Direct Action (29 page)

Doc Ellsworth had been sitting back against a rock, the PRC-117 handset up to his ear spitting out nothing but hissing static, when a human voice broke in and said clearly, “Echo Seven Oscar, this is Hammer-One inbound, over?”

The transmission was encrypted, so Doc didn’t have to worry about tipping off the Syrians. “Hammer-One, this is Echo Seven Oscar, over.”

“Roger, Seven Oscar, we are ten minutes out, standing by for zone brief, over.”

There wasn’t any fucking landing zone, but if the guy wanted to be humored, Doc was willing to oblige. “Hammer-One. LZ is a ridgeline, twenty meters wide at our position. LZ is covered with boulders, will require ladder. Wind is from the west, twenty knots. Recommend you approach from the southeast along the ridgeline, retire in the same direction. Enemy positions eastern valley, ridgeline northeast five hundred meters. LZ is not under fire at this time. Seven PAX for pickup. One emergency medevac, one priority ambulatory. Will mark LZ with IR strobe, over.”

“Roger, Seven Oscar.” The Blackhawk pilot repeated back what Doc had told him to make sure there were no errors. Then: “We have a stretcher on the hoist for your emergency, over.”

“Roger,” Doc replied. “Let me know when you want the lights on. Seven Oscar out.” Doc raised the MX-300 microphone back up to his lips. “Birds are ten minutes out, got that?”

“Say again?” came the response.

Doc could clearly hear the explosions down the ridge. They were even louder coming over the radio. He enunciated each word this time. “Birds are ten minutes out, over.”

Razor Roselli was still being slammed about by the mortar blasts. “Got it!” he screamed.

2005 hours

North central Lebanese mountains

During BUD/S, Hell Week begins at 2100 hours on a Sunday night and continues nearly nonstop until Friday evening. Most of Thursday is spent in the demolition pit. The pit is one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet deep, surrounded by barbed wire and filled with mud. Two heavy ropes stretch across. Completely exhausted by constant physical exertion and lack of sleep, the SEAL trainees spend the day crawling under the barbed wire, over the ropes, and through the slimy mud while explosives are detonated all around them. Anyone inclined to crack under the strain of prolonged loud noise and explosive concussion does so in the pit, not on an operation.

The mortar fire ended. The tubes in the valley fell silent. Less than a minute later the last bombs fell on the ridge.

It took Razor Roselli a few seconds to get used to the quiet. He was still hearing explosions in his head. “Sound off,” he whispered into his microphone.

“Jaybird.”

“Magic.”

Lieutenant Murdock was beside him without a radio. “Sit
tight,” said Razor. The oldest trick in the book was for artillery or mortars to fire a mission, then, just when you were brushing the dirt off your uniform and congratulating yourself on your survival, resume firing.

It didn’t happen.

Murdock leaned over and whispered in Razor’s ear. “Let’s get out of here before the smoke clears and the Syrians show up to take inventory.”

“Right,” Razor whispered back. “Okay, we’re moving. Magic, you’re on rear security. Jaybird, take the point. I’ll help the lieutenant. Doc?”

“I’m listening,” Doc Ellsworth replied over the net.

“We’re coming in. Try not to shoot us.”

“Never happen,” Doc replied. “At least not as long as Jaybird owes me money.”

Jaybird quickly got out in front. Murdock slung an arm over Razor’s shoulder and limped along. Every time he put his foot down, the pain was like an electric shock. The blood had soaked into his trousers. Now it stuck to his skin and the wounds whenever he moved. It hurt. Bad. Especially when climbing rocks. He was seriously regretting his decision on the morphine. He’d talk to Doc once they got back to the LZ.

Behind them, a great many automatic weapons opened fire with a loud roar.

“They’re finally making their assault,” Murdock whispered to Razor.

“Chicken-shit sons of bitches had to sit down and call in a mortar prep before they went after four guys.”

“Take it as a compliment,” said Murdock.

The SEALs were well beyond where the Syrians were assaulting, but that didn’t mean they were out of danger. It was like being beyond the target line on a rifle range. You could still get shot even if they weren’t aiming at you.

Green tracers skipped off the rocks and made bright trails in the night sky. Rounds that had gone long were hitting the
ground all around the SEALs. They couldn’t stop. All they could do was hurry along and let fate throw the dice.

But that didn’t keep them from flinching every time a close one went by.

“I hate this,” Razor muttered quietly. “At least when you’re shooting back you’ve got something else to think about. With this shit you just have to walk along and wait to catch one.”

Murdock was well into that stage that every SEAL experiences first-hand during Hell Week. Normally, when the body hurt, the brain reacted to the pain. But whoever hung on to become a SEAL discovered that you could tear the brain loose from the body and just keep going. That’s all you had to do—just keep going. The brain eventually got tired of you not paying attention to all those signals to stop and take it easy. After a while it gave up and came along for the ride.

Jaybird was waiting for them in the rocks. “Doc’s right over there,” he said, pointing.

Murdock and Razor shuffled by him. Jaybird waited for Magic. You always counted your people off as you walked into a position. One or two bad guys might attach themselves to the back of your file and try to walk right in with you. SEALs had been known to pull that trick on others, so they were very careful not to fall for it themselves.

Razor positioned everyone in an all-around security perimeter. But he weighted most of his firepower to the northeast, where he expected the Syrians to be coming down the ridge very soon. Ed DeWitt and Doc covered the southern axis of the ridge, just in case some Syrians had been quietly moving up while all the shooting was going on. DeWitt was there because he could only shoot one-handed, Doc to protect the only remaining PRC-117.

Razor briefed everyone on how he wanted the LZ evacuated. SEALs worked it systematically; they didn’t just haul ass for the helicopters. Everyone knew their sectors of fire and order of withdrawal.

“Echo Seven Oscar, this is Hammer-One, over?” said the voice in Doc’s handset.

“This is Seven Oscar, go,” Doc replied.

“Hammer-One is two minutes out, over.”

“Roger,” said Doc. He, like the rest of the SEALs, could hear the Syrians moving down the ridgeline. “The LZ isn’t hot now, but it’s going to be when you come in. So hurry it up if you can, and heads up. Over.”

“Roger,” the pilot replied coolly. There wasn’t much to say after that. “Hammer-One, out.”

Doc spoke into his MX-300 microphone. “Two minutes.”

“Pull your tape,” Razor told them over the net. The SEALs had sewn strips of thermal tape onto the front, back, and sleeves of their Syrian camouflage jackets. The tape would show up in the helicopter door gunners’ night-vision goggles and make it easy for them to pick out friend from foe if the extraction got messy. Until now the thermal strips had been concealed by green ordnance tape. The SEALs ripped it off.

“I’ll initiate fire,” Razor informed them. “I want to hold them as far back as we can. Take it easy and make your rounds count, we ain’t many left. I don’t want to be down to throwing rocks before the birds come in.”

2013 hours

North central Lebanese Mountains

Blake Murdock had spent his whole career expecting to find himself in his present situation. But at this point in all the scenarios he’d fought out in his head, he was supposed to be directing FA-18’s, helicopter gunships, AC-130’s, or naval gunfire against the enemy while the helicopters rushed in to pick them up.

Now that it was finally for real, he didn’t have any of that. What he had was seven SEALs, only six and a half capable of shooting and all of them sucking wind, AKs with only a magazine or so of ammo left, and maybe a couple of grenades. Murdock knew Doc would be angry at him for not thinking positively, but it didn’t look good. Damn, he’d forgotten about the morphine. Well, too late now.

Without an operational set of NVGs, Murdock planned to hold his fire until he could see something. Maybe his rounds would come in handy while they were boarding the helos. Now he knew how Ed DeWitt felt. Not worth a shit.

Through his goggles Razor could see the Syrians bobbing among the rocks in the distance. It was a difficult call. He had
to let them get close enough so they wouldn’t be able to call for mortar fire without getting hit themselves, yet keep them far enough away so they couldn’t easily overrun the LZ. It looked just about right. He settled the laser dot on the Syrian point man and fired.

The rest of the SEALs followed his signal and opened fire also. Slowly, carefully, a single shot only when they had a clear target.

The Syrians had to transition from a movement formation to a skirmish line while under fire. It took them a while. The SEALs could tell. The Syrians only fired their AKMs on automatic. First there were two firing, then six. Then eight. They finally worked up to around ten or twelve, which must have been all the men they could fit across the width of the ridgeline.

With only four SEALs calmly firing single-shot, it was a wonder the Syrians didn’t quickly gain fire superiority. But if the bullets weren’t hitting or coming close enough to make you take cover and stop shooting, it didn’t matter how heavy the fire was. The Syrians were what the SEALs scornfully called sprayers and prayers, hoping to make up for lack of accuracy with sheer number of rounds. It didn’t work.

Every time a Syrian rose to advance, a SEAL cut him down. But the Syrians learned quickly. Several began crawling forward using the cover of the rocks. That would work, but it would take time. The question was whose side time was on.

Jaybird was anchoring the SEALs’ far right. His magazine ran out and he slid his last one into the AKM. Thirty rounds left. The Syrians were getting better. Every time he fired, a couple of them would concentrate their own fire on his muzzle flash. It was getting hairy. He had to keep moving from rock to rock.

A BG-15 fired, and the grenade exploded with a shower of sparks in rocks right in front of him. Jaybird would have pissed his pants if he hadn’t been so dehydrated.

Something had to be done about that grenade launcher.
Jaybird couldn’t let the Syrian get the range on him. He only had two M75 frags left. Jaybird pulled the pin on one and palmed it, waiting. The BG-15 flashed again, and Jaybird’s grenade was in the air. The 40mm grenade exploded off to his side. Jaybird saw his grenade go off. He waited, but the BG-15 didn’t fire again. It seemed that the Syrians were getting closer. The shit was getting serious now. Where the fuck was the helicopter?

Magic Brown was experiencing a sniper’s frustration. It wasn’t that an AKM in his hands was like a surgeon operating with a linoleum cutter. It was that he was racking up a score but it wasn’t making any difference. He would take a man down only to have the Syrians quickly replace him in the firing line. Faithfully counting his rounds, he knew that he was a third down on his last magazine.

The Syrians fired a hand-held flare. The parachute popped over the SEALs’ heads, and the harsh yellow glow fell over them. But the swirling mountain wind quickly pushed the parachute back down the ridge toward the Syrians. The SEALs flipped up their goggles and had a few sounds of good shooting until the flare fizzled out. The Syrians didn’t fire any more flares. The SEALs went back to their NVGs.

The flare had given Murdock the opportunity to finally fire some rounds. Now he could only watch the firefight. They weren’t getting many BG-15’s; he’d been most afraid of that. The Syrians had probably used up most of their basic ammo load at the dome. Murdock sensed that the Syrians were slowly building up their fire for an assault. He remembered some Marine officers telling him once that a light infantry defense—a continuous series of ambushes and withdrawals—was the most difficult and infuriating thing to fight against. The Syrians must have taken a lot of casualties in the previous ambushes. If they got the idea that their adversaries were finally pinned down, they wouldn’t let up.

Doc Ellsworth spoke into the PRC-117 handset. “Hammer,
this is Seven Oscar. The LZ is now under fire. Enemy fifty meters northeast along ridgeline, over.”

“Roger,” the Blackhawk pilot replied calmly. “Mark the zone.”

Doc pressed the rubber button on the bottom of his strobe light. He heard the electric
zing
…
zing
sound when the blinking began. The strobe had an infrared cap on the lens and a plastic sleeve that directed the light straight out. Doc heard the beating of rotor blades. He aimed the strobe at the sound.

2015 hours

MH-60K Blackhawk Hammer-One

Miguel Fernandez and Red Nicholson cocked their Squad Automatic Weapons. The door gunners were crouched behind their miniguns.

“I’m going to come up along the ridgeline,” the pilot informed the crew over the intercom. “Otherwise we’ll never see that strobe. When we hit the LZ I’ll turn and point the nose east. That way the hoist will be on the side away from the enemy. Jimmy,” he said, talking to one of the door gunners. “Your side will be clear, you’ll work the hoist. Stan, the enemy will be on your side so you’ll be gunning. You SEALs handle the ladder.”

The pilot pressed the mike button on his stick. “Hammer-Two, Hammer-One, over.”

“Hammer-Two,” the second Blackhawk replied.

“Hammer-Two, when we go in I want you to hold back a half klick down the ridge. I’ll call you if I need you. When we come off the zone I’ll form up behind and follow you out, over.”

“Affirmative,” the second pilot replied. “Hammer-Two, out.”