Deathrace (24 page)

“We might not have ten. Look at number six.”

She checked it. “Good plan, this one is a snap.” She
showed Al Adams where to put the TNAZ charges on this one, and ran back to number six.

“Found that plutonium yet?” she asked.

Murdock ran to Franklin, and told him to ask the men in Farsi where the plutonium was being kept. He did, but nobody said a word.

He asked the question again. Still silence. He jerked one of the civilians to his feet and put a Colt carbine’s muzzle against the man’s head. Again he asked them. One man wavered. Franklin moved the carbine, and fired one round through the thigh of the man he held up. The shot civilian screamed, and Franklin dropped him to the floor. He jerked up the man who had seemed about to talk.

“Where?” he asked again. The man shook so hard he couldn’t talk. He pointed. Franklin pushed him in that direction. He went to the far end of the building, and showed them a panel on the floor. He caught a ring and pulled. The six-foot-wide panel lifted up on a counterbalance and a steel box, two feet square, rose on some kind of an elevator.

Kat ran up and looked at it.

“Heavy as hell,” she said. “Steel box that’s lead-lined to hold the plutonium. At least they’re protecting it right. Now we need a truck. Look around for a forklift of some kind.”

She ran back to the fifth bomb, which she had to work more on.

Murdock heard the firing from the rear. A voice came over the radio.

“L-T, we got a whole shitpot full of Iranians back here just pissed off to hell. Could use some help.”

Murdock ran toward the back door, shoving in a new magazine. He went through the door low, and felt bullets whine over his head. He was belly-down behind an old car of some make. Past it he saw flashes from at least a dozen weapons.

“Hold fire,” he directed in the mike. “Make the bastards
come closer, and get in the light so we don’t fire blind. Conserve your ammo. We don’t fire blind. Conserve your ammo. We don’t have all that much.”

The firing continued from the back for a moment, then slackened. Were they going to move forward slowly, or come firing at a run?

“Hey, cowboys, we’ve got some action out front,” Ed DeWitt said. “The jerk in the jeep patrol is driving right up to us. We’ll take him out, and try to grab the jeep for Kat. You said you needed transport, right?”

Murdock whispered into his mike. “Yeah, nail the jeep. We also could use three more men back here. The bastards are about to make a charge at us. Get them over here fast. Through the building. Do it now.”

24

Three more SEALs charged outside through the rear door, and went prone behind a car and a trailer. Murdock spread them out a little more. Then he saw shadows move into the light. His first 3-round burst from his submachine gun led the way as the SEALs all opened fire.

Ten of the attackers went down in the first barrage; three more turned and ran into the night. Murdock grunted.

“Shouldn’t be this easy,” he said into the mike. “Keep up the watch. If anybody comes into the light, gun him.”

He crawled back to the door, and slipped into the assembly room. Kat had just finished the last partial bomb. All had TNAZ charges on them waiting for the timer/ detonators.

Murdock touched his mike. “Ed, what’s happening?”

“Two silenced shots just wiped out the driver. We have that jeep. Where do you want it?”

Murdock looked for a truck door. There had to be one. He found it on the back side, just off from where the plutonium box sat. He told Al Adams to open it.

Douglas and Chin had come back to the building when they heard there was a captive jeep. Now the two looked around the big room. On the far side, under a tarp, they found an electric forklift. Douglas crawled on it and hit the switch, and the forklift moved. He checked the panel of instruments again, grinned, and turned the right switch. The rig began to move forward. He steered it around the partial nuclear bombs to the big steel box. It sat on a pallet board.

“Load it,” Murdock said. Joe Douglas worked the steel blades of the forklift into the slots of the pallet board, and hit the up switch. The forklift contacted the top of the pallet and strained slowly with the weight. Then it inched upward.

“Damn thing must weigh two tons,” Douglas said. He watched it come up, and when it was high enough, he moved the forklift forward.

“We’ve got company out front,” DeWitt said on the radio. Murdock sent three of the SEALs out to help.

The firing began.

Douglas concentrated on getting the steel box over the middle of the back of the jeeplike rig. Then he lowered it gently. The pallet board crushed part of the backseat, then the passenger’s seat, as it settled onto the jeep’s body. Murdock went to the rig and shook it side to side. The little utility vehicle didn’t turn over.

He waved at Douglas. “See if the engine will move the thing. If it will, take it just outside and shut the big door.”

Douglas started the jeep, and backed it slowly toward the door. It moved a little faster. “Should work okay,” he said.

Murdock nodded, and went to Al Adams. “Put the timer detonators in the charges but don’t set any time on them yet. That’s the last thing.”

He ran to the front door, opened it, and crawled out. DeWitt had his men behind any cover he could find. They had shot out the lights that had bathed the area, and now the whole place was black, except for an occasional muzzle blast from the dark.

Murdock found Ed.

“Must be a batch of them out there, but they aren’t firing much. What the hell’s going on?”

“Not sure. Hit every muzzle blast you see.”

The firing picked up then. A machine gun cut in and drilled a line of nine rounds into the wall of the building over their heads.

“Get on that MG,” DeWitt spoke into his mike.

Two MP-5’s chattered out six rounds each, and the MG went silent.

“Too damn quiet out there,” Murdock said. “They don’t want to use any heavy stuff against this building. Their nuclear bombs are inside. They don’t want to shoot anything in here that might hurt the bombs. Somebody is holding them back. The minute we leave here, they’ll be all over us.”

“We’ll have to leave soon. You have the plutonium loaded on that little jeep?”

“Ready to go.”

The small arms fire picked up then. It was longer range, and the rounds came from down the street. The rounds went parallel with the assembly building. That way they wouldn’t hurt anything inside, Murdock decided. He had the men move to better protection. They returned fire, and again the enemy’s shooting slowed down, then stopped.

“What the hell are they doing?” DeWitt asked.

Murdock shook his head.

They heard it coming, and couldn’t identify it. Sounded like a truck, then a tracked rig.

“Half-track armored personnel carrier,” Murdock said. “Where’s Magic and his fifty?”

“He’s outside the fence,” somebody said. “We can use forty-millimeters on this rig.”

“Yes, how many grenade launchers we have out here?” Ed asked.

Four men chimed in with affirmative answers. “When he
gets in range, use HE and WP alternately. All four of you fire four rounds each. Get ready, he’s coming closer.”

The rig had no headlights, to make it harder for them to find it. The first WP helped, spraying the white phosphorous in the street, lighting up the area, and outlining the halftrack coming. The second HE found part of the half-track and it veered to the left, then got back on course. A .50-caliber machine gun chattered from the weapons carrier, and the rounds slammed into parked rigs and the side of the building.

“Fernandez, you out here?” DeWitt called on the radio.

“Yes, I’m waiting for a good shot.”

Two more 40mm rounds exploded almost at the same time. One hit on the cab, the other the rear of the rig, and it spun around and stalled. It was close enough then that the rest of the men could use their guns on it. Three Iranians fled the injured rig.

“L-T, we’ve got some trouble back here, side door,” Murdock’s earpiece told him.

Murdock crawled through the street door and ran across the building to the side door. He’d left four men there. “Trouble?” he asked as he ran.

“Yeah, troops coming up. Can’t tell how many. Sounds like a whole damn company.”

“Got any WP?”

“I have two,” Lampedusa said.

“Put one out in front where you think they are,” Murdock said.

A moment later Lampedusa fired the round at fifty yards. It burst in a star pattern of brilliant white fire. For just a second, it outlined a line of troops marching toward them. The fire panicked the men and they broke and ran to the rear.

“The other one, Lam, at a hundred.”

He fired it, and the troops kept running.

“Murdock, we’ve got some new company, sounds like a fucking tank,” DeWitt said on the Motorola.

Murdock ran to the front again and bellied out to where DeWitt knelt behind a two-foot-high concrete block wall.

“He stopped. Don’t know why.” DeWitt said it. A moment later they heard a rumble again and the unmistakable clanking of a tank rolling toward them.

“Great,” Murdock said. “At least a tank doesn’t have any headlights. The forty mike-mike won’t touch a tank. We’d never get close enough out here to throw some TNAZ at him. What the hell, it might be time to cut and run. We’re almost done inside. Keep me up to date.” Murdock ran back inside, and found Kat. She sat looking at the partly made bombs.

“They didn’t do half bad a job,” she said. “Another three weeks, and they would be almost ready.”

“Sorry to upset their timetable. Can that steel box stand to be tipped over and rolled around?”

She frowned. “In the States I’d say it could. Here, I don’t know. Better to treat it like a seven-layer wedding cake— with extreme care.”

“Get to the jeep and wait,” he said to Kat. He motioned to Al Adams. “Set the timers now for fifteen minutes, and activate them as you go. Do them damn fast, then get out the back door.”

He ran to the side door. Nobody was firing. He pulled the four men in and took them to the rear door. “Cover this jeep. Don’t let anybody near it. Kat is in it with the plutonium. It’s got to take a ride.”

Back inside, he called to Franklin, who still watched the Iranians. “Find out if there’s any roads down this back side of the facility into the hills.”

Franklin asked the men. Most shook their heads. One small man with no teeth lifted his hand. He chattered a minute, then Franklin grinned.

“L-T, he says there’s a gate down about two hundred
meters. A service road runs down there and off into the hills a mile or so.”

“Good. Bring him with us, then chase the rest of the civilians out the side door over there and tell them to run for their lives. This building is going to blow up.”

The civilians went out the door and sprinted away into the darkness. The one with the wounded leg hobbled as quickly as he could behind them.

More firing came from the front. Adams finished setting the timer/detonators.

“We’ve got thirteen minutes, Skipper,” he said.

The three men ran for the front door. At the moment it was quiet out front. They didn’t even hear the tank.

“Ed, what’s happening?” Murdock asked his Motorola.

“The tank turned off. I keep hearing more troops arriving, but they aren’t firing. Can’t figure it out.”

“Timers set inside. We have eleven minutes. Let’s move to the back of the building. We’ve got the plutonium. Move.”

The shadows lifted up, and filtered to the right. Murdock, Adams, and Franklin ran that way. They made it to the back just as a barrage of gunfire opened up on the front of the building where they had been.

The jeep purred quietly. “Move it,” Murdock said. They drove away to the rear as quietly as possible. Ten SEALs led the way at a slow trot. The civilian pointed where to drive. They came to a half dozen Iranian soldiers in the darkness, but they ran away without firing a shot.

They had to make a slight move to the left to go around some buildings, and when they did, they came into the glare of searchlights and the tank with its cannon aimed directly at them.

“To the right side,” Murdock bellowed. Douglas hit the throttle and raced the little jeep behind a building just as a round from the cannon slammed past them and exploded
fifty yards away. The tank lumbered forward. Murdock could see a dozen men behind it.

Murdock called Joe Douglas up with his MG. “Lay down some fire around the corner to bleed those troops off the back of the tank,” Murdock said. Douglas pumped out 5-round bursts within twenty seconds.

Murdock dug out a quarter-pound block of TNAZ and pushed in a timer/detonator. “I want two more men up here with TNAZ charges with timers in them, now.”

Doc Ellsworth and Ron Holt ran up with their bombs ready.

“When that tank gets in range, we set the timers for ten seconds and throw them for the tank treads. Be sure the set is ten seconds. We don’t want any preemies. Get ready, he’s almost here.”

They were taking some return fire from the men in back of the tank, who had moved to the far side now. The tank nosed toward them, now twenty yards away, but it had no target except a building. Nobody was working the machine gun that must be on top.

The tank clanked and clattered forward. Murdock didn’t even try to figure out what kind of a tank it was. It was an old one, but still had a deadly sting, with a 75 to 90mm rifle mounted in it. It came closer. When it was ten yards away, Murdock said, “Now.” The three set the timers at ten seconds and threw the bombs.

Murdock’s went first and landed just in front of the tank tread. He counted off the seconds. Holt’s went next, and hit the tread on top and bounced off. Doc Ellsworth’s bomb landed just in front of the side of the tread and bounced on the driving mechanism.

“… eight, nine, ten,” Murdock counted. His bomb under the tread went off. The big machine hadn’t quite rolled all the way over the bomb, and it exploded with a shattering roar, lifting the side of the tank a foot off the ground. Two seconds later the bomb beside the tread blew
up, and then Doc’s TNAZ block on the inside of the tread went off, shattering the track and blowing it off the drivers. It acted as a brake, as the tank kept trying to run forward but only pivoted in a circle around the dead track.