Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (12 page)

They slid through the opening and checked. Five bodies in all. Murdock moved to his throat mike. “All clear in the tent. Bring down the bangers.”

They went to the front of the tent and looked at the laboratory door. There had been no opening in the rear or this side of the building.

“A far side door?” Murdock asked.

Lam left the tent on a run, rounded the back of the lab and vanished. He was back in two minutes. “Far as I can see there is only this front door. We got rats in a trap in there.”

Jaybird and the four CIA men hurried down the hill with their load of bombs. Each had been crafted that morning. Each used two of the one-pound bricks of C-5 and the detonators already inserted. They had six of the blasters.

“Two on the front,” Jaybird said. “The other four on this side evenly spaced. Set the timers for five minutes on signal from the radio. Then push in the activator and run like hell.”

“Let’s do it,” Murdock said.

Rafii and Fernandez hustled around the front of the lab and checked in. “You beat us to them,” Rafii said. “We were just about in position when we heard you firing and the three troops behind the lab went down. We on time for the blast?”

Each of the six SEALs had a bomb. They went over the orders again, then Jaybird waved them forward. They placed the bombs and checked in on the radio as ready. When Murdock heard the last one ready, he gave the word to activate.

They did and the six men rushed away from the lab. Those in the tent did the same, until they were seventy or eighty yards away from the building, then they lay down on the ground to wait the blasts.

They came in a ragged series. The two in front of the building went off first, smashing two great holes in the block wall, leaving weird skeletons of reinforcing steel rods angling upward. Then the side bombs went off, pushing in the whole wall and making way for the roof to collapse, falling nearly to the ground on that side, leaving the lab looking like a triangle lying on its back.

The sharp, thundering explosions of the C-5 in the open that way blasted through the air like a runaway atomic chain reaction, dulling the men’s hearing and blotting it out for some. A huge cloud of dust billowed up a hundred feet, and rubble and chunks of concrete blocks showered down on the far side of the former building. A slight breeze blew the dust away from the SEALs, and they waited for it to clear. As it did, they saw there were no targets to fire at. Nobody tried to get out of the building. The front of the structure had remained, but the pair of holes where the bombs had been placed were each ten feet wide and almost met in the center. Curiously, the twin doors remained in place.

“Mop up time,” Murdock said. The SEALs moved up slowly, ten yards apart, toward the holes in the front of the building. The first two blasts had powered whole concrete blocks, half blocks and down to gravel-sized missiles, straight back through the laboratory. The SEALs stared into the destruction from the front holes. Machines,
tables, chairs, lighting fixtures, and a dozen other items littered the floor. The ceiling slanted down from right to left so the left-hand part rested on the floor. Murdock could see two bodies twisted and battered on the floor.

“Do we go in?” Lam asked.

“Will it fall down?” Murdock asked. The SEALs stared at the debris and destruction. Bradford edged inside and pushed on the section of the roof. He couldn’t budge it.

“Perfect triangle,” he said. “Looks as solid as a square set in a mine tunnel. Safe as your sister’s virginity.”

Murdock stepped in first. He used his penlight in the gloom. To the left he found what could have been assembly tables against the far wall, where there was still eightfeet of overhead. A body in a white lab coat lay twisted and mangled on the floor under a table. On top of a table still standing he found an aluminum canister a foot in diameter and six feet long. It had split open and inside Murdock saw something that looked like the drawings of the pulse bombs he had seen.

“Check for any more like this one,” he said. “I have a body count in here of three. There should be more. Look for them.” The others looked and worked back through the clutter and rubble as far as they could go.

“Two bodies back here,” someone called.

“Got one canister back this way,” Lam said.

“Bring it forward,” Murdock said.

They found two more canisters in various stages of completion. Jaybird came up with his backpack of explosives. “Pile them up. We’ll give them a half pound. That should bust them up into a million pieces.”

“Then we use the WP grenades and burn this sucker right down to the last concrete block,” Murdock said. “We might not have much time before the rest of the guard force here comes back. So move it.”

They found two more bodies for a count of seven. That matched the cars outside. The SEALs left the rubble of the building and Jaybird set the timer on the half a block of C-5 and they ran for cover. The explosion was muted compared to the others, but when they looked inside they realized that the C-5 had set off the explosives in each of
the pulse bombs, but not in the right sequence, so they didn’t create the pulses. There wasn’t much left inside the slanted roof building.

They threw in four Willy Peter (white phosphorus) hand grenades and watched the fires start.

“Let’s get out of here before we have to fight our way out,” Murdock said, and the ten men took off at a trot up the hill and over it to their vehicles.

They had just driven a quarter of a mile down the main road when they met two of the army trucks filled with soldiers.

Nobody waved. The SEALs in the sedan scrunched down when the driver warned them. In fifteen minutes they were back at the safe house.

Murdock was the first one in the door. “Barbara, are you all right? How did it go?”

Huda came out of a bedroom and waved at him. “Not so good. Somebody saw her leave the package and shot her. The round hit her shoulder and she’s hurting. We can’t take her to a doctor here. Nobody gets shot around this area except people the army shoots at.”

“You fix her shoulder?”

“Did, but I am not a doctor. She could use one.”

Murdock turned. “Jaybird, front and center.”

Ten minutes later Jaybird had changed the dressing, put on a binder bandage to close up the wound. The bullet was still in her shoulder and would have to come out.

“I can’t do it, pretty lady,” Jaybird said. “You’re coming with us. Haifa is nice this time of year.”

“What about my business?”

Murdock held her hand. “The CIA guys say you were overdue to be sent back to the States. Your brother-in-law will have to step up and take over. He’ll do it. Why should he do the job when he had you making all the money for him? Don’t worry. We’ll have you out of here sometime tonight. Let’s get on the road.”

The van and the sedan left the village of As Suwayda’ just after three that afternoon. The sedan went first, but this time Murdock, Rafii, and Jaybird were in it. Rafii was worried about roadblocks.

“Something happens like this and they’ll get up their blocks and see who they can find moving. We should hide out for two weeks, then go singly toward the border. But we can’t do that, especially not with the wounded lady.”

Murdock wished he had a map. At least they were heading away from the smashed laboratory. Lzra’ was the next town, if they got that far. He hadn’t checked Bradford but he still must have the SATCOM. They hadn’t needed it yet but they could. He remembered seeing Bradford with it on the chopper, then later in the van. Yeah, he had it. Now all they had to do was get through the roadblocks and they’d be in the border area and could bring in the chopper. With any luck they could be in their comfortable bunks tonight at that Israeli air base.

The CIA man driving spoke Arabic like a native. Murdock kept hoping with each turn and slight rise in the road that it wouldn’t reveal a roadblock. The driver said the last sign said the main highway north was four kilometers away. “That’s right near Lzra’,” he said. “Once we get past that it should be clear sailing.”

They rounded a small curve in the road and dead ahead not two hundred yards was a roadblock, the best kind, two two-ton trucks blocking the roadway and the shoulder on each side. No way to go around or blast through. The driver slowed and then stopped.

Murdock scowled. Nothing he could do now. It was up to the skill of the CIA man in the front seat. If they had to shoot their way through this roadblock, there would be hell to pay before they could get out of the area. He watched the guard approach the CIA driver and pushed off the safety on his MGP-15 submachine gun.

The Syrian guard at the roadblock came closer, looking into the sedan. “Pretend to be asleep,” Murdock said softly and he and the other SEALs feigned slumber.

The guard had a submachine gun on a strap over his shoulder with the muzzle aimed downward. “Your papers,” he snapped in Arabic. The driver took them out of his shirt pocket, which was where most Syrians carried their identity and travel papers. The guard stared at them a moment, and handed them back. Then he waved at the sleepers.

“A football match and we lost nil to one,” the CIA driver said. “I told the men they could sleep going home.”

“Where’s that?”

“Up near Damascus. Town called Duma.”

“Yeah, heard of it. Lost the game, huh?”

“How did you guess? We had no push up the middle and our defense was sloppy. We had two good chances and even a goal kick to tie it, but Hosni choked and couldn’t get off a good shot. If you want to coach a football team, I have one all ready for you.”

The guard laughed. “Not a chance I’d coach. I got my own problems. Move on through but keep your speed down. Lots of potholes up ahead.”

One of the big trucks’ engines started and a driver pulled the truck ahead far enough for the sedan to squeeze through. Before he moved, the CIA driver looked back at the guard. “Oh, the rest of the team on this route is behind us in a beat-up van. I won the race to the main highway.” The guard nodded and the CIA man drove on through the roadblock.

When they were clear, Murdock spoke up. “How can the other driver possibly know about your football team story?”

“Easy, we use it all the time when we’re going with two rigs on one mission. It almost always gets us through quick and easy. This whole country is crazy over soccer.”

“Yeah, but you said football.”

“That’s what soccer is over here. Now we get past the big highway and we’re only about ten or twelve miles to Nawa. That’s where you guys bail out and call your chopper and I settle down for a long nap until tomorrow morning. Or maybe the next morning. I want things to cool down a little before I drive back up that highway toward Damascus. That hit on the lab is going to have this whole area crawling with secret police and soldiers.”

Twenty minutes later the sedan pulled into the same field where the SEALs had met it less than twenty-four hours ago. They bailed out and waved good-bye to the CIA driver. He said he’d wait for the van. Murdock realized he had to wait, too. Bradford and the SATCOM were in the van. They flaked out near the side of the road.

Ten minutes later the van pulled up and the SEALs crawled out. Murdock went over to help Barbara out of the van. She had on tough-looking pants, hiking boots, and a khaki shirt with a jacket on over it. Jaybird had put her right arm in a sling.

“Well, looks like you’re ready to travel, young lady,” Murdock said.

“Are sure this is the best? I can stay in the van and get back home. I have two or three doctors there who will rip that slug out of me and never say a word to anyone.”

Murdock looked at Trenton. The CIA man shook his head. “You have your orders, Barbara. It was either now or in two weeks, so while we have an easy chopper ride out with no hassle, let’s use it. The regional director gave me specific instructions by phone just before we came in here.”

Barbara lifted her brows. “So, I’m overruled again. I guess you have an extra passenger.”

“We’ll have a short wait, but I’ll get right on the radio
and get our horses in the air.” Murdock said good-bye to the CIA contingent. The two men they came in with would stay there, so it was seven instead of eight to go back to Haifa. The two rigs left slowly. Murdock led Barbara over to the SEALs and then yelled at Bradford. He already had the dish antenna out and opened up. He angled it toward where he thought the satellite should be and turned on the set. When he got the ready beep from the set, he pointed at Murdock.

Murdock made the call on Don Stroh’s frequency. He got an immediate response.

“Yes, Big M. How did it go?”

“Mission accomplished. Come and get us, same spot where we were dropped off.”

“Might be a problem there, Murdock.”

“No problems, send in one bird, that’s all we need.”

The SATCOM spit out the transmissions automatically encrypted and in a burst of less than a hundredth of a second so it was virtually impossible to triangulate the signal and pinpoint the sender.

“Some nut crashed a car bomb against the front gate this afternoon. Blew up the gate and killed four military police. The whole field is on a lockdown. I couldn’t even get the President in or out of here. The airfield CO said if you called I was to tell you we can’t move a chopper until after oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.”

“You did it again, Stroh. Next time we go fishing I’m going to drown you. We have to stay here overnight? We have a Company woman with us who has a rifle slug in her shoulder. It’s badly shot up. She saved our asses today. Now come and get us.”

“Can’t. I’ll be in contact with you right after oh-eight-hundred. Nothing else I can do, big buddy.”

“This better not be a scam you’re running on me.”

“No scam. Murdock. Just one hell of a mess here security-wise. There’s also been some rumors of a war about to start, but a friend here said they get those rumors every month. Just ease down there, have a good sleep, and we’ll contact you again at oh-eight-hundred.”

“You did it again, Stroh. I guess there’s nothing else we can do but wait.”

“Talk to you in the morning. Out.”