Specter

6

The AC-130U Specter was the direct descendant of the Spooky gunships so beloved of ground troops during the Vietnam War. The Spookys had been C-47s, WW II-era cargo planes mounting a deadly trio of 7.62 miniguns pointed out their left door and windows.

So effective had they been in close air support of ground troops that the U.S. Air Force had expanded on the idea. The AC-130U Specter gunship was a very specially modified C-130 Hercules, an ungainly transport remade into the image of a special warfare warrior. The 130U model mounted a single 25mm five-barreled General Electric Gau-12U Gatling Gun. Fed by a two-canister automated loader system, the high-speed gun could deliver a rate of fire of either 3600 or 4200 rounds per minute. The Specter also mounted a 40mm cannon and a 105mm howitzer, and all weapons were linked to laser range finders, an infrared sensor, radar, low-light television, and a sophisticated fire-control computer. All three weapons were mounted in the aircraft's port side, like the broadside of some ancient war galleon. Forward, a soundproofed battle control center sported an impressive array of television monitors, computers, radar screens, and IR sensor displays.

It was there that Major Peter K. Selby, the aircraft's fire control officer, sat with two sensor operators, scanning banks of television monitors. Three particular display monitors showed what the gunship's weapons were pointed at. The images on the screens were indistinguishable from those of a black-and-white television set, save that each was centered on a set of cross-hairs. Viewed in infrared, the scene below was day bright, unusual only in the fact that the engines of the Mi-8 Hip and an army truck parked nearby were glowing as brightly as a neon sign.

"Looks like they're having a damned party down there," Selby said. "You got 'em sorted yet?"

"No, sir," one of the sensor operators said. "Somebody's mad at someone, though. There's a hell of a lot of shooting going on down there."

Selby nodded. He could see several groups of men moving across the beach, and the muzzle flashes from their automatic weapons were distinctly visible. A helicopter was parked on the highway near a line of trees, and there was a hell of a lot of activity along the coast highway.

"Any sign of anti-air assets?"

"Negative, sir. Not so far. The Harriers have been circling for ten minutes, though, inviting them to come out and play."

The Specter gunship, flying low and slow, would be an easy target for enemy aircraft. Escort for this mission was being flown by a pair of Marine Harrier IIs flying off the Nassau. Any sign of Yugoslav MiGs, SAMs, or mobile flak, and the Harriers would pounce like a couple of hawks.

"Okay, then we can probably assume we're clear," Selby said. "Let's see if we can raise our guys." Reaching to an overhead console, he switched on a radio, adjusted the frequency, then picked up a hand microphone. "Nomad, Nomad," he called. "This is Night Rider. Do you copy? Over."

There was no immediate answer. The angle of the scene revealed on the TV monitors slowly changed as the Specter gunship circled the battle on the beach at a range of over two miles, and at an altitude of eight thousand feet, just above the lowest layer of clouds. The Specter's infrared optics penetrated the overcast almost as easily as it penetrated the night.

"Nomad, Nomad, this is Night Rider. Do you copy? Over."

"Night Rider! Night Rider!" sounded from an overhead speaker. The voice coming over the air-ground channel was scratchy with static, and Selby thought he could hear the thud and rattle of gunfire in the distance. "This is Nomad. Go ahead!"

It was a strange feeling to be talking to a man who was, at that moment, under fire. Selby had experienced the strangeness of this high-tech participation in battle before, during Desert Storm and he'd never gotten over it. Here, aboard the AC-130, the only sound was the drone of the aircraft's engines, the hum of electronics, the low voices of the sensor operators. Except for the tilt to the deck, he might as well have been in an air-conditioned room in the Pentagon basement. The man he was talking to, just a few miles away, was fighting for his life.

"Nomad, we are circling your approximate position at eight thousand. Understand you might need assistance, over."

"Night Rider, Nomad, that is affirmative," the voice came back. "Wait one while we sort ourselves out for you."

"Roger that. Night Rider, standing by." He turned to one of the sensor operators. "Let's back off a bit and see if we can get a shot of more of the beach, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

The scene receded as the operator adjusted the lens magnification. Damn, there sure as hell was some kind of a ruckus going on down there. Selby could see dozens of men, and a lot of gunfire. But on infrared TV, all uniforms looked alike and there was no way to pick out the ones worn by Navy SEALS.

"There, sir," Sergeant Zanowski, the senior operator, said. "Clear signal. There's another."

Three… no, five bright stars had appeared on the screen, three up on the beach, two more by the edge of the black water. There were two more now, also in the water. Each SEAL was wearing a standard survival vest strobe attached to his assault vest, but capped with an IR filter. Switched on, the light was invisible to the hostiles, but it showed up clearly to the AC-130's IR cameras.

"Nomad, this is Night Rider. I see seven lights on the beach or in the water. Confirm your ID with a flash, over."

"Roger, Night Rider."

The IR lights flicked off one by one, then flicked on again.

"Okay, Nomad, we confirm your position. Everybody else is a bad guy. Heads down! Here come the goodies!"

"Roger that, Night Rider."

Selby reached for an intercom switch. "Colonel Carlotti," he said. "We have Nomad on the screen and we have positive identification."

"Very well, Major. You have my permission to fire."

"Gunners, this is Major Selby. Hang onto your jockstraps, boys. We've got firing command! Sergeant Zanowski?"

"Locked in, sir. The computer has it." The sensor operator grinned as he flicked off a row of switches, releasing the last of the armament safeties. "Firing phasers."

The actual firing was done by the aircraft's computer.

"Blue Squad!" Murdock yelled. "Hit the deck and stay down! We've got incoming!"

"Yeah, big time!" Roselli added, and then the night lit up with fire.

At 3,600 rounds per minute, the high-velocity shells were shrieking out of the sky at a rate of sixty per second, each 25mm projectile traveling practically nose-to-tail with its neighbors in a solid stream of lead and high explosives. Fired at night, the rotary Gatling cannon seemed to be loosing a bolt of white-hot lightning… or the phaser beam of a popular TV and movie science-fiction series.

The beam slashed in from over the sea, illuminating the clouds as it burned through them, then passed above the heads of the SEALs with a shrill, air-shaking howl that was palpable. The AC-130's war-load for this pass was HEI — high explosive incendiary — and where those rounds hit there was destruction, instant, accurate, and devastatingly total. Poplar trees shuddered, cracked, and exploded left and right; part of the seawall dissolved in hurtling chunks of broken concrete; portions of the highway buckled and vanished in a searing cascade of explosions that swept across dirt and wall and pavement in a deadly, sparkling dance. The Mi-8 helicopter, its rotors still slowly turning as it rested on the highway, seemed to crumple like a deflating toy, sagging to the side before on-board fuel reserves were touched off and the aircraft fireballed. Thunderous explosions lit up the night as brightly as that shaft of glowing fire raining down from the sky. The Hip's five-bladed rotor lifted up off the helicopter's rotor shaft and cart-wheeled through the air; an instant later, the sky-fire brushed across the military truck parked nearby, and that vehicle added its touch of flame to the firestorm raging over the Hip's spectacularly dissolving framework.

And men died. They died as the stream from the sky touched them and shredded their bodies in whirling fragments; died as their uniforms burst into flames; died as bits and pieces of metal or chunks of stone or shards stripped from ricocheting bullets scythed through them like volleys of machine-gun fire. The noise was deafening, overwhelming, a thunderous cacophony piled atop the buzzsaw shriek of incandescent shells.

Murdock lay facedown on the beach, covering Garcia's body with his own as Roselli lay nearby, refusing to look up into that hellfire from the sky. With the Specter gunship's fire computer-directed, it was accurate to within five feet of the chosen target across a range of almost one mile. With an eerie and terrible mathematical precision, the Specter drew a curtain of flame and death between the SEALs and their foes.

When the fire ceased, scant seconds after it had begun, the silence was more unnerving in a way than the noise and flame had been. The beach was brilliantly lit now by the Hip's funeral pyre, but all gunfire had ceased.

"C'mon, Razor," Murdock said. "Help me get Boomer to the water."

"What about his weapon?"

"Forget it. Give me a hand!"

"Right, L-T."

Together, they half carried, half dragged Garcia toward the water's edge. They were met there by Doc and Magic, who'd swum back ashore when they realized that Murdock and the others were under fire. "I got him, L-T," Doc said. As Murdock, Roselli, and Magic formed a half perimeter at the surf's edge, Doc broke out his medical kit and began working on Garcia's wounds. A terrible sound could be heard now wavering above the crackle of flames, a low, monotonous moaning sound, a chorus of many voices from many terribly wounded men. Murdock could see several Serb soldiers moving against the firelight near the seawall, but he held his fire. If the Yugoslavs could see the SEALs where they were gathered at the edge of the water, they were ignoring them. More likely, the fire had so ruined their night vision that they couldn't see a thing right now beyond the immediate circle illuminated by the fire. Besides, they must have all they could handle right now, tending to their wounded.

"That's all I can do for him now," Doc said moments later. "We gotta get a medevac for him, stat."

"Well, we can't medevac him from here," Murdock replied. "Let's get him off the beach and into the water."

They discarded NVDs and boots, automatic weapons and ammo, Kevlar jackets and most of their assault vest loadouts as soon as they were past the wave line and well into deep water, keeping only their knives, radios, and survival gear. They took turns, one man pulling Garcia along with one arm thrown across his shoulder and chest, while another swam alongside to make sure the unconscious man's head stayed above water. Where the air had felt chilly, the sea seemed almost warm, though Murdock knew that was an illusion. They struck out from the shore, angling slightly south to counter the south-to-north offshore current. A twelve-mile swim with a badly wounded man. They'd never make it, unless…

Roselli grabbed Murdock's arm and pointed. "Hey! L-T! Look! It's Gold Squad!"

Murdock was almost too tired to look, so drained was he by the brutal intensity of that short firefight on the beach. He let Roselli turn him in the water, however, until he could just make out the indistinct forms of more night-cloaked SEALs riding low in a pair of CRRCs.

"Lieutenant Murdock!" Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt, Third Platoon's XO and the leader of Gold Squad, called. "Here!"

Hands grabbed at Murdock's arms. "No," he said. "Get Boomer on board."

"We got him, L-T. Come on."

"Christ, Two-Eyes!" Murdock said as he was rolled out of the water and onto the raft. DeWitt's team nickname was drawn from his position as platoon "2IC," the second-in-command. "I don't think those people like us."

"From out here it sounded like you boys got quite a reception."

"That's nothing to the reception we're gonna get at the debrief," Murdock said. "You pick up Mac?"

"He's in the other raft, L-T. With the package. A chopper's on the way from Nassau. God, it's good to see you guys. You had me worried!"

"That," Murdock said with feeling, "makes two of us."

Narednik Jankovic was the first one to find the blood, a coagulated patch on the beach close to the high-tide line. Most of it had already been absorbed by the sand, but there was no mistaking the slick, dark stain that remained as he turned his flashlight on it. Footprints were visible as well, along with a submachine gun dropped by one of the invaders.

He studied that weapon carefully. Heckler and Koch… though the fact that it was a German gun meant nothing. HK made some of the finest firearms in the world, and plenty of people, from the British SAS to a dozen European and Mideast terrorist groups, used them. The SD3 model, with integral sound suppressor too. The very best. He had the feeling that if he were to disassemble the weapon, he would find that every serial number on every part had been removed or was otherwise untraceable.

He turned his flash back on the blood and the ragged, double line of footprints moving down the shelf of the beach toward the water's edge. Those footprints closely flanked twin furrows that were most likely where a dead or wounded man's toes had plowed through the wet sand as he was dragged along. There was some more blood further along… and there… and there. There was something oddly comforting about that stain on the beach and the furrows in the sand, evidence that these commandos were human. They could be fought, could be shot and killed.

Jankovic needed that reassurance just now. The slaughter on the beach had been indescribable. In almost four years of fighting Bosniaks, Jankovic had seen plenty of death and suffering, but never, never had he seen anything to match the horror that he'd seen tonight. The faceless enemy had killed or wounded a dozen men in seconds, then somehow called down death incarnate from out of the overcast sky.

They can die. They can be killed.

Jankovic clung to that simple and comforting thought.

"Then what happened, Chief Roselli?"

Roselli's glance traveled from Dulaney, the Navy officer who'd been running the debriefing, to the three civilians in the steel-walled compartment, then across the table to Commander George Presley, Nassau's Combat Information Officer.

"Well, sir," Roselli said slowly, looking back at Commander Dulaney. "The Skipper started around the front of the truck on the left. I think he popped a couple of shots at the runner. I'm not sure."

"Did the man stop?"

"I think he did, sir. I'm pretty sure he was turning around."

"And Lieutenant Murdock shot him?" one of the civilians asked.

Damned suit, Roselli thought. "Uh, yes, sir."

"I see. Was he armed?"

"I don't know, sir. I was still quite a ways back and couldn't see real well. The truck was in the way."

"Do you know if any of the militia soldiers at the monastery tried to surrender?"

"Not that I know of, sir. It was all over pretty fast. If any of 'em wanted to, I doubt that they could have."

"What do you mean by that, Roselli?" Fletcher, the boss suit, asked. "That you weren't taking prisoners?"

"No, sir. I just mean we were in there just taking initials, cause we were moving too fast to take names."

"Did you understand, Chief," Fletcher said, "that your rules of engagement required you not to fire unless you were fired upon? That Lieutenant Murdock violated the ROEs by ordering you to open fire?"

"Well, we didn't have much fuckin' choice-"

"Chief!" Dulaney said sharply. "Please."

"Well, it's true! Excuse me, sir, but your agent would've been dead if we hadn't opened up when we did, and the whole op would've been for nothing."

Fletcher leaned over and whispered something to Dulaney.

"Very well, Chief," Dulaney said a moment later. "You may go."

"Thank you, sir."

Fletcher glanced down at a notebook in his hand. "And would you have, ah, Quartermaster First Class Martin Brown step in here, please?"

"Right, sure thing. Uh… listen, about the L-T-"

"That is all, Chief. Thank you."

"I just wanted to say that he-"

"That will be all, Roselli."

"Aye, aye, sir." Roselli rose, took a last look at the men gathered there, and walked out of the compartment. In the passageway outside, Prof, Doc, and Magic were waiting for him.

Just four hours ago, they'd been plucked from the sea off the Adriatic coast by a Navy SH-60 Seahawk off the Nassau. Flown back to the amphibious assault ship's flight deck, they'd been greeted before they even climbed out of the helo by a team of hospital corpsmen and a ship's doctor who'd bundled Garcia, strapped into a Stokes wire-frame stretcher, off to sick bay. While they were still climbing off the helo, they'd been met by Commander Dulaney himself, who'd told them they had two hours to get cleaned up and squared away for their debriefing.

Dulaney had not looked pleased.

When the SEALs had reported aboard the Nassau two weeks earlier, they'd brought full seabags as well as their combat gear; even SEALs couldn't run around aboard ship in their combat blacks all the time, and Murdock had always been a stickler for doing things the Navy way. "The fewer waves, the better," he'd told the platoon more than once, and so the SEALs had showered and shaved and changed into their blues.

Roselli had felt like he was under a damned magnifying glass throughout the briefing. Something had gone sour besides the mission itself, and he couldn't tell what it was.

"So how'd it go, Razor?" Magic asked.

"I'm not sure. Feels like they're railroading the Skipper, though." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "You're up next, Magic."

"Wish me luck, guys." The big SEAL sniper tugged at the bottom of his blue jumper, took a deep breath, and stepped through the compartment door.

"Shit," Doc said after the door had clanged shut. He folded his arms and leaned back against the bulkhead. "Here we go with the munchkin madness again."

"Aw," Prof added in a mincing, little boy's voice. "Are they upset that we bwoke their itty-bitty rules of engagement?"

"Something like that. Where's Mac and the L-T?"

"They went up on the flight deck. Something about needing some air."

"Don't blame 'em," Roselli said. "Maybe I'll join them. Uh, any word on Boomer?"

"Nope. He's still in sick bay. I imagine they'll fly him out today. Pneumothroax and he lost a lot of blood. They'll want him in a hospital Stateside pronto."

"Damn bad luck," Roselli said.

"Yeah, well, it happens," Higgins said. "He knew the odds when he got his Budweiser."

Roselli reached up and fingered the heavy, ugly gold emblem pinned to his dress blue jacket, just above its neatly ordered rows of colored ribbons. Eagle with outstretched wings. Anchor. Trident. Old-fashioned flintlock pistol. The "Budweiser" emblem that marked a man as a SEAL. "I guess so. Any word on what's going down? I feel like we're up for court-martial or worse. Mac got the package back okay, didn't he?"

"Turned it over to Dulaney soon as we stepped aboard," Higgins said. "Of course, things have been real tense with the Serbs all along. Maybe they're afraid that firefight's going to touch off some worse fighting."

"Well, shit," Roselli said with feeling. "Bring 'em on! Let's stop with the pussyfooting and settle this thing, right?"

"Rules of engagement," Doc snorted. "Who do they think they're shittin' anyway?"

Murdock and MacKenzie had not stayed on the flight deck for long. Nassau was in the middle of full flight deck ops, using her catapult to hurl Marine Harriers into the sky one after another. The noise on the flight deck was so loud that anyone without protective headgear would have been deafened in moments, and ordinary conversation, certainly, was impossible. Too, the stink of jet fuel made that "fresh air" Murdock had spoken of rather hard to find. After being confronted by a chief aviation boatswain's mate who told them both point blank that unless they had some specific business on his flight deck they'd both be pleased to go play tourist someplace the hell else, they decided to take the man's advice and find a spot for themselves somewhere out of the way.

The crew's lounge, aft and three levels down from the LPH's flight deck, normally didn't cater to either officers or master chief petty officers, and from the looks they were getting, Murdock decided that there probably wasn't any place aboard this ship where he and MacKenzie could unwind, at least not without collecting stares. A ship, even one as large as the Nassau with a complement of 58 officers, 882 enlisted men, and 1,924 Marines, is a tight, tiny community where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else, and where the only thing faster than radio communications is shipboard scuttlebutt. The SEALs had attracted a lot of attention since they'd come aboard two weeks ago, and Murdock still wasn't used to always being watched.

Screw it. He wanted a cola and he wanted someplace to sit and talk with Mac. They ignored the looks, got their drinks from a coin-operated machine near the compartment's forward door, and found themselves a table. The compartment was not too crowded at this hour of the morning. Two sailors were bent over a couple of arcade games aft, and several more were sitting on a sofa, watching television.

"They seemed pretty bent out of shape, Skipper," Mac said as they sat back in their seats. "They were hitting me with questions about the firefight at the monastery, and about you capping that guy who tried to surrender. How the hell did they find out about that?"

"Easy," Murdock said. "I told 'em. Hell, I'm not going to lie about something like that."

Mac shook his head. "Sometimes, Boss, you're just too much the frigging straight arrow."

"Hell, I didn't like doing it, but there was no way I was going to risk the mission screwing around with prisoners," Murdock said. "But I don't think that was what was bugging them. It was more like they were worried about, I don't know. What evidence we might have left behind."

"What, like our IBS? Boomer's piece? That stuff's all sterile."

"I know. It's just-"

Murdock stopped in mid-sentence, staring at the television monitor across the compartment.

"Lieutenant? What is it?"

Murdock gestured toward the TV. Nassau sported her own TV studio on board, but most programming was picked up from Armed Forces Network broadcasts and piped through the ship's closed-circuit network.

At the moment, an attractive, dark-haired, professional-looking woman was on the screen. Visible behind her was the familiar-looking facade of the St. Anastasias Monastery. "Oh, shit," Murdock said.

"Hey, son," Mac called to the sailors watching the program. "Could one of you turn that up, please?"

A second class obliged, and Murdock listened to the newscaster's words, comprehension dawning.

"… ian officials claim that American commandos carried out the predawn raid as a deliberate provocation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. One observer had this to say."

The woman was replaced on the screen by a military officer, an older man with the single star of a Serbian brigadier general on his gold-heavy epaulets.

"We are convinced this, this unprovoked attack is part of American campaign to win UN approval for further air strikes against Serb forces in Bosnia," the man said in heavily accented English. A subtitle appeared at the bottom of the screen, identifying him as General V. Mihajlovic. "We invite United Nations to come here, come see evidence of American aggression in Serbian internal affairs."

The general's face was replaced by a shot of the burned-out trucks in front of the monastery. Greasy black smoke was still curling from the wreckage. "So far," the woman reporter continued in a voice-over, "American officials here have refused to answer any questions about the incident, or to confirm that American aircraft took part a few hours later in an air-strike against Yugoslavian ground troops near the coast.

"For ACN, this is Marsha Shakarian, Mjini, Yugoslavia."

"That explains it," Murdock said. "The news networks got the story before the CIA."

"It's happened before, Boss."

"But that means they're going into ass-covering mode. I think the shit's about to hit the fan."