They went on questioning the man, who was badly wounded. He told them about the defenses, where the most troops were, and how the fence was electrified in some sections.
The man cried out in sudden pain; then his whole body shook for a moment before his head rolled back and both hands fell to his sides.
“He’s gone,” Murdock said. “Check the weapons, bring along anything that might help us. Should be some Kalashnikovs here. Sounded like them when they were firing. Then we haul ass before somebody else shows up.”
They looked around in the darkness, found six rifles that looked new enough to take — they were the older AK47, but potent and with a better range than the MP-5’s some of the SEALs carried.
Murdock put the men on a jog for a mile on south from the point of contact, and they soon heard a chopper swing over the area of the fight and land.
“A chopper out here means trouble,” DeWitt said on the radio.
“True, and we’ll see if we can give it some trouble as soon as we see it up close,” Murdock said.
Another half mile through the sand along the roadway, and Lam called a halt and showed Murdock the lights ahead.
“Must be it,” Lam said. “Lit up like a call girl’s switchboard.”
“Lights we can turn off,” Murdock said. “They already know somebody is coming to visit. Hope they didn’t kill the prisoner when they heard the firefight.
“We’ll do it the way we laid it out,” Murdock told the net. “Bravo will be the main assault force on the west side. Alpha will do the diversionary attack on the east side and hopefully draw off the firepower that way. We need to get close enough to blow the gate on the west side, or the fence nearby for access. Any questions?”
“How do the twenties come in?” Lam asked. They were all in a line, looking over the top of a sand dune a quarter of a mile from the compound.
Ed De Witt spoke up. “Bravo will take out the gate guards and the gate itself with the twenties from two hundred yards. Then we move up half our squad, with the other half working the twenties on any force that appears to challenge us. Once we’re inside, the twenty-shooters charge forward and join us.”
“On the other side of the compound, Alpha Squad will be shooting up the fence and that side of the big house,” Murdock said. “We’ll use our twenties on anything that moves over there. Probably can’t get through the fence with the twenties, but we’ll use charges and blow a hole big enough for ingress.”
“Questions?” DeWitt asked the radio net.
“How do we find the guy once we’re inside?” Fernandez asked.
“We have two Arabic speakers,” DeWitt said. “They will question anyone we find alive. He’s in the big house somewhere. It can’t have more than twenty rooms according to the blueprints we saw. Two stories, no basement.”
“We don’t use the EARs?” Jaybird asked.
“No, we don’t want to knock out our CIA man and have to carry him back to the water,” DeWitt said.
“Let’s do it,” Murdock said. “Alpha on me. We have fifteen minutes to get into position and start our diversion. Five minutes after our first shot, Bravo will attack. Let’s move.”
It took Alpha twenty minutes to get to the other side of the fortified house and to set up for their ambush. They settled in ten yards apart. They had three of the Bull Pups for this mission, and Bravo had four. Murdock checked the perimeter fence with his NVGs and then gave the word to fire. They hit the fence and caught one interior guard walking his post. The twenties boomed in the night and exploded on contact. Murdock’s first shot blew the side door off the house. A jeep rolled around the corner, then retreated behind the safety of the house. The SEALs didn’t aim at any windows to keep from hitting the prisoner inside.
Half a dozen rifles began returning fire, but the SEALs had set up in a gully three feet deep for top protection. The jeep driver decided to try to get from the house to the storage shed. It was halfway there when a 20mm round blew the vehicle off its wheels and dumped it upside down against the building.
A moment later Ed DeWitt opened fire on the main gate. The first round knocked out the guard post there; the next three hit the rollback electrically operated gate and closed a circuit somewhere. The heavy gate rolled open and stayed there. A squad of six men ran around the barracks, and was cut down by shrapnel from a pair of exploding twenties on the front of the barracks itself. One man limped away, but was dumped into the dirt by a sniper rifle shot. For a moment all was quiet at the front of the place. DeWitt could hear firing at the other side.
Then an engine roared and an armored personnel carrier stormed around the barracks, headed for the main gate. It slued to a stop, then straightened itself until its big automatic cannon swung out toward the gun flashes.
“Kill the lights,” DeWitt told his radio mike. Miguel Fernandez, Gunner’s Mate First Class, swung his H & K 7.62 sniper rifle around and began taking down the searchlights one by one.
“Franklin, put enough WP in front of that tank to blind him. Now. Six, eight rounds, and let’s hope there isn’t a lot of wind.”
The first 40mm grenade from the Colt M-4A1 landed beside the tank, exploded with a spray of white phosphorus that turned into a dense smoke. The second and third rounds hit in front of the armored personnel carrier. It was like the heavy hitter had gone away, until they heard the sound of the cannon going off and three rounds slammed into the ground twenty feet behind them, spraying deadly shrapnel the wrong way to hurt the SEALs.
DeWitt used his 5.56mm rounds from his Bull Pup to kill two more lights, and the whole front of the compound went dark.
“Let’s move up,” DeWitt said on his mike. “Split and half go up on each side of the gate. Leave forty yards between us for the big gun to shoot into. Move it. Now.”
They went forward at a trot, weapons on their hips ready to fire. Sporadic shots came through the front gate aimed where the SEALs used to be. They didn’t fire now so they wouldn’t give away their location. They went a hundred yards; then the smoke eased away from the armored personnel carrier.
“More smoke,” DeWitt said on the net. “Both of you, three rounds each.”
Franklin and Ostercamp both fired, and the personnel carrier rapidly vanished again. The SEALs were running now, flat out for the front gate.
“Assault fire,” DeWitt called, and the eight weapons opened up. The twenties fired, the sniper rifle, the G-11 with caseless rounds, and then the 5.56’s on the Bull Pups chattered. There was little return fire. No SEAL was hit.
They stormed toward the gate with the smoke covering it, and jolted through. DeWitt had been making a bomb with a quarter pound of TNAZ as he ran. He inserted a timer and set it for five seconds. The armored machine leaped out of the smoke at them suddenly, and DeWitt raced the twenty feet to the side. He pushed the bomb into the tread of the machine and pressed the activator on the five-second timer. Then he ran forward.
Five seconds on these timers could be tricky. Sometimes they went off at four and even three, sometimes seven or eight. This one blasted on four seconds, and the last of the SEALs through the gate had just cleared the machine when the TNAZ exploded. It blew the tread all the way off the vehicle and dumped it on its side.
A squad of three Libyan soldiers surged around the far end of the house, their rifles up. Tran Khai, Torpedoman Second Class, splattered the trio with a dozen rounds from his G-11 submachine gun, and they spun away dead before they hit the ground.
“Front door,” DeWitt said on the radio.
Canzoneri got there first. He had two TNAZ bombs ready, and pasted one on each side of the door lock, activated ten-second timers, and rushed away to the side of the building.
The explosion blasted large sections of the door inward, leaving a gaping hole where it had been, and also blew away two feet of the front wall.