“Piece of cake,” Ron Holt said.
“You heard the man,” Murdock said. “All SEALs will make the trip. If your gear is ready, sack out for four. It’s now 1020. Early chow, then we’ll be out of here about 1700. Senior Chief and Jaybird, figure out what munitions we’ll need and draw them from ordnance. Lots of two-hour detonator-timers. We’ll want any explosions we generate to go off just before dawn so we don’t give them advance notice of the landing. Let’s move, people.”
Murdock had a talk with the commander of the landing forces by radiotelephone.
“Yes, sir, Major. I understand. You’ll give us the length of the landing zone. We’ll clear everything in that zone.”
“Could be mines and steel spike structures to ram our landing craft. We want a clear shot at the beach.”
“Understood sir. We’ll time our detonations for just before you land.”
“Good. You want any help? We have some Marine Recon guys who are raring to go.”
“How long a landing zone, Major?”
“Two hundred yards. We’ll be going in quickly and won’t need a half mile.”
“Good. Two hundred yards are easy. My men will do that with no problem. No help needed.”
“As you say, Commander. Good luck on the beach.”
“Same to you, Major.”
The SEALs left the carrier at 1750 in two ten-meter RIBs. There was no rush. The Enterprise was only five miles offshore, and they had an hour before full darkness. They crept along at five knots, much to the disgust of the coxswain, who liked to kick the craft up to thirty knots and make everyone seasick.
Murdock left a Motorola with the lead RIB driver and told him to keep it dry and be ready to pick them up on call. He would lay about a mile off the beach waiting for the call well before the landing started.
At last the sun set and the sky grew dark. Murdock motioned the coxswain to head for shore, still at five miles per hour so they wouldn’t create a wake for some sharp-eyed lookout to see.
At a quarter of a mile from shore, the two RIBs slowed to a stop. The SEALs in full wet suits, helmets, and face masks but no rebreathers, slid over the sides of the rubber boats and tugged their load of ordnance with them in four neutral buoyancy waterproof bags.
Murdock took the lead into shore with Alpha Platoon. They had checked the shore with NVGs while they waited. They saw no sign of a guard force or even any sentries. Murdock hoped that pattern held.
They stroked silently on the surface toward the shoreline. Just at the surfline, Murdock paused and made sure all of his eight men were with him. He counted, then waved them into their search pattern. He and his squad took the north half of the LZ from the small point of land to the shack that looked like it once might have been a lifeguard tower. The SEALs left their two floatation bags with one holder and dove into the restless water no more than eight feet deep here to check for floating mines or steel bars and other obstacles that would rip apart a landing craft.
On the first dive they found nothing. Murdock scowled. This was high tide, so they should be working farther from shore. Anything set in this area could be on a sandy beach when the tide was low. He waved the men out twenty yards, and they worked another dive. The seven men covered a thirty-yard area, then came up for air. Even in the murky nighttime water they could find anything large and threatening. So far they had found nothing.
Murdock came up and looked around. He saw three white markers bobbing on the surface. Some finds. He swam to the first and went down. A floating mine anchored to the bottom on a four-foot chain. Even at low tide, it would be two or three feet underwater. It was two feet long and as large around as a ten-gallon bucket. It was big enough to take out a small tanker. Joe Lampedusa attached a one-eighth-pound chunk of TNAZ to the mine and gave Murdock a thumbs-up sign. The timer/detonator would be put in just before the SEALs were ready to leave. Then they would set them for the right length of time.
Murdock checked the other floats. Soon there were twelve of them in a rough line along the two hundred yards of shore. They had found no spiked fixtures in the sand, no tank-trap devices to sink or upset the landing vehicles. Evidently Saddam’s troops had only time enough to lay out the mine defense on the most likely landing beaches.
They worked for three hours and found eighteen mines. Lampedusa had made a solo infiltration of the beach area. He came back and reported to Murdock that he found no troops, no personnel of any kind. There were houses about 300 yards in back of the beach, but they looked lived in by civilians.
The SEALs’ job was done, but it was too early to set the timers. Murdock waved the men onshore, and they faded into the sparse growth and hid themselves against the chance a roving patrol might come by.
Just after 0100, a patrol did swing past along the hard sand. Two men in the jeep were chatting and not paying much attention to their task. Murdock snorted. Not the way to run an invasion of a hostile land.
Dawn would come at 0530. Murdock decided to be well out of the way by then. He told the men to set the detonator timers for three hours. Then at 0230, they went back into the water, pushed the timer detonators into the chunks of TNAZ explosive, and started the timers.
Then they surfaced and swam straight out from the shore. Murdock got his Motorola out and activated without getting it wet as he floated on his back. He called the RIBs three times before they came in.
“Ready to motor,” Murdock said.
“Roger that, we’re on our way. Keep transmitting, and I’ll try to home in on your signal. We’ll be coming right off the small point of land where we left you.”
The SEALs swam a half mile into the gulf and waited. Five minutes later, the black RIBs came out of the night and idled up to them.
Once on board, the SEALs settled down for a wait. The coxswains wanted to get back to the safety of the five-mile zone, but Murdock said no.
“We need to know that our charges went off,” Murdock said. “Then we send a message to the carrier, and it will be relayed to the amphibious ship so they’ll know the way is clear on the beach.”
They waited. Most of the SEALs slept. Murdock watched the shore for any sign of activity. They were only a half mile off and in rifle range if anyone wanted to try to hit them. If anyone knew they were there.
Murdock had Holt crank up the SATCOM at 0500 and reported to the carrier that the charges had been set on eighteen mines in the 200-yard LZ. They would detonate at 0530.
At 0525, the SEALs were all awake and watching shoreward. Just before the appointed time, the first explosion shattered the morning calm. It went off three feet underwater, so the report was not loud, but they could hear it and see the geyser that shot into the air. Then, in quick sequence, the other mines exploded. Some of them came on top of others, so they couldn’t be sure of a count. One man said there had been seventeen explosions. Another one said he heard nineteen.
Murdock got back on the SATCOM:
“SEALs to Flatiron.”
“Go SEALs.”
“We report explosions on the beach. We set eighteen. Some counted seventeen, some two more than that. We assume they all detonated. Please relay.”
“That’s a roger, SEALs. Come home.”
Murdock nodded at the coxswain who gunned the little boat, and it slanted away from the tip of the shore. The other RIB followed them. A moment later, they saw two landing craft utility boats plowing through the gulf waters at eleven knots, heading for shore. The big landing craft could hold 350 combat troops, or 250 troops and an M-48 tank. A half mile behind them came two landing craft air cushion craft sending spray high into the air. They held 24 combat men, but could do 40 knots, and slide right up the beach, into the sand, over solid ground, and discharge 48 men to put down covering fire from shore for the troops in the slower LCUs.