq had no more navy.

Just another day at the office. They moved on down the river. Murdock swam hard until he figured he was ahead of the rest of the men; then, as they came up to him, he waved them ashore on a sand bar that had some trees just behind it.

When the last man hit the beach, Murdock counted. Yeah, all there. He unzipped the waterproof pouch and pulled out his Motorola radio.

“Swimmers calling Pegasus. Swimmers in the wet looking for Pegasus.”

He repeated the call two minutes later but had no response.

The SEALs went back in the water. Murdock stayed at the front, and what he guessed were two miles on downstream, he went ashore with the men and tried the radio again. This time he had a response.

“Yes, swimmers, glad you’re coming. Pegasus here. We’ve run into a bit of a problem. Some assholes onshore with a machine gun and a searchlight have got us at a standstill on the far bank. They can’t get their light over this far. If you read this, you’re no more than three miles upstream.”

“Pegasus, our meat. We’ll move down and check out your buddies with the searchlight. Makes them easy to find. Hang tough.”

Murdock put the radio away. “You guys heard him. We’ve got some work to do downstream. Let’s move.”

Back in the water, they swam with a faster stroke now to help the current.

Sometime later, they rounded a curve in the river and could see a searchlight ahead, probing the water and then moving toward the far shore. The river here was too wide to let the searchlight beam hit the far shore. The far side of the river had trees growing down right to the water. Murdock wondered if the Pegasus was under the screen of branches.

Murdock waved the SEALs onshore. They cleared the water out of their weapons, charged them, and made ready to fight. Lam led out the Third Platoon. Murdock figured they were about 500 yards from the light. He wasn’t sure if it was on a boat or on the shore. If it was mounted on a boat, surely they would be on the water moving their light so they could pick up the enemy boat.

The SEALs moved for five minutes along the shore, then Lam went down, and the SEALs followed. Murdock slid into the grass beside his scout.

“Not more than fifty yards, Skip. Looks like a shore setup. A searchlight, small generator, a vehicle, and a fifty-caliber MG. How do we play it?”

Murdock waved the rest of the platoon up. He told them what they had ahead. “Alpha Squad will move up and take them down. Bravo, cover our rear. Let’s go.”

Murdock and his seven men worked forward, cautiously watching for security. He guessed there would be none. They had their weapons fitted with the suppressors and ready to fire.

Lam edged around a tree. Two men on the searchlight sat waiting in the glow of two bare bulbs. One man on the machine gun and a loader leaned against the small truck the MG was mounted on. Two more men sat against the rig, evidently eating.

Murdock brought the men up in a rough line of skirmishers. They were forty yards from the truck. Silently, Murdock assigned the targets to the men. As usual, they would open fire when his own MG pounded out three rounds.

One of the Iraqi men moved.

Murdock waited. The Arab soldier relieved himself in the darkness, then went back to the searchlight. Murdock sighted in on him, pushed off the safety on the subgun, and spat out three rounds.

At once the other silenced weapons spoke. The searchlight went out first as three rounds hit it and the glass shattered. The two men on the machine gun went down next, with rounds in their chests and head. One man, who had been eating, came up on his knees and reached for his weapon before two 7.62 NATO rounds slammed into his chest, mashing his heart into a froth of bubbles and spurting blood.

The other man who was eating lifted his spoon and turned toward his buddy before he slammed sideways with four rounds in his chest and side that punctured his heart and both lungs. The other man on the searchlight never got off his chair. He took three rounds and slumped over, one hand clawing at the light before he died.

The firing stopped. Then the door of the truck opened and a man came out, diving and rolling. He got almost to the cover of a huge tree before two rounds caught up with him and rolled him into instant communication with Allah.

They waited two minutes. Murdock waved the squad forward. “Make sure,” he said. He heard seven silenced rounds as the Iraqis received the classic coup de grace in the back of the head.

Murdock had out his Motorola. “Pegasus, come on to where the searchlight is and pick us up. We need a ride home. This bit of Iraqi soil is solidly in our hands. The bad guys are no longer with us.”

“Hey, SEALs, thanks. That’s a roger. We’ve moving.”

They could hear the soft growl of the big engines as the Pegasus came out from a screen of trees. In its black coat of paint, the low, sleek boat slid upstream against the current until it was halfway across the river. It turned with the current and slanted in to the shore where the searchlight still stood, now blank-eyed and dark.

The craft eased up within a dozen feet of the shore, and two SEALs grabbed the stern and pulled it in closer and held it. The other men stepped into the craft and moved into the covered cabin on the eighty-two-foot-long speedster.

Murdock was the last man on board. He looked at the ensign and smiled. “Nice to have you come fetch us,” Murdock said. “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

The ensign frowned in the half-light from the ship. “I beg your pardon, Commander?”

“Let’s go home, sailor. I’m hungry and could use a huge steak dinner with all the trimmings.”

The ensign nodded, and the boat moved down the river at fifteen knots. Murdock found the ensign. “I thought this tub would do forty-five knots.”

The ensign grinned. “Sure as hell will, Commander, but not in the dark on a damned river I’ve never seen before. Then there are floating logs and trees in here and who the hell knows what else. We’ll make fifteen, maybe twenty knots and be glad of it.”

Murdock nodded. “Right. You’re the skipper. Even fifteen knots is a shitpot better than swimming forty miles. You hit any other problems coming up?”

“Just that one searchlight and the fifty caliber. We even took one hit but above the waterline. They didn’t know where we were, so they covered the whole tree-lined shore. We were lucky.”

Suddenly Murdock was tired. He looked around. Half of the SEALs were asleep already. He waved at the ensign, settled down, and closed his eyes. For a moment he thought of Ardith Manchester, his beautiful lady back in Washington, D.C. He wondered what she was doing today, or tonight, whichever it was back there. Probably at work. He smiled. She would know about this run into Iraq before twenty-four hours were up. She and her dad should be working for the CIA.

He smiled just remembering that wonderful smile she had, the way she walked, how great she was at making small talk and figuring out his exact mood. She should have been a shrink. No, a lawyer was good or bad enough. He hadn’t decided yet. The last thing he remembered was her glorious smile when she met him at the door of his Coronado condo. Yes, some things were worth fighting for.

Murdock came awake from a nudge on his shoulder.

“Sir, we’ve got some trouble. Looks like a river patrol boat coming upstream with a searchlight.”

Murdock came awake at once. “How far away?”

“Half mile.”

“You have machine guns on here?”

“Yes, a 12.7mm and a grenade launcher.”

“Can you fire forward?”

“Yes. Get it ready. Bradford,” Murdock shouted. The big guy came awake at once and lifted the McMillan .50-caliber sniping rifle.

“Yes, sir. Where do you want it?”

“Forward, patrol boat coming. Give it ten rounds.”

Bradford found a place to shoot over the top of the low cabin and zeroed in on the oncoming boat. His first round was short, his second close. His third ripped into the patrol boat. The next three put it dead in the water.

The Pegasus’s machine gunner jolted the craft with the 12.7mm rounds as they stormed past it fifty yards away and at thirty knots. There was no return fire. The searchlight angled upward and still blazed with a shaft of brilliance through the dark night.

Once they made it past the river patrol boat, Ensign Turley looked at Murdock with new interest.

“Never seen you SEALs in action before,” he said. “You do good work. So far, we’ve only run the admiral around. Glad to get in some real action. This boat was made specifically to take you SEALs in and out of places on your missions.”

“We’ve heard,” Murdock said. “This is our first ride in one.” Murdock went into the small cabin and looked out front. The captain had been right; it was hard to see out there at night.

“That inland patrol boat must have had a radio. If they did, they probably got the word out that we were here. That land machine gun might have had contact, too. My bet that we have some more company downstream. How far do we have to go yet?”

“Thirty miles.”

“Plenty of time and distance for them to radio ahead and put out some heavy-duty welcome for us. Can we juice it up to thirty-five knots?”

“Might be safer than running though some concentrated fire from the riverbank.” He nodded to the helmsman who revved the throttle. Then he switched off the interior lights. “If they can’t see us, we’ll be harder to hit.”

“How’s your supply of forty-mike grenades?”

“Plenty, two cases of HE and a case of WP.”

“Good. Our guys might need to borrow some if they run out.”

They raced along hard and fast for a while. The river here was fairly straight and getting wider.

Ten minutes later, they saw a light downstream. Turley put his twenty-power scope on it. “Can’t tell. Could be a searchlight or maybe a bonfire onshore.”

He cut the power and the sound of the two big V-12 diesels that kicked out 4,500 horsepower.

“Whoever it is can hear us but can’t see us,” Murdock said. “How about hugging the opposite shoreline.”

“Dangerous over there, but we’ll try it and cut power again. Let’s hope we can creep by them.”

“SEALs up and at ’em,” Murdock bellowed. “Weapons on ready, especially you long guns. Some more company up front. If there’s a spotlight, I want it to go first. Snipers decide who gets it.”

The SEALs moved from the small, covered cabin to anywhere on the Pegasus that they would have a good firing position. The boat angled for the far shore. The light was on the right-hand shore. They chugged along at about five knots, and the engines sounded like they were idling.

Without warning, they saw a flash from the shore and a trail of sparks and fire coming toward them. It fell halfway to them.

“RPG,” Ed DeWitt said. “Damn poor calculation on range. They can get this far.”

As he said it, three more flashes showed onshore, and the rockets flew farther this time, but all fell short and slightly upstream from where they were.

The river here was three hundred yards wide. They were still fish in a barrel.

With dazzling suddenness, the light they had seen before turned in their direction, slashing a brilliant shaft of white searchlight across the water. It highlighted the far shore, swung back and forth in a good search pattern, but never got upstream far enough to find them.

“Do it,” Murdock said.

Two shots without suppressors blasted from the sniper rifles. Within half a second, the searchlight died.

Ensign Turley gave an order. The SEALs heard the motor revving up and slid back into safety or hung on with both hands. The slender boat leaped ahead, thrust by the four thousand horses. It went from five knots to forty knots faster than Murdock had ever gone before.

A machine gun chattered from shore. The rounds hit well behind them now. Turley aimed the dartlike boat at the middle of the river and pushed the throttle forward again until they were racing along at forty-five knots. Everyone hung on to anything solid he could find.

The machine gun fire faded.

Turley pulled the throttles back to fifteen knots and sailed down the center of the river.

“We didn’t hurt them much back there,” Murdock shouted over the engine noise to Turley. “They might have some more friends downstream waiting for us.”

“Might,” the Pegasus captain said. “I’m not counting on it. We didn’t see any activity at all on the way in here. I figured we might have to fight our way in and then get clobbered on the downstream run. But now I doubt if it is going to happen. They would have most of their defenses nearer to the navy base. We’re a long way from there now. Fifteen, maybe twenty miles to the gulf.”

“Hope to hell you’re right,” Murdock said. “That last bunch really messed up my nap. Gonna try it again.”

Murdock found a vacant spot in the cabin and sat down, crossed his ankles, and went to sleep.

Загрузка...