Tuesday, 3 May
2245 hours (Zulu +3)
Hawr al-Hammar, Iraq
A shadow against shadows, the black-hooded form silently broke the water's surface scant meters from the indistinct shoreline where lake gave way to marsh. The commando had removed his face mask underwater to avoid telltale reflections. For long seconds, he remained motionless in the water, eyes alone moving in his heavily blacked-out face.
Nothing. The wind whispered through the forest of marsh grass ahead, where unseen hordes of nameless creatures chirped and kee-ked and buzzed, undisturbed by the intruder. A crescent moon had set an hour before; the only light came from a dazzling spill of stars overhead and from a faint glow against the southeastern sky.
Moving gently to avoid making even the slightest splash, the figure pressed forward, swim fins seeking leverage in knee-deep muck, elbows braced across the black canvas of a gear flotation bag clutched to his chest like a swim board, gloved hands tight on his sound-suppressed subgun, an H&K MP5SD3. His movements against the bottom stirred the mud, which bubbled to the surface as an oily scum and a ripple of dull, sulfur-heavy plops. The stench — petroleum, decay, and the rotten-eggs stink of hydrogen sulfide — was thick enough to bring tears to the eyes, but the swimmer ignored it, sliding through the mud toward the cover of the marsh.
A stroll in the park. He'd waded through worse than this plenty of times before in Florida, Panama, and Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp.
Gradually, the deep, clinging muck thinned beneath his fins, rising to meet the ill-defined shore. Among the clumps of reeds and marsh grass, he found what passed for solid ground — a water-logged patch of tangled roots and mud inches above the lap-lap-lap of the surface of the lake. Silently, with a precise and practiced economy of motion, the black figure removed his swim fins, which were strapped on over his combat boots. Next, he unzipped the waterproof satchel and began breaking out various pieces of equipment. AN/PVS-7 night-vision goggles slipped over his face. The pound-and-a-half device transformed darkness to flat, green-lit day and gave him the surreal aspect of some alien, half-mechanical creature. For a full five minutes, the figure crouched at the edge of the swamp, scanning his surroundings through the NVGs, listening to the night noises and the steady lapping of the water.
Still nothing. Good.
Switching off the night goggles and sliding them up on his head, he broke out a GPS receiver and flipped up the plastic-housed antenna on the side. Thumbing the button marked POS, he studied the cryptic line of alphanumerics displayed on the instrument's small, lighted screen, then nodded satisfaction. Outstanding! Dead on target to within twenty meters, and that after an underwater swim of almost three klicks!
Pivoting on his heels, the figure aimed a finger-sized pencil flash toward the lake and squeezed it — once, twice... pause... a third time — the red glow too dim to be seen more than a few dozen meters across the water. In silent response, almost magically, other dripping, night-clad figures began rising from the sheltering water where they'd been awaiting the signal. Each man was outfitted like the first, in black fatigues, rebreather gear, and numerous waterproof pouches and rucksacks hooked to load-bearing harnesses; each too sported subtle distinctions of garb and equipment. One carried the waterproof backpack that housed the squad's HST-4 sat-comm gear and KY-57 encoder. Another was already unshipping the long-barreled deadliness of an M-60E3, the lightweight version of the machine gun with an auxiliary front pistol grip mounted between the legs of its bipod. A third pulled the mud plug from the suppressor barrel of his H&K MP5.
In all, six more men joined the first at the swamp's edge. Two donned NVGs and slipped away into the reeds, providing security for the other five as they broke out the rest of their gear.
Blue Squad, Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, had arrived, armed and ready for war.
1455 hours (Zulu -5)
Meeting of the House Military Affairs Committee
Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.
"The name SEALS," Captain Granger explained, sitting alone at the long table and reading from his notes, "is an acronym standing for 'Sea, Air, Land' and symbolizes the three elements the teams infiltrate through in pursuit of their mission objectives. The first two teams were formed in January of 1962, at the order of President John F Kennedy. Their commission called on them to operate up to twenty miles inland, serving as naval commandos with the express missions of gathering intelligence, raiding, capturing prisoners, and generally raising havoc behind enemy lines."
Opposite Granger's table, the members of the House Military Affairs Committee sat listening or spoke together in low-voiced murmurs. There were cameras in the room as well. These hearings were being reported by CNN and C-SPAN, and much of the speech-making and posturing was for their benefit.
"Their baptism of fire came in Vietnam," Granger continued, "where they served with distinction. Between 1965 and 1972, forty-nine Naval Special Warfare personnel were killed in action in Vietnam. During this same period, naval records credit SEAL direct-action platoons with over one thousand confirmed kills and nearly eight hundred probables, as well as close to another thousand enemy personnel taken prisoner. Three SEALs won the Navy Medal of Honor during the Vietnam conflict, while five SEALs and two UDT frogmen won the Navy Cross. Immediately after the war..."
"Ah, Captain Granger." Congressman Rodney Farnum, head of the House Military Affairs Committee, leaned closer to his microphone. "If I may interrupt."
"Yes, Mr. Chairman?"
"The House Military Affairs Committee is second to none in its, ah, deep admiration for members of America's special-warfare community, and we recognize their significant contributions to this nation's defense in the past. However, as the purpose of this special meeting is to review future funding levels for the Navy's special-warfare needs, and since several of the congressmen on this panel have commitments elsewhere this afternoon, perhaps it would be helpful if we could limit the session this afternoon to the present and to the, ah, future in the near term."
"As you wish, Mr. Chairman. I thought an overall background might be useful."
"I think we're all adequately familiar with the subject. Are there objections from my distinguished colleagues at the table? No? Then perhaps we could cut straight to the chase in this matter, Captain Granger. Let us begin by hearing your views on the necessity for maintaining an expensive and force-redundant unit like the U.S. Navy SEALs in this modern, post-Cold War era."
2301 hours (Zulu +3)
Hawr al-Hammar, Iraq
Chief Machinist's Mate Tom Roselli, the SEAL squad's point man and the first one ashore, donned his communications headset, fitting the earpiece snugly inside his left ear and securing it beneath his knit cap. The wire ran down the back of his neck and through a slit in his black fatigue shirt, where it plugged into the Motorola unit secured to his combat harness. The filament mike rested below his lower lip. He touched the transmit key and tapped lightly twice. A moment later, he heard an answering tsk-tsk through his earpiece as the squad's CO replied. Radio check okay.
Excitement burned, burned in Roselli's veins like liquid fire. He was pumped, he was psyched, he was ready to kick ass and take names. This was it, the real thing, the combat mission he'd been training endlessly for throughout his seven years as a U.S. Navy SEAL. He'd been on combat ops before, during the Gulf War, but never one like this.
Less than an hour earlier, Chief Roselli and thirteen other hard, combat-ready men, each shouldering over one hundred pounds of equipment, had stepped into darkness thirty thousand feet above southern Iraq. Silently, they'd fallen through the thin, cold air over the Hawr al-Hammar, a long and meandering, swamp-bordered lake that stretched for sixty miles along the lower reaches of the Euphrates River, from An Nasiriya to where the Euphrates joined the Tigris just above the city of al-Basra. Opening their steerable, parasail chutes at eight thousand feet, they'd glided for miles above the silent waters, splashing at last into the eastern end of the lake. From there, the fourteen men, one SEAL platoon organized into two seven-man squads, had made their way to the southern shore.
Roselli was with Blue Squad, six enlisted men under the platoon's CO, Lieutenant Vincent Cotter. Gold Squad, if all had gone according to plan, should be forming up separately about a mile further to the west.
By 2310 hours, the squad was ready to travel, its high-altitude breathing equipment and swimming gear wrapped up and stashed at the water's edge, the men rigged out in their first— and second-line CQB rigs. Lieutenant Cotter lightly touched Roselli's shoulder. You're on point. Roselli nodded, pulled his NVGs back down over his face, and started off, taking the lead.
They moved south, wading through mud and silt that gradually thinned beneath their boots until they were pressing ahead across firm, almost-dry ground, their passage screened by the dense sea of man-high reeds that stretched away endlessly into the darkness on all sides. They spaced themselves at five-meter intervals. Next in line after Roselli was Master Chief George MacKenzie, a long-legged, man-mountain Texan big enough to hump the squad's sixty-gun and carry an MP5SD3 slung over his shoulder as well. The number-two man was also the squad's navigator, checking compass and GPS frequently to keep the team on course. Cotter, the L-T, walked the number-three slot, and behind him came Electrician's Mate Second Class Bill Higgins, the team's commo man. Slot five was walked by the squad's medic, Hospital Corpsman Second Class James Ellsworth; inevitably, everyone just called him "Doc." The niceties of the Geneva Convention meant little to a SEAL team deep in enemy territory; Doc wore no red crosses and he packed an H&K MP5SD3 like Roselli's, though his personal favorite for a primary weapon was a full-auto shotgun. Behind him, lugging an M-16/M203 combo, was Hull Technician first Class Juan Garcia, "Boomer," the squad's demo man. The tail gunner slot was occupied by Quartermaster First Class Martin "Magic" Brown, a black kid from inner-city Chicago whose expertise on the range with a Remington Model 700 had earned him a position as the squad's sniper. Though each man was a specialist, their training and their skills overlapped. Two of them, the man on point and the man bringing up the rear, wore NVGs at all times, while the rest relied on night-adapted, Mark-I eyeballs. They traded off those positions frequently, though, to prevent night-goggle-induced eye fatigue, so the only slots that remained unchanged throughout the hike were three and four, the CO and the commo man.
No words were exchanged between the members of the team. Communications were limited to hand signs, touch, and rare, non-vocalized clicks and cluckings over the technical radios. Mutual trust and coordination within the group were perfect, almost effortless. These men had worked, trained, slept, and practiced with one another for months, until each could sense the others' positions and movements even in total darkness.
Sometimes Roselli imagined he could even sense their thoughts.
At the moment, of course, he didn't need psychic powers to know what the others were thinking. Everyone was focused completely on the mission, and on their objective, now some ten kilometers to the South.
1515 hours (Zulu -5)
Meeting of the House Military Affairs Committee
Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.
Congressman Farnum leaned forward, one hand clutching the base of the microphone as he played to the cameras in the room. "But Captain Granger, isn't it true that these SEALS, these, ah, 'NAVSPECWAR' people, as you call them, isn't it true that they present the Navy with special administrative and discipline problems?"
"Of course, Mr. Chairman. As I'm sure there are similar administrative difficulties with other elite military forces."
"Ah. But is it not true, Captain, that there have been numerous incidents near SEAL bases involving disorderly conduct? Drunkenness? Sexual harassment of both civilians and female military personnel?"
"It's true, Mr. Chairman. There have been some incidents. But I should point out, Sir, that these are very special men, highly trained, dedicated, motivated to a degree I never would have dreamed possible before I saw them in action."
"That hardly excuses their actions, Captain Granger. Ah, you are not a SEAL yourself, are you?"
"No, sir. But I have worked closely with the Teams on several occasions."
A congressman several places to Farnum's left looked up from the papers on the table before him. "When was it that you last saw SEALs in action, Captain Granger?"
"During the Gulf War, Congressman Murdock. I was a commander at the time, attached to the boat squadron that put a SEAL detachment ashore off Kuwait City the night before General Schwarzkopf began his end run around the Iraqi right. It was a damned impressive operation, let me tell..."
"I'm certain it was, Captain," Farnum interrupted. "Some of these elite units make a point of carrying off flashy, showboat missions that grab the public eye."
"I'd hardly call that op 'show-boating,' Mr. Chairman. The SEALs worked in complete secrecy, and their involvement in Desert Storm did not surface until some time after the war. In that particular instance, they swam ashore onto a heavily defended beach at Kuwait City and planted a large number of demolition charges. When those were set off, the explosions convinced the Iraqi commanders that the U.S. Marines were coming ashore there, at Kuwait City, rather than across their trenches and mine-fields in the south. In fact, our records show that several Iraqi units were moved back from the front lines to Kuwait City that morning, in anticipation of Marine landings there."
"Ah, yes, Captain Granger," Farnum said, shuffling through his notes. "We're aware of all that. However, the point here is that all of our military services maintain — at great expense, I might add — elite special-warfare units. The Air Force has their First and Seventh Special Operations Squadrons. The Marines claim their whole corps is an elite force, but they reserve a special distinction for their Special Operations Capable units. The Army, ah, well, the Army has Rangers, the Delta Force, Airborne units, Special Forces. Is it not true, Captain Granger, that these units perform many of the same tasks as the Navy's SEALS?"
"Well, yes, it is, Mr. Chairman, but..."
"Marine Recon teams could have planted those demolition charges in Kuwait as easily as SEALS, am I right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why is it that the U.S. Marines, the FBI's Hostage Rescue Teams, the Rangers, Delta Force, the SEALS, and God knows who else all train extensively to carry out, for example, hostage rescue missions? How many hostage situations has our nation been faced with in the past, Captain Granger?"
"I'm afraid I'm not qualified to answer that question, sir."
"The point is that we simply do not need so many units all designed to perform the same basic tasks. This is an appalling and incredibly expensive duplication of effort, training, equipment, and budgetary allocation that this nation can ill afford in these times of fiscal challenge. It is our purpose here today to determine just why Congress should permit continued funding for the U.S. Navy SEALS."
"Well, Mr. Chairman, the SEALs add a unique and valuable dimension to our special warfare capabilities. Their ability to work underwater, for instance..."
"Is duplicated by the Special Forces. Actually, I must admit that the old Underwater Demolition Teams did provide a useful service in surveying beaches, blowing up obstacles in advance of a landing, and that sort of thing. But the UDTs were closed out in 1983, when they officially became part of the SEALS, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now we have SEALs who do everything the UDT did, but who also conduct raids, rescue missions, even intelligence ops many miles inland. I submit that, for all of the branches of the armed forces, special operations are, ah, sexy. They have seduced all of the services, who see them as a means of securing for themselves larger and larger portions of the military appropriations pie.
"Now, in my understanding, Captain, the historic role of the U.S. Navy is ships and sea lanes. They support our ground forces overseas and, through our ICBM submarine force, maintain one leg of our nuclear-deterrence triad. I fail to see why we need these naval commandoes, these Rambos who carry out missions that can just as easily be assigned to Army Special Forces.
"In short, Captain, we simply do not need the SEALS. They are an expensive luxury we can easily do without."
0145 hours (Zulu +3)
South of Hawr al-Hammar, Iraq
Once the marsh had extended for most of the twenty kilometers between the motionless black waters of the Hawr al-Hammar and the ancient city of al-Basra to the southeast. North of the lake, the swamps had covered hundreds of square miles between the Tigris and the Euphrates River, stretching almost halfway to Baghdad. In the years since the Gulf War, however, Saddam Hussein's engineers had been busily carving a system of canals and man-made or man-improved rivers throughout the area in an attempt to drain the entire region. The Qadissiya River — dug in 1993 by 4,500 workers in just forty-five days — drained much of the southern Iraq wetlands into the Euphrates, and together with the Saddam River and the Mother of Battles River had already transformed the age-old topography of this part of the Fertile Crescent. Officially, the project opened new land for agriculture. It was pure coincidence that the south Iraq marshes had long provided refuge for Shiites, dissidents, and rebels.
As the intruders worked their way south through the dying marshlands, they encountered more and more signs of habitation. Twice they halted, then took wide detours to avoid sarifas, traditional marsh dwellings woven from the omnipresent reeds with ornate, latticework entrances. The huts, and the slender, high-prowed canoes called mashufs by the locals, were identical to huts and canoes built in this region for at least the past six thousand years.
Twice too the squad went to ground as Iraqi military patrols blundered past, crashing through the reeds and calling to one another with sharp, guttural cries in Arabic. Another time, as the squad was wading along the muddy banks of a canal, they froze in place, as unmoving and as invisible as moss-covered logs, while an ex-Soviet Zhuk-class patrol boat motored slowly past.
At last, reeds gave way to clumps of grass and scrub brush bordering an area of dry, sandy soil. At the swamp's edge, the squad paused once again to rest, and to strip and clean their weapons right down to the springs and followers of their magazines. A blaze of light glared against the sky to the southeast, harsh and intrusive after the silent darkness of the marsh.
Roselli's pulse quickened as he studied the source of that light through a powerful pair of binoculars. Five hundred meters ahead, the modern airport of Shuaba had been constructed on land reclaimed from the dying swamp. From a low rise in the ground, Roselli could see the control tower and hangars of the civilian airport. To the right were more buildings and a smaller tower, as well as the barracks belonging to a military air base. Beyond that, against a hillside and barely visible against the glare from the airfield lights, was a small town, the village of Zabeir.
Directly in front of the civilian tower, pinned in the cross fire of a dozen powerful searchlights, sat a transport, a C-130 Hercules. Prominent on the plane's high tail was the pale blue flag of the United Nations.
Roselli let out a pent-up breath as he lowered the binoculars, but at the same time the fire in his veins burned hotter. The SEALs had reached their objective, parachuting into a lake, then trekking through Iraqi-controlled territory across kilometers of swamp, and they'd done it unobserved. Now, however, the real fun was about to begin.
0210 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
Lieutenant Vincent Cotter studied the UN C-130 through his binoculars, carefully searching for the guards he knew must be there. The rear ramp was up and the cargo doors closed, but a civilian-type boarding ladder was still rolled up against the port-side door forward. Had Iraqi troops entered the aircraft? Were the hostages still on board? There was no way to answer either question from out here.
Third Platoon had been carefully briefed on the situation the previous afternoon at Dahran, and Cotter had looked at photographs of Shuaba Airport shot both from an orbiting KH-II spy satellite and from a high-altitude Air Force Aurora reconnaissance aircraft.
Both sources indicated that the Herky Bird was heavily guarded outside. As of the last radio contact with the UN plane's crew, some eight hours ago, the Iraqi troops had still been respecting the technical claim of extraterritorial sovereignty for the aircraft and had not gone aboard. That, Cotter reflected, could easily have changed in the past few hours. The SEAL team would have to proceed carefully, working on the assumption that armed Iraqi soldiers were now on the plane. As for whether the UN inspectors were still on board, that would have to be settled by a closer look.
The crisis had begun at 0930 hours the day before, when the C-130 had left Baghdad's Al Muthana Airport for Shuaba and an unscheduled inspection of a reputed chemical and biological weapons plant outside al-Basra. The tip that had led the UN weapons inspectors to that fourteen-hundred-year-old city on the west bank of the Shat Al-Arab River had been as solid as they come; German engineers who had helped build the facility ten years earlier had come forward with both the blueprints and photographs. The al-Basra facility was almost certainly being used to make and store CB agents, and the presence of an unusually thick concrete floor under part of the plant suggested that it might be tied in with Iraq's nuclear program as well.
Arriving unexpectedly at Shuaba, twenty kilometers east of al-Basra, fifteen UN inspectors had unloaded their Land Rovers and descended on the suspected facility, built halfway between al-Basra and Shuaba Airport and masquerading as a machine tool-and-die plant. There, the inspectors had brushed past surprised Iraqi guards and impounded a number of files and other physical evidence, then driven with them to the airport. They'd been in the process of loading the documents aboard the aircraft when Iraqi troops — reportedly members of the Republican Guard — had arrived, demanding the return of classified documents. When the Swedish commander of the UN team refused, a standoff had ensued. The Iraqis were point-blank refusing to allow the Hercules to take off unless the stolen files were returned.
Similar standoffs had occurred before in the wake of the '91 Gulf War. Until now, all had been resolved peacefully. This time, however, the situation was more urgent, and more deadly. Iraq's ruling military council, calling the incident a gross violation of national sovereignty, was threatening to destroy the plane rather than allow it to leave the country. Adding to the confusion, one of the UN inspectors aboard was an American, a CIA case officer named Arkin; the Company wanted Arkin out of Iraq and on his way to Langley for a debrief ASAP. From the tone of his operational orders, Cotter guessed that the Agency spook had stumbled across something in al-Basra pretty damned important.
SEAL Seven had been tapped by the Pentagon to carry out the mission, code-named Operation Blue Sky, a covert insertion into Iraq followed by a hostage rescue.
Cotter turned his binoculars toward the east, where two aging, rust-bucket buses had been parked across the runway, effectively preventing takeoff. A couple of jeeps were parked there as well, and the SEAL lieutenant could see the tell-tale orange sparks of a couple of lit cigarettes. He could smell them too. When the wind was right, it was possible to detect the odor of a cigarette at two miles; these were harsh and pungent, either Turkish or Russian, he thought.
"I make four hostiles at the roadblock, Skipper," Martin Brown whispered at his side. Brown had his Remington Model 700 unpacked, with an AN/PVS-4 nightscope already mounted over its breech.
"Let me have a peek, Magic." Cotter's night goggles could only distinguish human-sized targets to a range of about 150 meters. Taking Brown's sniper rifle, the L-T peered through the starlight scope, which extended his view to better than four hundred meters.
Yeah... there they were, revealed in an eerie glow of greens and grays, four Iraqi soldiers lounging by their vehicles, smoking, talking, but not appearing particularly alert.
Shifting the rifle-mounted scope to the C-130, he spotted two more soldiers sitting on the bottom steps of the boarding ladder. He counted three troops resting on the ground beneath the aircraft, and another on the control tower, standing on a railed outside walkway up near the top of the building. Ten in all... with the certainty that there were more nearby, possibly inside the terminal building or the hangars, possibly inside a trio of Iraqi army trucks parked next to the control tower's entrance.
He handed the rifle back to Brown, then checked his watch, carefully shielding its face with his hand as he uncovered the luminous numbers: 0215 hours. It was almost time.
Vincent Xavier Cotter, reserved, soft-spoken, oldest son of a devoutly Catholic family, seemed an unlikely warrior. During high school he'd actually considered becoming a priest, but then his father had died and he'd dropped out, going to work to support his mother and two younger brothers. Eventually he'd gotten his G.E.D. equivalency, then gone on to enlist in the Navy, figuring that he could send most of his pay home while the government provided him with room and board.
Navy life had agreed with him. Four years later, as an engineman second class, he'd "shipped for six" — re-enlisting for another six years — and put in for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school at Coronado, California, at the same time.
He still wasn't entirely sure why he'd volunteered for BUD/S training, though he suspected it had something to do with proving himself to himself, a challenge to mind and body. SEAL training had been a challenge, all right, a nightmare of mud, exhaustion, humiliation, and grueling hard labor beyond anything he'd ever imagined, a hell-course designed to weed out the less than physically and mentally perfect.
He still dreamed about that damned bell sometimes.
It had been set up on a post at one end of the parade ground, "the grinder," as it was better known to the recruit boat crews who'd drilled and exercised there. All any BUD/S trainee had to do to quit, at any time of day or night, was walk over to the bell and ring it three times. During the sleepless days of physical challenge officially known as Motivation Week — it was never called anything but Hell Week by the trainees — two BUD/S recruits had actually been detailed to carry the bell everywhere the boat crews went. He'd wanted to ring it. Oh, how he'd wanted to ring it! There'd been times when Cotter had wanted a shower and clean clothes and an uninterrupted eight-hours sleep so badly he would have done anything, anything to win them.
Except quit. He'd stayed the course and graduated, one of twelve out of an original complement of sixty. After the usual six months' probation, he'd finally won the coveted "Budweiser," the eagle/trident/flintlock-pistol emblem of the SEALs worn above his left breast.
For the next year he'd served with SEAL Team Two, stationed at Little Creek, Virginia, and participated in the SEAL raids on Iranian oil rigs during the so-called "Tanker War" of the eighties. In 1986 he'd qualified for NESEP, a Navy education program that put him through four years of college, with ten weeks of OCS the summer before his senior year. After BUD/S, college had been a vacation, and his stint of Organized Chicken Shit in Providence, Rhode Island, had been sheer luxury. He'd even managed to find time to get married and have a daughter. Graduating as an ensign in 1990, he'd immediately returned to the Teams, serving with SEAL Four in the Gulf War, then going on to command the newly formed SEAL Team Seven's Third Platoon.
He checked his watch again: 0230 hours. It was time.
Switching on his Motorola, he spoke quietly into his lip mike. "Gold, this is Blue. Authenticate, Sierra Tango one five."
"Blue, Gold" sounded in his headset. The voice belonged to Lieutenant J.g. Ed DeWitt, Cotter's 2IC, his second-in-command. "Copy. Authenticate, Tango Foxtrot three niner. Lockpick."
DeWitt's squad was in position and ready to go. "Roger that, Gold. Stand by."
Slipping quietly through the darkness, he joined EM2 Higgins, who was putting the finishing touches on the unit's tiny satellite transceiver, plugging the HST-4 sat comm into the KY-57 encryption set. The antenna, a folding umbrella just twelve inches across, had already been set up and aligned with a MILSTAR satellite 22,300 miles above the equator. "so, L-T," Higgins said quietly. "Is it going down?"
"That's a roger. Unless Washington has something else to say about it." He took a handset the size of a cellular car phone.
"Fairyland, Fairyland," he called softly. "This is Blue Water."
"Blue Water, Fairyland" sounded over his headset a moment later. "We read you."
"Fairyland, Blue Water. Lockpick. I say again, Lockpick."
"Blue Water, Lockpick confirmed. Cold Steel. I say again, Cold Steel."
Adrenaline coursed through Cotter's veins. The mission was still go! "Roger, Fairyland. Cold Steel. Blue Water out."
Cotter replaced the handset in its rucksack, locking eyes with Higgins as he did so. "Looks like it's a go," he said.
Higgins — known as "Professor Higgins" for his bookish habits between missions — replied with a killer's maniacal grin, teeth gleaming in a black-painted face out of nightmare.
1835 hours (Zulu -5)
Joint Special Operations Command Center
The Pentagon
During the first hours of the Desert Storm land campaign, one observer had wryly pointed out that Iraqi spies might have noted that something was afoot by the large number of pizza deliveries to both the White House and the Pentagon. True or not, this night several delivery cartons were open on the table, revealing half-eaten pizzas. The room's occupants, however, were paying less attention to their dinner than they were to a large television monitor on one console. The uniforms represented several services, Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the civilians among them included liaison officers with the CIA and one undersecretary to the Secretary of Defense.
Captain Phillip Thomas Coburn felt somewhat out of his league with the suits and the flag-rank brass, but he took comfort in the fact that he was a SEAL, and what was going down on the screen was a SEAL op. A twenty-five-year veteran, he'd started out with SEAL Two in Vietnam. Now he was the commanding officer of SEAL Seven, an elite and highly classified unit organized into four platoons of fourteen men each.
The room's lights were out, and watchers' faces were illuminated by the eerie phosphor glow of the screen. In the background, a whispering murmur of many voices could be heard, the relayed comments of aircraft pilots and of the SEALs themselves as they spoke to one another over their tactical radios. Operation Blue Sky was a large and complex mission, one involving far more assets than just the SEAL platoon now on the ground.
The scene on the television monitor was a bird's-eye view of an airport; a large, four-engine aircraft, seen from almost directly overhead where it sat on the runway, was clearly visible. The points of light moving toward it were antlike in comparison.
But Coburn felt a thrill as he watched the screen. Those were his men moving like shadows across the television monitor. God, how he wanted to be with them! "Feeling your age, Phil?" a soft voice murmured at his side.
"Stuff it, Paul," he whispered back, and the other man grinned in the darkness.
Captain Paul Mason was Coburn's single friend and confidant in the room, and another veteran of the Teams in Nam. A training injury had knocked Mason out of the jump and PT quals twelve years back, though he still thought of himself as a SEAL. The Teams were like that. Once you were one of them, you never left, no matter what your current duty assignment might be. Now Mason was a staff officer, serving as a voice for the Teams with USSOCOM, the U.S. Special Operations Command that managed all SPECWAR groups, including the Army Special Forces and Delta Force, as well as the Navy SEALS.
Shared experience had made the two men friends. Mason was no longer qualified as a SEAL, while Coburn, though he'd maintained his quals over the years with a fiercely dedicated daily regimen of running, exercise, and workouts, was stuck behind a desk. His last field assignment had been Grenada, and at fifty years of age he could feel the inner clock ticking away. Damn it, he thought, staring at the monitor. I should be there, not nursemaiding a bunch of suits and flags in a Fort Fumble basement!
"I'm still not sure what the hell I'm seeing," a Navy admiral complained. His name was Thomas Bainbridge, and he was the commanding officer of NAVSPECWARGRU-Two, the Little Creek-based headquarters of the East Coast SEALS.
"Real-time thermal imaging, Admiral," Mason said smoothly. "Computer-enhanced and corrected to give a steady image from a single angle. Right now our Aurora is circling above Shuaba at ninety thousand feet... so high up you couldn't even see it from the ground in broad daylight, much less in the middle of the night. Its scanning infrared sensors are incredibly sensitive. What you're seeing is the body heat from our SEALs as they deploy for the assault. This lone guy here on the control tower is probably an Iraqi soldier. These white glows up here look like warm engines, probably a couple of jeeps parked there in the past couple of hours. And... looks like four more guards by the jeeps."
"There they go," an Air Force general said, pointing to the left side of the screen. "Can you get a close-up of that?"
A computer technician typed several characters, and the image on the screen changed, zeroing in on four ghostly shapes moving with short, leapfrogging rushes across the dark blue ground toward a cluster of green buildings. Three other shapes remained in place in the rear. Close inspection revealed one of them to be a man bracing a dark, elongated object atop a low hill. That would be the team's sniper.
"The detail is absolutely amazing," an Army colonel remarked.
"Welcome to the twenty-first century, Colonel," one of the suits, a CIA liaison officer, said. "Warfare with all the comforts of home." He took a bite from a slice of pepperoni pizza, and some of the others chuckled.
Coburn said nothing, but continued to watch the stealthy deployment of his men on the screen. The comment about warfare in comfort rankled, but then, as friends of his in the Teams had often told him, "When an asshole gives you shit, you gotta consider the source."
Almost as though he'd read Coburn's thought, Mason winked at him.
Coburn rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, then leaned closer to the screen. "Could we see a wide-angle shot, please?" he asked quietly. The tight view requested earlier showed nothing but a single team sprinting toward the aircraft; there was a full platoon on the ground now, fourteen men, and he wanted to see the entire plan unfolding, not just one small part of it.
The technician typed in a command, and the C-130, huge on the screen, dwindled to a toy outside a tiny cluster of buildings.
According to plan, the two SEAL squads had approached the objective separately. Gold Squad was to neutralize the guards at the runway roadblock and in the control tower; Blue Squad would hit the guards outside the Hercules and board the aircraft itself. Coburn could just make out the flitting heat shadows of the two SEAL groups as they dispersed across the airfield. Two men appeared to be creeping up on the Iraqis at the roadblock. The others were moving to jump-off positions closer to the C-130.
"Fairyland, Tally Three" sounded over the room's speakers. "Hot Iron, repeat, Hot Iron."
General Bradley, one of the Air Force officers, cocked his head, listening to the murmured transmissions, relayed through an Air Force AWACS aircraft over northern Saudi Arabia. "Ah! There's Tally Three. Here we go!"
Tally Three was a pair of F-117 Stealth fighters circling south of al-Basra. When informed that the SEALs were going in, the black, arrow-head-shaped aircraft had swung north and commenced their approach. Their target was an Iraqi SAM site and command bunker dug into the hillside above the village of Zabeir. When the bunker went, the SEAL platoon would launch their assault.
The tension in the room was growing, tightening. Even here, in a darkened room thousands of miles from where the action was going down, Coburn felt the old combat reflexes kicking in. His senses were sharpened; it seemed that he could smell not only the pizza, but the breath and sweat and aftershave of each of the men present in the room. He could hear the tick and hum of the room's computers, the sigh of the air conditioner, the excitement in the anonymous radio voices of the AWACS crew as they noted the time and confirmed that Cowboy One, Two, and Three were all airborne.
He desperately wanted to be in the field again, on the ground with Third Platoon.
"Man, oh, man," the spook said, grinning. "This is the way to fight a war!"
Somehow, Coburn resisted the urge to drive that pizza slice down the man's throat with his fist.
0236 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
"You got him?"
"He's dead meat, Skipper. He just don't know it yet." Brown lay prone at Cotter's side, the Remington braced on his left hand, motionless, his right eye pressed tight to the rubber shield of his starlight scope to keep the device from casting a telltale glow on his face. "Say the word 'n' I cap him."
Cotter checked his watch again. Tally Three ought to be sounding the starting gun almost any moment now. Invisible to radar, silent as death, an F-117 should have already loosed its Paveway 11, sending the one-ton smart bomb gliding in along an invisible laser beam and right through the SAM bunker's front door.
A yellow flash lit up the southeastern sky, sudden, startling, and utterly silent as it billowed skyward into an orange fireball unfolding from the hillside above Zabeir. Cotter kept his binoculars on the Iraqis near the C-130. All were standing in the open now, staring into the flames with gaping mouths. "Knock, knock," Higgins said. "Avon calling."
Then the sound of the bomb blast thundered down from the hill, and Cotter's hand touched Brown's shoulder. "Do it!"
The sniper's rifle bucked in the SEAL's hands, its crack swallowed by the distant waterfall roar of the explosion. On the control tower's deck, the lone Iraqi guard pitched backward, dropped his weapon, then collapsed unmoving onto the walkway. Brown had already shifted targets, aiming toward the Hercules where the guards were pointing at the explosion and calling to one another. He fired again, and one of the Iraqis, the red triangle of the Republican Guard plainly visible on the sleeve of his fatigues, spun back into the boarding steps, arms akimbo. Before his comrades could react, four night-clad figures, torsos bulky with unfamiliar gear, faces painted black and heads shrouded by balaclavas and the insect-glitter of night-vision goggles, materialized out of the shadows and opened fire.
Brown shifted targets again and, one by one, began knocking out the spotlights surrounding the plane.
0237 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport runway, Iraq
Hollywood depictions to the contrary, no sound-suppressed weapon is completely silent. The MP5SD3s carried by the three SEALs in the aircraft assault element came close, though, the high-speed whiff of their bolts louder than the stuttering cough of their firing. Roselli sent two quick three-round bursts into the center of mass of one of the Iraqi soldiers at a range of fifty meters, jerking the man back and tossing him aside like a string-cut puppet. To either side, Doc Ellsworth and Mac MacKenzie loosed sharp, controlled bursts in synch with Roselli's, taking down the last three Iraqi guards in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Boomer Garcia backed them up, ready with his M-16/M203 combo as he scanned the darkness encircling the C-130.
Roselli raced to the parked Hercules, feeling vulnerable. The terminal building loomed beyond the aircraft, the slanted windows of the control tower dark and empty and threatening.
He ducked beneath the C-130's wing, pausing to put another three-round burst into the sprawled body of one of the Iraqi soldiers. Nearby, Doc made sure of another one.
During the mission planning, there'd been some discussion as to whether or not they should take prisoners, especially at this stage of the operation when some hard intel about whether or not the Iraqis had already boarded the aircraft would be damned useful. The final decision had been that there would be no time to interrogate prisoners, no time to cross-check their stories for confirmation. Better to just hop-and-pop, relying on speed and surprise to overcome any bad guys waiting aboard the Herk. As for taking prisoners, well... shooting POWs was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention. Third Platoon's written orders directed them to handle prisoners "according to SOP," which everyone understood to mean that there would be none. "Clear!" Ellsworth called from the other side of the aircraft.
"Clear!" MacKenzie called from the foot of the boarding ladder.
One Iraqi body lay on its back, left arm thrown across its chest in an awkward position. As Roselli approached, the arm slipped down and flopped limply onto the tarmac. Instinctively, he triggered a burst into the man's chest. "Clear!"
"Alfa, Bravo," MacKenzie said over his tactical radio. "Stage one, clear. Five tangos, five down. Going to stage two."
Tangos — SEAL talk for terrorists. These Iraqis weren't terrorists, Roselli knew. They were just soldiers, doing what they'd been told to do.
Unfortunately for them, the same could be said of Third Platoon, SEAL Seven. And the SEALs were very good at what they did, better, he thought with a natural and unassuming arrogance, than anyone else in the world.
"Let's move it, Razor," MacKenzie said, using Roselli's squad handle. "Up the ladder! Go! Go! Go!"
"Right, Big Mac." Slapping a fresh magazine into his H&K, Roselli braced himself, then sprinted for the boarding ladder at the side of the Hercules. It was dark — the searchlights aimed at the Herky Bird were gone now, courtesy of Magic brown — and he'd slid his NVGs up on his head so that he wouldn't lose his peripheral vision in combat. He nearly fell headlong when he stumbled across the body of the Iraqi lying on the stairs, but then he was past and climbing, with Doc and Mac at intervals behind him, and Boomer mounting guard at the bottom with his 203 grenade launcher. The C-130's crew-access door was closed, but Roselli had the T-shaped key that opened it.
Slamming the heavy door back on its mount, he paused outside to see if anyone was going to react to his arrival with gunfire, then lunged through and into the interior.
Aboard the C-130 Hercules, the forward, port-side access opens onto a fore-and-aft passageway on the aircraft's port side. To the right, the passageway leads straight aft to the aircraft's cavernous cargo deck; to the left, it goes forward a few steps, then takes a sharp twist to the right and up several steep steps to the flight deck.
Roselli turned right, then went prone, MP5 at the ready and extending into the plane's hold. Behind him, Mac went left to clear the flight deck. Doc followed Roselli to help secure the hold.
On the cargo deck the only light came from a couple of battle lanterns hanging from the starboard bulkhead. In their pasty glare, Roselli could see a number of men milling about in confusion, some already on their feet, others just rising from blankets or sleeping bags scattered about the deck. Some wore civilian clothing, others military fatigues, though all had the blue armband of the UN. There were a couple of Land Rovers parked aft in front of the tail ramp, piled high with cardboard cartons.
Hours of practice in SEAL Team killing houses had trained Roselli to take in a room at a glance, separating the bad guys from the good in an instant. No one visible in that crowd was holding a weapon, though some wore pistol holsters. None had the look of focus or concentration that suggested he was carrying out some prearranged plan. To a man, they looked frightened, confused, and a more than a little dazed.
"What the hell's going' on?" someone yelled in English. He was answered by an excited voice in French, then by someone else speaking what might have been Swedish.
"Everybody down!" Roselli bellowed, hoping the tone of his voice would carry the meaning to those who didn't speak English. "We are American Special Forces! Everybody down!" The babble of voices increased, and Roselli shouted again, his voice echoing in the hollow compartment. "American Special Forces! Everybody down!"
A big, blond man wearing a uniform and a blue beret approached, hands raised. "You are... Americans?"
"Please get down, Sir," Roselli replied crisply, still on the deck, his MP5 unwavering. "I don't want to have to shoot you. Now!"
The man complied, and he barked an order at the others as he did so. In a few moments, everyone was lying flat on the deck. In moments more, the C-130 was secure. The UN inspectors looked terrified, and as Ellsworth moved past him to start checking the rest of the hold, Roselli could certainly understand why. The black fatigues and combat vests, heavy with pouches, grenades, magazines, and equipment; the faces painted black with only the eyes and lips showing through the greasepaint; the commo gear and NVGs pushed back on their heads, all combined to create a terrifying, nightmare image. The SEALs looked like invaders from some other, darker world.
As Ellsworth covered the plane's occupants, Roselli ran a quick count. There were fifteen UN inspectors aboard, plus the four-man crew of the Hercules. Nineteen for nineteen, and no ringers hiding among the hostages.
"Did any Iraqis come aboard?" Roselli asked the inspection team leader.
"N-no, Sir! They gave us until dawn to surrender the records."
"Looks like we came just in the nick then," Ellsworth said, teeth showing very white against his black-painted face.
"Cargo deck clear!" Roselli called over the radio. "Hotels secure!"
Hotels meant hostages. Had there been bad guys on the plane the SEALs would have had to tie the hands of everyone aboard with plastic restraints and clear them one by one, but that wasn't necessary now. MacKenzie appeared a second later. "Flight deck's clear. Regular cakewalk." He touched his Motorola's transmit key. "Alfa, Bravo!" he called. "Stage two clear, negative tangos. We have the package! No damage!"
0239 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba runway, Iraq
"We have the package! No damage!"
Cotter heard those welcome words over the tactical channel and loosed a pent-up sigh of relief. The code phrase meant that all of the UN people were safe, the first half of the mission successfully accomplished.
Which left only the getaway.
"Alfa, this is Charlie!" That was Nicholson, one of the two Gold Squad men sent to take down the guards at the roadblock, "Clear! Four tangos down!"
That left one element of the assault still unspoken for. Delta, consisting of the rest of Gold Squad — DeWitt, Wilson, Fernandez, Holt, and Kosciuszko — had been assigned the daunting task of clearing the airport terminal facility, together with the attached air traffic control building that glowered over the parked Hercules like a prison guard tower. "Delta, this is Alfa. Report."
For answer, there was only a series of clicks, a signal that element Delta was busy right now.
0242 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba control tower, Iraq
Electrician's Mate Second Class Charles Wilson, "Chucker" to his squad mates, braced himself on one side of the door, while Chief Kosciuszko took the other. This was the deadliest part of clearing a building, going through a closed door with no idea what was waiting for you on the other side. Reconnaissance by grenade was the preferred room-clearing technique, but the assault so far had been carried out in near-perfect silence, and the longer the SEAL assault team let the neighbors sleep, the better.
So Kos nodded to Chucker, and Chucker nodded back. The chief took a step back, kicked at the flimsy, hollow-core door, and smashed it open. In a smooth roll around the door frame, Wilson burst into the room, his H&K held high, tight, and ready.
Nothing. Several beds, one of which looked as if it had been slept in recently.
Neither man wore NVGs. Even low-light gear requires some light to work, and it had been decided before the mission that individual IR goggles, which "saw" heat instead of visible light, were too heavy to make bringing them along as well worthwhile. Instead, both men had flashlights taped underneath the heavy, sound-suppressor barrels of their MP5SD3s; they provided both light for searching darkened rooms, and a quick-and-dirty aim-assist device in a close-quarters firefight.
Chucker crouched to one side of the door, H&K still at the ready, as Kos rolled in and began searching the room. They moved swiftly and with few words. "Clear," Kosciuszko said, and withdrew from the room. Chucker noticed a closed door and tried the knob. Locked. He put his shoulder to it and the cheap lock gave easily. Inside, his flashlight revealed a tumble-down of empty cardboard boxes, a mop and a wheeled, metal bucket, piles of rags and cleaning supplies.
"Chucker!" sounded over his radio. "Move! Move!" Kos sounded worried. Time for the search was sharply limited.
"On my way."
"Kos, this is Rattler." That was Fernandez. "We're in traffic control. Negative, negative. No hostiles."
"Roger that," Kos said, still standing by the splintered door. "Extract. Two-IC, this is Kos. Terminal clear. Dry hump!"
"Copy," the squad leader, Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, replied. "Move 'em out, Kos."
"On our way."
0245 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba runway, Iraq
"Alfa, Delta!" DeWitt's voice called over the tactical frequency. "Clear! Dry hump!"
Meaning they'd not found any guards inside the terminal complex. Cotter gave the scene another scan with his binoculars as worry tugged at his awareness. Had there only been ten Iraqis to begin with? To guard the UN Herky Bird and its treasure trove of stolen intelligence? Shit, there ought to be more, a lot more. Even if they hadn't heard the death-silent assault by the SEALS, they ought to be reacting by now to the explosion in Zabeir. Where the hell were they?
"You see any movement out there?" he asked Brown.
"Negative, Skipper. Nothin' but our own people."
"Stay on it. Gimme the sat comm, Professor."
Higgins handed him the radio. "Sky Trapper, Sky Trapper," he called. "This is Blue Water."
"Blue Water, Sky Trapper" sounded over his headset a moment later. "Copy. Go ahead."
Sky Trapper was a Saudi Arabian AWACS aircraft manned, at least for tonight, by U.S. Air Force personnel. The airborne communications and radar early warning plane was orbiting over northern Saudi Arabia, serving as a command center for the far-flung assets of Operation Blue Sky.
"Sky Trapper, Blue Water. Cold Steel, authentication Charlie India two-three. We have the package intact, repeat, we have the package intact. We're ready for delivery. Tell Cowboy and Shotgun to get their asses in gear!"
"Ah, roger that, Blue Water. Be advised that Shotgun should be over your position any time now. Cowboy is en route, ETA six minutes."
"Copy, Sky Trapper. We'll be waiting. Blue Water out."
Handing the sat-comm handset back to Higgins, Cotter paused and listened, straining against the darkness. Yes... he could just hear it now, the faint and far-off whup-whup-whup of approaching helicopters.
He changed channels on his Motorola, switching to a frequency that would link him to the entire SEAL platoon. "Blue and Gold, this is Papa One. Helos are inbound. Don't shoot 'em down, they're on our Two-IC?"
"Copy, Papa One," DeWitt replied. "Go ahead."
"Start bringing your people in, two at a time."
"Roger, Papa One, wilco."
"Out."
The plan was moving like clockwork now, each man with an assignment, each man with a place. Right now, Cotter's place was at the Herky Bird with the rest of his unit. He touched Higgins's shoulder. "I'm going in there. You two stay put until Cowboy One touches down, then hustle on in, okay?"
"Right, L-T."
"Magic?"
"Yeah, Skipper?"
"You did good. Real nice shooting on those two tangos. Two for two."
Brown's face split in a wide grin. "Hey, thanks, Skipper!"
Cotter believed in giving praise where praise was due. He'd been concerned, naturally enough, about the cherries in the platoon — and Magic Brown had been one of them. The quartermaster first class had been in the Navy for ten years, but he'd only been a SEAL for one, and this was his first time in combat. No matter how hard a man trains, no matter how grueling his indoctrination, there is no way to tell how he will act the first time he has to actually kill another human being. Brown had come through his baptism of fire and blood splendidly.
Rising, Cotter left the shelter of the low ridge and trotted toward the C-130. In the distance, the glare from the exploded SAM bunker had dwindled to a sullen flicker, and the aircraft was almost lost in the darkness. Damn. Where were the rest of the Iraqis, partying in town? Fleeing toward al-Basra? Getting ready to spring their trap? Cotter didn't like this situation one damned bit.
0245 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba control tower, Iraq
The rumbling boom of the explosion had brought him wide awake in an instant. While his partner Ibrahim had stood guard on the walkway outside, Sergeant Riad Jasim had been catching a brief nap in a duty room inside the control tower; but now fire stained the sky, Ibrahim was dead, and strange, black-garbed men were swarming among the shadows beneath the UN aircraft.
Terrified, Jasim had hidden inside a second-floor storeroom as someone banged up the control tower steps outside. He cringed as they slammed open the door to the storeroom, but he was hidden behind a pile of empty boxes and — praise be to Allah! — the intruders had no time for a thorough search.
When they left, he sagged back against the concrete block wall, trembling with relief.
Jasim spoke no English, but he had a good ear. He'd heard the language spoken before, during the heroic Mother of All Battles when his supreme commander, the glorious Saddam, had halted the enemy invaders at the gates of Iraq with the mere threat of his terrible weapons. "Terminal clear! Dry hump!" was English, Jasim was sure of it, even if the words themselves were gibberish. The Americans were here, attempting to liberate their spy plane!
When the heavy-booted intruders had left, Jasim had slipped out of the storeroom and up the steps to the glassed-in control tower. There, flat on his belly, heart pounding, he edged toward the glass door leading out onto the circular walkway that encircled the tower. He'd left his AKM assault rifle outside, with Ibrahim.
He was no hero. He'd been a simple farmer from al-Kut until the army had drafted him, but he believed in Saddam Hussein as the soul and savior of the Iraqi people, and he knew that Paradise awaited him if he died fighting the infidel Americans.
Slipping through the open door, he crawled onto the walkway. Ibrahim lay across his path, eyes open and staring, blood soaking the front of his uniform.
"My friend," Jasim told the corpse. "I will avenge you!"
But the brave words could not stop the trembling weakness he felt within. Somehow, he forced himself to go on. Retrieving his rifle and chambering a round, he inched himself closer to the edge of the walkway.
0248 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
By the time Lieutenant Cotter reached the C-130, the platoon was already deploying in a loose perimeter about the aircraft. Two Gold Platoon men, Fernandez and Holt, were already setting out four strobe beacons in a Y-shaped pattern, the top of the Y marking a safe LZ for a helicopter, the tail indicating the wind direction. MacKenzie met Cotter at the perimeter. The big master chief had slung his H&K and broken out his machine gun. Crouching there on the tarmac with that big gun in his hands and a belt of 7.62mm ammo draped over his shoulder, the Texan looked a bit like a black-faced, black-fatigued Rambo.
Except that Rambo never would have stood a chance against these night-clad killers. They moved with an efficient deadliness Hollywood could never portray and which movie-going audiences would find frankly unbelievable. Cotter felt a swelling, glowing pride for his men as he entered the perimeter. They were the best, absolutely and without qualification.
"Platoon, this is Blue Five!" Ellsworth's voice snapped over the radio. "I've got movement. Two... maybe three hostiles. Bearing one-seven-five, range one-one-zero meters. Near the big hangars."
Side by side, Cotter and MacKenzie dropped prone, scanning the southern end of the airfield with their NVGs.
"Don't see 'em, Skipper. You?"
"Negative." Cotter replied. He thumbed his Motorola. "Boomer! This is Papa One! Toss 'em a package, will you? Let's see if they'll party."
"Sure thing, Skipper. On the way!"
There was a hollow-sounding thunk nearby, and the 40mm grenade from Garcia's M203 arced into the shadows, then exploded with a flash and a savage roar. The thin sheet metal of the hangar buckled and tore, and one uniformed body flopped out onto the tarmac in a bloody sprawl. From the other side of the hangar, an assault rifle opened up with the characteristic flat cracking of an AKM, the muzzle flash flickering and stabbing against the shadows.
MacKenzie returned fire with his M-60, sending a burst of green tracers streaking into the night. Someone over there in the shadows shrieked in agony. The 203 thunked again, and this time the hangar was engulfed in a flaming maelstrom of exploding white phosphorus. Flaming fragments arced across a hundred yards onto the tarmac, streaming contrails of twisting white smoke.
"Nice'n neat with ol' Willie Pete," Boomer called.
Half of the hangar was burning furiously now. Several Iraqis ran screaming out onto the runway, their uniforms ablaze, only to be put down by sharp, short bursts from the waiting SEALS. The fire revealed a large number of other Iraqis running wildly in the opposite direction, up the hill toward Zabeir, most without rifles, belts, or helmets, many without shirts, a few without clothing.
"I think we popped their barracks," MacKenzie observed dryly. A trio of armed Iraqis broke across the tarmac, angling toward the Hercules, and he shifted the M-60, then cut them down one, two, three. "Looks like they've decided it's time to di di mau."
"Roger that, Mac. Keep knocking 'em down. Our choppers are incoming."
With a roar, a machine like a huge, metallic dragonfly thundered over the airstrip, the light from the burning hangar glinting from the angled sides of its canopy. Painted dark olive, the aircraft was a U.S. Marine AH-IW SuperCobra, fitted with an infrared night-vision system and an M197 under-nose turret.
"Blue Water, Blue Water" sounded over Cotter's air-ground channel. "This is Shotgun One/one. What's going on down there, Navy? Bit off more'n you could chew? Over."
"That's a negative, One/one," Cotter replied. "But we do have some unfriendly types who want to party. How about taking down those hangars one hundred meters south of the landing beacons, over."
"Roger, roger. Never fear, the Marines are here, and the situation is well in hand." The SuperCobra clattered overhead again, its skids at telephone-pole height above the runway. When the three-barreled 20mm Gatling cannon in its nose turret cut loose, it sounded like the high-pitched rasp of a chain saw. Downrange, sheet-metal hangars, maintenance sheds, and storehouses disintegrated in shrieking storms of whirling fragments.
A second SuperCobra arrived seconds later, call sign Shotgun one/two. The pair split up and began orbiting the SEAL perimeter, flying low both to spook hidden Iraqis into showing themselves and to discourage further attacks on Blue Water. Any Iraqi sniper in the area was going to think twice before opening fire with those birds of prey circling, talons exposed and ready.
The Marine SuperCobras had been stationed on a Marine helicopter carrier, the Tripoli, now with II MEF in the Arabian Sea south of Pakistan. As soon as word of the crisis at al-Basra had reached Washington, they'd been directed to hopscotch from the Tripoli to al-Masirah to Masqat, then up the Gulf coast to DSCUBAyy to Dahran to al-Kuwayt, refueling at each stop along the way. They were gunships, not transports, their nose cannon, rocket pods, and Hellfire missiles designed to give close support to the troops on the ground.
Half a mile away, a concrete bunker dissolved in orange flame as Shotgun One/two speared it with a Hellfire. The night was bloody with flame and roiling smoke and the thunder of high explosives.
Iraq certainly knew they were at Shuaba now. At this point, the SEALs had scant minutes to extract before the full weight of Saddam's war machine moved to crush them.
0249 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
Coming in behind the first SuperCobras, and escorted by two more, were three CH-53D Sea Stallions — Cowboy One, Two, and Three — the Marine helicopter transports that would take the SEALs and the rescued UN inspectors to safety. Their unmistakable racket was clattering out of the west now, coming in at treetop height.
"Blue Water, Blue Water" sounded over Cotter's radio. "This is Cowboy. Please authenticate."
"Boomer!" Cotter yelled. "Pop 'em a six-sixty-two!"
"Roger, boss!" A moment later, Garcia's grenade launcher thumped again, and an M662 red flare popped into gleaming, bloody visibility high overhead, drifting back toward the airfield on its parachute. "Blue Water, I see a red flare. I'm coming in."
"Roger that, Cowboy. We're ready to ramble. You should see the beacons any time now."
"Roger, Blue Water. Beacons in sight. Looks like you boys have a hot LZ down there."
"We're not taking any fire at the moment, Cowboy. You're clear to land."
"Copy, Blue Water. We'll send in Cowboy Three first." One of the Sea Stallions loomed out of the night, huge and noisy.
"Okay!" Cotter called over the platoon channel. "Start sending them out!"
His orders laid down the evacuation procedure. The records from the al-Basra "factory" would go out on the first helo, with the UN inspectors doing the loading while the SEALs held the perimeter. The inspectors would extract on the second helo, and the SEALs on the third. The orders had a certain amount of built-in flexibility. One Sea Stallion could carry up to fifty-five troops and all their gear; if two of the Sea Stallions broke down or were disabled, nineteen ex-hostages and fourteen SEALS, plus the hijacked Iraqi records, could all be easily transported aboard the third helo. One of the lessons learned at Desert One during the failed rescue of the American hostages in Iran was to allow plenty of redundancy in a rescue mission's helicopter assets.
The first Sea Stallion was touching down now, its rotors howling, dust swirling up from the tarmac in a blinding, stinging cloud. Two more CH-53s circled with the gunships, vague yet menacing shadows against the night.
0249 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba control tower, Iraq
Riad Jasim had never been so terrified in his life, not even when the American B-52s had bombed his encampment in northern Kuwait during the Mother of All Battles, churning up the desert like some monstrous, demonic plow turning the soil. Helicopters clattered and circled, great, evil insects waiting to pounce, and he was convinced that they saw him, they must see him, lying here in the open on the control tower walkway. He played dead, praying desperately. The hangars at the south end of the field were blazing furiously, and Jasim knew that the rest of the Republican Guard company that had quartered there was dead or in flight. He was alone, more alone than he'd ever been in his life. But somehow, somehow he had to do something!
Cautiously, Jasim raised his head, peering down over the edge of the tower walkway.
0250 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
"Let's go! Let's go!" Cotter pumped his arm in an urgent hurry-up as the two Land Rovers rumbled down the rear ramp of the Hercules and onto the tarmac. In single file, the UN inspectors trotted after them, shepherded along by Roselli and Ellsworth. There'd been no further gunfire from the nearby airport buildings for several minutes now, and the other SEALs stood or crouched at various points encircling the C-130, their attention focused on the flame-shot darkness around them.
"Are you in charge here?"
Cotter turned. A slight, bearded man in civilian clothes, khaki slacks and a safari jacket, stood behind him, a briefcase clutched incongruously in one hand.
"What the hell?"
"I gotta talk to you," the civilian said. The roar from the grounded Sea Stallion was deafening, and he had to shout to make himself heard. "I'm Arkin! I imagine you have special orders concerning me!"
Cotter sighed. This must be the spook from the CIA — the intelligence organization the SEALs derisively called Christians In Action. He didn't have time to screw with this shit now.
"Everything is under control, Mr. Arkin," he said. "If you'll go back with the others and..."
Arkin hefted the briefcase. "I've got important intel here, fella, and it's got to get out right away. I can't wait for the rest of that shit to be loaded on the helicopters."
"You'll go out with the others on the second helo, Mr. Arkin. You'll go faster if you help your friends load number one."
"No! I can't wait! I want..."
Cotter reached out and closed his left hand on the front of Arkin's collar, pulling him up on his toes and bringing his face to within inches of his own. "I don't give a fuck what you want, mister! Get your ass back with the others, and I mean now!"
He released the man with a shove that nearly sent him sprawling. Arkin gaped at Cotter, looked as though he was about to say something more, then apparently thought better of it, shrugged, and turned away.
0250 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba control tower, Iraq
From his vantage point fifteen meters above the ground, Sergeant Jasim could see the bustle of activity on the runway below. The two Land Rovers were approaching the big helicopter transport, which was squatting now on the runway with its rotors still turning. The UN spies with their blue armbands were trotting along behind their vehicles, as the black-suited commandos in their weird, bug-faced masks stood at the ready, their weapons probing the encircling night. Could they see him? Apparently not. At least they were not shooting at him, but appeared to be simply standing guard, watchful and deadly.
Jasim would get only one good burst from his rifle. He knew and accepted that. But at which target? There were so many.
Visibility was poor with the airport's lights shot out, but there was enough illumination from the burning hangars to reveal two men off to one side of the UN aircraft, obviously engaged in a heated conference. One was dressed like the other commandos in black, anonymous. The other, in light-colored civilian slacks and jacket and a blue armband, was an easy target, and the briefcase he was holding suggested that he might be a man of some importance.
The circling helicopter gunships were farther away now, searching for Jasim's comrades in the surrounding hills. Breathing a final prayer to Allah, Riad Jasim aimed his AKM carefully, taking his time to align the sights as he'd been taught, hold his breath, and slowly squeeze the trigger.
0250 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
Cotter watched the Agency spook stalk back toward the line of UN people still emerging from the Hercules. The self-important little bastard would probably file a report back at Langley, contending that he'd not received the necessary cooperation from the SEAL platoon tasked with extracting him.
Screw him. Cotter had gone rounds with the Agency's Christians before, and the exchange had never been pleasant.
He caught the wink of a full-auto muzzle flash in the corner of his eye, felt rather than heard the savage snap of bullets cleaving the air inches above his head. Arkin was ten feet away, his back to the SEAL lieutenant, completely unaware that they were being shot at. Without thinking, Cotter launched himself forward, tackling the CIA man from behind just as the unseen gunner corrected his aim. Arkin oofed as he went down hard beneath the SEAL and the briefcase skittered loose across the tarmac.
Something slammed into Cotter's side, then his right arm, then his back, the impacts painless but savagely hard, like hammer blows. For a dazed moment, he didn't know where he was. Why was he on his back, on the ground?..
0250 hours (Zulu +3)
Shuaba Airport, Iraq
Roselli had seen the Lieutenant knock the UN guy flat, then seen Cotter plucked from the man's back by an unseen hand and rolled off onto the tarmac. He'd not heard the gunshots above the roar of the helicopter, but he could tell from the way the Lieutenant had been thrown that they'd come from high up and that way, from the top of the terminal building tower.
He cut loose with a long burst from his MP5, screaming "Cover! Cover! Sniper on the tower!" as loud as he could. Other SEALs reacted in the same instant. MacKenzie sent a stream of green tracers slashing through the terminal's windows, and then Garcia's M203 spoke, slamming a 40mm grenade into the tower walkway, where it detonated with a flash and a bang and a sparkling shower of steel fragments and broken glass. Bodies... no, pieces of bodies spun lazily through the air, accompanied by an avalanche of shattered bricks and concrete.
Roselli was beside the Lieutenant in a second, crouching over him. "L-T! L-T! Can you hear me?" Oh, God, his blacks were sticky with blood. Shit, shit, shit! Where was all the damned blood coming from? The Skipper was wearing a Kevlar bullet-proof combat vest, of course, but it looked like he'd taken a round in the right shoulder. That was okay... sure. A ticket home and his arm in a sling, but he'd be up and back in full working mode in a few weeks, just like in the fucking movies.
"Outa my way, Chief!" Doc Ellsworth was there, shoving him aside. Roselli didn't want to leave. "Damn it, Chief, out of the way! I've got him!"
Turning, Roselli stared up at the control tower. The large, slanted windows had been blown out, and one side looked as though a giant had taken a hungry bite out of it. "Two-IC!" he yelled over the tactical channel. "This is Roselli!"
"DeWitt here," he heard. "Go ahead."
"The L-T's down! Damn it, I thought you said that fuckin' tower was fuckin' clear!"
"Okay, Razor. Chill out." He heard a click as DeWitt changed channels. "Platoon, this is Two-IC. The Lieutenant's down. I've got command. Acknowledge!"
"I hear you," MacKenzie's voice replied. "Blue copies."
"Acknowledged, Lieutenant," Chief Kosciuszko's voice added. "Gold copies!"
The man Cotter had knocked down was sitting up nearby, cradling his arm and rocking back and forth. "I'm hit! I'm hit! God, I'm hit!"
Roselli crouched beside him. It looked like a round had punched through the guy's safari jacket sleeve, bloodying his arm. A graze, nothing more. "You'll live," he said bluntly. "Hold still." He popped open one of his pouches, pulled out a roll of gauze, and quickly wrapped the man's arm.
"My attache case. Where's my attache case?"
Roselli retrieved it. "Here. Now get the fuck back with the rest of your people."
"But..."
"Move it, you numb-nuts dumb-ass son of a bitch!"
The UN man blinked at him in shock, then scrambled away, clutching his briefcase to his chest. Roselli turned back to Ellsworth.
"How's the L-T, Doc? Just a shoulder, right?"
"Shut up, Razor." Something in his voice, the intensity of his expression as he lifted Cotter's arm and probed his side with bloody fingers, told Roselli that it was more than a flesh wound. He could see the blood welling up beneath the Lieutenant's bullet-proof vest, coming through the vest's armhole just beneath his arm. Ellsworth started packing the space with whole rolls of gauze.
Cotter's head rolled to one side. "Doc..."
"You lay still, Skipper. You took a round in the side."
"Can't... feel m' legs."
"Shit." Ellsworth looked at Roselli. "Damn it, Razor, make yourself useful! Get me a Stokes from the helo!"
"Right, Doc."
The UN people had finished off-loading the cardboard boxes from the two Land Rovers onto the first Sea Stallion, then pulled back as the pilot fed power to the rotors and lifted from the tarmac with shrill thunder. Seconds later, the number-two Sea Stallion touched down in the beacon-lit spot evacuated by the first. As the crew chief lowered the rear ramp, Roselli ran up and jumped aboard. "We got a man down!" he yelled. "Gimme a Stokes!"
The crew chief pulled a Stokes stretcher off the bulkhead, a lightweight, open coffin-shape of wire mesh and white canvas straps used for transporting wounded. Roselli carried it back to Ellsworth on the double, then helped the corpsman gently lift Cotter into the basket.
"He took a round right through the armhole in his vest," Ellsworth said as they strapped him down securely. He spoke rapidly, and Roselli had the impression that he wasn't even speaking directly to him. "Collapsed his right lung and I think it went out through his spine! Damned, damned bad luck the Kevlar didn't catch it! Shit! Shit! Friggin' blood loss. Did it nick the post-caval? Gotta get him BVES, stat." Doc looked up at Roselli suddenly. "C'mon! Help me with him. Easy now."
Wildly, fragments of first-aid training flitted through Roselli's mind, Don't move a victim with a back injury! Except when leaving him where he was would be more dangerous.
The second Sea Stallion was loading now, the rescued UN inspectors and Hercules crewmen filing aboard between two SEALs standing guard. Among them, Roselli glimpsed the man Cotter had saved, marked by the white bandages on his arm, his briefcase clutched to his chest like a shield. Good riddance to the bastard. If the L-T hadn't been trying to save his ass...
Commands crackled over Roselli's radio, but none included his call sign and he ignored them. The SEAL platoon was starting to pull back from the airport buildings. The Sea Stallion was loaded, its ramp closing like the jaw of some gape-mouthed fish. The helo rose from the tarmac in a whirlwind of noise and dust, then swung low across the runway, angling toward the west and vanishing into night. One of the SuperCobras paced it.
Ellsworth and Roselli positioned themselves on either side of Cotter's Stokes, grabbed the carry straps, and lugged him toward the LZ where the third transport chopper was just touching down. Together, with an assist from the Marine crew chief, they hoisted him onto the Sea Stallion before the rear ramp was all the way down, then scrambled aboard themselves. Two by two, the rest of the SEALs followed. Three savage explosions ripped through the night as the trucks parked next to the terminal exploded one after the other. Garcia and Frazier, Gold Squad's demo man, had been busy setting charges while the rest of the SEALs covered the perimeter.
That perimeter was shrinking now as more and more of the SEALs climbed up the Sea Stallion's ramp. MacKenzie and Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt were the last two men aboard.
"Let's go!" DeWitt yelled, holding his microphone to his lips, making a circling motion with his free hand. "All aboard! Haul ass!"
With a roar, the Sea Stallion lifted into the night sky, turning toward the west. As Roselli stared out the still-open rear doors, he watched the C-130 parked in front of the Shuaba terminal, kept watching as the Hercules crumpled, an orange flower blossoming from the root of its port wing. Then the fuel tanks touched off, and in seconds the UN C-130 was a single sheet of flame, its fuselage and wings a wire-work skeleton half glimpsed through the raging, hungry blaze. Smaller explosions took out the two Land Rovers an instant later, tearing out their guts and scattering smoking bits of engine across the runway. When the Iraqis returned with the dawn to reclaim their airport, they would find not one vehicle, not one piece of American equipment left behind intact for them to claim as spoils of war. With a whine, the ramp slid up and the rear doors clamped shut, cutting off Roselli's view of Shuaba.
He turned back to Ellsworth, who was still working on the L-T. The Stokes was lying in the center of the chopper's cargo deck, and a clear plastic oxygen mask had been strapped over Cotter's paint-blacked face. There were bubbles of blood clustered around the Lieutenant's nostrils, and more blood at the corner of his mouth. His breathing beneath the mask was rasping and labored, audible even over the roar of the Sea Stallion's rotors. MacKenzie was kneeling beside the Stokes, holding a plastic bottle filled with clear liquid aloft as the Doc threaded a thick needle into a vein in Cotter's left inside elbow. The other SEALs of Third Platoon, along with the helo's Marine crew chief, watched from a circle about the tableau, impassive. They all knew that if Doc couldn't save the Skipper, nobody could.
"Shit," Doc said, rocking back on his heels. His arms were bloody, clear to his elbows. He pried up one of Cotter's eyelids, staring at the pupil. "How long to Kuwait?"
"It's almost a hundred miles to Kuwait City," the Marine crew chief said. "Call it thirty minutes."
"Shit, shit, shit!" Doc started unzipping and unhooking the L-T's combat gear and discarding it on the helo's deck, using a pair of blunt-tipped bandage scissors to cut away his fatigue shirt. Roselli helped, as MacKenzie continued to hold the IV bottle in the air. By the light of the helo's battle lanterns, the L-T's skin looked death-pale where it wasn't crusted with blood.
Roselli felt a creeping, nightmare presentiment. He'd seen death before. He had been in the Navy for twelve years and in the Teams for seven. His first time under fire had been in Panama, where he'd been wounded in the assault at Paitilla Airfield. Four of his squad mates had been the very first American fatalities of Operation Just Cause, four good friends killed in a clusterfuck where elite SEALs had been thrown like cannon fodder against barricaded defenders with machine guns, then ordered to hold the position all night for reinforcements that were late in arriving.
The bond between members of a SEAL platoon is close, closer than any other human relationship Roselli could imagine. Though he wasn't married, he knew SEALs who were... and to a man they seemed to value the camaraderie of their fellow SEALs and swim buddies more than they did their own wives.
Thinking of wives reminded Roselli of Donna, Cotter's wife. And they had a kid. Oh, damn... damn!
0305 hours (Zulu +3)
Helo Cowboy One
Cotter awoke, aware of faces bending over him, fuzzy against the glare of lights. Pain... he felt pain... but it wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. Funny, he couldn't feel a thing below his diaphragm.
"Where?"
Was that Doc's face peering down into his? Hard to tell. "We're aboard the helo, L-T," Doc's voice said. "You just rest easy."
"The men?" It was hard to speak, hard to make himself heard. Each breath was a small agony, and he wasn't sure Doc could hear above the background roar of the rotors.
Doc's face dipped lower, turning. "What was that, Sir?"
"The... the men. Get them... out."
"Everybody got out, Skipper. You're the only one who stopped a bullet. Why the friggin' hell didn't you duck?" Doc's voice was light, bantering, but Cotter could hear the tightness behind the words. "Damn it, what kind of example is that for you to set for your men?"
"Mission?.."
"All three helos made it out, Skipper. Everybody made it out. Mission complete. Now shut the hell up and let me work. You've got a hole in your side and you're losing blood. Understand me? Skipper? Do you hear me?"
Cotter heard, though the faces and lights had blurred to a soft and indistinguishable white haze. Was he dying? His thoughts touched lightly on Donna and Vickie, but they slipped away. Somehow, he couldn't hold onto the memory of their faces, and that raised a small stab of guilt. He tried to draw a breath, bracing against the pain... but nothing would come. He tasted blood, hot and thick and choking, weighing down his throat and chest. Couldn't breathe.
His boys were out safe. That was good. And the mission a success... what had it been? He tried to think, couldn't remember. Oh, yeah. Training mission, working with the Marines at Vieques, the big island east of Puerto Rico. It was nice there, a tropical paradise. Sunny beaches. Warm water. He loved Puerto Rico. Training session. How had he been hurt? Accidents happened, even in training... especially in SEAL training.
Goddamn, he was proud of his boys, every one of them. The best warriors, the best men in the whole God damned world.
The white haze was turning dark around the outside, like a tunnel. Funny. He couldn't even remember Donna's face, but he could see the SEALs he'd worked with and commanded over the years, every one of them, like they were right there with him.
"Proud... of... you," he said. Damn he was proud of his boys.
0306 hours (Zulu +3)
Helo Cowboy One
"Lieutenant!" Ellsworth was kneeling over the Stokes, both hands on the center of Cotter's chest, pumping down on a heart that stubbornly refused to beat. "God damn it, don't you die on me! Lieutenant!"
Roselli, at the L-T's head, had pulled off the O mask at Doc's instructions and was holding an AMBU mask over Cotter's bloody nose and mouth, squeezing the inflated bag to ventilate the Skipper's lungs.
Doc kept pumping at the Skipper's chest. "L-T! SEALs don't quit! They don't know how to quit! They're too stupid to quit! Lieutenant!"
At last, though, Ellsworth slumped back on his haunches, a stricken look on his face. "Goddamnit," he said, his voice empty. "God damn it to hell!"
"You did what you could, Doc," MacKenzie said.
Roselli stared at the L-T's face, stunned. The Lieutenant couldn't be dead... he couldn't!
Abruptly, Ellsworth shook off Mac's hand and resumed pumping at Cotter's heart, but Roselli already knew it was too late. They would keep working at him until they got him aboard a medevac at K-City, but it wasn't going to do one damned bit of good.
The Skipper was dead. Dead. Blown away by some half-assed rag-head who probably barely knew one end of a rifle from the other.
Roselli felt like he wanted to cry.
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