Ten of the attackers went down in the first barrage; three more turned and ran into the night. Murdock grunted.
"Shouldn't be this easy," he said into the mike. "Keep up the watch. If anybody comes into the light, gun him."
He crawled back to the door, and slipped into the assembly room. Kat had just finished the last partial bomb. All had TNAZ charges on them waiting for the timer/detonators. Murdock touched his mike. "Ed, what's happening?"
"Two silenced shots just wiped out the driver. We have that jeep. Where do you want it?"
Murdock looked for a truck door. There had to be one. He found it on the back side, just off from where the plutonium box sat. He told Al Adams to open it.
Douglas and Chin had come back to the building when they heard there was a captive jeep. Now the two looked around the big room. On the far side, under a tarp, they found an electric forklift. Douglas crawled on it and hit the switch, and the forklift moved. He checked the panel of instruments again, grinned, and turned the right switch. The rig began to move forward. He steered it around the partial nuclear bombs to the big steel box. It sat on a pallet board.
"Load it," Murdock said. Joe Douglas worked the steel blades of the forklift into the slots of the pallet board, and hit the up switch. The forklift contacted the top of the pallet and strained slowly with the weight. Then it inched upward.
"Damn thing must weigh two tons," Douglas said. He watched it come up, and when it was high enough, he moved the forklift forward.
"We've got company out front," DeWitt said on the radio. Murdock sent three of the SEALs out to help.
The firing began.
Douglas concentrated on getting the steel box over the middle of the back of the jeep-like rig. Then he lowered it gently. The pallet board crushed part of the backseat, then the passenger's seat, as it settled onto the jeep's body. Murdock went to the rig and shook it side to side. The little utility vehicle didn't turn over.
He waved at Douglas. "See if the engine will move the thing. If it will, take it just outside and shut the big door."
Douglas started the jeep, and backed it slowly toward the door. It moved a little faster. "Should work okay," he said.
Murdock nodded, and went to Al Adams. "Put the timer detonators in the charges but don't set any time on them yet. That's the last thing."
He ran to the front door, opened it, and crawled out. DeWitt had his men behind any cover he could find. They had shot out the lights that had bathed the area, and now the whole place was black, except for an occasional muzzle blast from the dark.
Murdock found Ed.
"Must be a batch of them out there, but they aren't firing much. What the hell's going on?"
"Not sure. Hit every muzzle blast you see."
The firing picked up then. A machine gun cut in and drilled a line of nine rounds into the wall of the building over their heads. "Get on that MG," DeWitt spoke into his mike.
Two MP-5's chattered out six rounds each, and the MG went silent.
"Too damn quiet out there," Murdock said. "They don't want to use any heavy stuff against this building. Their nuclear bombs are inside. They don't want to shoot anything in here that might hurt the bombs. Somebody is holding them back. The minute we leave here, they'll be all over us."
"We'll have to leave soon. You have the plutonium loaded on that little jeep?"
"Ready to go."
The small arms fire picked up then. It was longer range, and the rounds came from down the street. The rounds went parallel with the assembly building. That way they wouldn't hurt anything inside, Murdock decided. He had the men move to better protection. They returned fire, and again the enemy's shooting slowed down, then stopped. "What the hell are they doing?" DeWitt asked. Murdock shook his head.
They heard it coming, and couldn't identify it. Sounded like a truck, then a tracked rig. "Half-track armored personnel carrier," Murdock said. "Where's Magic and his fifty?"
"He's outside the fence," somebody said. "We can use forty-millimeters on this rig."
"Yes, how many grenade launchers we have out here?" Ed asked. Four men chimed in with affirmative answers. "When he gets in range, use HE and WP alternately. All four of you fire four rounds each. Get ready, he's coming closer."
The rig had no headlights, to make it harder for them to find it. The first WP helped, spraying the white phosphorous in the street, lighting up the area, and outlining the half-track coming. The second HE found part of the half-track and it veered to the left, then got back on course. A .50-caliber machine gun chattered from the weapons carrier, and the rounds slammed into parked rigs and the side of the building.
"Fernandez, YOU Out here?" DeWitt called on the radio.
"Yes, I'm waiting for a good shot."
Two more 40mm rounds exploded almost at the same time. One hit on the cab, the other the rear of the rig, and it spun around and stalled. It was close enough then that the rest of the men could use their guns on it. Three Iranians fled the injured rig.
"L-T, we've got some trouble back here, side door," Murdock's earpiece told him.
Murdock crawled through the street door and ran across the building to the side door. He'd left four men there.
"Trouble?" he asked as he ran.
"Yeah, troops coming up. Can't tell how many. Sounds like a whole damn company."
"Got any WP?"
"I have two," Lampedusa said.
"Put one out in front where you think they are," Murdock said.
A moment later Lampedusa fired the round at fifty yards. It burst in a star pattern of brilliant white fire. For just a second, it outlined a line of troops marching toward them. The fire panicked the men and they broke and ran to the rear.
"The other one, Lam, at a hundred."
He fired it, and the troops kept running.
"Murdock, we've got some new company, sounds like a fucking tank," DeWitt said on the Motorola.
Murdock ran to the front again and bellied out to where DeWitt knelt behind a two-foot-high concrete block wall.
"He stopped. Don't know why." DeWitt said it. A moment later they heard a rumble again and the unmistakable clanking of a tank rolling toward them.
"Great," Murdock said. "At least a tank doesn't have any headlights. The forty mike-mike won't touch a tank. We'd never get close enough out here to throw some TNAZ at him. What the hell, it might be time to cut and run. We're almost done inside. Keep me up to date." Murdock ran back inside, and found Kat. She sat looking at the partly made bombs. "They didn't do half bad a job," she said. "Another three weeks, and they would be almost ready."
"Sorry to upset their timetable. Can that steel box stand to be tipped over and rolled around?"
She frowned. "In the States I'd say it could. Here, I don't know. Better to treat it like a seven-layer wedding cake — with extreme care."
"Get to the jeep and wait," he said to Kat. He motioned to Al Adams. "Set the timers now for fifteen minutes, and activate them as you go. Do them damn fast, then get out the back door."
He ran to the side door. Nobody was firing. He pulled the four men in and took them to the rear door. "Cover this jeep. Don't let anybody near it. Kat is in it with the plutonium. It's got to take a ride."
Back inside, he called to Franklin, who still watched the Iranians. "Find out if there's any roads down this back side of the facility into the hills."
Franklin asked the men. Most shook their heads. One small man with no teeth lifted his hand, He chattered a minute, then Franklin grinned.
"L-T, he says there's a gate down about two hundred meters. A service road runs down there and off into the hills a mile or so."
"Good. Bring him with us, then chase the rest of the civilians out the side door over there and tell them to run for their lives. This building is going to blow up."