They strapped their weapons over their backs, adjusted the tied-on waterproof sacks of explosives and timer/detonators, and moved into the water without a splash.
Murdock led the SEALs now. Lam was right behind him. They swam to the light, went underwater and swam as far as they could, surfaced for a quick breath, and went back down. They had only forty yards to go this way before the lights faded and the river opened up into a body of water to the left that had to be the Iraqi naval base.
They swam inside, found a deserted pier, which they swam under, and rested on the muddy bank. Murdock, Lam, and Mahanani made the scouting trip. They were back in a half hour.
Murdock gave them the intel. “The frigate is three-quarters submerged and rotting. Not worth wasting a charge on. There are two Corvettes. One has lights on and a crew. It looks operational. The second Corvette is listing. We’ll blow both of them. We didn’t see any operational patrol boats a hundred feet long. There are two that are hulks, look like they have been used for spare parts. We’ll blow all three of them.
“The replenishment tanker at four hundred feet is not in the basin. We saw about twenty ten- to twenty-meter patrol craft. We’ll try to blow them so fuel tanks will explode and we’ll have a wonderful pier-side fire.” He looked at the men clustered around him.
“Lam, Adams, Franklin. Are your wounds holding you up any? Are you ready for this duty?”
All responded that they were fit for duty.
“Okay. Bravo Squad, take the two Corvettes. Both are bow into the dock. Try to blow the whole ass end off both of them so they’ll settle into the muck.
“Alpha Squad will do the patrol boats and figure out something for the twenty-meter jobs. We’ll set the timers for thirty minutes. After setting the timers, we all should be back here in fifteen minutes. Then we’ll kick out for our meet-up with that Pegasus taxi. Now, gentlemen, let’s go blow up the last dregs of Saddam Hussein’s navy.”
13
Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt led out his Bravo Squad, moving silently through the dark waters of the bay, angling for the pair of Corvettes berthed end to end along the pier. They had decided to use four charges of TNAZ on each side of the sterns of each ship. They would do the dark and unmanned ship first.
Jack Mahanani led the way to the silent vessel with Quinley, Ostercamp, and Jefferson. They all had rigged the charges with magnets so they would clamp solidly on the steel hull wherever they wanted them. Ostercamp and Quinley planted their two charges each at the ship’s waterline thirty feet in back of the stern on the port side next to the dock. They dropped below the surface just as two sentries walked by on the pier.
Mahanani and Jefferson put all four of their charges at the waterline and about twenty feet back from the stern. They would plant the charges, gather at the stern of the dark ship, and when all were ready, would go back, insert the timer detonators, and start the timers.
DeWitt, Adams, Fernandez, and Franklin moved quietly toward the lighted Corvette. Three sailors moved on the deck. The SEALs went underwater and came up against her hull. They surfaced without a sound. Two went on each side of the stern of the ship and planted their TNAZ bombs at the waterline. Just as DeWitt checked the ship, he found a sailor looking down at him.
In the stern of the Corvette under the chopper landing pad, there was no more than five feet of freeboard. The sailor leaned down. DeWitt surged upward out of the water, reached up, grabbed the Iraqi sailor’s arm, and jerked him over the side before he could cry out. When the two splashed back into the water, it made more noise than DeWitt wished for. Then he was underwater with the wiry Arab, trying for a choke hold, then simply holding the man under the water until he began gulping in mouthfuls of water, probably hoping that it was air.
DeWitt’s experience holding his breath underwater made the difference. He came up with his nose and mouth barely out of water and gulped in glorious air, then went back down and dove with the body of the dead seaman deep under the hull, where he snagged his clothing on the propeller.
He surfaced, gasping, directly beside the stern. The other SEALs watched him. He gave them a thumbs up and they swam quietly back to the stern of the dark Corvette.
“Everyone here?” DeWitt whispered. He counted seven heads. “Okay, let’s go and set the timers for thirty-five minutes and then get back to that unused pier. Murdock may need a little more time with his targets.”
Murdock had split his squad into three teams. Dobler and Holt would do one of the old patrol boats, Sterling and Bradford would take out the second patrol boat hulk. Murdock, Lam, Ching, and Ronson would work on the thirty small patrol boats.
They had a longer swim to the old patrol craft. The teams set the charges on the hulks and waited for Murdock to come back to them.
Murdock and his three men swam another hundred yards to the small docks that moored the patrol boats. There were fifteen in a row on one side of a wooden dock and fifteen on the other. He could see no sentries or guards.
Then a soldier on a bicycle rode down the dock, looked out over the water for a moment, then rode back and disappeared. They had decided to put half of the quarter-pound chunks of TNAZ on the fuel tanks of twelve of the small boats. They picked ones spread out through the group. Once pasted to the fuel tanks, Murdock told them to set the timers to thirty minutes and activate them. They did and swam back to the patrol boat hulks. Their men came out of the shadows of the ships.
“Timers set when we saw you coming,” Dobler whispered to Murdock. The eight men swam silently back to the deserted pier. As they passed the manned Corvette, they heard sounds on board. They couldn’t understand the words, but it was evident that a search was under way. By the time they were past the ship, it blossomed with all lights available and a dozen men scurried around the ship, seemingly searching for something.
Murdock and his men made it back to the pier, met with Ed and his squad, and talked it over.
“Lots of activity on that Corvette,” Murdock said.
“I got spotted by a sailor, but I pulled him overboard,” DeWitt said. “They probably missed him and are searching. Maybe it’s time we get out of here.”
Murdock nodded, and the platoon took to the water. When they hit the current of the river, they grinned in the darkness.
“That’s a five-knot current,” Murdock said as they floated down the river.
DeWitt swam alongside him. “You still have your watertight Motorola?”
“Safe and sound. We get down a couple of miles, we’ll hit the shore and give them a try. Can’t hurt.”
Just then, a machine gun from the near shore slammed bursts of five rounds of hot lead into the river. The bullets zapped into the water just behind the swimmers, and they dove underwater and swam forward faster.
When they surfaced, they heard the machine gun firing, but now well behind them.
“Somebody getting nervous, or did they see us?” Senior Chief Dobler asked Murdock.
“My guess is the nervous gidgets, a bunch of rookies who have never been in a fight before. Now they get nervous and think they see something.”
They heard the first blast behind them, a resounding explosion that reverberated through the night air. Murdock could imagine the Corvette losing its stern and sinking into the bay. Then, in rapid succession, they heard eight or ten more blasts through the silent Iraqi night. The men gave a soft cheer. If everything went right, Iraq had no more navy.
Just another day at the office. They moved on down the river. Murdock swam hard until he figured he was ahead of the rest of the men; then, as they came up to him, he waved them ashore on a sand bar that had some trees just behind it.