Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire (14 page)

“He’ll be in touch. His call is Redeye. You’ll be transported back to the ship, then we’ll decide what to do with you.”

“Thanks, Company One. It’s a long walk out of here.”

Murdock told the rest of the crew what had gone down.

“Heard about that new weapon,” Lam said. “It must really work. Everything electronic. Damn, that puts us back in the Stone Age. Israel expects to be attacked?”

“She does,” Murdock said. “What a terrific advantage to the invaders. The military would be operating as squads, maybe as a company if they had enough runners.”

“They did it nicely in the Civil War,” Jaybird said. “But it does take some overhead planning. Who will invade? Jordan or Lebanon?”

“Lebanon doesn’t have squat,” Fernandez said. “They couldn’t invade Pismo Beach. Syria calls the shots in Lebanon. Now they do have an army and an air force. They might charge though Lebanon and into Israel from the north.”

Rafii nodded. “Most likely it won’t be Jordan. They are
getting settled down more now, no land takeover ambitions. Trying to get into the modern age. My vote would go to Syria.”

Fifteen minutes later the SATCOM came on.

“This is Redeye calling Murdock. Can you read me?”

“You must be at ten thousand feet, Redeye. We read you loud and clear. Are you moving?”

“On our way. We have an ETA your position in forty-seven minutes. We have to go down to the Israel border with Lebanon and then slant in to your location.”

“Sounds good, Redeye. When we see you coming, we’ll give you one red flare on the ground. Right now we have no hostile forces and we expect none. Fly safe now, we need you.”

“Do our best, Murdock. Out.”

Murdock put two men in the fringes of the brush to keep a lookout, both ways.

“No sense getting surprised now that we have some help on the way.” He checked Barbara.

“Heard we do get a chopper after all,” she said, a half smile trying to break through. She grimaced. “Sorry. I’ve never been shot before. No fun, is it?”

“No fun at all. Did I thank you for that bombing? It really pulled most of the defenders away from the lab. Made our job twice as easy as it would have been.”

“Glad to do it.” She paused and looked up at Murdock. “Do you think I got anyone inside that army HQ?”

“I’d say you must have checked out two of them right into their meeting with Allah.”

“Good, that would make six, I think.”

“Then the other four you get credit for were at the lab. You count those four and you have your ten, and you’re even with the Syrians even before you leave the country.”

“I can count four of those?”

“I don’t see why not. Nobody else has claimed them. Without your help we might not have won the war. Take them and wipe the slate clean and see what you can do for the Company back in Washington, D.C. I’d think your understanding of the Syrians and how they operate would be a big help to the Near East Desk at the CIA.”

She looked up, brows raised. “You think so? I’d never thought of that.”

“You’ll have a debriefing when you get back. Tell them that you want to be on board and they should jump at the chance to hire you. Pay is good, and nobody is going to be shooting at you.”

Ten minutes later the chopper with its “US NAVY” logo on the side chattered its way toward them. Jaybird fired a red flare and the bird sat down fifty feet from the brush line.

Exactly an hour later the SEALs and Barbara were safely onboard the
Shiloh.

Rahat Air Base

Haifa, Israel

Don Stroh was amazed at the nearly total confusion at the air base. He’d never seen a military operation without radio communications. Runners were taking messages. Slowly the base came into a semblance of organized confusion. Guards at the entrances were beefed up tenfold, with an armored personnel carrier at each gate, their biggest guns trained on the entrances.

Messengers on diesel ATVs from the base recreation office had been dispatched before 0700 to motor as far south as they needed to, to find communications with Tel Aviv, and then relay what had happened to the Haifa area. As soon as the message got through, the air force was expected to send in replacement helicopters and fighter aircraft for defense of the northern sector. Everyone Stroh talked to expected that there would be an invasion. Nobody knew from where or who it would be. Syria and Lebanon were the most likely candidates, he was told.

Slowly the morning passed with no invasion. In town diesel tow trucks were trying to clear a lane for one-way traffic through the thousands of stalled cars on the city streets. Diesel-powered bulldozers shoved cars aside to make one-car-wide corridors through the hopeless crush of stalled cars. Police and firemen needed emergency lanes open.

By 1000 fighter planes swept in and landed at the air
force field. Soon there were twenty defensive fighters on the base, with more on the way. Pairs took off to fly patrol and CAP on Haifa, the twenty miles to the Lebanese border, and the buffer zone. The pilots brought portable radios with them for the air control tower and for headquarters.

By 1100 two transports landed on the airfield with truckloads of handheld radios and larger radio units to re-equip the airfield’s headquarters and for military police. Soon radios were issued to the defensive units and infantry on base for security.

It was nearly 1600 before the base commander, Air Force General Menuhin, sat back in his big leather chair and tried to relax. A second and third transport loaded with radios had arrived and the radios were taken by helicopters to the army units in the north. By 2000, virtually all of the military units were in contact with their next higher command.

With first dark two patrols were sent out five miles into the buffer zone to sit and watch for any enemy movement. When nothing happened by midnight, the patrols were ordered to penetrate ten miles beyond the buffer zone into Lebanon, to find concealment and remain there for three days. They would be the advance eyes of the Israeli Army and must report at once any sign of a massive movement of Lebanese or Syrian tanks, trucks, or ground troops. They found their spot that night in darkness, camouflaged their position on the top of a small wooded hill, and settled in to wait the three days. Nobody in the six-man patrol would give odds that they would ever see the third day of their assignment.

Saida, Lebanon

General Mahdi Diar smiled as his air-conditioned limousine toured the back roads and fields around this small Lebanese town. He was over forty miles from the Lebanese border, and well out of the range of the pulse bomb. He had troops and tanks and guns everywhere. This morning the E pulse had hit Haifa and normal life there mush-roomed into total chaos. Slowly they were recovering but
it wouldn’t be in time. He had sent two men into the big city on motorcycles to report back by radio. They had been outside the kill zone of the pulse. He was satisfied with the slow recovery.

All night tonight he would have his troops moving forward under cover of darkness. He would throw fifty thousand men at Israel and over a hundred tanks. His air force would pulverize any token resistance, and he expected his mounted troops and tanks would penetrate all the way to the Haifa city limits before dark tomorrow. Yes, he had the plan, the Israeli troops would be disorganized and flustered at the lack of direction and when they were hit with overwhelming odds they would shatter and scatter and race back into lower Israel.

General Diar watched the sun. Would it never set? Would blessed darkness never come? His slow buildup had been going on for two months and the Israelis had never tumbled to it. Most of the tanks were cleverly camouflaged and hidden. The men had been there on a “joint training exercise” with the Lebanese forces. He would pit fifty thousand men against Israel. He had additional men to call on. At the moment he had over 330,000 men under arms. Eighty percent of them could report for the battle if needed. His tanks would win the day. They could be slightly older than the Israeli tanks, but he had many more of them.

He cursed the sun again in its slow retreat into night. What he had worried about were Israeli patrols in the buffer zone and even into Lebanon to act as an early warning in case of an attack. Any military man would expect an attack after such a bomb went off.

He had sent special squads into the area ten miles into Lebanon, past the buffer zone. They had been in place for three days and were close enough together to spot any Israeli infiltrators. So far they had reported two groups of them. They would leave them alone until the first troops were to hit the ten-mile zone. Then the Israeli frontline lookouts would be eliminated and the troops would move on up to the initial point. The attack would begin promptly
at 0530, just before dawn. Yes! General Diar motioned to his aid, a new major this week, who poured him a crystal glass of his favorite lemonade, spiced with half vodka. Yes, it was going to be a delicious war.

More than three hundred trucks swept south along the coast highway from Saida. They rolled like a long, jointed worm, with thirty infantrymen crammed into each truck, the men all armed and ready to do battle. Another long worm of trucks wound down the border road that swept south between Lebanon and Syria. Tanks had been rumbling south since darkness along the same roads and some secondary ones. Fifty tanks came down each side of the country, all aimed at Israel.

By midnight most of the trucks had emptied their human loads, turned, and raced back north to pick up more troops. The tanks fanned out to predesignated attack points across the twenty-eight-mile width of Israel. They would be the first wave to push off with daylight.

High on the hill ten miles inside Lebanon, Sergeant Benjamin Ranon watched the first tanks move down the country road. He counted nine of them, then lifted his radio.

“Silverstone One, this is Silver.”

He had an immediate reply. “Yes. Silver, go.”

“I’m at Point B. I have nine medium tanks passing me moving on toward the buffer zone. I can hear other tanks and what must be large numbers of trucks, but I haven’t seen any yet. Things are moving here. Request permission to withdraw toward the buffer zone.”

“Request denied. We need you there. You’re our only eyes and ears. Watch for more tanks. Protect yourselves. Send out scouts on both sides for a half mile and see what they can learn. Do it now.”

“That’s a roger. I have a feeling we’re in the middle of a massive Arab attack. No identity on the tanks, but Lebanon has few tanks.”

“Move those lookouts. Have them stay in place until an hour before daylight, then rush back to your OP and report. Good luck. Yes, we feel, too, that an invasion is underway. We’re doing all we can to get ready to repel it. You’re helping. Out.”

Sergeant Ranon looked at his four men. He chose the smartest and best soldiers of the group. “Babi and Adir. I want you to work to the sides. Babi to the west, Adir to the east. Move out a mile, and find some cover. Count any tanks and trucks you see. Also if there are walking troops, estimate their numbers. Get back here just before dawn. Headquarters is depending on us to tell them how many tanks and men are moving toward our homeland. Go. Don’t fire your weapon unless you must to save your life. Now go.”

Before they slipped out of their hideout, more tanks rumbled past less than a hundred yards away. The two men waited, then scurried down the sides of the hill and rushed each way from the OP. Sergeant Ranon marked down the time they had left, then added ten more tanks to his total observed and settled down to wait.

Ranon motioned for the other two soldiers to be on the alert, and he pulled a field jacket over his head, took out a map they had given him, and used his penlight to study it. The tanks would have a direct thrust into the buffer zone and on into Israel down this wide valley. Nothing would stop them. He heard trucks again, this time closer. He reached into his pocket and took out a picture of his family he’d taken where they lived far down in the southern part of Israel at Be’er Sheva. His wife and two daughters. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he shivered. He would never see them again. He knew that in the very heart of his soul. He was on a suicide patrol. None of them would ever come back from it, nor see the morning sunshine. It was his last day of life. He turned off the light, put the picture in his pocket. He shouldn’t have brought it, but he had to. It had been with him on
every patrol, every action, every bit of army life he had endured for the past three years. He looked at the other two men in the small outpost. They had no idea what was coming.

A half hour later, the radio came on again. He had turned the volume so low he could barely hear it.

“Silver, this is Silverstone. Any more tanks?”

“Yes, we’ve seen two groups of ten to twelve. These were slightly west of our position, but we saw them. We figure they have about thirty tanks on a line near here heading for the buffer zone.”

“Roger that, Silver. Have your men left?”

“Two out, one on each side. They’ll be back in about three hours, just before sunup.”

“Well done, Benjamin. Your country won’t forget your noble service. Stay alert.”

The last transmission came at precisely the same time the rifle round slammed into Sergeant Benjamin’s head, jolting him backward and spraying the other two soldiers in the outpost with his blood and skull fragments. Before the sound of the single shot had echoed into the distance, a grenade bounced once and landed at the feet of the two soldiers who were trying to scramble out of the depression so they could roll down the hill. The grenade exploded, sending shrapnel deep into the bodies of both men, killing them instantly.

A Syrian ranger sergeant worked carefully up the hill to the top and checked the three bodies there. “Three down here,” he said on a handheld radio. “The other two Israelis didn’t lie to us about where the lookout was. We’re clear of any crossers in this section. Out.”

Ten miles forward, Major Hosni Rahman brought his tank to a stop twenty feet from the buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel. It varied in width, but here his map told him it was about three miles wide. His tank and the three others in his platoon were aimed down a gentle valley that broadened when it came to Israel and continued for some ten miles. It was a perfect spearhead that he would use to dagger deeply into Israel, wiping out any resistance that the Jews might have thrown up in front of
him. He knew about the pulse bomb and that the Israeli Army would be seriously handicapped in communications. He figured that most of the tanks they had were diesel-powered, and had not been harmed by the pulse. But if any of them had electronic aiming and firing mechanisms, they would be almost the same as out of action.