The Delta Solution (56 page)

Also from that half-hidden position, they could nail down any attack from the town, where it was possible that a reserve force was stationed, in the event of a major attack against them. According to Bob Birmingham, the whole place was involved in piracy on the high seas.

It was fifteen minutes to the midnight H-hour. The SEAL teams fixed the heavy machine guns, one with each of the two groups, both weapons
ready to lay down withering fire either toward the garrison entrance or the guard posts.

The minutes ticked slowly by as they lay motionless in the sparse desert brush. With five minutes to go, Mack’s phone vibrated in his harness and he took a call from RV Point One, the SEALs around the other side of the compound.

Its rotors beating low over the water, the AH64D Boeing gunship came clattering into the area where the Black Hawks had landed. Then it made a long swing to the south, avoiding the town, before finally turning back up the beach and screaming straight toward the garrison.

Jimmy Shand opened fire approximately two hundred yards from the south wall with two Hellfire missiles—antiarmor HEAT (high explosion anti-tank with a shaped charge). They blew out of the pods and rocketed above the head of the SEALs before blasting into the huge garrison gates with a stupendous explosion that obliterated the entire entrance, flattened both gates into burning matchwood, and knocked down half the wall.

The Apache streaked above the garrison and then made a hard lefthand turn down by the ocean before coming in at speed for a second run. Shand opened up with his nose-mounted M230 chain gun, hammering thirty-millimeter cannon rounds into the entire compound, blasting windows and doors, and mowing down the panic-stricken guard platoon on the main southwest corner wall.

Anyone inside the garrison was rushing for cover. And as they did, Commander Bedford stood up and roared, “
LET’S GO, GUYS, RIGHT NOW! . . . GO! GO! GO!
”

All eighteen SEALs sprang to their feet and charged forward, machine guns drawn, running hard behind the boss. Through the gaping hole of the gateway they came, four of them peeling right and heading for what looked like a guardroom. Barney Wilkes threw two hand grenades straight through the open window and reduced the entire place to rubble.

Four more SEALs performed exactly the same task on the west side of the courtyard, and the massive blast brought down the building and the wall above it, where the high lookout position had once been. By now the only operational guard post still standing was the one on the northeast
corner, where they were struggling to assemble the launch post for the RPGs and desperately trying to knock the Apache out of the sky.

But it was dark with billowing, black smoke everywhere, and many of their colleagues were either dead or wounded. There was an atmosphere of mass confusion. No one knew who had attacked them. Half the compound was on fire, and the Apache was making one last steep turn, incoming again, guns blazing away with the last of Jimmy’s 1,200 rounds, going for the high walls, sustaining fire above the heads of the SEALs.

One final staccato burst finished the last, high guard post. No survivors. They never even got a shot away, so sudden and deadly was the onslaught of the Apache from Delta Platoon. The SEALs watched their helicopter bank away to the left and, as suddenly as it had arrived, head back toward the ocean where the
Harry S. Truman
awaited.

Mack Bedford now sensed the first resistance since they had entered the compound. He called in to RV-1 and told them he was inside the garrison with his team, but the place was not secured and the second team led by Lieutenant Malone was to stay right on station in case a new force was regrouping in the town.

There was sporadic fire coming down on them from the glass-fronted building in the northwest corner. The SEALs were in a safe position behind the rubble of the guardhouse, and the enemy was behind a twelvefoot wall built across the front of the big house. No one knew it, but they were looking at the first line of defense built for Mohammed Salat’s palace guard.

Armed to the teeth, the tribesmen formed a recognizable line of battle, facing south, staring directly at their unknown assailants, the men from Coronado, the men who wore the Trident. The palace guard had no trouble with their launch post, and through the drifting smoke the tribesmen unleashed two Russian-built rockets, aimed roughly in the direction of the invaders.

One of them lanced across the courtyard and shot through the gateway, down the main street, and ended up on the beach. The next hit the pile of concrete rubble behind which the SEALs were crouching. It blew with a thunderous bang, shook the ground and the SEALs, but injured no one.

Barney immediately suggested he take three guys and attack the house, getting some high explosive to work in there.

But Mack overruled on the basis that anything they wanted out of this exercise, including personnel and material assets to the tune of millions of dollars, was likely to be in that house. The last thing anyone needed was for Barney and his buddies to knock it down and kill everyone.

“There’s no way we can accomplish this mission,” said Mack, “unless we can get some goddamned prisoners and find that cash. And I sure as hell don’t want to blow it all up before we’ve even located it. We need to be a bit more subtle and careful,” he added.

“But isn’t that against our religion?” asked Barney.

“Usually,” replied the boss, “but we gotta be clever here. We must overwhelm the guard and take the house. That’s how we take prisoners. Those are the facts. So let’s not screw it up before we start.”

“Okay, sir, what next?”

“We can’t storm it because we’d be running directly into heavy fire. I’m guessing there’s a half dozen guards behind that wall, and we need to take them out. They can’t see us, but they may realize there’s another group of invaders hidden on the far side of the compound.

“Either way, we need to get two or three grenades behind the wall and take everyone out. Just treat it like an enemy machine-gun nest.”

“Okay, sir,” snapped Barney. “We’ll run in, take cover under the wall, and then hurl the grenades over the top, right?”

“Correct. Cody will provide heavy covering fire and you and I will charge in.”

“Okay, sir, just give me the word.”

“Get the grenades ready. We need two each in case one of us gets hit. I’ll talk to Cody.”

Moments later, Mack was back. “Barney,” he said, “when Cody’s machine gun opens up, we charge straight for the wall, dive in head first, right along the ground.”

“Kinda like second base.”

“You got it, bro. We don’t move until the guns start. Then we go in hard.”

Four minutes later, Cody Sharp, the cattle rancher’s son from North Dakota, hit the trigger on the heavy gun, opening up a withering volume of gunfire, all along the top of the wall, the bullets studding into the plate glass windows of the grand residence behind it.

Four more SEALs joined in firing at the same target. Anyone behind
that wall must have thought he was facing one hundred armed warriors as the huge volume of bullets screamed, ricocheted, whined, and spat over their heads.

Mack Bedford and Barney Wilkes rushed forward and pounded across the ground and dived into the base of the wall, covered in dust and sand but unharmed. Cody and his men stopped firing as suddenly as they had started, and that’s when Mack and Cody ripped the pins out of their grenades and tossed them over the wall.

All four of them had landed on the ground when the first two exploded with mind-numbing force, shaking the compound to its foundations, shuddering the wall, and sending raking cracks across the spectacular glass-fronted south elevation of Mohammed Salat’s beautiful home.

“Holy shit,” said Barney. “You could probably hurt someone real bad with one of these things.”

What he meant was, “If anyone happened to be behind that wall right there, those boys are outstandingly dead. Yessir.”

Mack Bedford summoned his SEALs, standing in the courtyard and beckoning them forward. “
LET’S GO!
” he yelled, “
RIGHT NOW!
”

Like a swarm of angry wasps, Delta Platoon raced to his side en masse and followed him straight into the Salat residence, fanning out as they went, kicking open doors, machine guns raised, and conducting a routine house search just as if they were back on the side streets of North Baghdad.

They found Salat in the basement with his wife, both unarmed. There were various other “officials,” secretaries, and computer operators, and the Delta team rounded them up in short order.

Commander Bedford had his senior men conduct interviews to try to work out who was who, but he already assumed that Mohammed Salat was the owner of the house and therefore the kingpin of the Somali pirates.

He posted a four-man team outside the house and made contact with the RV guys outside the compound’s main wall. But just as he was attempting to speak, there was an incoming call from Brad Charlton: “
There’s an entire fucking army moving through the town, heading right toward the garrison.
”

Mack was unsurprised. He’d anticipated an uprising in the town, which was why he’d put Chief Charlton at the head of an eighteen-man SEAL assault team in the first case.

“Drive ’em back, Brad,” he said. “They’ll be well armed. So let ’em get
close and then open fire. But shoot to kill only if you’re being overwhelmed. They’ll be civilians mostly, and they scare easily. Keep them under sustained fire until they retreat.

“I’ll send extra men. And I’m calling in the Black Hawks. If you get under pressure I’ll have the Apache back here in ten minutes. Stay in touch.”

“Roger that, sir,” replied Chief Charlton, who was now flat down in the grass, next to Shane Cannel, watching a highly unusual sight. Marching four abreast was a tribal army, possibly 150 people, all carrying a rifle of some kind.

At their head was a uniformed character. They could not know this was the fabled Commodore Patrick Zeppi, the $10,000-a-month Somali warlord who was paid to protect Mohammed Salat if the garrison ever came under a major attack.

When Patrick had started over to the Salat residence a half hour ago, he’d thought he was witnessing World War III. The helicopter had scared him, and the concrete-ripping explosions had unnerved him. But he knew one thing: The wealth of the entire town was tied up in that compound, and he, Commodore Zeppi, was tasked with saving the cash.

He’d raced from house to house, summoning people and calling on every man who owned a rifle to fall into formation outside his house. They would march to the garrison and fight, if necessary, to the death.

Commodore Zeppi did not believe this would be necessary since he had driven off marauders trying to steal the pirate money many times before. What he did not know was that he was marching directly into the guns of one of the most highly trained platoons of Special Forces the world had ever seen.

Chief Charlton had Shane Cannel pass the word among the eighteenstrong force that he would give the word and then they would open fire, sustained for thirty seconds, to see if the enemy would turn and run. If it didn’t, then shoot to kill and drive them back into the town. Mack plainly did not want them inside the compound.

With all the advantage of surprise, the iron-souled US Navy SEALs remained flat in the dusty scrubland and watched the Haradheere militia advance into what might prove to be certain death.

No one was comfortable gunning down armed civilians. But SEALs were not trained to be comfortable; they were trained to do whatever it
took to save their lives and execute their mission. Suddenly there was a strange lull. Commodore Zeppi had turned around and was facing his army, shouting instructions.

“Christ! Have they seen us?” muttered Brad.

“Not possible,” replied Shane, his black cammy-creamed face making him almost invisible from a distance of six feet.

Already the Delta men were preparing to open fire. “Hold it, hold it,” muttered Brad. “They’ve stopped.”

At that moment the game changed. Commodore Zeppi spun around and let out a bloodcurdling war whoop, raised his Kalashnikov, and charged forward straight at the hidden SEALs. There were no more than 150 yards between them and Brad Charlton.

Falling in line behind Zeppi, the chaotic-looking army charged. They all raised their rifles and began firing into the sky, shouting and laughing maniacally, high excitement mingling with mass hysteria, as they came bounding across the ground going for the garrison, determined to reinforce Salat’s guard.

There were bullets flying everywhere, into the dark sky, straight at the garrison walls, into the ground high and low. Two young SEALs in the back line were hit, though not seriously, and then a volley spat into the ground between Brad and Shane, covering them in dust.

“
FUCK ME!
” bellowed Chief Charlton. “
This is it! Open fire right now . . . Drive these crazy bastards back!
”

The SEALs let fly with their deadly M-4 machine guns straight at Commodore Zeppi’s front rank, which was now only seventy yards away. Four tribesmen went down, then four more. They shot the commodore dead in his tracks. No one could live in the face of the steel-curtain of machine-gun fire being unleashed by the men from Coronado. It was partly in self-defense but mostly to make these wild men turn around and head back the way they came.

Thirty-two Somalis were down, eight dead, before someone yelled the retreat. And then they all began running, stampeding back down the dusty main street, shouting and wailing, disappearing into houses and side alleys.

Brad Charlton, too, ordered a cease fire, and Shane Cannel went to check on the two walking wounded, both of whom had been hit in the
upper arm. Then the chief ordered the entire force to move back into the garrison and report to the boss. He did not expect the tribesmen to bother them again.