Payback

16

Bill Bradford shook his head at the commander’s announcement. “No wet suits, you said, so that means we have another land-slogger assignment.”

“More like a mountain-climbing event,” Murdock said. “Now listen up, we don’t have a lot of time. We fly out of North Island in a little less than an hour. The trip could last a couple of days, so take an extra set of cammies. The usual mix of weapons, with the snipers on both squads to use the new Knight Mk 11. We haven’t had much work on that new weapon yet, so this will be its test under fire.

“Now to the particulars. We’ll be going out of North Island in the luxury flight on the Gulfstream directly into Sacramento. From there we will move by CH-46 to a road three miles from the Saddle Mountain Ranch. It’s a working cattle ranch, which also has luxury accommodations for city slickers who want to be cowboys for a week. From our drop-off point we will move with two platoons of Army Rangers toward the ranch, with the hope that we can find the North Koreans who have attacked the President and his party, take them down, and rescue the civilians.”

There was a yell and lots of loud talk.

“You mean somebody tried to hit the President?” Luke Howard asked.

“Correct. He was on a secret conference with his top aides, and two choppers bored in and blew up three CH-53’s and we don’t know what else. They are hurting and need help. The hit took place just about 9 A.M. It’s now 1115. We fly out at 1200, so let’s get moving.

“That’s a huge wilderness area up there in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We’ll be around the five-thousand-foot level and near Saddle Mountain. That’s somewhere near the South Fork of the American River. Questions?”

“Cold-weather gear?” Franklin asked.

“Snow should be long gone up there by now. We might wind up wearing both sets of cammies. No special cold gear.”

Murdock looked around. No more questions. “All right, let’s get our gear ready. Double on the ammo. We’ll all take drag bags for additional ammo. We won’t have any friendly local supplier. We take what we’ll need including six MREs per man. Senior Chief, see if you can get some of those good ones with the heating pouches. That’s it. Let’s move.”

The sleek Gulfstream II, which the Navy called the VC-11, rolled off North Island using only handheld blinkers from the tower for control. Because of the blackout the tower was down. The bird was usually reserved for VIPs for fast trips. Lately the SEALs had been in the fast-trip category and had used the business jet several times. It was made by Grumman, now called Gulfstream Aerospace, held a crew of three, and could carry nineteen passengers in the best airliner recliner seats.

The Gulfstream has a wingspan of sixty-nine feet and is eighty feet long. It uses two Rolls Royce MK 511-8 turbofan engines that push her along at 505 miles an hour with a ceiling of 43,000 feet. Range was no problem getting to Sacramento. The bird would do 4,275 miles without gulping any new fuel.

They landed VFR at the Sacramento airport, working through a series of blinker signals and filtering in with hardly any air traffic. Flight time was a little over an hour and a half. More than twenty airliners sat on the ground, not able to take off due to the blackout that had shut down all air-control facilities. The Gulfstream pilots did a lot of looking around the sky before they brought the ship into Sacramento airport, to be sure that there were no other aircraft in the same area at the same time.

They taxied to the transient plane hangar and were met by an airport safety jeep. The driver talked to Murdock. Then the SEALs picked up their drag bags and gear and headed past the business jet fifty yards to where a CH-46 sat with two armed guards around it. The time was slightly after 1335.

Jaybird couldn’t let it pass. “Hey, guys, we in a hot LZ here or what? Why the cannons?”

A second class glared at him. “Loudmouth, they just lost three CH-53’s over there where we’re going. We don’t want to lose this one. Any objections?”

“None at all,” Bradford said as he walked past the guard and into the bird. The rest of the SEALs climbed on board and sat down where they could find a spot on the floor. This wouldn’t be a luxury flight. Murdock and DeWitt talked with the pilot outside, and then all came in and the two guards moved to the side doors and hooked up their machine guns on swivel mounts.

“How many civilians are we hunting up there in cold country?” Canzoneri asked.

Murdock looked up from a map he was studying. “Our orders didn’t say. Just the Presidential party. Could be ten or twelve, maybe with six or eight Secret Service agents along.”

“Those guys still carry the Ingrams under their coats?” Jefferson asked. “Think for an outing like this they’d get some long guns to take along.”

Murdock pulled down his lip mike on the Motorola. “Listen up. The pilot gave me a message from Don Stroh. There were supposed to be two Army Ranger platoons waiting for us here with their choppers going along on this ride. They got hung up at an airport and the locals wouldn’t let them take off. They were up the coast somewhere that’s still blacked out, and the local sheriff clamped down and blocked the runways with fire-fighting trucks. So for the first phase, we’re on our own.”

“Shit, they don’t get to come to the party,” Jaybird said. “Bet they are pissed.”

“We’ve got six hours of daylight left. Take us maybe half an hour to get up to the PD. From the Point of Departure, we’ll work up hill toward the ranch. We’ll go cross-country, and we don’t know where the sneaky North Koreans are, or if they’re still even in the area.”

“Wilderness, you said, up in there,” DeWitt said. “Where could they go?”

“From the sound of things, the Ks have been planning this thing for some time,” Lam said. “They could have come in as civilians, hired a pair of choppers, and moved in forty men, made their hit, and gone out the same way they choppered in.”

The engines on the big chopper started and revved up, and soon they lifted off and flew northeast.

“We’ll be about ten miles north of Placerville,” Murdock shouted to DeWitt, who sat beside him. “Damn rugged country. I don’t know how the owner gets to his ranch. Probably made his own road into the place.”

“This dude ranch. Do they have guests there while the President is there?” DeWitt called.

Murdock shook his head. “Last radio message said no guests, just the President and his team and Secret Service.”

“No recon, no data, we’re really going in blind.”

“That’s why you earn the big bucks, DeWitt. Our first job is to find the ranch and see if anyone is there. Depending on what we find, we figure out what to do next.”

“We have the SATCOM,” DeWitt said.

“The pilot says he’s to stay in the general area. If we want him we should use our Motorolas, or fire a red flare. He’ll jump ahead if we’re getting out of the five-mile radio range.”

“He can talk to his home base?”

“Right, Lemoore Naval Air Station down below Fresno.”

They were quiet then, watching the country out the side doors. The chopper had moved up to a thousand feet over the terrain, and had to keep climbing as the ground rose into the foothills, then into the Sierra Nevadas themselves.

The crew chief came back and hollered at Murdock. “Ten minutes to our LZ. The lieutenant says he’ll let you off, then move back three miles and shut down.”

“Tell him to keep his Motorola on too,” Murdock said. The sailor nodded and went back to the cockpit.

Five minutes later the chopper pilot found a road through the wilderness, and followed it to a spot where a small bridge spanned a stream. He put the bird down just past the bridge and the SEALs poured out each door, setting up an immediate perimeter around the CH-46.

When the SEALs had cleared the ship, the pilot lifted off, showering the men with dust, dirt, and a few stray pebbles from the downward wash of the rotor blades. Then it was up and away. The SEALs formed up in twin diamonds and began to move on a compass bearing due west. The immediate area had an open space near the creek and extending a quarter of a mile to the start of the timbered slope that lifted upward.

They established a pace of about three miles to the hour, due to the altitude and the drag bags. The idea of the bags was that by pulling them along, most of the weight rested on the ground and the man didn’t have to carry it, just drag it.

The timber was mostly pine and some fir, with clumps of oak and cedar. They moved through it with Lam fifty yards out front watching, checking out any problems he could see.

They had covered a mile and a half up the slopes when they came to a fence. It was new, with steel posts set in concrete and four strands of bright new barbed wire. The SEALs stepped between the middle two strands, and then pulled the drag bags under the bottom one.

On the point, Lam hit the dirt when he heard something to his left. He lifted up and looked, then dropped down. A moment later a pair of steers walked past some brush, grazing as they moved slowly toward the men. Neither animal looked up. Lam grinned and reported his find to the troops, then kept moving forward.

A mile later they came to the top of a sharp little ridge, and Lam eased up so he could look over it without skylining himself and becoming an easy target. He peered under the brim of his floppy hat and just over the ridgeline. Ahead a thousand yards on a broad mesa, he could see the ranch buildings. He called up Murdock, who took a look at them with his binoculars.

“Okay, we’ve got the buildings. Looks like they’re set on a flat area. I can’t see any movement or any bodies. How about you?”

“Saw one man run from the ranch house out to the next building to the left. Only action. So there are troops in there.”

“So where is the President and his people?”

“What would we do in the same situation?” Lam asked. “If we had this spot and overwhelming firepower moved in, we wouldn’t be able to hold the buildings, right? So where would we go?”

“Scatter and make a lot of trails for the bad guys to try to follow,” Murdock said.

“Makes sense. About what I’d do. So, the President and his advisors and the Secret Service shields probably aren’t in the ranch house or the other buildings.”

“Roger that, but there could still be some of the staff. You don’t run a place like this with Mom and Pop.”

“True, so we can’t hit them with the twenties.”

They stared at the setup again. Murdock moved his view to the left and grunted. “See to the left of the buildings, that flat area just below the level of the ranch house?”

“Oh, yeah, Skipper. Looks like three burned-out Fifty-Threes.”

“Agree, and next to them are?”

“Two smaller choppers, maybe the ones the bad guys arrived in.”

The two SEALs looked at each other and grinned.

“Oh, yeah, what do you make the range, Skipper?”

“Eight hundred yards,” Murdock said, and pumped a 20mm round into the chamber on the Bull Pup, then sighted in the laser on the chopper nearest him. When he had the target he squeezed the trigger. Seconds later the airburst ripped through the pristine-pure high Sierra air right over the first chopper. Shrapnel rained down on it, and some hit the second chopper nearby. Murdock didn’t use the laser on the second round. He sighted in and fired. The contact round jolted into the engine compartment of the bird, and it exploded in a gush of flames, soon involving the second helicopter.

“Two men just ran out of the ranch house,” Lam said. “They are looking at their transportation out of there. Now they are zigzagging back to the house like they expected to be shot at.”

“So, they know we’re here,” Murdock said. “Let’s get the troops up here and move forward.” He flipped his lip mike down from where it rested against his floppy hat.

“You men heard two shots. We just splashed two enemy choppers. There are terrorists at the ranch house. Let’s chogie that way and figure out what the hell to do.”

Ed Dewitt came up with Jaybird and Senior Chief Sadler.

“How many men?” Jaybird asked.

Murdock rubbed his jaw. “Chopper that size could pack in maybe eight men. So we’re looking at sixteen, maybe eighteen tops.”

“The fucking odds don’t seem fair,” Sadler said. “I mean, those poor sods up there don’t have a tinker’s damn chance in hell.”

Murdock put down his glasses. “DeWitt, take Bravo up that gully over there and position at the left side of the buildings. My squad will work the right end and when we get within three hundred yards, we’ll take a look and see what we have. Move out.”

Murdock held his Alpha Squad until DeWitt had traversed the hundred yards to the left side of the complex and the ravine. Then Murdock moved his men over the ridge in the cover of the trees and down the far side. Eight hundred yards to the ranch house. He wondered if those inside would realize that a much better armed force was coming against them and that they couldn’t hold the buildings. Would they flee into the brush and trees as well and try to get lost? It depended what they had done so far. If they had captured and murdered the President and his staff, their job would be done and they would exfiltrate out of the area, and try to reach a Korean settlement in San Francisco or Los Angeles where they would blend in.

Lam led the squad as scout. He moved from tree to tree and hurried through brushy areas, then went flat as he saw something ahead he didn’t understand.

“Come take a look, Skipper.”

Murdock moved up, bellied down in the grass next to Lam, and pulled out his glasses.

“Off about three fingers from that big pine out there, looks like a red splotch. Could it be a red shirt or a dress?”

They concentrated with their binoculars. “Moving,” Murdock said. “Oh, yes, that’s a dress. Must be part of the President’s party or staff. Get up there without getting shot by the Secret Service and let them know we’re coming.”

“Roger that,” Lam said, stowed his field glasses, and eased to his feet. A moment later he vanished into the brush and trees. The red dress was less than a hundred yards ahead. Well away from the ranch house but within sight of it. They must have seen the Korean helicopters destroyed. Murdock knew the general route Lam would take to approach the friendlies. Try as he might, he couldn’t detect the scout as he moved through the trees and undergrowth.

Murdock used his mike and told the rest of the SEALs what they had found. He told the squad to come up to his position. The other men spread out five yards apart near Murdock waiting to see what happened.

The Motorola earpieces spoke.

“Skipper, I’m at about twenty yards from them. I have four civilians. One definitely Secret Service with his Uzi with stock extended. Another is an older woman. The other two are young women, who might be on the staff at the ranch. I’m moving in softly.”

Lam pushed up the mike so it touched his floppy hat, and edged around the pine tree and then angled into some heavy brush. He worked ahead slowly now, not moving a branch, not stepping on a dead branch or pile of leaf mold. He put weight on his foot only when he knew it would not make any noise.

Ahead was a six-foot-wide open space. To go around it would take twenty minutes. He watched the four people. All could see the opening if they looked his way. Two faced away from him. A third sat on a log staring straight ahead. The Secret Service man moved back and forth watching mostly uphill through the trees toward the ranch house.

Lam waited until the man turned and headed away from him, then darted across the opening and faded into the brush. One of the women staring straight ahead turned and looked at the opening, but Lam had gone across it. She shrugged.

Lam moved again, slowly, cautiously. He came within ten feet of the group, and waited until the Secret Service man paced away from him. Lam surged forward silently and walked beside the government security man.

“You must be Secret Service,” Lam said.

The man jolted around, started to swing the Uzi upward, but Lam caught it and kept it aimed away from him.

“Hey, I’m a friend. Easy with the sub gun. I’m Lampedusa, a Navy SEAL. We’ve come to help you.”

The Secret Service man stepped back, his eyes still wide, sweat popping out on his forehead. He shook his head in wonder. “How in hell did you do that, slip up on me that way? I’ve been watching for anything.” The Secret Service man shook his head again and grinned. “Damn, but I’m glad to see you. I’m Horowitz. How many SEALs are there?”

“Sixteen of us, sir. Let me call up my boss.” He flipped down the mike. “Skipper, all clear to come forward. Four here are A-OK.”

“You on a radio net with the other Secret Service people?” Lam asked.

“Yes. We check in every hour.”

“You lose anybody on the attack?”

“One of our men is missing, doesn’t report on the net. We don’t know what happened to him.”

“So your net may be compromised. The North Koreans could have one of your radios listening. Are all of the civilians safe?”

“Not sure. The commander of the North Koreans said they would execute prisoners every half hour. We’re not sure if they did or not. I watched the first one. They said they would kill Secretary Alvarez. I saw the shot and saw her fall, but they might have faked it. They did it again a half hour later. I heard the shot. I don’t know if anybody was killed.”

“So don’t tell your net that we’re here. They only know that somebody blew up their choppers. We like to surprise the North Ks.”

“You took out their helicopters?”

“Yeah, with a twenty-mike-mike rifle.”

“You kidding. A round that big from a rifle?”

“New. Show you one when they get here. Where are the rest of the party and the President?”

“Our plan was to scatter if anything happened,” Horowitz said. “The Koreans came in suddenly and burned our birds, and we knew we couldn’t hold the ranch house so we all split. The plan was for two men to take the President and two more to take the Vice President generally to the north. I know they made it out of the house and to their first holding point. Beyond that we haven’t heard much except the net checks.”

A booming voice came through the air. It was an amplified voice on a bullhorn.

“Secret Service men, it is time to come in and give up your weapons. We have captured the President and killed the two men trying to protect him. I repeat. We have captured President Dunnington.”