A pair of corridor-wide swinging steel doors blocked their path. Red edged up to them, and pushed one in four inches so he could look through to the other side. Machine-gun fire blasted into the door but missed the inch-wide hole, and Red fell back swearing.
Murdock squirmed forward. "You hit?"
Red shook his head.
"Forties," Murdock said. Red nodded. Murdock used the mike and told Adams and Lampedusa to get up front and break out their 40mm rounds.
They worked it systematically. One man edged the door open far enough to get his M-4A1 through, then fired a half a magazine of .223 whizzers down the hall. Meanwhile, the next man pushed his weapon through below that, and fired an HE 40mm round. As the lower man loaded a new round, the top man fired the last half of his .223's from his magazine.
Then the lower man fired another grenade. They worked the ritual for six grenades. The last one was a Willy Peter phosphorous round that exploded with the impossible-to-put-out sticky phosphorus that could burn through anything but metal, including human bones and tissue.
No return firing had come after the second grenade.
Murdock held up his hand to stop the action. They waited. A groan came from in front of them. Murdock hoped that the WP smoke would drift out of the hallway ahead of them.
He nodded at Ron Holt, who lay on the floor, and Holt pushed one of the swinging doors open with his MP-5. There were no incoming rounds. Holt held the door open as the First Squad raced over him and into the hall half filled with smoke.
They heard no firing from the front. Red Nicholson ran through the smoke, past three dead Kenyans, and to a door that swung half open. Fresh air billowed through the door, and outside he could smell the green countryside of Kenya.
A minute later, Murdock edged the door open wider. A bright moon bathed the landscape. He wasn't sure where they were, but they were at an outside door.
"Holt, get your ass up front," Murdock said into the mike.
"Right behind you, L-T," Holt said, grinning in the darkness.
"Crank up that box of yours and see if the flyboys are still up there riding shotgun."
Holt flipped two switches and took the mike. "Tom Birds, this is Water One. You still flying?"
The return came through at once.
"That's a roger, Water One. Cruisin' and snoozin'."
"We're almost out, may need some help."
"Can do. Give us a call."
"Time?" Murdock asked.
Holt punched the light on his watch. "It's just after 2235, sir."
Murdock took another look outside. "Road out there, and no inlet, so we're in the motherfucking front of this asshole place. We need the back, and we need to get wet."
Just as he started to push forward out the door, a chattering machine gun snarled and seven rounds jolted into the door slamming it all the way open.
The SEALs ducked back inside the building.
"Anybody hit?" Murdock asked.
"If somebody got hit he's dead," Holt snapped. They laughed. It was what they needed.
Murdock took a quick look out the door to the right where he had heard the machine gun. He saw it mounted on a three-quarter-ton-type military truck. Had to be a .50-caliber.
"Brown, get it up here. Got one more small job for you to do."
13
General Umar Maleceia stormed from one side of his large office in the military headquarters to the other. His dark green uniform shirt showed stains of sweat under the arms and down the chest. His eyes bulged as he stopped in front of his second in command, Colonel Jomo Kariuki.
"How could this happen? Our troops at the American Embassy have been slaughtered and the hostages have been taken away? How could you let this happen?"
"General, sir. They had fast jet fighters that attacked the embassy. Then they brought in large helicopters with troops in them, and the fighters flew cover. Two of our weapons carriers were destroyed."
"These same jets shot down one of our MiGs?"
"Yes, sir. We now have only tatu, just three of the MiGs left."
The phone rang. The colonel picked it up. He answered, listened for a moment, then held out the handset. "General, you better hear this."
"What? What is it?" Colonel Kariuki pushed the handset toward the general.
"Yes, yes, what is it?" Maleceia listened a moment, then had the man on the other end repeat the words when static interrupted the telephone conversation.
General Maleceia pulled the handset away from his mouth and threw it and the phone across the room.
"Attacking us again! They are attacking the prison where I have the rest of my hostages! How can I demand money and goods from America if I don't have any hostages?"
Colonel Kariuki stepped back to be out of the rage pattern of his commander.
"Sir, we have five hundred seasoned troops in a camp just north of Mombasa. I can alert them now, and they can be at the prison in a half hour."
General Maleceia seemed not to hear his advisor. He swept everything off his desk. He threw a portable radio across the room, smashing a window. He kicked over his desk chair, and then sat down on the desk hard, his hands over his face.
"General we can send in troops from the camp north-"
General Maleceia looked up with a killing stare, and Colonel Kariuki stopped.
"I know where our troops are, Kariuki. In a half hour the attackers may be gone. Why don't we have more helicopters? Why not more than three jet fighters? I know. They cost hard currency, which we don't have. Yes, send the jets down to blast anything they see that moves around the prison. If we can't keep the hostages, at least we can kill them all."
"General, the report is that there is air cover for the raid. It is probably the F-14s, the same type plane we think shot down our MiG. Sir, they are much faster, with better missiles and far better radar than our older MiGs. Our pilots wouldn't stand a chance."
"Send them up now. They can be in Mombasa long before the troops can move across town in the trucks. Order it at once."
"Yes, General." The major went outside to his desk, where he made two phone calls. Three minutes later it was done. The three jets would be lifting off from their home base near Nairobi within fifteen minutes. They would be at Mombasa in another thirty minutes. It all depended how quickly the American raiders could rescue the sailors and get them out of the area. It all depended. He had no hope that the troops in their trucks would be of any practical use.
If the jets got to the prison in Mombasa before 2245, they might have a shot at helping. The colonel gave a short sigh. If they weren't shot down fifty miles from their target.
"Somebody has night eyes over there," Brown said. He had just cranked out another .50-caliber round that didn't find a home.
"Soon as I got off that first round, that damned truck jolted behind that offset in the front of the building. Can't even see the bastard now."
"But if we started sending men outside, he could pull out, fire off a dozen rounds, and slam back in hiding before you got off more than one shot," Murdock said.
He turned to Holt. "Call in the Tom Cats. We need some help."
Holt picked up the mike. "Tom Birds, got your ears on? This is Dry Water One."
"Oh, yeah, Dry Water. We've got company. Two more Cats to help. What's up?"
"Do a flyby at the front of the building. There's a vehicle with a fifty-caliber MG that has us pinned. We're at a door at the front near the west end of the place. Be right obliged if you could disassemble that fifty and not burn us out."