Frontal Assault

3

Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven had made a silent move two miles into the desert mountains from the gate at the big gunnery range that the SEALs used for live firing exercises and training. The bleak nightscape of desert spread twenty-five miles to the north and fifty miles all the way to the Colorado River on the east. There was no chance a thunder of live firing could hurt any civilians.

Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock watched his new SCPO, Will Dobler, working the platoon. He’d given the senior chief petty officer the problem: Move the platoon two miles to the target. Attack the “bungalow” from two sides, make sure of the enemy casualties, re-form, and move out a mile due north to avoid any countermeasures.

So far, Dobler was working well. He had been a SEAL for six years, two as an instructor at BUDS/S and four with the teams. He had proven himself under fire in eight actions all around the world. He was an easygoing German-Irishman who brought a little more maturity to the platoon. So far, he had the respect of the men who were quickly learning to have confidence in him. He would need that in the days to come.

Murdock watched as Dobler spread out the men in silent formations in front and to the side of the bullet-absorbing bungalow. Murdock’s earpiece spoke.

“Silenced snipers, both squads, take out the guards.”

Murdock heard the whispers of the suppressed NATO round weapons firing. All weapons but the machine guns had silencers on. The Motorola personalized radio came on again. Each SEAL had one with a transceiver on his belt, an ear speaker, and a lip mike for instant communications up to nearly a mile. For wet work, they zippered into a waterproof pouch on the men’s combat vests.

“Let’s take it down,” Dobler said on the radio. “All fire, now.”

The desert landscape sparkled with the flashes of fifteen weapons. The two H & K 21-E machine guns chattered off five- and seven-round bursts.

Thirty seconds into the firing sequence, the radio came on.

“Ching, Franklin, two WP forty-mike rounds each on the target, now,” Senior Chief Dobler said. When the four WP rounds bathed the front and side of the bungalow with starbursts of burning phosphorus, Dobler called a cease-fire.

“Jefferson, Ostercamp. Get in there and clear it, then make sure of the KIAs. That means one round in the head of each of the dummies in there. Move.”

Two points for Dobler. Murdock watched the little drama play out, heard the clear signal on the Motorola, then the four single shots that sounded from the bungalow. The two SEALs came out, charging back to the line of their buddies, who still lay in the darkness forty yards from the target.

“Phase one completed, Commander. Orders?” the senior chief said in the radio.

Two more points for Dobler. He was going to work out. “Gather the platoon around me for a talk-down,” Murdock said.

A pair of minutes later, Murdock stood in the center of the platoon. “Senior Chief, any suggestions or ass chewing for the troops on this mission?”

“A few, Commander. He stood up and walked around the men. “Three of you moved like little old ladies on the hike up here. I can name names, but you know who you are. Sure, sure, you’re swimmers, wet warriors, but at least half, maybe sixty percent of all the SEAL ops will be on land. Remember that, people.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass how much you dislike slogging along like the infantry; that’s a fucking big part of our job. Accept it and adapt to it or get the hell out of SEALs.

“Not all of you were ready to fire when I gave the order. With silenced weapons, you all can’t hear the commander or Mr. DeWitt or me fire the first rounds as a signal to you. That’s why now and again, you’ll get a verbal order to open fire. Be ready. That’s your job, to put concentrated, deadly fire on the enemy, when you’re ordered to do so.”

Dobler looked at Murdock. “That’s about it, sir. Not a bad operation, but we can stand some work to sharpen up.”

Murdock nodded in the darkness. Another two points for the senior chief. He had chewed, then put himself in the picture saying, “we can stand some work….” Yes, good. “The JG has the next phase. What time is it?”

“0223, sir,” Jeff Jefferson bellowed.

“Glad somebody in this group can tell time. The senior chief is right; we’re getting a little sloppy. With nobody shooting back, we’re not digging in like we should. Mr. DeWitt, this bunch is your meat.”

Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt’s leg had healed up as good as new. He led the platoon on a forced march at just over ten minutes to the mile up a ridge, down across a valley, and upward again toward the Lion’s Head. It was a peak that the SEALs used for a variety of purposes.

Less than a hundred yards from the top, Murdock’s vibrator pager went off. Their contact with the CIA, Don Stroh, had furnished Murdock with a pager and insisted that he wear it whenever he was Stateside.

“Hold it, platoon,” Murdock said. “Somebody is on the hot line.” He looked at his beeper, which had the message: “SATCOM, NOW.”

“Holt, get back here to me at the tail end. Warm up that SATCOM of yours on the way. Methinks that duty doth call.”

“What the fuck he say?” somebody cracked on the Motorola.

Holt had the SATCOM radio on receive before he found Murdock. It was on voice transmission.

“Skipper, just had a transmission. It’s the master chief, and he sounds grumpy as all hell frozen over.”

Murdock took the handset of the fifteen-pound radio that could bounce signals off the satellite or work through cell phones’ TAC frequencies, and a half dozen other configurations.

“SEAL Seven, this is Murdock.”

“Murdock, it’s really hit the fan. Just had an urgent from Don Stroh. He wants you and yours ready to fly out of North Island at noon today. Better get your fannies back on the bus and move it toward town. Not much we can do until you get here. Stroh was breathing fire. He’ll meet you at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C.”

“We’re moving it, Master Chief. An hour back to the bus, then three hours to your place. It’s 0230 now. Say we’ll see you at 0630, give or take a bit. Let’s start with a big breakfast as soon as we hit the base. Then we can shower, get new cammies, and get our gear ready. Yeah. Can make that noontime deadline.”

Murdock signed off and called into his Motorola, “Reverse your march, SEALs. Just had a call from our buddy, Don Stroh. He’s hot for our asses again. We fly out of North Island at 1200 today. So let’s shag our tails for the fucking bus.”

They made their connection at North Island, sweeping in with less than a minute to spare. The next stop was Andrews Air Force Base, just outside of Washington, D.C. They picked up double-sized box lunches and walked stiffly to their next transportation.

“I’m in fucking heaven,” Jeff Jefferson said when they stopped next to a Gulfstream, U.S. Coast Guard VC11 executive jet. Most of the other SEALs had been in a Gulfstream before.

“It’s got real airliner seats that lean back,” Jaybird said. “Hey, we’re traveling first class on this one. Which means they have some especially dank and shit-kicking job for us once we get wherever we’re going.”

They filed on the sleek jet, took seats. There was room for nineteen passengers and a crew of two or three. It cruised at 581 miles per hour and could cover 4,275 miles without a drink of fuel. A Coast Guard commander sat in the driver’s seat. His copilot was a Coast Guard JG female. She didn’t even look at the men; she was too busy doing a final preflight checklist.

Don Stroh came running out. They had held the plane for him for ten minutes. He grabbed one of the box lunches and dropped into a seat beside Murdock.

“Okay, big spender,” Murdock said. “Tell us where we’re going and what kind of hell we’re going to be jumping into.”

“We’re going there fast. That’s why I wangled this VIP jet. She’ll fly us over there in a damn rush. We’re late now. I haven’t even figured out when we’ll arrive or where we stop for fuel.”

“Hey, Stroh. Just tell me where we’re going.”

“Last stop is Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Another sixty-five hundred miles from here. We’ve got a small problem in the Persian Gulf.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, big buddy, again.”

“So, is it a secret?”

“It is. We’ve had a supertanker hijacked in the middle of the Persian Gulf. The captain on board used a common term that is a trigger word. It means the ship is in terrorists’ hands, and he has no control of it. If the terrorists know that we know, they could sink the ship or release millions of tons of crude into the Persian Gulf, causing a die-off of billions of fish and birds and turning the gulf shorelines into a wasteland.

“The tanker, the SUCC Jasmine Queen carries one and a half million tons of crude.”

“When was the takeover?”

“We’re not sure. First transmission of the trigger word was about midnight, our time, last night.”

“You move fast.”

“The President moves fast. There’s a lot of other crap going on as well over there.” Stroh told Murdock about the four coordinated bombings in Cairo and the attacks on three U.S. embassies in the Middle East.

“Does it all tie together?” Murdock asked.

“The President wishes that he knew. State doesn’t have a clue. Our Middle East desk is totally in the dark. We’re swatting flies in an outhouse here.”

Murdock thought about that a minute. “We must be one of the swatters. Our job is to retake the tanker?”

“Good guess. I have the specs on the ship, layout, crew, types of radar, and machinery. Everything you’ll need to know.”

“We better start planning. Will the tanker still be in the gulf by the time we get over there? How fast is she?”

“She does eighteen knots fully loaded; that’s two hundred and fifty miles a day. The gulf is four hundred seventy miles long. Let’s say they captured the ship in the dark thirty-six hours ago. The tanker had loaded at Kuwait City near the top of the gulf. In forty-eight hours, the ship will be out of the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Oman.”

Murdock stood up in his place. “DeWitt, Dobler, Sterling, up here for a powwow. Now.”

Stroh moved across the aisle. DeWitt took his seat, and the other two stood in the aisle. The business jet was quieter than most jet airliners.

“We’re going to the Persian Gulf. Here’s the problem.” Murdock laid it out for them. They all listened and then began talking at once.

“Hey, easy. We’ve got lots of time. We’ll be on this plane for another eleven hours. We’ll chew it around, get some sleep, and then talk about it again in the morning. It’s now twenty-two hundred. Stroh says the pilot reports that with two stops, we should hit Riyadh about 0900. So talk to me.”

They talked.