Battleground (21 page)

Two dozen guns fired at the gunner behind the MG. He took three hits and slammed off the side of the rig. Another man reached up for the gun, but the mass of rounds fired made him pull back. More 40mm grenades exploded near the rig. Then two Willy Peter went off on top and beside the lightly defended carrier. The intensely burning phosphorus exploded both the front tires.

A pair of AK-47’s pounded off two bursts each from behind the rig, and were met with a withering volley of small-arms rounds. That was the last activity that came from the Kenyan vehicle.

Murdock waited five minutes. Already he had sensed new sounds on the
Turner.
The main engines must be turning over. Murdock took the mike from Holt, who had been beside him during the firing.

“Knight One, I’d say you have a safe landing zone now. That’s a go-ahead to land.”

“Inflatable, that’s a Roger. ETA is about two minutes.”

The big chopper settled gracefully to the steady deck aft, and twenty more sailors rushed from the rig into the hangar deck and to their pre-assigned duties on board the fast frigate. Seconds after the men cleared the Sea King, the
hatch door slammed and it took off into the black Kenyan sky.

Murdock and the Marines remained as guards on the starboard side of the
Roy Turner.

More sounds rumbled in the big ship. More lights came on, and Murdock saw lookouts posted where they were supposed to be.

Murdock settled down to wait. On the carrier, they had told him it could take from five minutes to an hour to get the
Turner
ready to ease away from the dock and start its trip down the channel. It would depend on what condition she was in, what damage had been done by the layover, and if any of the vital components had been shot up during the retaking of the craft.

Thirty minutes after the last chopper landed, Murdock saw sailors casting off the lines that tied the
Roy Turner
to the dock. A second lieutenant with the Marines stationed half of them on both sides around the bow and half of them on the stern.

Murdock touched his throat mike. “Looks like we may have a wrap on this part of our job,” Murdock said. “Casualty report.”

Doc Ellsworth came on the Motorola. “L-T, we’ve got one serious I know of. Ted Yates took an AK-47 round in his lower leg. One bone is broken for sure, maybe both of them.”

“We have a splint?”

“Not that I know of. He’s resting easy. We’ll wait for the carrier’s corpsmen. He’s had a shot of morphine.”

“Any others? Speak up, guys. I need to know now.”

“I scraped my face on this damn no-skid deck, does that count?” Lincoln asked.

“Not if you can see out of both eyes,” Murdock said. “Ronson, Nicholson, and Brown. How are those old wounds?”

They each came on pretending to be not sure what their lieutenant was talking about. In the end they all said they hurt like hell but they would live, and wouldn’t be cut out on the next phase of the mission.

“Yeah, we’ve got to do some high and mighty planning on that one.” Murdock said. “Politics is gonna be a factor here soon.”

Murdock kept his troops on alert until the frigate moved all the way down the channel and out past the little village on the north shore. In a few minutes, the frigate would come alongside the big carrier, and then the troops could really relax.

2220 hours

RX Military Headquarters

Nairobi, Kenya

General Umar Maleceia had taken off his military jacket and loosened his tie. His shirt showed sweat stains in his armpits and a streak down his chest. He held a long cigar, but hadn’t been smoking it. His fury fell on his second in command, Colonel Jomo Kariuki, who stood across the desk from the big commander in chief.

“What the hell you mean, you just heard? You sent that tank and the men out after the ship hours ago.”

“The phone lines are not—”

“Phone? Why the hell do we have radios?”

“My general, they are not that reliable. I couldn’t get through. I phoned and at last—”

General Maleceia threw a paperweight at the colonel, and hit him in the chest. The colonel backed up rubbing the bruise.

“The tank was destroyed by a missile, the personnel carrier was burned up by white phosphorous grenades,” he said. “I have confirmed reports that the U.S. Navy ship left the pier, and then left the port at about 2120.”

“Gawd damn!” The general dropped into his large leather swivel chair and leaned back. “I’ve got nothing left to negotiate with. No trump cards, not a gawddamned thing.”

“Sir, we still have our Navy ship and two or three aircraft.”

“Sure, send them against the task force out there? Hell, they have a carrier with probably a hundred fighters on the
decks, and all sorts of helicopters with missiles, and the missiles from all the covering ships. I’ve seen them operate. Nothing can get through that screen of missiles, let alone three little ships and a couple of outdated fighters.”

“Sir, if I may ask. What is next for us?”

Maleceia picked up an in basket from his desk and threw it at the colonel. He missed. “Next? How the hell do I know? It depends what the Americans do. If they’re satisfied with getting their ship back and sail away, we might hang on here yet. If they attack, then the whole thing may collapse.”

The telephone rang. Colonel Kariuki leaned over and picked it up. He listened a moment, shook his head, and hung up.

“What? What?”

“I’m afraid some bad news. The TV station and the radio station here in Nairobi have fallen to forces loyal to the President. Our men walked away and refused to fight them.”

“Bastards. Cowards. Have them all shot.”

“I can’t do that, my general. They all went back to the President’s side. They took the whole barracks with them. About a thousand men here in Nairobi.”

General Maleceia stood and paced the length of the room. He went to the windows and looked out.

“Double the guards around the headquarters. Bring out all of the machine-gun mounted small jeeps we have. Get all of our fifty-calibers out and manned. Make damn sure there is no problem with deserters here. If anyone tries to desert, shoot him on the spot.”

Colonel Kariuki saluted the stiffened back of his general, and hurried out of the office to put the new guard orders into effect. It would certainly keep anyone from leaving, and it might keep out a minor attack. Did the President still have any units loyal to him that had tanks? He couldn’t remember.

The colonel smiled. If things went from this bad to much worse, he had his own plans. He still had his civilian clothes. He also had the Mercedes stashed in a private area not even the enlisted men knew about. He could be out of
the complex, through Nairobi, and into Tanzania in two hours. He had a supply of U.S. dollars and South African rand gold pieces that would last him the rest of his life. Yes, it paid to make plans well in advance.

2140 hours

USS
Monroe,
CVN 81

Fifteen miles off Mombasa, Kenya

Murdock and DeWitt stood beside the hospital bed and watched Ted Yates come out of the general anesthesia. It had been a bad break of both bones. The fibula was shattered. They’d had to do some reconstruction, inserting a rod and some pinning and wiring.

Doc Ellsworth had watched the operation, and he was still showing the sweat. “Damn, but them guys are good. They pasted old Yates back together like he was a rag doll. He’ll be almost as good as new.”

Murdock nodded. Almost. He’d been through it several times before. There was no chance that Yates would be able to stand up under the strenuous rigors of a SEAL’s life. He would be back to the regular Navy for the rest of his hitch, and his career.

“Yates, Ted Yates,” Doc called. “Hey, buddy, you’re coming out of that wild dream. How was it in there?”

Yates tried a grin. He blinked, and rubbed his eyes. His hands were still in plastic gloves. They hadn’t taken time to clean him up before they operated.

“Doc, you bitch. You didn’t tell me it was going to hurt. Still hurts like a fucking volcano.”

“You had some shots, buddy. Should knock out the pain in a few minutes. Maybe knock you out too.”

“So why all the fuss over a broken leg?” Yates asked.

Doc looked at Murdock.

“Yates, it was worse than just a break. The medics say one of the bones was shattered. They had to pull in some reserves to paste you back together.”

“Reserves? You mean some pins and wires and things?”

“Yeah, Yates,” Doc said. “And a short length of rod. That bone was just in little bitty pieces in there.”

Yates frowned at them, then shook his head as a stab of pain drilled through him. He blinked, and looked at Murdock. “L-T, this ain’t gonna slow me down being a SEAL, is it?” He blinked again and shut his eyes. He lifted his hand, and then the medications took over as he drifted into sleep.

“You got off the hook on that one, L-T. Course he’s got to be told sooner or later.”

The three SEALs left the room, and worked their way with some help back to their assembly room. They had cleaned up a little, and Doc went to the EM mess for a late-night supper. He had a steak dinner with all the extras.

Murdock and DeWitt hit their quarters, had showers, and then went to the dirty mess and got their suppers to order.

“We got lucky on that one,” DeWitt said. “If those Hornets hadn’t been babysitting us, we’d be mincemeat by now in Mombasa harbor. Those one-oh-fives would have riddled the ship and blown us into the bay in tiny little pieces.”

“Yeah, thank God for the aviators.”

After they had eaten, and were on the way back to their quarters, DeWitt asked the next vital question.

“Now, do we go in and root out General Maleceia like we first planned?”

“That’s up to Washington. That’s the way we left it in our planning with Don Stroh. He’s got the ball now. We lick our wounds, and get ready to go in if he calls.”

“Mean we might get a day or two to rest up?”

“If the politicians have to decide it, we might have a whole week. We’ll need it to get ourselves into fighting trim again.”

Murdock made sure his men had been fed, had showers, and had good bunks; then he crashed in his quarters.

The next morning, Don Stroh knocked on his door at 0700.

Murdock let him in while wringing the sleep out of his brain.

“Hey, thought you’d been up for hours. We may have a small problem.”

Murdock took the offered cup of coffee, and sat down sipping at the life-giving fluid.

“Small problem?”

Stroh leaned against the door. “Well, maybe not all that small. You remember we left the ending open here. We said when we got the ship and all the people back, we’d worry about what to do about Colonel, now General, Maleceia.”

“You said it was a political, not a military matter. What did the politicians say?”

“Not a damn word. They haven’t even considered it yet. My boss said he talked to the President about it again yesterday, and he got put off.”

“So, can we fly back to San Diego?”

“You’re officially on hold until the politicos decide. I still say we don’t make the same mistake we did in Iraq. We go in and blast the guy into hell so we don’t have to come down here and do this job again.”

“So when will we know how they think?”

“Maybe a day, maybe a week. Maybe never. Politicians have a weakness for letting the hard decisions slide until everyone forgets about them.”

“What’s so hard about this one?”

“Our stature in world opinion, or our relations with President Daniel Djonjo, who it seems is gradually retaking control of his country. He’s got Mombasa almost totally recaptured. He is working north with a large force of troops that remained loyal or came back to his command. So we, and he, don’t know what the hell is happening.”

“Why wouldn’t he want us to rip up the last of the general and get him out of the President’s hair?”

“You got me. Maybe they are both from the same tribe or
something. It’s all a mystery to me. I’ve sent three signals to my boss this morning with the hope that we can get a go/no-go by tonight.”

Murdock stretched and reached for his pants. “So I’d better get my men looked over, shaped up, and rested for another go-round. We need to do our basic planning just in case it is a go.”

“I’m with you. I don’t see how the President can turn us down on this one. We’ve asked for a go, and he’s conferring with some members of Congress and his staff and cabinet. That could be trouble. We’ll have to wait and see.”

The two had breakfast, then went to the SEAL assembly room. Again Murdock had to have an escort to get him to the right room on the right deck.

The SEALs looked a little tired but in good spirits. Doc Ellsworth reported that he had taken Nicholson, Brown, and Ronson to the medics to have their wounds treated and redressed. All had broken open again, but the medics said they weren’t serious, and if the men wanted to stay on duty, it was their call.

Jaybird had them all cleaning their weapons, and he’d already made an invoice of what ammo they had left for each type of weapon. Six of the men had brought back the AK-47’s with them.

“A damn souvenir,” Miguel Fernandez said. “Hell, ain’t every day I get a chance to look down this end of one of them weapons. It’s a pretty fine piece.”

Murdock filled them in on the chances of taking on General Maleceia. They groaned at the delay.

“Didn’t we learn anything in Iraq?” Ron Holt asked. “Jeeze, think them Washington guys would think back and see what we didn’t do back there. Time we finished the job here.”

Half the men had a comment. Murdock listened, realizing that most of the bitching was along the lines of what he thought.

“At least it gives us a small window to get our breath, check over our weapons, see if we can find anything new we want to use, and maybe even do some training,” he said.

That brought a groan from the men.

“Besides, we need to get in some head work on how we’d take on that RX Military Headquarters where the general hangs his hat.”