Inside the lighted building, the SEALs found a short assembly line where large bombs were evidently loaded with their powder charge and the fuses attached. In the far corner, steps led downward. Ed DeWitt and Murdock charged down the steps with their flashlights on. Down ten steps they came to a concrete wall with a steel door firmly in place. It had a time lock on it.
“Fernandez, get down the steps with some primer cord, now,” DeWitt said to his mike.
Fernandez arrived a few moments later, saw the problem, and unrolled two one-foot-long strings of the quarter-of-an-inch-thick pliable C-4 explosive. He pasted one strip against the door circling the lock, and then put an X across the lock itself with the other strip. He inserted a timer/detonator into the cord.
“Three minutes?” he asked, and looked at DeWitt. The officer nodded, and Fernandez activated the timer. All three SEALs ran up the steps and to the side, out of the way of the back-blast that would funnel up the steps.
The rest of the SEALs heard the talk, and faded to the sides away from the steps. The blast came on time with a muffled roar; the near side of the building next to the steps shook for a moment, but didn’t come down.
Murdock and DeWitt hurried into the smoke down the stairs. They came right back up coughing and wiping their eyes.
“Check with the guards in front to see if there was any reaction outside,” DeWitt said. Canzoneri slipped out the front door, and came back a moment later.
“No reaction,” Canzoneri said on mike. “Our guys heard the blast, but didn’t think the noise traveled far.”
It was four minutes later before the SEALs could penetrate the fading smoke and get to the door. The lock had been blown right through the metal door, and it sagged outward on bent hinges. It took both men to pull the door open enough so they could get inside. There were no lights. Their flashes served as they checked the twenty-foot-square room.
In the middle stood a table with a sealed container on it.
“We’ve got our warhead,” DeWitt radioed. “Kat, get down here with your kit of tools.”
Kat came through the door with her kit and two flashlights she had borrowed from SEALs. She looked at the sealed container, and took out her issue fighting knife and began ripping it apart. It was made of hard and soft plastic, and soon she found the key and opened one seal that held the two halves together. She lifted the top half and looked inside.
“Yes, the same warhead as the one in Libya,” she said. “Help me lift it out of there and then I can get to work.”
They pulled it out, cut off the rest of the plastic, and Kat began to work.
“Jefferson,” DeWitt said on mike. “Find Yasmin and stay with her. We don’t want her doing anything weird.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jefferson said.
Murdock sent two more men downstairs to hold flashlights while Kat worked. They began to sweat when Kat did as she began the delicate operation to make sure the trigger device could not possibly work to set off the nuclear bomb.
“This one is different,” Kat said. “No way I can kill this one without some radiation.”
DeWitt checked with Murdock, who was topside.
“Do it,” Murdock said. “Sometimes we have to crack a few eggs to get the job done.”
“Hey, Cap, we’ve got trouble up here,” Franklin said from the front of the building. “The damn patrol rig is coming up. What do we do?”
“If they get too curious, waste them and get the jeep out of sight around back somewhere. Keep it silent as possible.”
“Got it,” Franklin said.
In front of the building, Franklin watched the jeeplike rig come closer, turn away, then make a U-turn and come back straight for them. He was going to make a social call. Damn, Franklin thought. It might be the last U-turn that driver ever made. He lifted the AK-74 and wished to hell that he had his silenced H & K MP-5. Shit. A SEAL had to do what a SEAL had to do.
30
Franklin watched the utility vehicle come to a stop ten feet in front of them. The driver looked out and shook his head. From the other side of the rig a soldier came around with a marching step. He had chevrons on his sleeve, wore a floppy hat, and had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, muzzle down. His face was a silent mask of anger.
“Soldier, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Guard duty, Sergeant,” Franklin said in Arabic.
“You’re not the men I assigned here two hours ago.”
“Oh, yeah, we’re from the supernumerary, replacements. The two guards here got food poisoning and they rushed them to the medics.”
The sergeant came closer until he was only four feet away.
“Your uniform…” That was all he got out. Franklin had been holding the long rifle on his shoulder. He pivoted the butt downward suddenly and slammed the barrel into the side of the sergeant’s head, jolting him to the ground like a head-shot deer.
The moment Franklin made his move, Khai leaped forward, swung down the Kalashnikov, and pushed the barrel into the driver’s throat.
“Unless you want to die in five seconds, don’t make a sound. Get out of the vehicle.” Again all in Arabic.
The driver stared at his sergeant motionless on the ground, and slowly stepped out of the rig. Khai marched him to the side of the building in the shadows, where he tied his hands and feet with plastic strips, and then gagged him.
Franklin dragged the dead sergeant around to the side of the building. “No need to gag this one,” Franklin said. “Can you drive the jeep?”
Khai said he could, and pulled the rig to the side of the building into the moon shadows.
The two went back to the front of the structure and resumed standing guard. Franklin told the net what had happened.
“Hope to hell nobody finds them. How much longer we have to stand like clay pigeons out here?”
“We found the device,” DeWitt answered. “She’s working on it. Hang tough.”
Murdock went down to the basement to hold a flashlight and let one of the men go topside. He watched Kat work. She knew exactly what she was doing. No lost time, no waiting and wondering. She cut wires and pulled contacts and wiped sweat out of her eyes.
It took her fourteen minutes to get the warhead in the condition she wanted it to be. She leaned back. “Bring down the charges I made ready,” she said to the mike.
Fernandez brought down the package, and she spent two more minutes placing them exactly where she wanted them, then inserted two timer/detonators, and looked at Murdock.
“That will take care of the bomb. Maybe we can seal this basement with some blasts at the sides of the stairway. They’ll have to go off exactly the same time as the blast down here, or a fraction of a second later. I’ve set the charges so most of the blast will go against the back wall. Which should allow a half a second before it ricochets out the stairwell.”
Murdock looked at the stairs and decided it would work. Fernandez brought more C-4 and TNAZ, and helped form the bombs and place them on each side of the steps low down.
“How long on the timers?” Kat asked.
Murdock used the mike. “DeWitt, ten minutes on the timers on the blasts?”
“Sounds right. I’ve got Ostercamp looking at that truck outside. If it will run, we can use that to blast back to the fence to the south. Ostercamp, do we have wheels?”
“That’s a Roger, Mr. DeWitt.”
“Ten minutes on the timers,” DeWitt said.
Murdock, Kat, and Fernandez each set one of the bomb timers at ten minutes when Kat said, “Mark.” Then they hurried up the steps and out the front door. The Syrian six-by stood at the door. The rest of the SEALs were inside. Murdock picked up Kat and tossed her up to the tailgate, then climbed in.