The SEALs were in the darkness here, but twenty yards ahead the floodlights took over, turning the night into noon. The three men climbed the ladder, edged onto the pier, and hid behind some stacks of wooden boxes ready for shipment.
After five minutes they found out there were three guards circling the warehouse. A small jeep rolled up and two men in it talked to one of the guards. Then the rig drove back the way it had come.
“Every two minutes another guard comes around,” Murdock said. “Does that give us time to grab one of them, strip him, and put Lam in his uniform and insert him into the guard rotation?”
“Damn short time,” Lam said. “I could have my Draegr and combat vest off and put his clothes over my cammies.”
“Where?” Mahanani asked.
“Closest stack of goods, those cardboard boxes just at the end of the warehouse,” Lam said.
“Worth a try. That would give us four minutes to get to that first small door, bust it open, and get inside.”
“What if I meet those guys in the jeep?” Lam said.
“You take them out silently and we go hard if we have to,” Murdock said. “It would take them some time to miss the jeep guys. Then to get some men here. Maybe in that time slot we can open the cones and set all the charges.”
“Then run like hell,” Lam said. “I’m game. Hell, I like walking guard duty.”
“Not now. You two stay here and watch for anything new. I’ll go bring in the troops and your drag bags. Stay out of sight.”
It took Murdock ten minutes to swim back to where the SEALs hid and get them moving toward the warehouse.
“We’ll put Bravo Squad on the pier with Kat. Alpha stays at the foot of the pier in the water. When Bravo gets inside the warehouse, we’ll see what we have. Probably Alpha Squad will come on the pier and deploy defensively protecting this end of the warehouse. We hope to keep this silent until we get the charges set and we’re back in the water. If it doesn’t work out that way, we play it by ear, defending with all our weapons until Bravo Squad gets out of there with Kat.”
The SEALs swam.
Murdock went topside and watched the rotation of the guards. Lam picked out the one he wanted to take out. He’d use his KA-BAR fighting knife for a silent kill.
“See those boxes nearest the warehouse?” Lam asked. “I’ll get behind those in the first gap between guards, then take out the one I picked as soon as he turns the corner and has his back to me. I’ll have twenty yards to cross as quickly and silently as I can. Then I drag him back to the boxes and change clothes.”
Lam had stripped off his combat vest and his Draegr, and put down his Colt Carbine. He waited. When the next guard vanished, Lam sprinted for the boxes. He made it without a cry from any stationary guard.
The targeted guard came past and turned. Lam left the boxes at full stride, his rubber boots making almost no noise on the concrete. The Libyan guard must have heard something. He turned a second before Lam hit him from the side. Lam’s hand went over the soldier’s mouth. His other hand drove the KA-BAR blade into the guard’s side and slanted upward so it penetrated flesh and then lanced into his heart. He died a few seconds later.
Lam dragged him by the hands back to the boxes, leaving only a thin trail of blood to show his passage.
Murdock couldn’t see Lam stripping the uniform shirt and pants off the Libyan and pulling them on over his cammies.
Quicker than Murdock expected, Lam, in the Libyan uniform and floppy hat, ran back to the warehouse, picked up the guard’s automatic rifle, and began his slow walk around the warehouse.
Murdock called up Bravo Squad with Kat. They climbed the ladder and hid behind the boxes.
“Kat, on the next round by Lam, Mahanani and I will run over to that small door and get it open. We’ll check inside and see if there are any guards. If there are, we take them out. Then I’ll come to the door and wave. You wait until you see Lam coming. When he shows, he’ll wave at these boxes to let you know it’s him. When you see him, you and Bravo Squad dash across the concrete and get inside the door within a minute. Then you go to work.”
He crawled to the ladder and talked to Dobler. “Chief, you have command of Alpha Squad. As soon as you see Bravo Squad get inside, you bring up your men and deploy them for protection, but keep hidden from the guards. We’ll get out as soon and as soundlessly as possible.”
He got back to the freight boxes just in time to spot Lam on his rounds. Murdock and Mahanani sprinted to the regular door on the end of the warehouse.
“Locked,” Murdock said. He put his sub gun on single-shot and fired three silenced rounds into the door-lock area. The door swung open.
Murdock listened. He heard nothing. He slid through the half-open door. The inside of the huge warehouse was as bright as the outside. He saw four guards pacing around an eighty-foot-long missile that sat in the middle of the otherwise empty warehouse. They were forty yards away. Three tables sat near the missile. On it Murdock saw four shapes of what could be nuclear warheads. Murdock went silently to the floor.
Mahanani crept in beside him and went down, his Alliant Bull Pup with its 5.56 underbarrel already tracking the guards.
“I’ve got two on the right,” Murdock whispered. Then he fired the submachine gun on a three-round burst. Two of the 9mm singers slammed into the guard who had just patted another soldier on the shoulder. He slammed backward from the force of the rounds and jolted to the floor. Before the man he touched could turn to see where the rounds came from, he took one of a three-round burst in the throat, and died in seconds from a shooting spray of blood spurting with heartbeat regularity from his carotid artery.
Mahanani’s first round caught the left guard in the chest and drove him backward into the fourth man, who stumbled and fell. Mahanani pumped three rounds into the crawling man, who seemed to be trying to get behind some wooden boxes.
“Clear right,” Murdock said.
“Clear left,” Mahanani said.
They all had put on their personal radios as soon as they were out of the water. Murdock and Mahanani stood and checked the rest of the building quickly. There were no more guards inside.
“DeWitt, get your men and Kat in here when you can when Lam comes by again. We’re clear in here. One missile and some items on tables. Move it when you can.”
Murdock and Mahanani checked the four guards. Three were dead, but one was still moving. Mahanani put a silenced round into his head, and they pulled the bodies away from where Kat would be working on the warheads.
“Those little things are nuclear bombs?” Mahanani said.
“These are good-sized ones. We have them so small they’ll fit in a suitcase.”
Ed DeWitt and Kat came through the door. Then Kat ran to the table.
“Yes, four of the warheads. Are there any more in the missile nose cone?”
Murdock and Kat hurried to the big ICBM, and saw where the nose cone had been opened. Four more missiles remained in place.
“Will they have to come out of there?” Murdock asked.
She shook her head. “No, I can set the charges right where they are, but we do have a problem.”
“What?”
“We have eight warheads here. They exploded one in Chad. Where is the tenth warhead?”
“Shit. I knew this was going too easy. What would they do with it?”
Kat went back to the table and examined the four warheads. She opened a drag bag and carefully took out four large charges of TNAZ, a plastic explosive fifteen percent more powerful than C-5. She placed the charge at an exact spot, then wrapped it in place with sticky green ordnance tape. After that she took out her tools and worked silently over the warhead for three minutes. Then she nodded and moved to the next one.