Under Siege (9 page)

His two sons, both captains in the tank division, died in that monstrous attack, and the army lost hundreds of its brightest, most able officers and men. Now was the time for revenge. He took out his wallet and removed the pictures of his family. His two sons, and his wife and two daughters. Both were married with families of their own. He would gladly die to protect them. Now he might die avenging the deaths of his sons. If so, it would be worth it.

Two weeks ago he had carried out the final tests. It had been in a remote section. He had driven into the far desert with just one man and the materials he needed. The first test was on a pen holding twenty goats. They were closely quartered so they couldn’t run away. He placed a container in the enclosure and pulled back a half mile before detonating the package with a small charge. The billowing white powder burst from the container and spread over the goats, coating them in a white blanket, then filtered to the ground like snow. He watched using a twenty-power spotter scope.

At first there was little reaction by the goats to the powder. Then one stumbled. Another went down on its chest.

“They are reacting, General,” the driver said.

General Majid nodded grimly. He had seen men die of poison gas. This would be different. Slower. The dose less massive than this. He watched more of the goats stumble, bleat, and fall. Three hours later all of the goats were down, not moving, and he considered them dead. He put the scope away and motioned to the car. The driver opened the air conditioned car’s rear door, closed it when the general stepped inside, then hurried around to the driver’s side.

Two weeks later the general and the same driver had gone to the same area of desert, only this time they had two political prisoners in the rear seat tied and gagged. At the test site the two convicts were taken from the car and pushed to the ground. They remained tied and gagged but not blindfolded. General Majid didn’t talk with them. He placed the small airtight container near them and upwind, then retreated with the car a half mile and watched. The driver pushed an electric button that set off a small charge on the container and white powder sprayed from the container and drifted over the two convicts. The men coughed and blinked then tried to crawl away from the powder. They couldn’t.

General Majid watched the men struggle against the powder for half an hour, then they seemed to give up, to sag where they sat. The smaller one toppled over and lay on the ground. Two hours later one of the men stopped moving and Tariz knew he was dead. The stronger, larger man held out for another two hours before his coughing and convulsions ended. Tariz checked his watch, then motioned to the driver. Ten miles from the test site, General Majid told the driver to pull over.

“Check the tires. I think the left rear one is low on air. We may have to slow down. Check them all, now.”

The driver left the black Mercedes-Benz sedan to look at the tires. General Majid eased out of the car and met the driver at the rear of the vehicle. He had his pistol out and shot the driver three times in the heart, then two more in his head where he lay on the ground. He didn’t bother moving the body. The first good sandstorm would cover it up and it would never be found. If for any reason the attack did not go as planned, no one could now tie him to this execution of the two political prisoners in the desert test.

General Majid had powered the big car back toward the city. He was ready now. All of the tests were completed, the pieces of the game would soon be in place. He would
notify the ruling council when the exact date of the invasion would take place. Allah be praised! Long live the Glory of Islam!

Back in the army camp eighty miles from the Iraq border, in his armored motor home, General Majid remembered the tests with the anthrax powder and nodded. It was a bold move, and he would catch the Iraqi soldiers and generals off balance and in the end defeat them. He should be in Baghdad in two days.

His second in command came into the living area of the forty-foot motor home and saluted.

“General Majid, sir. We have heard from our man in New Namibia. The United States president’s wife has been abducted and is being held. The ransom message has gone out to the Americans. They must be scrambling all of their powers to concentrate on southwest Africa.”

“Good, good. That’s our signal to start to work. Give the men ten minutes to get ready, then start the general movement toward the border. We have eighty miles to cover before dawn. The lead elements of tank companies will form our Lightning probe, followed by the armored troop carriers. Alert the air command, for air support. I want them overhead at daylight.”

General Majid smiled. He took out the pictures of his two dead sons and kissed them. Before another day is over. I will avenge your deaths. I will make you once again heroes of Iran. Tears welled up in his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He didn’t notice them. All he could think about were his two sons he had lost in the humiliating defeat by the Iraqi forces.

Natabi, New Namibia

The sleek business jet swept into the small airport at Natabi and landed, then angled toward the taxi strip and a hangar at the north end of the field. When Murdock stepped out of the plane, John Ludbezian met him.

“Sir, I’m the senior Secret Service man on site. We know only that nine or ten men kidnapped the First Lady and took her off the airport and headed south. I chased them in an airport Jeep but they had a twenty minute lead and we never caught them. We found out from men along the route about where they went, then we lost them. Apparently there’s this huge mansion a few miles up in the direction they went. Figured maybe they’d head that way.”

“Where are the Delta forces?”

“Half of them went to the point where we lost the trail. The rest are protecting Air Force Two.”

“We’ll need transportation, Ludbezian.”

“Yes, sir. I have two vans for your use beside the hangar.”

“We flew over so many time zones I have no idea what time it is here.”

“It’s slightly after two
P.M.
, sir.”

“Thanks.” Murdock motioned to the door of the plane and Lieutenant DeWitt sent the men out. They formed in front of the plane in two squads.

“Ludbezian, you’ll come with us and guide us up to the farthest point in your chase.” Murdock signaled DeWitt and pointed to the two vans and the SEALs double-timed over to the transportation and climbed inside.

Twenty minutes later the vans pulled up at a fork in the road. The road had petered out into a one-lane dirt trail through the heavy vegetation. An unoccupied van had been parked at the side of the road. Murdock and his men got out and looked around.

“They look friendly,” a voice called out of the jungle.

“Yeah, but they don’t look like no Frogs I ever saw,” another voice answered.

“Let’s spray the far side of the road with about twenty rounds of HE,” Murdock bellowed. The SEALs lifted their weapons and aimed them that way but didn’t fire.

“Hold it, goddamn it, we’re just kidding,” a new voice with a parade ground bellow called out of the brush. “Hey,
we’re on your side.” A dozen men stood up from perfectly camouflaged positions on both sides of the road and walked in. One man, who was six-feet four-inches with powerful shoulders, strode forward and saluted Murdock.

“Captain Murdock, I’m Captain Engle. I hear we’re supposed to babysit you guys.”

Murdock returned the salute. “Actually we’ll take all the help we can get. You sent out any probes?”

“Just arrived here at twelve hundred. We’ve got a scout out about five hundred watching and waiting.”

“Which road?”

“The left-hand one. The other one fades out about a half-mile out and heads toward the coast.”

“We’re sure the personnel carrier went up this road?” Murdock asked.

“Affirmative, Captain.”

“You work with squads?”

“That’s a roger.”

“Let’s move out and catch up to your scout. What kind of commo do you have?”

The captain showed Murdock the personal radios. They weren’t Motorolas. “No way we can communicate with each other on them. I’ll get you one of ours so you can keep in touch with us.” He turned to the SEALs. “Let’s move out. Lam out two hundred. You should find a Delta scout out five. Join him and stay three hundred ahead of us. Five yard intervals. Alpha leads off, then the Delta men and DeWitt and Bravo Squad bring up the rear.” He turned to the civilian. “Ludbezian, take one of the van’s back to town and take care of the other folks there. Men, let’s move out.”

Lam pushed out fast and silently through the slowly fading semblance of a road. Before he got to the five hundred yard mark, the road was no more. Now it was a grassy and weedy trail just wide enough for a vehicle. He saw where branches had been snapped off recently. Lam spotted
the Delta scout, while fifty yards behind him moved up silently. He slid in beside the soldier and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Bang, bang, Delta, you’re dead.”

“Huh, what! Oh God, don’t scare me that way. Where the hell did you come from?”

“Didn’t your captain tell you I was on my way?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t hear you. I mean my job is to watch out front.”

“Which the two of us are going to do. But as silently as possible. We stay three hundred ahead of the troops. Let’s go.”

Lam used his Motorola. “Contact here, Cap. We’ll stay at three. This trail is still showing signs of recent travel by a big rig. We’re starting to climb. Can’t see anything ahead.”

“That’s a roger.”

Murdock moved to the rear of Alpha squad and watched the Delta men. Yes. They were good. Pros at what they were doing. They didn’t jangle, they didn’t talk, smoke, or make jokes. They were on the job. Each man had his personal long or automatic weapon and a sidearm. All wore combat vests loaded with goodies much the same as the SEALs.

Murdock edged back into the Delta formation until he found Captain Engle.

“Your platoon been on missions like this before?”

“Only two,” Engle said. “We can’t stack up against your platoon’s rep. We know about you and your special connection with the president. Heard you lost a man on your last mission.”

“That’s the hard part. I’ve written fourteen letters like that in the past six years.”

“Too damn many, Captain. Hey, a Navy captain is the same as an Army light colonel. What you doing out in the field?”

“The Captain rate is temporary, I’m permanent at Lieutenant Commander.”

“Yeah, like an Army major. Looks like we’ll have to take care of you.”

“Nobody has rank on a mission. I’m glad your men don’t have any showing on their sleeves or collars.”

“Damn right. In combat that’s a good way to get picked off by a sniper.”

“I’m going back up front. Give me a call on the Motorola just to see that it’s working right.”

Ten minutes later, Murdock’s Motorola earpiece spoke to him.

“Cap, you best come up and take a look. Might want to hold the troops where you are.”

Murdock worked his way up the three hundred yards and found Lam and the Delta scout flat on the side of the road. Murdock bellied down between them and watched where Lam pointed. A newly dug line showed across the trail. It was no more than a foot wide and appeared to be fairly straight.

“A row of land mines?” the Delta man suggested.

“They couldn’t carry that many,” Lam said.

“Might have had them stashed in the personnel carrier,” Murdock said.

“Look just beyond the dug-up place,” Murdock said. “See those two four-inch trees bent almost double? Any idea what did that?”

“Trip-wire triggers,” Lam said. “While we’re worrying about the dummy ditch, we flounder around and set off the trip wires with old-fashioned Vietnam-type punji swinging logs with dozens of sharpened sticks ready to impale a soft body.”

“So we go around the whole thing,” Murdock said.

“Track back twenty yards and we’ll go both ways,” Lam said. “Straight off from the trail for thirty yards, then up the trail for fifty before we come back to it.”

“That’s a roger,” the Delta man said. “Hey, sir, I’m Jamison, Sergeant First Class Jamison, from Kentucky.”

Murdock shook his hand. “I’m Murdock. Pick your side, Jamison. You go one way, Lam, and I’ll go the other way.”

“Hell, I’m to the right,” Jamison said. They backtracked for twenty yards, then Jamison went right and the other two to the left off the trail and into the brush. Lam watched the foliage closely as they moved. He saw Jamison go off the road to the right and checked his own path again.

Ten seconds later a grenade blasted the quiet New Namibia countryside on Jamison’s side of the road. Murdock and Lam backtracked to the road and looked where Jamison had gone.

“Captain Engle,” Murdock called on the Motorola. “Get up here. We have a problem.”

By the time Captain Engle ran to the front of the patrol, Lam had spotted and removed two trip wires and the grenades rigged to them. Jamison lay where he had fallen when the deadly shrapnel ripped through him.

“He died instantly,” Murdock said. “The grenade wasn’t three feet from him when it went off.”

Engle scowled. “You cleared the area?”

“Safe enough now, sir,” Lam said. “I found two more trip wires and grenades.”

“Why to the right and not the left?” Engle asked.

“Over ninety percent of people are right-handed. When a choice comes up right or left, most right-handers automatically will go to the right. These terrorists just played the odds.”

Lam vanished to the left of the trail and Captain Engle called up two of his men to take Jamison back to the transport.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Murdock said. “Lam is scouting out the bypass on the left. He’ll be checking everything from now on.”

The rest of the men came up and filed past the body and then went to the left around the punji trap. Ten minutes later all the men were around and moving up the tracks the personnel carrier had made along an old trail.

“If there’s a house up here, this can’t be the main road
in,” Ed DeWitt said. “There must be another entrance for cars and trucks to get in and out.”