Hostile Fire (19 page)

“Lam,” Gardner whispered. “Get up there and make contact. I figured somebody would be up here by now.”

“Roger that, Lieutenant,” Lam said. He lifted up and moved silently forward. He soon vanished in the night air that was starting to cool. The men were all sweating. They lay in the sand and rocks waiting for the contact.

Less than two minutes later, Lam materialized silently out of the darkness and waved. “We found them. Murdock says come on in.”

The rest of Third Platoon hiked the fifty yards to the edge of the wadi and looked down. A small fire burned against the far bank. Four figures waved at them as they slid down the six-foot incline to the flat floor of the dry watercourse.

“Good to see you guys,” Murdock said as he stood and held out a hand. Gardner shook it and frowned.

“What is this, chow time?”

Murdock took another bite of one of the cheese sandwiches they had brought with them and grinned. “It is now. I hope you guys brought food and water. We could take another look at the place tonight, but so far I don’t see one fantasy way in hell that we can even get inside this monster, let alone destroy it with the bombs we brought.”

He watched the men greeting each other then got their attention. “Men, I want you to meet the person who found out where this place was for us, and in the process compromised herself and became a kill target. Let me introduce Gypsy, our benefactor.”

Gypsy had hung in the background; now she moved up and waved. “My English she isn’t so good but best I can do. Better I am here than dead in Baghdad. Where is this woman scientist, this Kat Garnet?”

Kat come up and hugged Gypsy and they moved to the side and began talking.

Murdock sat down with the men. “This sucker is underground all right. We don’t know how far. I’d guess it has at least four feet of concrete on top and then two feet of sand and rocks on top of that to make it impossible to spot. You brought that laser the brass talked about?”

“We did, and we have Prescott, who took a day of training on it and can make it work,” Gardner said.

“We sure as hell might need it,” Murdock said. “Those troops we saw were working the area in a circle around the factory. We heard there were two hundred. Could be more than that. They live out here. We almost ran into two kitchens. No bedrolls—they sleep on the ground. All day is given over to patrols, interlocking patrols with ten-man units. They range from a mile to three miles from the complex, so we never could be sure where they might show up. We had to back off and wait them out.”

“So how do we get close enough during the day to get Prescott in there to use the laser?” Jaybird asked.

Murdock scowled. “My guess right now is that we don’t. We go in at night and have the bombers primed and ready to go. They are going to need the bunker busters, those babies that can penetrate ten feet of concrete before they explode. Once we laser it and they get their first sightings in on it, they can plaster it with a dozen of the busters and that should do the job.”

“So how can we be sure that we’ve destroyed the four bombs?” Wade Claymore asked.

Everyone looked at Murdock. “We can’t. After the bombing, we’ll have to send in a small team, three or four with Kat, and see what we can find. Once the place is wrecked, they may pull all the troops out and bring in the scientists and construction men to start seeing what they can salvage. If they do that quickly, we’ll have a good chance to get in and get out.”

“Sounds like a suicide mission,” Senior Chief Neal said. “Doesn’t sound like SEAL work.”

“We don’t do suicide operations,” Vinnie Van Dyke said.

Everyone was quiet for a while. The two women had moved back to the group.

“I don’t know about you guys, but my job out here is to
get those four bombs destroyed,” Kat said. “I’m going in there if I have to go alone.”

“We won’t let you do that,” Murdock said. “If it comes to a three- or four-man unit going in, we’ll be with you. First we have to find out how to get the damn bunker busters in the neighborhood. Bradford, you have our regular SATCOM that sends and receives?”

“Yes, sir. I can have it set up in about thirty seconds.”

“Do it.”

A minute later Murdock keyed the mike after setting the transmission to the one Don Stroh usually used.

“Murdock to Stroh. Come in, big buddy, we’ve got a problem.”

He waited. Nothing happened. He made the call twice more. There was no response. “Turn it to the CIA channel,” Murdock said. Bradford did. “This is Underground One in Iraq. I need to talk to Don Stroh. Can you raise him for me?”

The response was immediate.

“Underground One. Stroh is in Kuwait. He’s probably turned off his set. I’ll contact him by land line. Call again in thirty minutes. Out.”

It took them almost an hour to raise the CIA man in Kuwait.

“Murdock, this better be good. Pulled me away from the best steak I’ve had in years. These Kuwaitis really know how to cook.”

“Bunker busters,” Murdock said. “We need a dozen of them out here in the boonies tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow? It’s that hard a site? Must be. You know the navy doesn’t carry them around. We’ll need the air force to fly them in. They can land here in Kuwait, I’d guess. You have the laser?”

“We do, and a man who can work it and a target to set up for you but only at night.”

“Night is no problem. Getting the hardware in place might be. I’ll call my boss and have him ring some tails. What time is it in DC? Damn. I’ll call anyway. What time tomorrow night?”

“Anytime after dark. We’ll set up a time when you get the bombs in Kuwait.”

“You know how much just one of those busters costs?”

“You know how much one nuke on San Francisco would cost?”

There was a moment of dead air. Then Stroh let out a long sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll get the gears grinding. Might have to fly them in from Germany. I don’t know. I’ve got to make some calls.”

“Underground out.”

He sat down against the side of the wadi. He had put out two guards, one on each end of the gully. They all had to get some sleep now since tomorrow they would be moving around to stay out of the way of the roving patrols.

Kat came up and sat next to him. “Hey, Gypsy tells me you had some action in Baghdad. Got shot at and everything.”

“Yeah, true, but we won.” He scowled. “Oh, damn. Mahanani, you got your goody kit?”

“Never without it. My CO’s orders.”

“Find Rafii. He took a round in the arm and I forgot to check it. He could be hurting.”

“Rafii got shot and you forgot about it?” Kat asked. “You must have been busy. How could he forget about it?”

“Happens. Heard about this Marine in ‘Nam who was in a vicious firefight with rockets and grenades. He was throwing grenades with his right hand and it wasn’t until the short firefight was over that he realized that his left hand had been blown off. It can happen. There’s such a surge of adrenaline during combat that it wipes out everything else. Rafii wasn’t hit that bad, an in and out I think he said. But, yeah, we’ve been busy.”

“Can I help him?”

“Mahanani can do it.”

“Good seeing you again, Murdock.”

“Good seeing you, too. You married yet?”

“Nope. You?”

“Almost. We have a new condo we bought.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is.”

“Murdock, we’ve got to get those four bombs. The President
is afraid that Iraq will sell them to the highest bidder, probably some terrorists like al-Qaida.”

“You hobnobbing with the President again?”

“When he calls, I drop everything and run right over to the Oval Office. Be surprised how intimidating that place is.”

“I’ve been there.”

She nodded. “Right, you told me about that. Anyway we have to destroy those bombs before they get spread around. That’s why I’ve got to go in there and try. Even if I don’t come out.”

“You’ll come out, Kat, or none of us will. Now, get some sleep. I don’t want to have to carry you on my back tomorrow.”

“Hey, sailor, that will be the day. Remember I can outrun you any day of the moon.”

“The moon has days?”

“Absolutely. Good night, sailor.”

One of the guards woke up Murdock at midnight. He had the graveyard shift. He always took his turn. Besides, he wanted to see the sun come up over the desert. For the first two hours he played with the thermal imager. Twice he saw small animals. He’d have to find out what they were. Once he thought he saw the flash of headlights far to the north. Then he decided it must be a flash of dry lightning. Too far away anyhow to worry about rain. He remembered once they were almost trapped in a gully when rain in the mountains poured down and the ravine suddenly filled with water twenty feet deep. Not this time.

The sun came over the eastern horizon. At the lip of the wadi he figured he could see twenty miles to the east. The red glow of the sun was muted somewhat by a ground haze that sent slivers of gold and red throughout the desert. Then the huge red orb broke free and the heat warmed him from the night desert chill. All too soon it would be too warm and then hot and then miserably hot.

At first he didn’t believe it. Then the spot on the far sky raced closer and he could see that it was an aircraft. A jet? Or an old piston plane? He couldn’t tell. He ran back to their camp, roused everyone, and told them to blend in with the sides of the gully in case the plane came directly over them.

Murdock stared at the craft over the lip of the wadi. He couldn’t be sure if it was coming right at them. Then it turned, and from what he figured was less than half a mile away, it swept down to a hundred feet and powered straight down the wadi where they hid.

Murdock looked at his men, who had flattened against the walls of the wadi. All had pulled floppy hats down over their faces and their brown and tan desert cammies helped them blend in with the sand and dirt. The four of them in gray and brown shades of Iraqi clothing melted into the background as well.

He moved his head an inch so he could see where the low-flying plane would come from. It was a small, high-wing craft that could seat no more than four and must be used for scouting and recon around the facility. He had seen no airstrip, but here it would take a bulldozer only an hour to level out a dirt landing field.

He could hear the sound of the plane now. It might be over one more wadi, maybe fifty yards away; he couldn’t be sure. Then he saw it, amazingly close, no more than a hundred yards to the left and a hundred feet in the air. It dipped its right wing and made a gentle turn away from them, coming close to the ground, then continued the turn and climbed as it headed back the way it had come. Murdock held the team in place for another two minutes, then called out.

“Relax, I think he missed us. If he spotted us, we should be hearing from a mounted patrol within half an hour. Let’s talk.”

The men and women gathered around. Kat and Gypsy sat close together whispering and grinning, laughing now and then. It seemed to Murdock that they had bonded like longlost sisters.

“Bradford, crank it up and let’s see what our chubby buddy from the Company has to say.” When the SATCOM was aligned with the closest satellite, Murdock took the handset.

“Big Daddy Kuwait, this is Underground One.”

The response was immediate.

“Yes, skinny little buddy, I’m here. You cause me more trouble. I had to get people out of bed. Well, turns out we do have some of the GBU-28s on station here in Kuwait. That’s air force talk. They are delivered by the B-52 Stealth bombers. I can’t say where they are or where they might come from, but some are now on station in Kuwait awaiting your orders. How’s that for hot copy?”

“Not bad, Company Man. At first dark we’ll move into position about five miles from our OP. We should have the GPS coordinates for you on the target around twenty hundred. Then we’ll light up the target with the laser designator and hope we can coordinate the attack.”

“Sounds like a winner. Oh, while we’re on the air, some details. The GBU-28 is a weapon developed and tested and put into operation in twenty-eight days back in February of 1991. This is unheard of speed in munitions creation. The critter is four thousand six hundred and thirty-seven pounds and has six hundred and thirty pounds of tritonal high explosives. It has a four-thousand-four-hundred-pound penetrating warhead. The bombs are made from modified army artillery tubes because of their great strength. Only two of these weapons were used in Desert Storm, but many have been dropped in Afghanistan.

“The bomb is fitted with a GBU-27 LGV kit and is only fourteen and a half inches in diameter and nineteen feet long. Tests show that it can penetrate twenty feet of concrete and up to a hundred feet of soil without heavy rock formations. You were right; they don’t cost much, only a hundred and forty-five thousand dollars each. Any questions?”

“We light up the target with our laser designator and keep it on until the bombs fall, right?” Murdock asked.

“Right, we trained your man on that.”

“Will there be more than one bomb run by the B-52?”

“We don’t know. I’m not sure how many of the bombs the B-52 can carry at one time. We’ll get back to you on that. If we don’t, or our commo goes out, just keep the target lit up until the planes go away.”

“That’s a roger, Company Man.”

“Be careful out there. After the hit, those Iraqis left alive are going to swarm like enraged hornets.”

“That’s for sure. We’re out.”

“Why doesn’t all of that HE go off when it first hits the concrete?” Jaybird asked.

“I’ve seen pictures of them,” Gardner said. “It has a charge right on the nose that helps dig through the concrete, then blasts on through and explodes when it’s underground.”

“How much destruction will they do under that concrete roof?” Kat asked.

“We don’t know,” Gardner said. “But any explosion inside a concrete box like that will be magnified by ten times in the concussion, the blast, the shrapnel effect of blowing things apart. Will it take out a completed nuclear bomb? I have no idea. Let’s hope we get to go inside and see for ourselves.”

“Worst scenario,” Murdock said. “We hit it with two of the bunker busters. That building could be a hundred yards long, size of a football field. Would two bombs totally destroy it? Probably not. So what do the Iraqis do?”