Battleground (15 page)

Holt thanked the Tom Birds that were in a holding pattern over the site. Then he picked up some flyboy chatter.

“Tom Bird One, this is Four. I have what could be a visitor from the north on my screen. Anyone copy it?”

“Tom Bird Four, I don’t see anything. You and Three take a run up north for fifty miles and see what’s out there.”

“Will do, One.”

Murdock looked at Holt. “What was that all about?”

Holt told him.

“Is Maleceia foolish enough to send more of his too few MiGs down this way?”

“Could be, could be a flight of geese.”

The line of sailors moved slower than Murdock wanted. Two men had broken down and were being carried by a two-man hand-chair arrangement. They had roughly a half
mile to go to a spot along shore where a pickup could be made. Murdock figured his men would be late. They had left the dead sailor in the prison.

Murdock heard the chatter of small arms before he saw anyone.

“Hit the dirt!” Murdock bellowed. The SEALs down the long line repeated the words.

Murdock looked at a slight rise to the west of the prison. He saw the headlights of a vehicle before someone remembered and cut them off.

“Ronson, get set up,” Murdock bellowed. The machine gunner came out of the line, flopped on his stomach, and angled his H&K-21A1 toward where he had seen the lights.

“Wait for some muzzle flashes,” Murdock said. The SEALs with long guns were down and ready.

Half-a-dozen flashes came and bullets sang around them. The SEALs poured fifty rounds into the immediate area. Ronson’s machine gun chattered with five- and seven-round bursts until the one-hundred-round belt emptied. He fit in a new one and waited.

“Range?” Murdock asked Jaybird, who had been firing beside him.

“More than fifty yards, sir. I’d say about two hundred.”

“Ching, Adams, Yates, Jaybird. Let’s move up there. Long gunners, give us some cover. We’ll be to the right for five minutes, then cease fire.”

They moved out with their NVGs up, running low to the ground. Murdock led them. The land had been cleared here for two hundred yards and there wasn’t much cover. Murdock hoped the men on the rise didn’t have NVGs. The SEALs covered half the distance and went to ground. The SEALs below hammered out with the heavier rounds from the sniper rifles, MGs, and M-4A1’s.

Murdock angled his men more to the right. He could see the small ridgeline, and a couple of minutes later they were to it. He looked over.

Down forty yards, he saw the enemy. Six Kenyan rangers fired over the small ridgeline with perfect cover. Until now.
Murdock brought his four men up so each had a free field of fire.

“Now,” he said in his mike, and all five blasted the six men. The rangers were caught by surprise. Four of them went down in the first furious fusillade. One crawled toward the small truck. Murdock slammed six rounds into him before he made it.

Jaybird caught the last man trying to run up the hill. He blasted him with a three-round blast, and the man went into the dirt and lay still.

“Move the men out for the water,” Murdock said into his mike. “Tell the commander to get his men off their asses and heading for the bay.”

Murdock and the four SEALs jogged down the hill, angling to catch up with the rest of the group.

Holt touched Murdock’s arm. “L-T, the flyboys are on again.”

“Tom One, this is Three.”

“Find anybody out there?”

“We’ve got three blips coming in fast from the north. Still over a hundred miles away. Closing at about six hundred.”

“Those old MiGs again. Warn them to turn around, and get a radar ID.”

“Roger that.”

“Home Plate, you copy that?”

“Right. If they keep coming and don’t acknowledge, you have missiles free. I repeat, Tom Birds, your missiles are free.”

“Roger that, Home Plate. You copy, Tom Three and Four?”

“Right. They’re still coming.”

Murdock looked at the shadowy line of men. He wanted to run up and carry each one. No food for three days would take a toll on them. They had been functioning on adrenaline, but that was burning off. They still had a quarter of a mile to go, and there was a small ravine in front of them they had to cross. Bad news.

“Holt, tell the carrier we’re running late. Have them hold the transport offshore until we get better positioned. We
need to be there waiting for them when they come in. They can’t do it quietly, so it has to be fast.”

“Will do, sir. They have the two LCACs off the coast now waiting for our go. They say it will take them less than eight minutes to get from two miles offshore into out inlet.”

“That fast?”

“They do forty knots, L-T.”

“We’re nowhere near ready for them to be moving yet. Have them hold.”

Murdock heard something. At first he thought it was a plane, but the jets were well overhead. Then he caught it: truck engines. The sound came from the hill where the six men had been. The sound came closer, then stopped.

The first sailors were in the ravine. It was the only cover around here. The trucks had to mean more troops from somewhere in Mombasa. The prison troops had had time to call for help.

“Get all the crew in the ravine,” Murdock yelled. “We’ve got company.”

“SEALs, get these men into the ravine,” Murdock said on his radio mike. “It’s the only cover anywhere around. First Squad break to the right and form up. Second Squad go left so we can get some cross fire on these assholes. Move. Take the suppressors off the MP-5’s to get more range.”

Two searchlights came on, shining from the ridge above, and began to sweep the area. Magic Brown lifted his H&K sniper rifle and blew out both of them with two quick shots. The lights hadn’t touched the last of the sailors, who dropped into the ravine and out of sight.

Murdock had his men in an assault line when the first of the troops came over the small ridge that had been protecting them.

He used the Motorola. “See them? Let’s give them a real hot SEAL welcome.”

Sixteen weapons opened up on the surprised Kenyan troops. They had no idea where their enemy was. Fire laced into the ranks from both sides and they dropped to the ground. A few fired at the gun flashes on both sides.

A Kenyan machine gun opened up, firing at DeWitt’s
squad. Six of his weapons concentrated on the MG man, and he went out of business quickly. For a few minutes there was no leadership among the men on the ridge.

Murdock had no way of estimating how many there were. He’d seen maybe twenty different weapons firing. For the number of trucks he heard, there should be a lot more ground troops than that.

Then just to his left, fifty yards from the first soldiers, another group of Kenyan rangers hit the ridge firing. The rounds weren’t aimed at anyone. They couldn’t see anyone. They simply fired down the slope.

Murdock’s men concentrated on the new targets. Answering the SEALs’ fire came a scattering of rounds, and Murdock heard a sharp cry to the left.

“Holt, that you? You hit?”

He got only silence.

Murdock crawled five yards to where he had last heard from Holt. The radioman lay on his back, the SATCOM radio half torn off his shoulder pack.

Murdock felt Holt’s back and side, but didn’t find any blood. He slapped the radioman’s face gently. Holt shivered, then shook his head and blinked.

“What the hell?”

“Your radio just became a casualty. You hurt anywhere?”

“Sore as hell in my back and side. Maybe the round hit the radio and that damn SATCOM hit me and knocked me out.”

Murdock unstrapped the radio and dropped it on the ground. He hit his Motorola mike. “DeWitt, we just lost the SATCOM. Get Willy Bishop to warm up his contact with the planes. We can use some close ground support on this puppy.”

The men on the ridge kept firing. Murdock moved his men twice, and told them to hold fire so the Kenyans couldn’t find them and have a target.

Two minutes later DeWitt came on the Motorola. “SATCOM contacted the F-14’s. They see the firing, want a flare and a red smoke on the target. They’ll be here in three minutes.”

“You shoot the flares in two minutes,” Murdock said.

It was a long damn two minutes, Murdock decided. Then the white flare burst over the Kenyans and a red smoke hit among them, and within seconds two F-14’s came down in rapid order blasting the Kenyan troops with 20mm rounds.

“Fire at will,” Murdock said into his mike, and all the SEAL weapons opened up again.

One more jet came sweeping in, blasting the men and probably the trucks behind them just as the flare burned out, and Murdock nodded. He saw two fires burning behind the ridge. Two trucks to the torch. The Kenyans would be lucky if they had enough men left for one truckload.

Engines roared, and the remains of the truck troops motored away in the direction they had come from.

“Back to the ravine,” Murdock said.

It took them fifteen minutes to get the tired sailors on their feet and out of the safety of the ravine. Two more had to be carried now as they moved down the slope toward the inlet three hundred yards away.

Murdock didn’t believe that it took them ten minutes to move the three hundred yards. Just as they hit the trees near the water, he told Bishop to call the LCACs circling offshore.

“Tell them we’re on the beach ready to board,” Murdock said.

Bishop came up to Murdock. “Message sent, sir. They said they have three craft and will be on-site here in eight minutes. How fast are those air-cushioned boats anyway?”

“The LCACs can do forty knots when they’re in a rush, which they will be. We’re going to put fifty-nine men on each boat, so it will be damn crowded, but the ensign from the boats said it will work.”

Commander Judd came up. “Three craft coming in?”

“Yes, sir. Time to split your men into three groups. We’ll load fifty-four of your men on each of the air-cushion boats and get the hell out of here.”

“With five of your men, that’s almost sixty men to a boat,” Judd said. “Where will they put us?” Then he
shrugged. “They must know what they’re doing. I’ll split up the group.”

Murdock told DeWitt to put his squad on one of the hover-craft, saying he’d split his own squad between the other two. Then the SEALs spread out, all facing toward the prison, as a rear guard to wait for the boats.

Murdock had wondered about the air-cushion craft as well. They had almost no cargo space, were only eighty-eight feet long, and topside were covered with ducts and fans and blowers. He hoped the sixty men could find a place to hold on.

Murdock heard the jets overhead. They’d be there until the landing craft were tucked up to the carrier four miles to sea. What could go wrong now? Maybe the Kenyan Navy. They had talked about the patrol craft the Kenyans had. The question was how many of the ships had gone over to the colonel in the coup. They heard some of the ships had simply put to sea to wait out the confusion.

On the carrier, they had been most worried about the two Kenyan fast-attack craft with missiles. They were the Nyayo class, 186 feet long, and could do forty knots. They carried SSM:40T0 Melara missiles with radar guidance and 210-kilogram warheads.

The F-14’s would be watching for them.

Bishop came up and gave Murdock the listen/talk hand-set.

He heard the fighters overhead.

“That’s a roger, Bird One. The three bogies are still on course, now about fifty miles and closing. They have ignored our ID calls. They definitely are not friendlies.”

“This is Home Plate. Tom Birds, your weapons are free. Splash two. I repeat. Splash two.”

“This is Tom Bird Three. I say lock on. I have a fox three from Tom Bird Three.” It was the aviator’s code for a Phoenix missile launch.

“This is Tom Bird Four. I have lock on. I say a fox three from Tom Bird Four.”

“Two Phoenix birds away and homing,” Tom Bird Three said.

A moment later. “I have splash on bogie three.”

“Splash on bogie two.”

The air was quiet for a moment. “The third target has just turned and is heading back the way he came. Looks like the fun is over.”

“Well done, return to your cover assignment,” Home Plate said.

On the ground by the inlet, the SEALs heard the whine and roar of the air-cushioned craft two minutes before they saw them. Three of the craft raced forward at a surprising speed, making a huge spray of water and foam as the ducted air fans beat air into the water to keep the craft lifted off it, while fans in back slammed them forward. Suddenly they cut power and slowed dramatically before they drove directly on the beach from the water, scattering sand and sticks from the air blowers. The engines idled down, and the front ramps lowered on both craft.

Commander Judd had the men in three groups on their feet waiting. They moved on board like well-trained combat troops. Murdock gawked in surprise. He got his men on the second and third craft, saw DeWitt get his squad aboard, and then the ramps came up. At once they roared off the beach into the water and slammed down the inlet toward the bay. The LCAC boats hadn’t been on the sand more than a minute and a half.

Their only armament were 12.2mm machine guns. Murdock told Magic Brown to get out his fifty just in case they needed it. The sixty men crowded the rail and clung to the sides of air shafts and any spare spot they could find on a deck filled with pipes and tubes and compartments. Murdock saw why the specs said the boat was made to handle only twenty-four troops.

They entered the bay proper, and turned left in a gentle curve spraying water fifty feet. Douglas tailed Murdock wherever he went. His radio was still set to the aircraft, and a moment later they heard the landing craft’s radio.

“Tom Birds, this is Cushion One. I’ve got lights and a wake coming up fast behind us. Can you see it? Left side of the island in the channel.”

“Looking, Cushion One. Yes, have it. Looks like a fighting ship. Kenya have any big patrol craft?”

“Tom Birds, could be a fast-attack boat with missiles. We’re ducks on a pond here. They match our speed.”

“We can’t see much on each flyover.”

“Can you tell if they have missile launchers?”

“I’d say that’s a roger,” another voice came in. “Can’t be sure. Can see what looks like a three-inch gun on the bow.”