Frontal Assault

26

Don Stroh came back and found Murdock just as he finished his meal, and they went to his compartment. Murdock sat on his bunk and Stroh tried to pace, but there wasn’t room.

“Like I said, we know where Saddam has his poison gas, we know what it is, and we know how to destroy it with as few deaths in the entire area as possible.”

“Sure, meaning a dozen or so SEALs.”

“You will not be in serious danger if you do the work the way the NBC boys say it should be done.”

“How long do we have to train for this job?”

“Roughly twelve hours.”

“I’ll have all the men write suicide letters before we leave. Make it easier on you when you have to write our next of kin.”

“Stop that, Murdock.” Stroh said, his impatience tingeing his words. That caused Murdock to look up.

“You’re serious about this mission?”

“Damn serious, and so is the President. He says it must be done, and done quickly and done right. He suggested you and your platoon.”

“He didn’t know how shot up we are.”

“This isn’t going to be a hundred-mile marathon. You’ll have all the support we can give you, and that’s a hell of a lot.”

“Chopper in?”

“Absolutely, with four to six Cobra gunships for protection.”

“Chopper out?”

“Yes, it’s too far to walk.”

Murdock eased up from the bunk. He felt the twinges again, the little hurts that bothered him sometimes from the shrapnel still in his ass from several missions back. “Just what the hell can we do with nerve gas? There’s no easy way to destroy the stuff without spreading it around the whole damn globe. We going to do that?”

“Absolutely not. We have a proved way to do the job.”

“Nerve gas doesn’t deteriorate quickly. It won’t burn. It can’t be broken down chemically without a whole fucking cracking plant. So how the hell can twelve of us do the job?”

“This gas is called ectoprocy. Don’t ask me what it means or how to spell it. It’s a known nerve gas but hasn’t been used much. It is generally considered too unstable to qualify for production or installation on weapons. Saddam didn’t agree. He’s done it. He has it. A whiff of a minute quantity of ectoprocy will shut down the nervous system of any animal on earth. It happens in a shorter time than I can tell you about it.”

“How would Saddam deliver it?” Murdock asked.

“Missiles. He’s still flush with the Scuds and can fire them from mobile units. Which means he can drive them right up to his borders and have a much greater range for them than we figured.”

“So the Scuds are the key. Destroy them and you checkmate his gas.”

“For a while. We know he has artillery he can use the gas with. That limits his range, but with the right wind, this stuff can be deadly.”

“It’s a nerve gas, so it bursts out of the shell or missile and clouds across a populated area, killing everything that breathes it?”

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

“How can we destroy the stuff?”

“You ever seen one of the cloud bombs we have?”

“No.”

“It’s a combustible liquid chemical, and when released, it vaporizes and forms a huge cloud, maybe a quarter of a mile wide. That is ignited, and the whole quarter of a mile explodes with a fury that hell would like to get the franchise for. This could be burned or exploded something like that.”

“You’re telling me that this nerve gas will burn? Be damned. You want us to be the trigger?”

“No. We need an accounting.”

“We going to be counting warheads and missiles and canisters that hold the deadly shit?”

“That’s what we’re thinking right now. Unless you have a better plan. The situation is, we must make sure that we get all of the gas. It’s manufactured at this plant; the shells and missile heads are assembled there. They have had accidents. Once two years ago, twenty men died when a tiny leak developed in one artillery shell. The shell was containerized and buried at once.”

“Gas masks for the tender twelve?”

“Yes, two, actually. We have a new one that will filter out particles down to microns smaller than ever before. This mask has worked in every test it’s been given. Using animals, of course. Then you’ll have a regular-issue gas mask that is pretty damn good.”

“What kind of security does the place have?”

“Doesn’t need much. It’s in the middle of the desert, a hundred miles from the closest village or oasis. There are twelve buildings in the complex, and on last count, about three hundred military guards. No wall, no electric fence, no guard towers. They tried not to make it look like a military location.”

“How many workers at the plant?”

“The work is done. Now it’s just a maintenance crew and specialists in case something goes wrong. Not more than twenty-five men.”

“So all we have to do is knock down three hundred troops, then outwit twenty-five maintenance men who are undoubtedly armed with Uzis or Kalashnikovs, and then go in and count beans.”

“Roughly put, yes. We plan a small surprise for the troops. There will be a helicopter landing of a hundred Marines twenty miles from the target. They won’t make a secret of the landing. They will be moving slowly toward the target. This should bring out most of the troops guarding the missile site and factory.”

“So, say we can get inside and put down the locals, then count the beans and radio out our totals, how do we burn up the gas?”

“You don’t.”

Murdock did a double take. “What the hell you mean, we don’t burn up the gas? Why else would we go in there?”

“To count the beans. We have to know that everything they have is in that one complex.”

“So, we pull out, you use one of those big gas cloud bombs and hope to hell you burn up everything.”

“That’s what we’re hoping.”

“Bullshit,” Murdock said. He stood and faced the CIA man. “You know that won’t generate enough heat to blast open those missile heads or the 105 artillery shells, and whatever else he has loaded with your ectoprocy. You’ll get some of it but not all of it. All Saddam has to do is come in, salvage, put the warheads on new missiles, and he’s ready to go.”

Stroh looked at him with eyes as cold as Murdock had ever seen.

“So, you know that won’t work; you won’t do it. Which leaves only one sure way to do the job. A way that the U.S. hasn’t used in fifty-five years.”

“That’s enough. You don’t have a need to know.”

Murdock laughed. “Oh, hell, yes. You send us in there, into the fucking lion’s mouth, and tell us to pull his teeth and then get out and you don’t even tell us that the lion isn’t even sedated. You think I’m stupid, Stroh?”

“No.”

“You’re talking like it. The only way to burn up all that shit in the desert and be sure it’s gone is with a nuclear weapon. A small yield, maybe only five thousand kilotons. Just enough to vaporize everything in that complex and for five miles around. That keeps the three hundred Iraqi troops in the clear. Of course, the twenty or thirty maintenance men are still inside when you pull the cork.”

“Thirty men dead is a small price to pay to keep an estimated ten million from being gassed to death.”

“If it came to that.”

“If Saddam goes down, it will come to that. Already, his advances are stalling. They have overextended their supply lines, and they’re running out of gas, food, and ammunition.”

“So when will his retreat start?”

“We figure in two more days, the tide will turn and the Syrians, with U.S. airpower help, will start driving Saddam back toward the border.”

“And then Saddam will wipe out Damascus, Syria, for a start, and maybe Haifa for good measure.”

“All of this is off the record, Murdock. You didn’t hear me say a damn thing about any nuclear weapon.”

“Hey, when it happens, it will be an accident in a secret site where Saddam was building nuclear weapons. An easy out. So we didn’t throw in a bomb after all.”

“Your men aren’t to know.”

“Oh, yeah, we get away in a chopper and a fucking mushroom cloud boils up behind us and I tell them, ‘Damn, just a lucky accident.’ ”

“A warning, Murdock. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who says a word about this to anyone else, will suffer a serious and fatal accident. This isn’t one we can fuck around with.”

“The nuke is the only way?”

“You have a better plan?”

“Stroh, you don’t need us in there. Just nuke it now and hope you get it all.”

“Won’t work. The President says you SEALs have another job. You have to make sure all of the personnel left in the complex are routed out and moved at least twenty miles away before the blast. We’ll have four choppers there to lift out up to eighty personnel. We pull any civilians off site and dump them out near a road.”

“So we’re baby-sitters, too, on this one? Bean counters and baby-sitters. What a great assignment.”

“You can tell your men you’re going in to neutralize the poison gas facility and get the guards out before the place is bombed off the map. You can’t tell them how. That’s all they need to know.”

Murdock slammed the flat of his palm against the bulkhead. “What you’re telling me is there is no chance I can say no to this assignment.”

“That’s what I’m saying. When it happens, there is a special bonus for your men. Everyone is advanced one grade in rank by presidential order. You realize what that’s going to mean to your men, to have a presidential order promotion in their permanent service file?”

“It ain’t no medal of honor.”

“But comes damn close. You can go to full commander, and the JG to full lieutenant.”

Murdock shook his head. “Not for me. I move up to full commander, they yank me out of the field so fast my silver leaves would curl up and fall off. I’ll stay put and take a commendation instead.”

“Done. Now get your ass in gear. We’ve set up the security on this as tight as next Thursday. Your point of departure will be Forward Logistical Temporary Base One. It’s about ten miles from the Iraqi border and about twice that far from the Syrian border. The spot is almost six hundred miles northwest of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I’d say just your usual weapons, maybe twice the ammo. You’ll be riding both ways, so I’d think all of your men not in the hospital could make the trip.”

“I’ll decide that, Stroh. When do we get the COD off this floating vacation land?”

“Anytime after five o’clock, I mean 1700. That gives you almost five hours to get ready.”

Ten minutes later, Murdock called his thirteen men together in their assembly room and told them quickly what the mission was. He said they’d clear the complex, then haul ass in a chopper and the Air Force or the Navy would blast the place into rubble.

“Won’t that release the nerve gas?” Ching asked.

“Extensive tests have shown that this type of nerve gas will vaporize once released and then becomes flammable,” Murdock said. “It will explode like one of those gas cloud bombs the Air Force uses.” Murdock hoped they bought his explanation.

“You’ll get briefed again in the COD. We’ve got some traveling to do before first light tomorrow morning.”

Murdock made a sick bay call. The JG was better, but still not out of danger. He spoke little, and Murdock left feeling lousy. Adams was in good spirits, saying he knew his arm would heal perfectly and he’d be back in SEALs in six months.

Bill Bradford, with his stomach wound, looked the best of the three. He joked about his “no guts” operation and Murdock told him they were off on another joy ride.

“You’ll be on the next one, or one soon,” Murdock said. Then he hurried out to pull his gear together and move the men up to the plane. He’d worked it out with Senior Chief Dobler to take over the Bravo Squad for this assignment and the rest of their current deployment. Murdock didn’t know what he’d do about the JG once they returned to Coronado. He’d worry about that later. Right now, he had to go in and do a setup for an atomic bomb blast without getting any of his SEALs killed.