Battleground sts-6 Page 6

  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.

  Murdock whispered into the filament mike perched below his lower lip. It connected to the Motorola MX 300 each of the SEALs wore for instant communication. They each had an earpiece, and a wire down the back of the neck through a slit in the cammies and plugged into the Motorola unit secured to the combat harness.

  "Ed. Progress," Murdock said.

  "Couple of stubborn boys back here." He heard more firing of the M-4A1's, then the karumph of a fragger grenade exploding.

  Murdock looked at the front of the embassy. In the faint light he could see some pockmarks from the 20mm. In the dark he couldn't see much, but the soft moonlight helped. A figure bolted from the front door and darted toward the open steel front gate in the block wall.

  Two three-round bursts brought him down in the dust of the courtyard. He didn't move.

  Fire erupted from two windows along this end of the second floor. Murdock lifted his MP-5 Heckler & Koch submachine gun, and sent four three-round bursts into the first window. He heard the heavier sound of the M-4A1's with the sliding butt-stock pounding away. For a moment there was no more firing.

  Murdock surveyed the land. He had to move across an open space to get to the protection of a pair of cars. They would give him a perfect field of fire on the front door and half of the windows facing the street.

  Murdock used the radio again. "Horse, can you cover the front door?"

  A moment later Ronson's voice came back. "If I move about five yards toward the street. Just a minute."

  Murdock figured his thirty-round magazine was more than half full.

  "Yeah, I got it," Horse responded. "Cover for you ready."

  "I'm moving to those old cars. Now, Horse."

  The HK 21A1 machine gun blasted off six rounds to Murdock's left. The Platoon Leader and Holt came out of a crouch and jolted forward, sprinting the fifteen yards for the pair of parked cars. Both cars had been hit by 20mm rounds, Murdock decided.

  Half way there an automatic rifle opened up from the second story window. A spray of hot lead drilled the ground just in front of Murdock and Holt.

  Behind him he heard the 7.62 nun NATO rounds slamming out of Horse's machine gun. By then Murdock had hit the dirt behind the tire-flattened cars and caught his breath. Holt skidded in close behind him.

  A dark figure ran from a door half way down the building. Magic Brown saw him, brought down the 6 x 42 telescopic sight, found the target and fired the H & K PSG 1 sniper rifle without the suppresser. The 7.62 NATO slug slammed into the figure's chest and jolted him into the dust.

  Murdock heard more firing from the back of the building. He hit the mike again.

  "Ed, need any help?"

  "No. We've got two men inside. One pocket of three bad guys don't want to give up. Lincoln is moving up on them with a pair of fraggers."

  "Keep it wired."

  Murdock saw more winking flashes from the second story. It might be harder than they thought to drive these guys out. He had no idea how many there were.

  He flipped down his NVG. They turned the night into a soft greenish hued dusk. He scanned the face of the two story embassy and spotted a man coming out a window on the far end on a rope. He figured the range, 80 yards at the most. They all had taken the sound suppressors off their MP-5 submachine guns for more range. They were good without the silencers for 150 yards.

  Murdock sighted in and fired a three-round burst, then another. The man shook when the last three rounds hit him, and spun off the rope. He jolted hard into the ground. Murdock watched him through the NVGs, but the Kenyan didn't move.

  Jaybird Sterling charged along the stone front of the embassy. He was so close no one inside could see him. He ducked under first-floor windows, and came near the front door. Just then a machine gun began hammering away out the front entrance. Murdock and three other shooters put a hail of fire into the opening, but the weapon kept slamming bullets out at eight hundred rounds a minute.

  Murdock ducked as the rounds drew slow stitches across his protective car. Jaybird had gone flat on the ground next to the building near the front door when the MG started firing. Then, as the friendly fire tapered off, he crawled forward, pulled a fragger from his harness, and jerked out the safety pin. He squirmed another few feet, then rolled the grenade into the front-door opening.

  It was 4.2 seconds later when the hand bomb went off. Sandbags toppled, and the machine gun on a tripod tipped over with its smoking muzzle on the floor. The gunner sprawled in death with one arm blown off and his chest tattooed with shrapnel.

  For a moment all firing stopped. Then, in a rush, three Kenyan soldiers charged out the front door heading for the open gate. Jaybird put one of them down from behind with his MP-5. Kenneth Ching nailed the second one with three rounds from his M-4A1.

  Doc Ellsworth dropped the third one with a throaty blast from his Mossburg pump action shotgun throwing out double ought buck.

  The radios spoke to the 16 man SEAL team. "Rear secured, we're moving inside," DeWitt said. "Haven't heard any firing on the second floor lately. We'll move to the top and clear it as we come down. You can be sure it's a bad guy target if anyone comes out the front door or a window. We'll stay inside."

  7

  Tuesday, July 20

  0352 hours

  U.S. Embassy

  Nairobi, Kenya

  Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt waved at his two most experienced men, Scotty Lincoln and Miguel Fernandez. Both had traded their usual weapons for MP-5 submachine guns. They had lots of experience training in the Kill House back in California. Both men wore NVGs, and flipped them down and nodded.

  Fernandez went in the rear door first, angling to the right. He saw nothing move in the green-tinted world. It was a storeroom of sorts on the ground floor.

  Before he could move, Lincoln bolted in and covered the other half of the room.

  "Clear," Fernandez whispered into his throat mike.

  A door led off to the right, and another one to the left. Lincoln took his side, and Fernandez went to the right. Fernandez dropped to the floor and looked around the doorjamb from ankle level. The room ahead was a meeting space, with tables and chairs. Something moved on one of the tables. A man lying flat. Fernandez stared at the figure through the night-vision goggles. The man lifted a weapon.

  Fernandez hosed him down with two three-round bursts, and saw him take the 9mm rounds and roll off the table. Another form down the way sprinted for the far door, and made it before Fernandez could bring his weapon around.

  He checked the rest of the room area by area. No more bad guys. "Second room right clear," he said into the mike. He came to his feet and sprinted for the next door. Three rounds came through it and he dove to the left, and skidded against the wall three feet from the opening.

  He pulled a hand grenade from his harness, popped the safety pin, and threw it into the room. The explosion brought a pair of screams that trailed off. Then silence.

  This time he looked around the side of the door about three feet off the floor. Inside was an office with two desks. Two bodies lay sprawled in the aisle between the wooden desks. A form lifted up beside a filing cabinet and fired three rounds from what Fernandez figured was an AK-47. The rounds missed.

  Fernandez sighted in on the side of the cabinet where he had seen the Kenyan and waited. Almost a minute passed, but Fernandez held his sight. Then the Kenyan leaned quickly out from the steel filing cabinet, but befo
re he could fire, Fernandez nailed him with three rounds from the "room sweeper," and the Kenyan slammed to the rear with half his throat shot away.

  The SEAL ran into the room with his MP-5 ready, but he found no more living Kenyans. He hurried to the far door and looked around the doorjamb. He saw a figure lunge up from behind a line of file cabinets and throw something.

  A grenade.

  It hit once in front of the door, bounced true, and Fernandez tracked it through the open door on his nightscope. He caught the hand bomb, and in the same motion threw it back the way it came. He jolted against the wall outside the room, and a second later the grenade went off with a blast.

  Fernandez heard no human sound from the room. He edged around the door again and looked. File cabinets against the walls, some down the center of the room. He saw a bloody head on the floor halfway along the files. A moment later he touched his mike. "Clear three right," he said. Lincoln's hurried call came just after his message. "We may have a problem in room two my way. I hit a staircase, and somebody is up there covering the whole damn room but gives me no target."

  "Hang tight," Fernandez said. "I'm out of rooms and on my way."

  A minute later, Fernandez slid to a stop beside an open door. Lincoln was by the other side. Fernandez checked through the door, and jerked back at once. Two slugs drilled through the air where he had been.

  "He's got some night vision too," Lincoln said.

  "What's in the room?"

  "Stores, looks like lots of food and office supplies. No good cover down there. Except maybe that stack of what looks like boxes of paper halfway down to the left."

  Fernandez took a look from head height. "Yeah." He put a slug into the boxes and jerked back. They never even wiggled. "Cover," he said. "You spray that stairwell top and I'll get to the boxes. That'll give me a good angle to shoot straight up the stairs and nail the bastard."

  Lincoln pushed a fresh thirty-round magazine into his MP-5 and nodded. He poked out the muzzle and pounded off three rounds, then adjusted and nodded at Fernandez. Twelve rounds on full auto slammed into the top of the staircase as Fernandez charged the fifteen feet to the stack of cases of paper, then rolled to a stop below them out of sight of the stairway.

  Lincoln kicked six more rounds up the top of the stairs. Then Fernandez added his firepower, with the advantage of the angle. He slapped twelve rounds out of his weapon, and heard a scream from up the stairs.

  Fernandez saw a hand appear at the top of the stairs holding a grenade. Before it could be thrown, Fernandez drilled the arm with three rounds, and the small bomb dropped out of the Kenyan's hand and three seconds later exploded.

  Fernandez looked back at Lincoln and nodded. He sent covering fire up the stairs until he felt Lincoln slide into place beside him.

  "No response up above," Lincoln said. "Might just have solved our little problem."

  Fernandez used the mike again. "L-T, we could use about four good men in here. The stairs is ours."

  Moments later Adams, Lampedusa, Bos'n's mate Ted Yates, and Quinley ran into the room and found cover.

  Quinley had a shortened pistol-grip shotgun with no stock or much of a barrel, and five rounds of double-aught buck.

  "Quinley," Lincoln said. "You and me up the stairs. Side by side. You've got the left. Blast at anything that moves."

  Quinley pulled down his night-vision goggles, and the two ran for the stairs and up them.

  Quinley fired one round upward as they hit the bottom step. When they got to the top they dove to the floor and surveyed the scene. Just in front of them lay a green-clad Kenyan ranger with his head half blown off his shoulders. His AK47 lay just beyond his stiffening fingers.

  Ahead they saw a long hall with lots of doors opening off it. "Shit," Lincoln said. "We got to clear every fucking one of those rooms." He touched his mike. "Bring up the troops," he said. The other four SEALs ran up the steps and went flat on the floor at the top.

  "Rooms to clear," Lincoln said. "Two men to each room, just like in training. We do three rooms at the same time. Move out."

  The first three rooms contained no enemy troops. The next three had two men in one who didn't get off a round before they had half-a-dozen 9mm slugs in their vital organs.

  Fernandez looked at the last two rooms. The doors were farther apart. So far they had found only sleeping quarters for two to three persons.

  Fernandez motioned to Quinley, and they took the far door. Lincoln and Adams had the near one. The other two pointed outward as security.

  On signal they kicked in the doors and charged inside.

  Fernandez saw it was a three-room suite. Maybe the ambassador's. The main room was clear. They swung open another door and found a bathroom. Adjoining it was the master bedroom. Once inside the bedroom, Fernandez swore. One woman lay dead on the big bed. She was naked, and her breasts had been sliced off. The other woman, a redhead, lay on the floor, naked as well, with several big-caliber slugs in her body.

  "Gonna be hell to pay," Quinley said.

  Fernandez nodded. "Hope to hell I get to do the collecting."

  Lieutenant Ed DeWitt ran into the room, and shook his head. "The bastards."

  He went out to the hall. At the end of it there was another corridor at right angles. There were only six doors on this side. Before they got into the line of fire from down the hall, DeWitt sent a three-round burst down it.

  Two weapons answered him.

  "One came from the second room on the right," Quinley said. He had been flat on the floor peering around the wall. "The other one was farther down.

  "They don't have NVGs," Quinley added. "If they did they would have seen me."

  "How in hell do we get down there and not get ourselves shot to hell?" Fernandez asked.

  "I'll go," Quinley said. "Hey, I'm the smallest one here. I'll take fraggers and crawl down there along the wall. You guys give me some cover fire three feet high. I get to the second door. Must be open or they couldn't fire out of it. I cook a grenade for two seconds, then throw it in, and two seconds later, whammo."

  "Could work," DeWitt said. He touched his mike. "Front side, we've got a holdup here on the second floor. We're working it out."

  "Need any help?" Murdock asked.

  "Negative, front side. Hang on."

  They fired from the wall opposite the one that Quinley crawled along. Bursts of three rounds, then single shots, never in any pattern. Some shots went to the third and fourth doors too.

  Quinley had almost gotten there when a rifle poked out the second door and slammed off six rounds well over his head. Most dug into the walls. Nobody got hurt. Quinley surged ahead before the door could be closed, and let the arming handle pop off a grenade, held it two seconds, then threw it into the second room.

  The explosion came almost at once. Quinley jolted forward, came to his feet, and surged into the room with his MP-5 chattering. A few seconds later, he waved out the door with a thumbs-up. Three SEALs used assault fire and stormed down the hallway to the second door and rushed inside.

  Lincoln led them. Now he checked the hall. They weren't sure which door the second sniper had used. DeWitt had cleared the first room, and Yates and Lampedusa cleared the third room. They had three ahead of them.

  "It was either the fourth or fifth door," Quinley said. "Sure as hell wasn't the last one. All that's left is four and five."

  "One man on each side of the hall," Lincoln said. "Same procedure. I'm on one side, Willy Bishop on the other. Same thing Quinley did. Give us some cover."

  Two more SEALs ran into room two, and were ready for support fire. Lincoln nodded and dove to the far wall, and Lincoln took the near one. The SEALs laid down the covering fire. One weapon poked out of door four, but jerked back in when the fire concentrated there.

  Lincoln had that side. By the time he got there the door was closed tightly. He fired three rounds into the locking area, kicked the door open, and sprayed the inside of the room with 9mm whizzers.

  R
eturn fire blasted through the door. Lincoln had fired from low and to one side. He tossed in a fragger grenade, and when it went off, he was up and charged inside. No shots came from the room.

  DeWitt and the others cleared the last two rooms, and they relaxed. "Second floor clear," DeWitt said into his mike. "Nobody exited the joint," Murdock said. "Good work. You moving downstairs for the first floor?"

  "Roger that."

  The Second Squad went down the far steps quietly and with caution. They cleared three doors and found no one home. They went through the kitchen, the infirmary, a library, and six more offices. There were no more Kenyan rangers in the compound.

  "Clear all," DeWitt said. "Where the hell are the hostages?"

  "We found a door with stairs leading down," Willy Bishop said.

  "Let's do it," DeWitt said.

  The stairs were clear. In the basement they saw two small rooms had doors standing open. Big locked double doors led to what must be a larger room just beyond the smaller ones.

  DeWitt tapped on the steel door with the butt of his MP-5. He waited. Three taps came back. DeWitt tapped again, three quick raps, then three slow ones, then three fast ones. Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot. SOS in Morse code. They heard a cheer from inside. More noises came as the doors were evidently being freed so they could be opened. One door swung open slowly, and a lone man stood there with a bandaged left arm.

  "Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt at your service, Mr. Ambassador."

  First Secretary Frank Underhill let the tears roll down his cheeks. "Thank God," he whispered, then pulled both doors open wide. "Thank God for the United States military forces."

  "Hostages freed," DeWitt said in his mike. "Call in the choppers, Murdock. Time's a-wasting."

  The SEALs had never received a warmer welcome. Every one of the hostages hugged the SEALS, and the women kissed them on the cheeks and didn't want to let go of them.

  "The two women Colonel Maleceia took away?" Underhill asked. DeWitt took him aside and told him what they had found.