Uniform details would not be visible to the airborne IR cameras transmitting the scene to Starbase. Randall wasn't going to tell them, not now. All the SEALs needed was an abort order from nervous Pentagon REMFs.
Don Hughes — "Runcible" — pulled the door open and Sid James and Goddard rolled through, SD5s held high, tight, and ready. Randall heard the fast-triggered semiauto bursts from their weapons as he followed, entering the big, stonewalled entryway as three more Syrians, soldiers in fatigues and berets like the officers outside, were still falling. Two flanked a massive wooden door at the far side of the room, collapsing in bloodied, choking heaps. Weapons ready, Randall and Kyzinski moved forward….
"Are you sure we're just dealing with Hezbollah here?" Gordon asked, watching as the green-lit figures of the SEALs spilled through the main door to the big house. "The Syrians have been keeping a pretty strong presence throughout the Bekaa Valley lately."
"The nearest Syrian encampment is ten miles up the road, toward Rashayya," Goldman said. "There might be Syrian observers or liaisons at the objective, sure, but our intelligence sources on the ground say no. The guerrillas have been working on their own."
"The Syrians don't want to be linked to Hezbollah, remember," Colonel North said. "They were brought in to control the guerrillas in the first place."
"Yeah," Goldman said. "That's their story, and they're sticking with it."
Civil war had been raging in Lebanon for ten years. By now, dozens of factions were going at one another, though the main struggle was between the Christian right-wing militia and the Shi'ite fundamentalist guerrillas of the Party of God.
Within the Bekaa Valley of southeastern Lebanon, though, it was the Syrians who were most powerful, at least on the ground. They'd been invited in, at least in a theoretical sense, by the Christian government in Beirut, though everyone accepted that the Syrians had all but ordered the Lebanese parliament to send the request in the first place. Obviously, the Syrians were concerned about a major war on their southwestern border; historically, Lebanon had always been within their political sphere of influence.
A major concern among Western intelligence agencies, though, was whether the Syrians were suppressing the Hezbollah factions in the territory under their control… or cooperating with them. Certainly, the Syrians hadn't been able to help with finding the hostages held by the fundamentalist militias. The question was whether they were even trying.
"The Hezbollans are Shi'ite, remember," the colonel said. "The Syrians are Sunni, and the government is secular. The militia would never cooperate with them."
Gordon had his own thoughts about that, but kept them to himself. People were people, not machines and not ciphers, and the most fanatic of Shi'ite fundamentalists could be pragmatic when the situation called for it.
"Uh-oh," a technician at a nearby console said. "Colonel? Zoom back to check the north road."
The moving green figures on the screen dwindled to dots as the view expanded to take in not only the rectilinear shape of the fortress, but the rugged hills and the narrow, S-curve of a dirt road leading to the front gate. A line of vehicles, engine blocks glowing white-hot under infrared, was coming up that road. Gordon could make out the distinctive shape of a Russian-made BDRM, leading two pickup trucks, a flatbed piled high with troops, and a pair of canvas-covered deuce-and-a-halfs.
"Alfa, Alfa, this is Starbase," the technician said. "You have company on the way, north road. ETA … five minutes."
"Copy." The reply was flat, without emotion. Things were starting to go to hell now with startling speed.
"Estimate sixty troops and one piece of wheeled armor. Looks like a BDRM-60."
"Starbase, Alfa. You people are just full of good—"
The voice was cut off by a sudden, ripping blast of sound, as unsilenced machine guns opened up….
Randall heard the sudden burst of automatic gunfire from somewhere outside.
"Alfa Two, Starbase!" the voice called over the tactical channel. "Alfa One is compromised! Abort the mission! I say again, abort the mission!"
"Like fuck," Randall said. He slammed back to the wall next to the basement door. "Kizzy!" He shouted, pulling a flashbang from a combat-vest pouch. "Locked door! Let's have your Masterkey!"
Micromanagement. It was the bane of military operations, especially within the highly technical, highly specialized world of covert operations.
In World War II, a general would send his battalions in, following a plan outlined through meticulously written battle orders, but the maxim that no plan survived contact with the enemy still held true. As the battle gelled, as friendly forces blundered into those of the enemy, plans might be adjusted, with contingency plans called into play or reserves shifted to meet an unexpected enemy deployment, but battlefield communications were still in their infancy. All frontline communications depended on primitive radio equipment with a range of only a few miles and subject to enemy jamming or atmospheric interference, or on telephone lines vulnerable to enemy patrols or random artillery hits.
The older SEALs, the retired members of the Teams, especially, still talked about Vietnam, when SEALs operated with almost complete independence… and how when they ran into official red tape, they'd pulled an UNODIR.
When they'd decided they needed to pull a particularly risky op — gather some vital intelligence in a VC-infested area, say — and there was a real possibility that some REMF farther up the chain of command would say no, some of the SEALs had taken to writing up their plans headed up by the words UNLESS OTHERWISE DIRECTED… "UN-ODIR." The plan would then be sent to HQ, but too late for a refusal to come back down the chain. Some SEALs would have gone out, pulled off the op, and returned before their more cautious superiors could even draft a reply.
That sort of shoot-from-the-hip operating just didn't fly these days. Communications had improved dramatically in the decade and a half since Vietnam. The SEALs not only had headset radio communications with everyone in the field unit, they had a satcom link to assets offshore that could launch air strikes, call in a battleship salvo, or send in rescue helicopters. And on some ops, the sensitive and high-risk missions like this one, a special channel had been set up to allow Washington not only to eavesdrop, but to kibitz.
The debacle at Desert One, during the attempt to rescue American hostages held in Tehran, was still discussed by field operators, sometimes in hushed tones. That had been the night when General Charlie Beckwith, commanding the rescue force code-named Eagle's Claw, had pretended that he was having radio trouble so that he could make his own decision based on what he was experiencing at the site. On the other end of that "malfunctioning" communications link had been members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander in chief himself, President Carter.
In a sense, General Beckwith's actions had been a replay of Nelson's, at the Battle of Copenhagen almost two centuries before. When Sir Hyde Parker, Nelson's commanding officer at Copenhagen, had used signal flags to order him to break off in the middle of the fight, he'd held his telescope to his blind eye and calmly stated that he saw no signal….
Sometimes, the guy on the ground at the knife's point was the only one who could call it, and he didn't need second-guessing by swivel-chair REMFs.