Authors: Keith Douglass
“We’ll be landing on the aircraft carrier USS
Monroe
in about three and a half hours. She’s steaming south along the Somalia coast. Kenya is just south of Somalia. The captain of the carrier tells me he should be off Kenya or within chopper-infiltrating distance at about two
A.M.
tomorrow morning.”
Murdock took over. “Don, we’ve kicked this around during the past twenty hours, and the only way we can see to get in and get out of that embassy is with choppers. We’ll need at least three, maybe six. That means protection to keep any snipers down and out of business until we can get in, take over the place, get our people freed and on board rescue choppers. The birds will probably have to come in one at a time. Then we get the choppers safely in the air and head for the carrier.”
Stroh rubbed his face. He was the CIA contact between the platoon and the President. He outranked everyone from admirals right up to the Vice President.
“I talked with Captain Prescott of the
Monroe
about an hour ago,” Stroh said. “Given the three hundred miles between the coast and Nairobi, his thoughts were along the same line as yours. There’ll be no trouble getting cooperation from the admiral. His ship is at your disposal. I’d guess he got a special call from the President.”
Murdock took in what the CIA man said, and looked at his crew. “All right, let’s plan this puppy from the ground up. What do we have to work with, the Seahawk?”
Jaybird spoke. “The SH-60 Seahawk is an ASW chopper, but if they take out all of the missiles and depth charges, it should be able to carry twenty-five hostages with no luggage.
The Seahawk has a range of seven-hundred-eighty-one miles at four-thousand-feet altitude, with auxiliary fuel. So the three hundred miles to Nairobi and back is no problem. We’ll need two of them to exfiltrate the forty-one hostages.”
Magic Brown spoke up. “So to keep it all coordinated, we need another Seahawk to transport us in with all of our goodies, and to get us out of there without a lot of bullet holes in our hides.”
“That leaves our assault on the compound,” Murdock said. “My guess is that this colonel-general will keep the hostages in the easiest place to contain them: a basement room if there is one. Meaning we won’t hit any friendlies when our gunships strafe hell out of the place to dislodge the crew that the fat man leaves there when he moves on.”
“Does this task force have any Cobras on board?” Miguel Fernandez, Gunners’s Mate First Class, asked.
“Not on the CVN, but there should be an amphib ship along in the fleet,” Murdock said. “It’s got a bunch of them. We’ve used them before. Only problem is they don’t have the range. They top out at four hundred miles max. We’ll have to go with something else.”
“What about a pair of F-14 Tomcats?” Joe Douglas asked. “They can’t fire their missiles, but they can use their twenty-millimeter cannon.”
Murdock pointed his finger at Douglas. “Yeah, sounds about right. We’ll talk with the flyboys about it.”
Stroh rubbed his face with one hand. “Damn, sounds too simple. Does Kenya have any air capability at all?”
“You’re the one who should know that,” Murdock said. “Give your buddies in Langley a call and ask them. Whatever air they have, another pair of Tomcats riding a wide shotgun circle around the embassy should be enough to handle any trouble.”
“I’ll ask them when we get a list of things,” Stroh said. “Now, we need to know how to find this embassy. It’s on 2249 R Street North West. Remember, Nairobi is a town of just over two million people. We don’t want to blow up the wrong compound—say, strafe the hell out of the French Embassy.”
“The pilots will know how to find the place,” Jaybird said. “That’s their job. So we’re in on the ground. What weapons do we take, our MP-5’s and the M-4A1’s?”
Magic Brown chimed in. “We’ll still need the sniper rifles and the MGs. Sounds like our usual weapons.”
Murdock looked at Ed DeWitt. “Ed?”
“Regular shooters plus four fraggers for each man. It’s close-in work. Kill House stuff. The MP-5 will do fine, but we won’t need the suppressors. Get more range that way.”
“Agreed,” Murdock said. “We all have our regular weapons, and a double load of ammo. We can get any more we need from the carrier’s supply and stash it on board our chopper. Don’t forget the forty-mike-mike grenades. Our side arm will be the Mark 23 again. This time we won’t have that hellish long silencer, so be glad.”
“Looks like a regular shoot-and-scoot operation,” Red Nicholson said.
Murdock turned to Stroh. “My guess is the President doesn’t want to wait another day on this. We get on station at 0200. Does he want us to jump on those choppers and head inland right then? The Seahawk will do about two hundred mph. That’s an hour-and-a-half trip if we’re right at the coast. If we’re a hundred miles off the coast of Kenya when we launch, it’ll take us two hours.
“Stroh, talk to the skipper of the
Monroe
and see if he has three Seahawks and at least four F-14’s we can use. Then find out how far we’ll be from Nairobi at 0200.”
Stroh had been taking notes. He nodded, stood, and hurried up to the cockpit.
Murdock looked at his crew. “Let’s see if we can get some shut-eye. We’ll need it. We can’t make any more plans until we know for sure we can get the choppers we want.”
Monday, July 19
1848 hours
USS
Monroe,
CVN 81
Indian Ocean off Kenya
The Greyhound COD landed on board the carrier after dark, and caught the two wire.
“Any landing you can walk away from,” Murdock said as he supervised the unloading of the cargo plane, and moving all of the SEALs’ equipment, ammo, and collapsed IBSs to a spot where they could be loaded on one of the Seahawks.
A white shirt, a safety guide, led Murdock and his men off the flight deck and into a mess hall where a hot meal waited for them: steak, spare ribs, or fish, and all the trimmings.
Murdock sat across from a three-striper who said his name was Commander Lewis.
“We’ve made all the arrangements you asked for, Lieutenant. We have a new position for you. As of 0200 we will be about forty miles off the northern part of the Kenya coast. That’s three hundred and thirty-five land miles from Nairobi. Flying time to your target in the Seahawk is about an hour and forty-one minutes.
“First we thought of the Sea Knight. She hasn’t got that kind of range. They top out at about four hundred twenty miles. The Seahawk is the right bird. We’ve stripped down three Seahawks for you, the SH-60B. They’re ASW hunters. We’ve taken out the torpedoes, most of the armament, and the missiles. We’ll move in to the three-mile limit and the Seahawks can get you there and back with a load of twenty hostages.”
“The KIAs, sir?” Murdock asked.
“The dead will have to wait, Lieutenant. We don’t expect this coup to last long. We’ve got plans.”
“The Seahawks it is, sir.” Murdock looked at Don Stroh, who had his mouth full of steak. “Stroh, what about the timing?”
“Just got a signal from the White House. We are to begin the operation at the earliest possible time. Meaning as soon as we get on station about 0200.”
“Commander, what about the F-14s?” Murdock asked.
“Yes, we’ll go with the Tomcats. No missile firing but they can take a load of twenty-millimeter rounds and give you good close ground support.”
“Are they ready to roll?”
“They will be ready when you are, Lieutenant. We’ll send
the Tomcats out well after you leave here so they can be on target and give an almost continuous attack starting fifteen minutes before you arrive at the embassy.”
Murdock stood. “Men, chow call ends in five minutes. At 0200 we’ll be in the air. Let’s move it.”
When the SEALs got to the Seahawks, the one the SEALs would ride in had been loaded with all of their gear and ammo except for the IBSs, which were stored. Murdock saw the F-14s roll out and two get positioned. They wouldn’t take off for an hour yet. The Seahawks would be near the target when the Tomcats strafed the place with the 20mm cannon.
Murdock settled back against the side of the chopper and thought it through again. Yes, they had the best scenario. They had an hour-and-forty-one-minute flight. By the time they got there, the compound would have been pounded by the Tomcats for ten or fifteen minutes. The SEALs’ chopper would set down inside or on the street close to the embassy, and his team would charge in and take out any Kenyan soldiers left there alive.
The other two Seahawks would wait for an all-clear signal to come in to pick up the hostages. The first twenty would go out in the chopper the SEALs arrived in.
Murdock saw four of the SEALs sleeping. Good. Nobody was wound up tight. This should be a walk in the park.
An hour and a half later, he was in the cockpit of the chopper looking down at the U.S. Embassy grounds. A Tomcat swept down, fired a salvo of 20mm rounds, and slanted up and away. The radio chattered.
“Slowboy, that you? Sweepers ready to retire and circle. Be available for any special targets.”
“Sweepers, this is Slowboy, we’re approaching. Any more visitors?”
“We’ll watch for any mounted reinforcements coming in by land. Expect no air. Our last run completed. Good hunting.”
The Seahawk pilot looked over at Murdock. “Get ready, Lieutenant, we’re going in. See down there in the spotlight? There’s an area just this side of the main building where I
can set down. Close, but I can make it. You want us to hold or take off?”
“There’ll be some damn angry rebels down there. You scoot, and come back when you see a red flare. Shouldn’t take long. Looks like the Tomcats did a good job.”
Three minutes later, the tricycle landing gear on the Seahawk touched the Kenyan dirt inside the enclosure, and the crewman jerked open the side hatch. Murdock hit the ground running, and heard the rest of Third Platoon right behind him. That was when they took the first enemy small-arms fire.
Tuesday, July 20
0341 hours
U.S. Embassy basement
Nairobi, Kenya
Frank Underhill heard the jet plane roaring past again, then the explosions above. He wondered if there would be anything left of the embassy. For the past fifteen minutes the jets had been attacking the rebels above who defended the grounds. None of the Kenyan soldiers had tried to enter the basement room.
Underhill and the two Marines had barricaded the doors, and put a two-by-four through the large handles of the doors. They opened inward. The two-by-four would need to be broken to get the doors open. At least no Kenyan could rush in and machine-gun them all.
Underhill’s shot-up arm hurt like fire. He tried to forget about it. Two women clung to each other. They had been that way since the strafing began. He saw several people with their eyes closed and their lips moving as they fingered their rosary beads. The woman with the bad chest wound had quietly died about an hour ago. There was nothing they could do for her except hold her hand.
Somebody was going to pay.
“Mr. Underhill,” someone said beside him. He looked up at the big Marine. “Sir, you think we should open the door yet?”
“No. Not until the firing stops. What’s happening up there, Sergeant?”
“Well, the strafing is done. They were bigger rounds than machine guns. Maybe twenty-millimeter cannon. Makes a nasty mess if it hits someone. Then I’d think, with the jets pulled up, some assault choppers would come in. Only I don’t know where they’d come from.
“Course the jets came from somewhere, maybe a Navy carrier. So they would have some choppers. Could be a detachment of Marines from the carrier.”
They heard the stutter of automatic fire from above. Someone pounded on the basement doors and fired some rounds at it, but the steel door held and wasn’t penetrated by the rifle slugs.
The Marine sergeant nodded. “Oh, yeah, the guys on top have auto M-16’s, or maybe some other automatic weapon. Bet they give them Kenyan GIs a bad time. Wish to hell I was up there with an M-16 and about twenty magazines. Damn!”
A woman wailed in the far corner, and Underhill went over to try to calm her. He hoped that he could.
Lieutenant Murdock sprinted to the stub of a block wall, and dove behind it. He heard rounds going over his head. Single shots. Good. He saw Magic hit the ground down about ten feet, and a moment later Ron Holt skidded in beside him. Holt was the radio operator for the platoon, and carried his ever-present radio. It was the AN/PRC-117D. It was extremely compact at fifteen inches high and eight inches deep. It weighed only fifteen pounds, and was the most sophisticated tactical radio in the world. They called it the SATCOM.
It could send and receive UHF satellite communications on the SATCOM. That meant it could reach literally anywhere in the world. It could use UHF line of sight to talk to the Tomcats or the choppers above. With VHF or FM, it could use the bands that most of the world’s armies use.
Changing bands was easy as flipping a switch and deploying the right antenna. Its power could go from ten
watts maximum down to .1 watt to reduce enemy interception. An encryption system was embedded in the hardware, and the crypto keys could be changed daily by punching in a new set of numbers. It could transmit in voice, data, or video, and with a special interface could even link into the worldwide cellular telephone system.
Murdock could talk directly with the CIA in Washington or the President.
Murdock saw winking flashes of weapons firing ahead coming from the front and side of the embassy. He hadn’t seen anyone shooting out of the embassy windows.
They worked their attack plan. Ed DeWitt and his Second Squad would circle around to the back and clear that area. Then they would charge inside the building, flushing anyone inside out the front door. Murdock and his squad would eliminate any hostiles in the front of the building, and be ready for anyone trying to get out that way.
Murdock saw the rest of his squad spread out along the near side of the building and this wall. He motioned at the three men he could see, and waved them ahead. They ran with assault fire at the windows as they charged forward and jolted against the end of the main structure.