The Coward's Way of War (45 page)

“Sergeant, we have surrendering prisoners,” one of his men shouted.  Doug followed his gaze and saw several Saudis, their faces drawn and terrified, advancing with their hands in the air.  He scowled, feeling something tingling at the back of his neck, wondering what was wrong.  Something wasn't right.  “What do we do...?”

The man at the rear threw a grenade towards two American soldiers before anyone could react.  The explosion sent them both flying through the air.  Doug brought his rifle up and squeezed the trigger in one harsh motion, gunning down the Saudis before they could run or reveal any other hidden weapons.  One of them exploded under his fire, revealing that he had been wearing a suicide belt.  Who knew what the others had been carrying.

“Sergeant...?”

“Pass the word up the chain,” Doug ordered, harshly.  He stared down at the dead men, knowing that some of them might not have known what the others had in mind.  They had died because of their comrades’ treachery.  “Tell them that these bastards cannot be trusted to surrender.”

His voice hardened.  “No mercy...”

Somewher
e out there, there’s a bullet with your name on it
.

-Specialist Joe Buckley

Saudi Arabia/Arabian Gulf

Day 37/38

Petty Officer Joe Buckley grinned as he stepped out of the SOF Planning space on the USS
Florida
. 
This is going to be fun
.  No one had really gotten to use the new systems on the converted ex-boomers - missile boats - for their intended purpose since they had come out of the conversion overhaul.  Oh sure, there had been exercises, training and one or two missions that never
officially
happened, but no one had actually tested the equipment in combat.  The SEALS would be the first to use the systems in a combat zone.

Those Ragheads won’t know what hit them
, he thought.  He walked down the aft ladder in control, turned and started pulling gear out of the lockers in the old fan room.  Within a couple of minutes several of his teammates were there helping and prepping their gear.  Long experience had taught them to take all they could, but to be careful about what they took.  It was astonishing what some officers thought should be taken onto a battlefield.

Over the next two hours Joe and the rest of the team loaded up the mini subs as the
Florida
sat on station.  The massive submarine currently embarked a full sixty-man team of SEALS and a full load of one hundred and fifty-four Tomahawks.  The boat could keep the SEALS in bullets, beans, and anything else they might need for two months, although no one expected this particular mission to last that long.  Still, SEALS knew better than anyone not to count on anything when it came to missions in hostile territory.

By the time the SEALS and the delivery team boys had finished loading the first boat and ensuring the batteries were fully charged up, the moon had set and it was time to go.  The team crawled up the ladder into the bottom hatch of the port mini-sub and braced themselves as the submarine carried out a final check and confirmed that they were alone in the water.  As soon as the
Florida’s
sonar section gave them the final all-clear, they were gone.  The only way Joe could tell they weren’t still attached to the mother sub was the sense of being in a sports car, instead of a big bus.  The tiny submarine just felt very different to the six hundred-foot long boomer.

Joe sat back and waiting, quelling the agitation that always bubbled up on the eve of an operation.  He couldn’t see out, except a little over the driver’s shoulder, and it felt a lot like being in the hold of a small airplane prior to the jump signal.  The designers, knowing what kind of missions the submarines would be used for, had neglected to include any bells and whistles – or luxuries for the team.  The guys up forward driving the bus were able to see, and they had a sonar system as well.  Fifteen minutes later the driver slowed the sub and settled her onto the bottom.

Lieutenant Walker deployed the periscope for a look around.  The whole minisub was a marvel of engineering, and the second version to come out since the SSGN conversion program had started.  This one could actually go up on the beach on tractor treads like a tank, if the mission called for it.  It had a fuel cell to recharge the batteries, a deployable remotely piloted vehicle for surveillance, a non-penetrating periscope that used a very high tech camera in a float system, communications equipment, and even an automatic grenade launcher that could be deployed through the top hatch for troop support.  Right now the three-man crew were using everything they had to determine whether or not anyone was around before dropping off the team.  A single alert patrol on the beach could be disastrous.

“Ok, team one; your ride is over,” the coxswain said.  He sounded rather pleased with himself, but then, he wasn't coming on the mission. “It’s clear; no one around as far as we can see. You’ve got good starlight, no moon, and a clear beach all the way to the dunes.  The beach is straight off the bow, seventy yards or so.  Good luck and good hunting.”

I hate long sloping beaches
, Joe thought, as he crawled out the bottom hatch pulling his bag behind him.  The CO hadn’t wanted to expose any of the minisubs, just in case the Saudi Air Force was on the prowl, something that was certainly a valid possibility this close to one of their major air bases.  The pasting the Saudi Air Force was supposed to be taking should have put them off the idea of running patrols, but Joe had learned the hard way never to put too much faith in the flyboys and their exaggerated claims.  What the orders meant for the SEALS was a long slog through water that a man couldn’t run in without making more noise than anything natural and was too shallow to hide a human being.  The plan was to stay underwater as long as possible and then run like hell for the beach and concealment. 

After Joe crawled out of the way, the other four members of his team came out one at a time and then formed up on him.  Once everyone gave the thumbs up sign, they were on their way.  The sub carried thirty men instead of five, but it was going to make several more stops during the night.  As Pierson swam away, he could hear the sub’s motors start up as she pulled away for the next stop.

***

Back on the
Florida
, Commander Ringo was staring at the big screen in SOF and reviewing the deployment plans for his men.  He would have just as soon have been out there with them, but CENTCOM had wanted someone back at the submarine to supervise the mission.  The minisubs had just reported their last successful deployment, and he now had twelve five-man teams deployed along the coast between the Kuwaiti border and Qatar.  The
Jimmy Carter
had put a team on the stretch of beach between Qatar and the UAE, and the
Ohio
had placed teams along the Red Sea.

The purpose of the operation was two-fold.  First, the teams were to act as advance beach masters for the assault to come. As such, they would be doing final scouting of beaches and inland landing areas for the vertical envelopment assaults.  This included destroying any beach obstacles, scouting the beach itself for suitability and gathering Intel on the local troops, before guiding the Marine LCAC vehicles in when the time came.  Second; they would be doing strategic intelligence for the big picture, and doing damage evaluations and target designation for the air war. 

In a perfect world, no one on the enemy side would know they were there, and they would never actually fire a shot. 

***

It wasn
’t more than thirty minutes after the last drop by the minisubs that
Florida
got her first feed from the teams, squirted back through a highly-classified communications system.  Ringo watched as the data feed came in on one of the screens, once it had been decompressed and decrypted.  He was looking at the feed off the team the
Florida
had dropped off.  As the camera scanned across the hills he could see mobile Exocet II, Sunburn III, and Sahib II missile batteries being set up by the Saudis.  The Sahib missiles were a surprise; they were produced in Iran.  He couldn’t say that he was surprised that the Saudis had been dealing with (one of) their arch-enemies, but he was fairly sure that it wouldn’t do them much good.

He looked over towards one of the electronic techs.  “Is there a location stamp on this data, sailor?”

“Yes, sir,” the tech said, with a nod.  “I have full grid coordinates, and a date time stamp.  The team also gave an estimated time to fully complete the set up.  Oh and sir…they also say that there are AAA and Patriot sites going up on the outside edges.”

Ringo nodded, already drafting the targeting report for CENTCOM.

***

Joe Buckley was trying hard not to move.  There was something crawling across the back of his neck under the gillie cover he had spread over himself and it was big.  Probably a damn scorpion, he thought to himself; not much else would be that big
out in the desert.  He tried to project his thoughts to the beast, half in jest.  Just move on mister scorpion, nothing to see here.  It may have worked or it might not, but either way the damn creature kept going.  Under normal circumstances he could have risked movement to brush it away, but this was far from normal.

That morning, a Saudi engineering battalion had moved in and set up shop on the beach and the hills above.  They were busy making tank traps and setting up artillery ranging stakes for the fortifications they were establishing in the hills overlooking the beach.  The nearest of them was about fifty yards away and merrily laying anti tank mines along the high water mark.  Joe knew that the Saudis couldn’t cover the whole shore with this sort of defence; at least not with regulars.  Of course, these guys might not be regulars; he had been unable to get a better look at the uniforms.  The sun would be down in a half hour, and then he could find out.

When the sun went down the work by the engineers didn’t stop, but they did stop screwing around with mines on the beach, which showed they had some common sense.  Joe was rather surprised.  The US Army’s Construction Battalions would have unceremoniously sacked half of the engineers he’d watched, if they survived their own incompetence.  As soon as it got fully dark, he crept out from under the cover he had lain in all day and moved in, with a cover me gesture to where the rest of the team was hidden.  He didn’t have to go anywhere near the minefield; it was at the waterline, and he and his team were in the ditches of the road that paralleled the shore about fifty yards in.  An antitank minefield shouldn't track on a person, but it was unwise to take chances.  The engineers were setting up low-lying tank traps about ten yards above high water.  They looked like they were designed to rip the skirts off of a LCAC and the work involved lots of welding, done under construction lighting. 

Joe shook his head.  It showed a lamentable lack of awareness of satellite observation, let alone American SEALS crawling around in the darkness.  Or maybe the Saudis did know and they hoped the Americans would see the defences and back off.  Whatever the case, it meant the workers had absolutely no night vision, so Joe could creep right up to the edge of their lighted area.  They would never see him lurking in the darkness.

When he got close enough to see their uniforms, he had a surprise.  They had been expecting Saudi Regulars or perhaps the National Guard, but these looked to be a combination of reservists, regulars and a lot of men who seemed to have had no training at all.  They were the worst, swaggering about as if possession of a weapon instantly transformed them into Rambo.  He shook his head tiredly, knowing what was coming in their direction.  The Saudis had no idea just how unprepared they were for modern war.

***

The
Saudi Eastern fleet sailed out of Al Jubayl at sunset.  There were four corvettes, two frigates and some minesweepers, escorting fifteen large fishing vessels.  The fishing trawlers were packed to the gunnels with mines, state of the art plastic-hulled mines that were almost impossible to sweep.  They looked like rocks to sonar; they didn’t set off magnetometers…they were almost perfect for their role.  The best thing about them, as far as any defending force was concerned, was that Italy would sell them to anyone with the money.  If there was one thing the Saudis had, it was money. 

At the same time, the Saudi western fleet sailed from Jeddah with a similar configuration of vessels to mine the entrance to the Red Sea from the Arabian Sea.  The only difference was that they had most of the Navy’s frigates, and no corvettes.  Urged on by the clerics, they were determined that the ‘infidels’ would not enter the gulfs.  Despite losing the air war, their commanders didn’t seem to care, not after three of them were replaced for questioning orders.