“What kind of security does the place have?”
“Doesn’t need much. It’s in the middle of the desert, a hundred miles from the closest village or oasis. There are twelve buildings in the complex, and on last count, about three hundred military guards. No wall, no electric fence, no guard towers. They tried not to make it look like a military location.”
“How many workers at the plant?”
“The work is done. Now it’s just a maintenance crew and specialists in case something goes wrong. Not more than twenty-five men.”
“So all we have to do is knock down three hundred troops, then outwit twenty-five maintenance men who are undoubtedly armed with Uzis or Kalashnikovs, and then go in and count beans.”
“Roughly put, yes. We plan a small surprise for the troops. There will be a helicopter landing of a hundred Marines twenty miles from the target. They won’t make a secret of the landing. They will be moving slowly toward the target. This should bring out most of the troops guarding the missile site and factory.”
“So, say we can get inside and put down the locals, then count the beans and radio out our totals, how do we burn up the gas?”
“You don’t.”
Murdock did a double take. “What the hell you mean, we don’t burn up the gas? Why else would we go in there?”
“To count the beans. We have to know that everything they have is in that one complex.”
“So, we pull out, you use one of those big gas cloud bombs and hope to hell you burn up everything.”
“That’s what we’re hoping.”
“Bullshit,” Murdock said. He stood and faced the CIA man. “You know that won’t generate enough heat to blast open those missile heads or the 105 artillery shells, and whatever else he has loaded with your ectoprocy. You’ll get some of it but not all of it. All Saddam has to do is come in, salvage, put the warheads on new missiles, and he’s ready to go.”
Stroh looked at him with eyes as cold as Murdock had ever seen.
“So, you know that won’t work; you won’t do it. Which leaves only one sure way to do the job. A way that the U.S. hasn’t used in fifty-five years.”
“That’s enough. You don’t have a need to know.”
Murdock laughed. “Oh, hell, yes. You send us in there, into the fucking lion’s mouth, and tell us to pull his teeth and then get out and you don’t even tell us that the lion isn’t even sedated. You think I’m stupid, Stroh?”
“No.”
“You’re talking like it. The only way to burn up all that shit in the desert and be sure it’s gone is with a nuclear weapon. A small yield, maybe only five thousand kilotons. Just enough to vaporize everything in that complex and for five miles around. That keeps the three hundred Iraqi troops in the clear. Of course, the twenty or thirty maintenance men are still inside when you pull the cork.”
“Thirty men dead is a small price to pay to keep an estimated ten million from being gassed to death.”
“If it came to that.”
“If Saddam goes down, it will come to that. Already, his advances are stalling. They have overextended their supply lines, and they’re running out of gas, food, and ammunition.”
“So when will his retreat start?”
“We figure in two more days, the tide will turn and the Syrians, with U.S. airpower help, will start driving Saddam back toward the border.”
“And then Saddam will wipe out Damascus, Syria, for a start, and maybe Haifa for good measure.”
“All of this is off the record, Murdock. You didn’t hear me say a damn thing about any nuclear weapon.”
“Hey, when it happens, it will be an accident in a secret site where Saddam was building nuclear weapons. An easy out. So we didn’t throw in a bomb after all.”
“Your men aren’t to know.”
“Oh, yeah, we get away in a chopper and a fucking mushroom cloud boils up behind us and I tell them, ‘Damn, just a lucky accident.’ ”
“A warning, Murdock. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who says a word about this to anyone else, will suffer a serious and fatal accident. This isn’t one we can fuck around with.”
“The nuke is the only way?”
“You have a better plan?”
“Stroh, you don’t need us in there. Just nuke it now and hope you get it all.”
“Won’t work. The President says you SEALs have another job. You have to make sure all of the personnel left in the complex are routed out and moved at least twenty miles away before the blast. We’ll have four choppers there to lift out up to eighty personnel. We pull any civilians off site and dump them out near a road.”
“So we’re baby-sitters, too, on this one? Bean counters and baby-sitters. What a great assignment.”
“You can tell your men you’re going in to neutralize the poison gas facility and get the guards out before the place is bombed off the map. You can’t tell them how. That’s all they need to know.”
Murdock slammed the flat of his palm against the bulkhead. “What you’re telling me is there is no chance I can say no to this assignment.”
“That’s what I’m saying. When it happens, there is a special bonus for your men. Everyone is advanced one grade in rank by presidential order. You realize what that’s going to mean to your men, to have a presidential order promotion in their permanent service file?”
“It ain’t no medal of honor.”
“But comes damn close. You can go to full commander, and the JG to full lieutenant.”
Murdock shook his head. “Not for me. I move up to full commander, they yank me out of the field so fast my silver leaves would curl up and fall off. I’ll stay put and take a commendation instead.”
“Done. Now get your ass in gear. We’ve set up the security on this as tight as next Thursday. Your point of departure will be Forward Logistical Temporary Base One. It’s about ten miles from the Iraqi border and about twice that far from the Syrian border. The spot is almost six hundred miles northwest of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I’d say just your usual weapons, maybe twice the ammo. You’ll be riding both ways, so I’d think all of your men not in the hospital could make the trip.”
“I’ll decide that, Stroh. When do we get the COD off this floating vacation land?”
“Anytime after five o’clock, I mean 1700. That gives you almost five hours to get ready.”
Ten minutes later, Murdock called his thirteen men together in their assembly room and told them quickly what the mission was. He said they’d clear the complex, then haul ass in a chopper and the Air Force or the Navy would blast the place into rubble.
“Won’t that release the nerve gas?” Ching asked.
“Extensive tests have shown that this type of nerve gas will vaporize once released and then becomes flammable,” Murdock said. “It will explode like one of those gas cloud bombs the Air Force uses.” Murdock hoped they bought his explanation.
“You’ll get briefed again in the COD. We’ve got some traveling to do before first light tomorrow morning.”
Murdock made a sick bay call. The JG was better, but still not out of danger. He spoke little, and Murdock left feeling lousy. Adams was in good spirits, saying he knew his arm would heal perfectly and he’d be back in SEALs in six months.
Bill Bradford, with his stomach wound, looked the best of the three. He joked about his “no guts” operation and Murdock told him they were off on another joy ride.
“You’ll be on the next one, or one soon,” Murdock said. Then he hurried out to pull his gear together and move the men up to the plane. He’d worked it out with Senior Chief Dobler to take over the Bravo Squad for this assignment and the rest of their current deployment. Murdock didn’t know what he’d do about the JG once they returned to Coronado. He’d worry about that later. Right now, he had to go in and do a setup for an atomic bomb blast without getting any of his SEALs killed.