Pacific Siege

1

Newly promoted Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock watched his fifteen men in the murky gloom of the interior of the special C-130 Hercules. They were flying at night near the northern Kuwaiti border next to Iraq, too high for anyone on the ground to see or hear the plane. This area was outside the Iraq radar envelope.

The Hercules was the one they had used before, painted totally black with no insignia, armed and equipped specifically for covert night flights over hostile territory.

Murdock patted the side of the big plane. He knew it was the most versatile and widely used military transport in the post-World War II era. The four big turboprop engines growled away outside. He’d heard that a C-130 had even been flown off a Navy carrier without the use of a catapult or arresting wires. The plane had a 133-foot wingspan, which made Murdock wonder how they did it. Right now they were flying at the plane’s ceiling of 33,000 feet.

The big plane lumbered through the thin air at 350 mph as the sixteen SEALs rattled around in the big cargo compartment. The Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven, based in Coronado, California, under command of NAVSPECWARCOM, Naval Special Warfare Command, was now assigned to and under the direct orders of the CIA. Murdock began inspecting each of his first squad’s seven men. They had checked the rigging, gear, weapons, and combat vests of each other. Now Murdock went over it all again, then had two men look over his latch-up. When he was satisfied, he saw that Lieutenant (j. g.) Ed Dewitt had given his seven-man Second Squad a similar routine.

“When the fuck we going to get there?” Engineman Second Class Fred Washington asked. He was the only black man in the group, and confessed he sometimes felt like the platoon’s “Nominal Nigger.”

“Hell, I can say that, but you shitheads better not,” he had said during late-night drinking binges.

“We get there when we get there, Slowfoot,” Les Quinley cracked.

He was a Torpedoman Third Class, from Maine, and the platoon’s computer expert.

Even though they had made jumps like this dozens of times, each one was new and different, and presented the ever-present dangers of any jump.

Murdock looked at his watch, and punched the light button. In the glow he saw that they had fourteen minutes to their drop point. They had been sucking oxygen from masks provided in the plane ever since they passed fifteen thousand feet. He motioned the men around him, talking loudly so they could hear.

“Nothing new from the top. We go in as we planned. Let’s stay within fifty feet of each other on the drop, and pull up when we get down there for an easy landing. We don’t want any broken legs or sprains on this jump. Any questions?”

Bill Bradford, Quartermaster First Class, waved. He was a hulking six-two, and did marine oil paintings in his off time. “When do we start to use our portable oxygen?” He was the new man in the platoon, taking over Magic Brown’s spot after the machine gunner had been knocked out of action in the Deathrace operation in Iran.

“We’ll turn on our personal oxygen system in about three minutes, as soon as the red jump light goes on,” Murdock said. “That will put us ten minutes from our jump point. We have two hours of oxygen in each bottle, which should be plenty.”

“How long to touchdown?” Ron Holt, Radioman First Class, asked.

Holt was a rabid Dodgers fan. When baseball wasn’t on, he’d rather go deep-sea fishing than eat.

“We jump on this HAHO at about thirty-two thousand. We’ll be on static lines to open our chutes automatically to keep us bunched as close as possible. Then we should have seventy-two to seventy-five minutes gliding down.

“By then we should be about fifteen miles inside Iraq, and near the small town of Osadi. That’s the objective. This High Altitude High Opening routine should put us down within half a mile of the target.

We’ll use the Motorolas, and if we see we’re overshooting, we’ll circle so we can come down close to the target.”

The red jump light came on.

“Let’s turn on your portable oxygen and have a radio check. Second Squad first.”

Murdock listened to the earpiece as the Second Squad chimed in to Dewitt.

“First Squad report,” Murdock said into the lip mike. It was connected to a wire that went under his shirt collar, and down inside his cammie shirt to a waist transceiver unit clipped on his belt.

Another wire led to an ear speaker. The seven men responded with their last names, and the Platoon Leader nodded.

Murdock watched his men. He’d been with some of them for two years now as Platoon Leader. They were his guys. They had bonded together in live-or-die combat situations more than a dozen times and were closer than blood brothers. They would die for each other. He remembered three of his men who had done just that. He shook his head, not wanting to think about those three.

The loadmaster came out of the cabin into the big hold, and motioned to Murdock.

“Sir, about six minutes from the drop. You better get the men hooked up and ready.”

Two minutes later the squads lined up, one on each side of the big cargo hatch at the back of the plane. Thirty seconds later they felt the whoosh of air as the nine-foot-long ramp lowered from the top of the plane. The jump light still showed red.

Murdock watched the loadmaster, boss of this phase of the operation.

Three minutes later, the light turned from red to green.

Murdock nodded. “Go, go, go,” he barked into the lip mike. The sixteen SEALs ran forward in two closely spaced lines, out of the big hold, and off the end of the ramp into the blackness of the Iraqi night.

The time was a little after 2100.

Murdock sensed the jolt of apprehension as he always did on a jump.

Then he took the last running step off the ramp, and surged into the darkness. The freezing cold hit him like ice-water in the face, jolting past the ski mask protection, icing his nose in an instant even under the oxygen device.

The moment he was free of the craft he went into an arch move, his arms and legs spread out like a bird so he wouldn’t tumble. After only six seconds he felt the drag chute pull from his main chute, then the gradual slowing as the rectangular, steerable chute deployed.

The air was so thin at 32,000 feet that the chute came out gradually and took some seconds to fill with the thin air. The steerable chutes lowered a man’s free-fall speed much more gently than a big round chute would do.

There was no disemboweling jerk on the parachute straps as a falling body slowed suddenly from free fall to fully supported. Murdock had experienced that quick stop on other jumps halfway upside down. The straps around his legs and shoulders would slam him upwards, bringing a groan; then the chute over him would take up the load, and the pain would ease into a slow throbbing. He always worried that he had crushed his balls in those regular jumps.

He grabbed the straps and looked around. He saw the bobbing glow lights. Each man had one and held it so it could be seen by the others.

This was one way to help them stay somewhere near each other. Murdock swallowed and tried the lip mike. He hoped it hadn’t frozen up.

“Platoon, use your compasses. We’re on a bearing of three-forty degrees. Let’s hit it dead in the chops. Radio net report First Squad.” Murdock listened as seven men responded. He heard Dewitt check in his men. Sixteen SEALs primed and ready to go. His fingers screeched in pain even through the special gloves as the cold bit into them. At thirty thousand feet it must be well below zero. More than an hour more of gliding, but it would get warmer.

The Platoon Leader looked at his altimeter, and punched up the small light. It showed 30,100 feet. He wasn’t sure what the ground-level height was here, but it couldn’t be more than five or six hundred feet. A long ride down.

He looked around, and spotted six of the glow lights. Ingenious little devices. A plastic tube with two compartments each containing a separate chemical or element. Bend them and break the seal inside, and the two substances combined to give off a healthy glow. Most of the six-inch-long tubes were good for six to eight hours.

As they glided toward the Iraqi village, Murdock went over the briefing. Their objective was a modest house in the small village of Osadi. It was controlled by a local war chieftain who was a renegade from the Iraqi Army. He was known as El Raza. Saddam Hussein hadn’t tried to catch him, probably deciding it was too much trouble. El Raza ruled like a bandit lord over the locals. His house was heavily defended, according to the latest reports. He had troops, machine guns, maybe even land mines. The house would be a fort.

Two days ago, El Raza had slipped into Kuwait at night with a dozen men, and captured a well-known Kuwait leader in a small town only five miles from the Iraqi border. The kidnapped man was highly placed in the Kuwait government. He had come to his relative’s home at this border town for a holiday.

Kuwait was powerless to get him back. They couldn’t afford to invade Iraq. They had no special forces who could rush in and break him free. El Raza had demanded two million American dollars as a ransom for the man, Fayd Salwa. He said if the ransom wasn’t paid within forty-eight hours, Salwa would be sent home a body part at a time in a basket.

Don Stroh, the SEALs contact with the CIA and main order-giver, had been clear.

“You go in HAHO as silent as a SEAL. You take down this El Raza and rescue Salwa and we’ll pick you up outside the town with a chopper.

Maybe a six-hour mission from drop to pickup. All done at night and the Iraqis won’t know who hit them, especially El Raza.”

When the SEALs received the orders, they had hung up their close-quarters shoot-out weapons, and left from North Island Naval Air Station four hours later.

A gust of wind rocked Murdock’s steerable chute, and he felt the drift, but quickly pulled the glide chute back on course. He saw the glow lights of the other men making the same correction.

“Halfway down,” he heard Dewitt say in the Motorola earpiece.

“Yeah and warmer,” David

“Jaybird” Sterling, Machinist Mate Second Class, said. Jaybird was the platoon noncom administrator and boss.

“Why the fuck does it stay so cold out here?”

It was clear and cool. Murdock was always surprised how cold it could get in a desert: 110 during the day and down into the forties at night.

Far ahead, he saw a faint glow. It had to be the town of Osadi.

According to their best maps, this was the only town in the whole territory for fifty miles around. It was why El Raza had chosen it as a haven from the Iraqi Army. He felt isolated and safe. When he’d deserted, he’d taken a company of his men, and all the arms they could pile on armored personnel carriers.

Twenty minutes later, the soft glow ahead had turned into fuzzy lights. They were low enough that Murdock could see some of the terrain below. Desert, a few ravines, a scattering of low brush and weeds, lots of sand and rocks. Good old desert.

“Looks like we’re dead-on on the old cracker barrel on this one, people,” Murdock said. “My skyhook shows that we’re at just under five thousand feet. We could come in a tad short, so don’t waste any altitude maneuvering. Ed, can you see all of your men?”

“All but one. I think his glowworm died. He was close in last I saw him.”

“Yeah, Commander. Franklin here. My light died like a stiff prick at a church service. I got glowworms on both sides of me.”

“Roger that, Franklin,” Murdock said.

They came to ground a half mile short of the village. Everyone made it down without any injuries. They had practiced this landing enough that they should know how by now.

They didn’t bother to bury the chutes.

“They’ll know we’ve been here tomorrow, so why bother?” Murdock said. They checked equipment and got their issue weapons in their hands, and Murdock moved them out.

The scout, Joe

“Ricochet” Lampedusa, Operations Specialist Third Class, led the troops, with Murdock right behind him and Ron Holt, with his SATCOM, right behind Murdock in case he was needed in a rush. First Squad scattered out behind at ten-yard intervals. The ten yards was standard for most combat situations. One lucky explosive round or one hand grenade wouldn’t put down more than one man at a time.

Second Squad, with (j. g.) Dewitt in the lead, followed the First Squad. They both were in a modified diamond formation, and hiked along at a pace of fifteen minutes to the mile.

A half-moon cast a suggestion of light over the desert. Here there were occasional tufts of grass, a few cacti, and now and then a low growth that must hug runoff gullies formed when sudden downpours bathed the desert.

Still a quarter of a mile from the first lights, Lampedusa went down, and the rest of the SEALs dropped into the dirt as well. Murdock met the motorcycle enthusiast halfway. “Some kind of a truck, no lights,” Lam said. “Parked out there about a hundred yards from that last building.”

“A roving mounted patrol?” Murdock asked.

“Doubt it. The rig hasn’t moved for five minutes. I’ve been watching it.”

“Let’s pay your truck a visit.” Murdock turned, and motioned for the rest of the men to stay where they were. In the darkness, the signal went from one man back to the next, until it worked all the way through Second Squad.

Murdock and Lam bent over, and ran silently toward the truck.

Murdock saw that it was some type of Russian personnel carrier. It had a machine gun mounted facing forward. The rig was parked so it nosed away from the settlement.

Without warning, the truck’s headlights blazed a path through the desert night. Murdock and Lam were well out of the beam, but they went to ground and didn’t move. Murdock figured it was two minutes later before the lights snapped off. He had kept his eyes tightly closed during the light show. When he opened his eyes, he found his night vision not affected. He snapped up the NVGs, Night Vision Goggles, and checked the truck.

He could see a man at the steering wheel, but he wasn’t sure if there was another man in the cab. Murdock motioned, and he and Lam moved to the left to come up more on the side of the rig. Murdock carried his standard-issue weapon, an H&K MP-5SD submachine gun with the stock extension closed. It had been customized for the SEALs with a special stock, handgrip, and safety. It had tritium dots on the sights for night shooting. It could spit out one 9mm round at a time, bursts of three, or full-auto fire.

The scout carried his usual Colt M-4A 1, a .223-caliber that fired single shots or full automatic at seven hundred rounds per minute. Like all SEAL M-4AI’s, his also had an M203 40mm grenade launcher under the barrel.

They moved forward in a crouch until they were forty yards from the rig, then went down to a crawl. Cradling weapons across their arms, they went by elbows and knees another fifteen yards. Both weapons carried sound suppressors. Murdock used the NVGs again, nodded, and brought up his H&K. He sighted in and put a three-round burst through the open side window.

After the silenced burst, the two SEALs came to their feet and charged the small truck. They found two uniformed men in the front seat, both dead. There were no troops in the back.

Murdock stood and waved the SEALs forward. He had silhouetted himself against the town’s lights. The men came up in formation, and the platoon moved forward.

Lampedusa knew where the fortified house should be. He checked the buildings, then swung around to the right.

Murdock figured there couldn’t be more than two hundred inhabitants in the place. The house they wanted was in the second row from the outside. They weren’t blocks exactly, more like cow paths or maybe goat trails.

Lam went down again to the dirt fifty yards off the first row of buildings, and Murdock crawled up to him.

“Figure it should be right in there, between these closest two buildings. Looks the same as the satellite pictures we got.”

Murdock put his NVGs on the slice of territory they could see between buildings. As he watched, he saw an armed guard walking across the area.

“Must be it, they have sentries out.” He touched his lip mike.

“Dewitt, up here.” They hadn’t worked out the final assault on the place because there wasn’t enough intel. Now they would parcel out the assignments.

Murdock and Dewitt talked for three minutes; then Murdock moved ahead with the First Squad. There were no people on the streets. There were streetlights only every two hundred yards. None shone on this area.

First Squad slid between the buildings, which looked like commercial enterprises, and spread out along a narrow street that fronted the target house. It sat twenty yards in back of the avenue, and had a stone wall around it that was only three feet high. The house itself had two stories, was made of stone and mortar, and looked sturdy.

Ed Dewitt brought his men up, and sent half of them to each side of the house between buildings, and wherever they could find an open field of fire against the house.

The guard Murdock had seen before came again, evidently walking a circuit around the house. He carried a rifle over his shoulder, and walked at a leisurely pace as if thinking about what he would do when he got off duty.

They waited. Another guard came out of the shadows, and talked with the rover, then went back where he had been. Now, with the NVGs, Murdock could see him. Murdock searched other shaded areas, and found another front guard.

“Dewitt. Check for fixed guards on the sides. We’ve found two out here.”

“Roger that.”

Murdock pointed to Bill Bradford, the new sniper for the First Squad with his H&K PSG 1. It fired a 7.62 NATO round from the high-precision sniping rifle. He had a 20-round magazine, a long, heavy barrel, and a pistol grip at the trigger. It had a fully adjustable stock, a 6 x 24 telescope, and a sound suppressor.

Bradford lifted the rifle, and looked through the scope. The light-gathering properties brought the target into clear focus. He checked the first hidden sentry, then zeroed in on him and fired. He shot just once, then moved to the other sentry and cut him down with one round.

“Take ‘ down if you got ‘, Ed,” Murdock whispered into his mike. He heard two muffled rounds from the side, then silence.

“Ready to go,” Ed said on the Motorola.

Before Murdock could move, three floodlights snapped on, bathing the whole front of the house and the yard with light.

“Do them,” Murdock said. Ten silenced shots whispered into the night. All the floodlights died from hot lead.

“Move it, First Squad,” Murdock said into his mike, and the eight men lifted up and stormed the front of the house. They took gunfire from firing ports and out the windows.

Seven of the SEALs blasted through the twenty yards, and slammed against the house. One man was down. Murdock ran back and grabbed him, and then ran forward, half dragging Ron Holt to the wall.

“Caught one in the left arm, Commander. Sorry.”

As they talked, Kenneth Ching, Quartermaster’s Mate First Class, had pasted two globs of TNAZ plastic explosive on the house’s front-door hinges. He set timers and looked at Murdock, who gave him a thumbs-up.

Ching pulled out the activating switches. Then he ducked under a window, and rushed away fifteen yards along the house.

The twin explosions came almost on top of each other. Doc Ellsworth, Hospital Corpsman First Class, got to the blown-in door first, and tossed in a flash-bang grenade. He dodged to the wall beside the door, shielded his eyes, and held his hands over his ears. The series of sharp, powerful, but non-lethal explosions erupted inside the room coupled with six brilliant strobe lights. Both light and sound blasted out the open doorway.

When the last strobe faded, Murdock and Doc Ellsworth pulled down their NVGs and jolted through the door. Murdock took the right side, and Doc the left part of the room.

Doc blasted his MP-5 twice. The two bursts of three rounds cut down two Iraqis on his side of the room. Murdock had no targets.

“Clear one,” Murdock said as he and Doc charged to a door at the other side of the room. They hit the wall next to the door, and Murdock threw a flash-bang grenade inside. The screeching, pulsating sound roared through the room as the series of brilliant strobe lights flashed through the doorway. The two SEALs waited flat against the wall on both sides of the open door.

As soon as the last strobe faded, the two charged into the room.

No one was inside. The third room was to the left. They hit it with one more flash-bang grenade, then jolted through the door, their MP-5’s ready. Murdock cut one kidnapper in half with a fully automatic burst from his weapon. The man’s face showed surprise as he dropped the knife he was about to throw, and he crumpled to the floor dead.

Doc put a burst of three 9mm rounds into the second Iraqi, who still held his hands over his ears. The kidnapper took the rounds in his chest, slammed backwards against the wall, and slid down slowly, leaving a wide red smear.

There were no more Iraqis in the room. There also was no hostage.

“Where the hell is he?” Murdock asked.

Doc shook his head. They had cleared all the rooms in the house.

There was no kidnap victim.

“Pull back, Second Squad, pull back to the desert. We need some recon. We’re right behind you.”