He turned off the motor and the swell drove them up the beach. When the wave receded, the men jumped out, carried the boat high into dry sand, and pushed it behind a small mound covered with sea grass.
They untied the equipment they needed, checked and cleared their weapons and charged them with a live round, then watched the other boat come in.
It came over a swell, got turned sideways, and barely managed not to be flipped. It came in backwards, and the men picked it up and dashed up the beach. They were all thankful for the many hours of IBS training they had done through the breakers on the Silver Strand beach near Coronado.
Not a word was said. They had to move to the right. Hand signals grouped the men into the two squads. Murdock led his men out first. They would bypass the main gate by fifty yards and set up their firing positions. The Second Squad would set up on the near side to put the gate in a cross-fire.
When he was in position with his men ready, Murdock tapped his mike three times. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
It was over a nervous minute later when Murdock and the rest of First Squad heard the answering tsks in their earpieces. Magic Brown and Red Nicholson had leveled in on the front gate through their Litton M92 Starlight 3-power scopes. Both had selected targets and sighted in on them.
Murdock had checked the gate through Magic's scope moments before. Four guards walked in front of a steel-bar gate near a small gatehouse. Twenty yards behind it was another gate manned by two soldiers.
Murdock tapped Brown and Red on the shoulders and their weapons chugged out a greeting to the Chinese. Murdock saw one of the guards at the gate go down as he watched through his NVG. Then the other one crumpled. The third guard started forward to help his buddy, but he slammed backwards from another round. The fourth guard was caught with another silenced round from the Second Squad shooter before he could move.
The snipers turned to the second gate. Only Magic had a shot. He jolted one round into the guard just outside the small guard building. That brought out his partner, who took two rounds from Second Squad gunners.
At once the squad came to its feet and moved cautiously toward the gate. Two men guarded the rear. Murdock ran ahead, checked the four guards, then ran on to the second gate. It was a simple lift bar. He raised it and his fourteen men darted through, past a double barbed-wire fence and another that looked electrified. They were inside.
They had studied the enclosure from the satellite photos for hours. Their best guess was that the concrete building to the left of the main gate would be the one covering the entrance to the massive underground nuclear production facility and storehouse. The men ran that way, their soft-soled boots making no sound on the concrete paving.
Just then a small jeep-like truck came rolling around the far corner of the complex, the twin beams of its headlights stabbing ever closer to the fifteen SEALS.
10
The four SEALS with silenced sniper rifles needed no orders. They opened fire as soon as the headlights flashed their way. The first four shots took out the headlights. Six more shots through the windshield killed the driver in his seat. The utility vehicle went out of control and jolted into the concrete wall of the building and stalled.
Jaybird Sterling raced the thirty meters to the jeep and checked inside. There was only the driver, and he was greeting his ancestors.
Jaybird darted back to the unit and the men moved ahead cautiously. The compound door to the windowless, concrete slab of a building showed directly in front of them. It was not guarded.
The SEALS in their black flight suits and with blackened faces blended in with the shadows around the big building.
The large truck door was designed to lift and roll back into the structure. There would be no chance there. At the lower right-hand corner of this door was a man-sized opening with an electronic control panel next to it filled with Chinese characters.
Murdock eyed the door again, then spoke into his mike with a whisper. "Cutting charge," he said.
Gunner's Mate Second Class Greg Johnson ran up beside Murdock and knelt.
"Small door, three sides, go," Murdock said.
Johnson and Fernandez ran to the door unrolling the lead-sheathed triangles of high-velocity explosives. The point of each triangle focused the shaped charges' powerful force into a thin line. It could blow a pencil-wide slice through four inches of steel. It took thirty seconds to position the charges around the door and set the electronic detonator.
Johnson came back with the trigger in his hand and nodded at Murdock.
"Fire in the hole," Murdock whispered, and Johnson pushed the button.
The strips of shaped charges around the door exploded with a cracking sound like a stick of dynamite does when it's hung on a string from a tree and set off. In one moment the door was solid. Then a fraction of a second later the steel door had been cut out and blasted inside the building.
Four SEALS surged through the opening, Murdock in the lead and angling to the right. His MP5 covered his section of the room ahead. It was a lobby, a reception area with a bench along one side, a desk in the middle, and ten meters behind it a pair of polished wooden doors. Only one man was on duty. He had been blasted off his chair behind his desk.
He came to his knees and fumbled at his belt for a handgun. Murdock sent a trio of 9mm slugs into him, blasting him backwards into a quick death.
Two armed men surged through one of the wooden doors and were cut down by Jaybird and Ron Holt with their silenced MP5S. Jaybird's three-round burst caught the first Chinese soldier in the throat and worked upward into his head, spraying brains and blood against the polished wooden door.
Holt's rounds took his victim in the chest and drove him back against the door, where he dropped his rifle and slid down to the floor. Murdock stared at the two doors. Which one? A crap shoot. He charged the door on the right. The First Squad followed him and according to the plan, the Second Squad dispersed around the room behind what cover they could find to secure the area against any opposition.
Murdock led his seven men into a corridor that slanted downward. It was a death-trap box if anyone challenged them with machine guns from the other end.
They sprinted downward for thirty meters, then came to a branch. Chinese signs designated directions. Kenneth Ching was a step behind his L-T.
"Supplies, maintenance to the left," Ching called. "Production and storage to the right."
Murdock waved them to the right. The eight men charged along the corridor for another thirty meters, then came to an open area with a guard station. They faded back in the poorly lighted tunnel and looked out. There were six soldiers visible. A machine gun had been mounted above a sandbagged position. The wooden barricade looked temporary. Behind the sandbags they saw a vehicle also with a mounted weapon on it.
Ron Holt carried one of the RPGS. Murdock motioned him forward. Holt put the shoulder-mounted launcher in place and flipped the arming switch, then zeroed in on the machine gun emplacement and the truck behind it. He gave Murdock a thumbs-up sign. Murdock held up his finger and motioned sharply to Holt.
He fired.
The blast of the rocket in the tunnel was like a swarm of angry bees. If left a fiery trail for twenty meters, then exploded on the sandbags and the truck. The vehicle's gas tank blew up in a gushing ball of fire that sent two guards still alive running. Magic Brown and Red Nicholson brought the two down with their silenced sniper M89s.