Frontal Assault

15

“Bahrain is the name of the place,” Don Stroh said to the assembled SEALs in their room on the big carrier. “Bahrain was a traditional monarchy, with an emir at the head. It’s an island nation of two thousand two hundred square miles. That’s the same size as an island forty-six miles one way by forty-six miles the other way. About the same size as the land mass of the city of San Diego.

“Not a big place. But it has a half million people. Three or four days ago, there was a coup there. The emir was gunned down at a soccer match, and a general of the Bahrainian army took over to ‘stabilize the government.’ He’s still there. There has been a request through the United Nations by the former premier of Bahrain who escaped to Saudi Arabia, that they send a force into his country to free it from the conspirator/murderers who control it.

“The U.N. has agreed and assigned the U.S. to make the amphibious landing on the island kingdom. That’s where you guys come in. You just did a beach clearing. This is another one. There are only two places where amphibious landings are practical on the island, and both will probably be stoutly defended. Your team and a platoon from Marine Recon will go in there.

“After the beach is secure, you will move with the Marines inland to suppress any enemy fire and to secure the beachhead for the landing.”

“All thirty of us?” DeWitt asked.

“Not sure how big a Recon platoon is, JG,” Stroh said. “I’ll find out. We’re not sure, either, how many of the former ten thousand Bahrainian military are loyal to the new commander in chief. I’ve heard we’re sending in seven hundred Marines.”

“We’ll go in with the rest of the troops?” Murdock asked.

“Not the plan now. After the Marines are ashore, the colonel in command said he would keep the SEALs and Recon in reserve for special assignments.”

“Anything the Marines can’t handle, they give to us,” Jaybird cracked. The men laughed.

“So that’s it. You’ll be choppered over to the amphibious ship Boxer. It will move into position tonight and be ready for a dawn landing. There will be no shelling of the area, no bombardment. The idea is to do as little damage to the real estate as possible yet still kick butt.”

“Any contact mines in the surf?” Dobler asked.

“We don’t know,” Stroh said. “There could be anything there. However, the new regime hasn’t had much time to install defensive measures, and the former emir did not think he needed any. So it could be just a walk in the park.”

“That’ll be the day,” Tony Ostercamp said.

“We’ll go in cammies and face masks,” Murdock said. “Sounds like most of it will be in the surf. We’ll know more after our briefing on the other ship. Regular loads of ammo, usual weapons. Bradford, bring the big fifty, leave the PSGl. Bring a hideout if anyone wants to; ankle holsters are best. Any questions?”

“How much TNAZ per man?” Jaybird asked. “We might have some blowing up to do.”

“Two pounds per man,” Murdock said. With eight timer/detonators.”

“I’ll draw some more,” Jaybird said.

“How we going to work with the Jyreans?” Franklin asked.

“We don’t know. They get UDT training, too. We might each take a section, be near but separate.”

“Yeah, separate but they’re unequal,” Jefferson said. The men cheered again.

“Let’s get with it,” DeWitt said. “We have an hour to chow, then another hour to get on the flight deck, ready to rumble.”

Three hours later, the SEALs landed on board the USS Boxer LHD 4. Officially, she was a Wasp Class Amphibious Assault Ship. In actuality, she was an 884-foot-long mini-carrier that specialized in helicopters and vertical-takeoff Harriers. She normally carried eight Harriers and 42 CH-46D Sea Knight helos. She had the capability of carrying almost any helicopter the Navy used including the Super Cobra, Super Stallion, Twin Huey, and Seahawk helicopters.

In her holds she could also pack l,850 combat-ready Marines. Each chopper could move eighteen Marines on vertical assault missions. In the hold were also landing craft and air cushion landing craft.

The SEALs found their quarters and sacked out. They would be going in shortly after dark to start their beach-clearing work. Any demolition they needed to do wouldn’t start until daylight, with the Marines hard on their way to the beach.

The briefing for the officer was about what Murdock expected. He did learn that half the Marines would be coming in on one beach and half on the other side of the island at another good landing area. The Recon Marines would clear one beach, and the SEALs the other. Separate and equal.

The Boxer had been steaming north all day at twenty-two knots. It would need fourteen hours to get into position. She would lay five miles off Bahrain until an hour before the landing was set. Then she would steam within a mile of the beach and discharge the Marines in a pair of borrowed LCU 160 °Class Utility Landing Craft. They would each hold 350 Marines, and one would attack each coast.

The SEALs and Recon men ate late chow at 1900 and then went to their disembarking point in the stern of the big ship on the third level down. The huge ramp at the stern of the ship opened to let the LCUs move through the water into the open sea.

When they were ten miles off Bahrain, the SEALs would launch in the Pegasus that had sailed to the Boxer as soon as the mission was set. By that time it was nearly 0200 and pitch black. They would have the south shore of the island and the Marines the north.

The SEALs boarded the Pegasus and checked their gear again.

“The captain tells me we’re about ten miles off the coast. We’ll be going in fast for the first eight, then simmer down and move in as close as he can go, maybe a hundred yards, just outside the surf line. From there we take a swim. You know the score on clearing a beach. Anything that will mess up a landing craft, we take care of. We have a little less than an hour’s ride. The time now is 0220, meaning we’ll have five or six hours to find any obstacles, mines, concertina on the beach, anything at or near the beach that would cause problems. Questions?”

“Yeah. What was all that?” Joe Lampedusa asked. They all laughed.

“Take a nap, you guys. You may need the sleep before this one is over.”

Half of them slept. The other half were the least experienced at the real thing: shooting at people and having them shoot back at you. Murdock watched them and looked at the sky. A partial moon, no clouds. At least no rain. He’d been on a dozen of these beach-cleaning missions. The only thing he worried about were pressure-activated mines just under the surface of the wet or dry sand. Maybe they would be lucky.

The constant roar of the two big diesel engines drove them across the open gulf toward the island nation. When the sound toned down and then nearly stopped, Murdock came awake at once and talked to the ensign.

“Two miles out, we’re moving in at five knots so nobody will hear us,” the officer said. “At least we hope nobody expects us, so they won’t be watching for us.”

“My hopes exactly,” Murdock said.

Another mile closer to the beach, and Murdock could see lights on the island. What did Stroh say, it was a forty-six-mile square? Plenty of room to hide. He wondered how many of the 10,000 troops had followed their murderous leader. They would soon find out.

“Okay, you guys, up and at ’em. Wake up time. Final check on weapons and waterproof pouches. We’ll want the Motorolas later. We have another quarter of a mile to go. Bravo Squad off first and work to the shallows where you can stand. We’ll join up there and check the situation, then make assignments.”

Five minutes later, the ensign running the boat nodded.

“Bravo, over the side. Good luck.”

They tipped into the swells and could hear the breakers less than fifty yards ahead of them. They surfaced and stroked easily shoreward with their weapons strapped on their backs.

Murdock’s Alpha Squad followed them. They met in three feet of water with breakers pushing them forward with each wave.

Murdock and the SEALs scanned the area. It was a mile-long, sandy beach, evidently a gradual slope that could give the bigger LCUs beaching trouble. So the Marines get wet coming in. He didn’t see any mechanical metal tank traps or angled steel to rupture the landing craft. The SEALs spread out in the center of the area. They would clear a section and put up a waterproof rolled-up sign they had brought to indicate the center of the cleared landing area. Hopefully, the coxswain on the landing craft could see it.

For two hours they walked the waves and shallows but found nothing to deal with. It was 0300 when they hit the first problem. Horse Ronson had moved out of the surf to the edge of the wet sand and walked along, gently probing the sand ahead of him with his K-bar. Suddenly, he stopped and didn’t move. He had his Motorola out and working and whispered into the lip mike.

“Murdock, we have a problem.”

Murdock came out of the foot-high gulf and saw Ronson squatting in the wet sand.

“Hit metal, Skipper. Not the hell sure what it is. Should I take a look?”

“Wait. Get Jaybird up here. Your ears on, Jaybird?”

“Yeah, coming,” Sterling responded.

He came up on the wet side of Murdock and Ronson.

“Back the way you came,” Jaybird said. “Both use your footprints in the sand as stepping stones. Let me take a look.”

Jaybird had become the platoon’s mine man when he deactivated six mines left over from World War II that the SEALs discovered deep in the sand at their desert training grounds.

He probed gently with the KA-BAR already in the sand. He withdrew it gently and probed in the wet sand around the point where he knew there was metal. The rest of the platoon moved down the beach in the foot-deep water and out to three feet deep, examining the black water and the sand when they could see it. Their job was to clear a 300-yard stretch of beach for the Marines to land on.

Jaybird looked at Murdock, who knelt in the wet sand right behind him.

“Wish to hell I could use a light,” Jaybird said.

They both knew that he couldn’t. He twisted one way to let what little moonlight there was shine on the spot. By this time, he had an outline. It was no more than three inches across.

“How in hell did he ever find this needle?” Jaybird said. Slowly, he began to scrape the wet sand off the top of the area. He went down an inch, then two inches. He scraped metal. After that, he moved more cautiously as he removed the sand from the circle around the object.

“Could be an old tin can,” Jaybird said. Sweat formed on his forehead and ran into his eyes. He slashed it away.

“Yeah, but more likely a bouncing Betty. Remember them from that training film?”

“Yeah, about three inches across. You step on one, even the side, and a small charge goes off, bouncing the real whammer four or five feet in the air, where it goes off like a grim reaper, wiping out a squad at a time.”

“Could do it right here.”

“Don’t they wish.” Jaybird had a hole excavated around the three-inch cylinder. Now he could see the metal sides of the bomb. It was no tin can.

“Yes, a bouncing Betty type at least. Sometimes they put this one together with a pressure-release type mine. Say the Betty is on top of it, like holding down an arming spoon. As soon as a jerk like me lifts the Betty off, thinking he’s solved the problem, the arming device clicks in, and whammmo, there goes another rubber tree plant.”

As he talked, Jaybird probed down each side of the mine, then deeply under it until he was satisfied.

“Okay, sports fans, no double trouble here. We’ve got one Betty, but are there any more? If I was gonna spread them out down here, I’d put them in a rough line across the beach, parallel to the fucking shore.”

“I’ll start looking,” Murdock said. He took out his KA-BAR with its eight-inch blade and began probing the wet sand two feet over from where Jaybird worked, doing the final removal of the mine. He took out an orange plastic sack from his combat vest and delicately wrapped the bomb in the sack. Every man in the platoon knew what the orange sack meant. Jaybird began probing the sand, moving the other way from Murdock.

It was a monotonous task. They probed with the knife every three inches in a line three feet wide, then moved up three inches and probed back the way they had come. After clearing a three-by-three-foot section, they moved to the side and did another section. It was slow, agonizing work, and any second one bad probe or one with too much force could set off a mine.

Master Chief Dobler came to where Murdock worked his KA-BAR in and out of the sand.

“We have the surf and the outside wet sand cleared,” Dobler said. “Not as certain as you’re doing it here, but there are no obvious problems to a smooth landing.”

“We still need to check the dry sand. How much here, about thirty yards?”

“Somewhere near. A lot of space to cover.”

“Tell Lam to use his KA-BAR and clear a path through the sand up to that fringe of woods. Then have him check it out and in to the point where he finds any humans, civilians or otherwise.”

“Aye, sir.” Dobler moved away through the water to find Lam, their platoon scout.

“How much we going to do on this, Skipper?” Jaybird asked.

“You know how far three hundred yards are, sailor?”

“Too fucking far. What if this is the only one? What if it was dropped by mistake on some kind of an exercise by the original home boys here?”

“What if we miss one and it blows up six Marines coming across this wet sand?” Murdock stood, waved up the rest of the platoon, and told them the routine. “Every three inches in a three-foot square. Line up and let’s get at it. We ain’t got all night.”

Lam edged his way up the soft and dry sand, probing two feet wide and moving faster than he should. He made it across the twenty yards to the dry grass and some salt brush. Lam stopped and listened. He couldn’t hear the SEALs behind him because of the pounding breakers. He watched ahead. No lights. Small brush, and some trees, but he didn’t know what kind. The whole island looked low and flat. He moved into the brush carefully, watching, taking in everything he could see in the half-light.

Nothing.

Nobody.

He went another fifty yards. Still nothing. If they wanted to defend this place, they were going about it in a crazy way. Maybe they had no idea they would be invaded. He hoped so. An all-out war with ten thousand troops was not his idea of fun. Especially since they only had seven hundred Marines backing them up.

A half mile inland, he found the first habitation. It looked like some kind of vegetable farm. A small house, a hint of a valley, with a tiny stream and row upon row of some kind of green crop. Enough. He turned and headed for the beach.

On the way, he neither saw nor heard anyone.

A walk in the park.

He was almost to the beach when a jolting explosion drilled the sky with an arc of light, then the rolling thunder of the mine washed over him along with a wave of hot air. He ran to the edge of the dry sand.

The SEALs had scattered, most of them back into the foaming foot-deep seawater. Lam had no idea where the safe trail was that he had carved coming into the woods. He sat down and waited.

Murdock heard the blast and swore as he left his section. It was to his right. He ran through the foot-deep water to where he saw the small cloud of smoke slowly rising. Two men lay on the wet sand. Mahanani crawled up to the first man. Murdock went to his knees beside him. It was Ron Holt.

“I’m not hit bad, Skip, just knocked me out. Got some nicks and scrapes, damn shrapnel. It’s Al Adams over there who caught most of it.”

They moved cautiously in the water to where Adams lay. His right arm was torn off. Blood gouted. Mahanani pulled off his shirt and held it tightly around the bloody arm stump halfway to the shoulder.

“He’s bleeding, so he isn’t dead,” the medic said.

Murdock checked his face and chest. Blood soaked his cammie shirt. His face was not marked.

“Lam,” Murdock said in his Motorola. “You back?”

“Back, Skipper. Nobody up here for almost a klick.”

“Work a safe path for us through the dry sand. Be damn careful. Adams got it bad, we need a place to keep him off the beach.”

“Doing it. Work better if Dobler could work from the wet to meet me.”

“I’m on it, Skipper,” Dobler said on the radio.

“Can we save him?” Murdock asked the Hawaiian.

“I don’t know. Shock, blood loss. Haven’t even looked at his chest yet. Be good to get a chopper in here for him. Can we contact the big boat?”

“Didn’t bring the SATCOM. Pegasus can call them. They must have heard the blast if they hung around. He touched the mike. “Beach calling Pegasus. Do you copy?”

There was no response. He made the call three times. Then he heard a faint reply.

“Beach, on our way home. Need help?”

“Triggered a mine. Got two of our men, one critical. I know we can’t get a chopper in here until the attack. That’s still two hours off. Can you pick up our wounded?”

“Check with mother hen. Give me a minute.”

Everyone heard the conversation. Adams tried to say something, then drifted off into unconsciousness again.

“Get his feet up. He’s in shock. More blood to his brain the better.”

“Beach, we have a go for ambulance run. Mother is within five miles. They hit here first, then go to Beach B. Coming in. Any enemy fire?”

“None we’ve found so far. Just the damn mine. We found one more but have it out. Gentle slope of the beach here, not sure how close you can come. What do you draw?”

“Not sure. We can nose in to ground, then get off easy.”

“You have a medic on board?”

“Negative. We’re about two miles out and moving in fast. You may be able to hear us. Give me a glow stick to find you. You’re where we left you before?”

“That’s a roger to both.”

“Jaybird, take a green stick, wade out, shield it with your body from the island, and give Pegasus a target.”

“On my way, Skip.”

Murdock checked out Ron Holt. He had two deep gashes in one leg, an arm wound, and, after repeated probing, admitted that he couldn’t see very well.

“The damn flash,” Holt said. “Twice as bad as a flashbang.”

“Can you walk, Holt?”

“Yeah, but I won’t know where I’m going.”

“You’re with me. He hit the radio again. Ronson, Bradford, get over here and help us get Adams down to the boat. It should be here in a few minutes.”

Murdock led Holt into the water and out beside Jaybird. They heard the Pegasus coming, then it toned down as it slowed. It had no lights, only a murmur now as it idled in the last quarter mile.

Two minutes later, the long craft nosed in three feet from Jaybird until its bow scraped sand. It stopped. The water was chest deep when they walked out to the boat. They lifted Holt on board, and Murdock told them he couldn’t see.

Adams was tougher. Ronson and Bradford carried him like a silk pillow, but the men on board the Pegasus had trouble getting him into the ship.

“Mahanani, get in there and help. You’re going back with them. Check over Holt for blood loss. Have one of the crew try to stop the bleeding with pressure on that stump. A wet towel might help. Go.”

The Pegasus eased backward, away from the beach, turned, and crawled away on low throttle. They heard it rev up farther out to sea.

Murdock looked at his watch. Nearly 0400.

“Jaybird, get that mine. We’ll take it with us. Lam, you know where that safe route is?”

The earpiece came on. “I’ve got one end, Senior Chief Dobler has your end. Bring the troops into the cover. Nobody up here yet, but I’d guess we’ll have some company before the Marines land.”

Murdock’s radio talked again. “On our way, Skip. Holt is doing well, chest wounds superficial. Lots of blood, not much hurt. He still can’t see. Adams is looking bad. We brought the rest of his arm along and the crew has it in a bucket of ice. You know what they can do with severed limbs these days. Almost out of range. Good luck.”

The SEALs moved across the safe strip of sand and into the woods. No one else had been touched by the mine. Jaybird said it wasn’t a bouncing Betty or five or six of the men would be hurting.

They spread out in the brush facing inland while Lam took another scouting run. He came back thirty minutes later.

“Skip, I’d suggest we move inland about half a klick. There’s some good defensive areas there. My guess, there will be someone from the interior over here soon to investigate that mine going off.

Murdock sent them along. Ed Dewitt had the con and Dobler to help him set up an ambush.

Murdock and Jaybird stayed behind. They went back to the wet sand through the safe trail. They marked the trail with an orange flag, then went down to where the mine exploded and put another orange flag. The third one they put on the spot Jaybird had removed the first mine. The flags were three feet square on four-foot poles jammed into the wet sand.

At 0530, Murdock had heard nothing from Ed DeWitt. He said he’d call if they ran into trouble.

Murdock tried a call to the LCUs. They were supposed to have one radioman on board with a Motorola set to the SEAL’s frequency. He tried the call again. Nothing. That meant the Marines were still farther out than the three-mile radius of the small radios.

He had to wait. Just as Murdock sat down on the dry sand, his radio spoke.

“Murdock, we have contact. Looks like two jeeps and maybe a dozen men. Is it too early to take them out? If we let them come through, they will see the landing and cause all sorts of hell. The rigs have mounted fifty-caliber MGs.

Infantry tactics. It all depended on the situation and the terrain, they used to say. Only this time, there was another factor: time. If they blasted the rebels now, that might bring a much larger force to defend the beach before the Marines got there. If they didn’t take the rebels down now, they would come through to the beach and cause a passel of trouble.

Murdock spoke into the lip mike. “Light them up, Ed. Use all silenced weapons if you can and don’t let them fire a shot.”

“That’s a roger.”

Before Murdock could do more than offer a silent good luck to his men, his radio sputtered and a garbled voice came over.

“Bea… Beach. On t… way. Give us some…. Make them t… green on…”

“Marines. Broken reception. You want green stick lights?”

“Roger th…”

Murdock turned to Jaybird. “Let’s get in the middle of our little cleared path. I’ll tell him by radio about the mines. They have three cleared paths for single file.

That was when he heard some repeated rifle and machine gun fire from well into the trees.