"Right." He opened his tactical radio. "All units, this is Bushmaster One. On my signal, rock and roll. Acknowledge!"
"Bush Two, acknowledge!"
"Bushmaster Three, acknowledged!"
"Bush Four! Affirmative!"
"Bushmaster Five, acknowledged. We're with Bush Six. We've left Han outside the POW compound."
Another burst of gunfire echoed from the direction of the compound. Sikes couldn't know for sure, but it sounded as though it might be Han who was in trouble. The original idea had been to stay clear of the POWs until the last minute. When they saw the SEALS, they might make a lot of noise and it would be difficult to control them.
But now was the time.
"Copy, Bush Five. Take Six and get back to your target on the double. Secure the prisoners."
"Roger that."
"Okay." Sikes took a deep breath. "Take 'em down!"
There was a pause, and then the sky lit up orange in the direction of the airstrip as a fireball rolled into the night from a gasoline storage tank. An instant later there was a flash like the popping of flashbulbs, and the microwave antenna over the communications shed shuddered, sagged, then toppled slowly toward the fence. The crash was submerged in the ratcheting blast of plastic explosives detonated in a daisy chain under the bellies of trucks and other vehicles parked in the motor pool. The Mi-8 helo added the contents of its fuel tanks to the conflagration, transforming the camp into an inferno of flames and light and wildly shifting shadows.
The camp's siren began its mournful wail, and soldiers raced once more out of the barracks building, yelling and shouting to one another as they pulled on articles of clothing, stopped to lace boots, or worked the actions on their rifles. Sikes and Gordon lay still behind a hummock of earth, each man holding a small firing device connected to a battery. Men began leaping into the air raid shelter ditches.
Someone touched a tripwire carefully hidden in the ink-black bottom of one of the trenches, and claymore mines set into either end of the ditch triggered simultaneously. A hell of noise and smoke and shrill screams rose above the shouts of running soldiers. Claymores in a second ditch triggered, followed closely by a third. The soldiers still outside of the ditches became a mob surging back toward the barracks.
Sikes flipped the safety bail on his firing trigger and squeezed hard. A claymore nestled into the shadows near the barracks fired, cutting a bloody swath through the mob. Gordon fired a second mine an instant later. The yells and shouted orders were gone now, replaced by the shrieks and screams of the wounded. Bodies lay in front of the barracks in cordwood stacks, mowed down by repeated scythes of steel ball bearings. By the time Gordon opened up with his M-60, only a few Koreans remained standing.
The morning's festivities were off to a great start.
The first explosion rattled the walls on the POW building and silenced the angry shouts of the Korean guards. As the second explosion roared in the near-distance, HM/1 Bailey squeezed the trigger on the Mark 22 and the weapon bucked with a sharp chuff submerged by the far louder thunder outside. The soldier's head jerked back, suddenly bloody. The corpsman was already tracking his second target… and then his third.
A fourth Korean screamed in the door, then leaped backward, out into a night suddenly afire. Chief Bronkowicz scooped up one of the AK-47s, checked it, and handed it to one of the men. "The SEALS!" he yelled. "Now's the time!" The prisoners now had three assault rifles besides the pistol, and a chance to fight back.
The hand grenade sailed into the room through one of the windows high up along the north wall. It was one of the Soviet-made, apple-green RGDs and it skittered across the floor, bounced off the south wall, then spun in the middle of the floor.
"Grenade!" Coleridge screamed, and men dropped to the floor or tried to crowd back. There was a blur of motion as someone in khaki leaped toward the grenade instead of away, sprawling on top of it, gathering it in against his stomach.
The explosion was deafening, though the flash was smothered. The body of the man who had thrown himself across the grenade jerked a foot into the air, and bloody gobbets spattered across the floor. There was a lot of smoke, and a harsh mingling in the air of seared meat, blood, and feces.
The men crowded close. "Oh, God!"
"Who is it?"
"Did you see that?"
"Is he alive?"
Bailey knelt at the man's side, gently rolling him over. Lieutenant Novak's eyes met his for a moment, then glazed over. Much of his abdomen had been blasted away. The shredded remains were spilled across the floor and blood was gushing from the emptied cavity.
The lieutenant was dead in seconds.
Explosions continued to echo and reverberate from outside, and a flickering glow from the west spoke of fuel tanks going up in flames. Inside the room there was a momentary silence, reaction to the horror that was Novak's mangled body, reaction to the knowledge that the man had blamed himself for what had happened.
Seconds later the spell was broken by the yammer of AK fire from close by. Zabelsky had climbed up to the window through which the grenade had come and was firing short bursts into the night.
"Come on, you guys!" Chief Bronkowicz said. His eyes were locked on Novak's gory corpse and the spreading pool of blood. "Let's make it count for something'!"
Bailey rose, still gripping the pistol. Everyone had been so sure that Lieutenant Novak was a coward…
Bailey went to the door, a new and dangerous rage boiling inside. He half expected a blaze of autofire from outside, but events seemed to have thrown the Koreans into as much confusion as their captives. He spotted movement in the darkness and snap-fired, his shot rewarded by a groan and the clatter of a dropped rifle. Bronkowicz stepped past him, brandishing an AK, closely followed by half a dozen sailors armed with nothing but their fists. "Go, Chimeras!" someone yelled. Another sailor let out a spine-chilling rebel yell.
The corpsman looked back at Gilmore, who grinned weakly and gave him a salute from his makeshift bed. "Those SEALs are going to need help, son."
Bailey grinned, saluted, then joined the crowd running into the night.
Coyote turned his binoculars on the camp. "God, the whole place is going up!"
Kohl pressed the night-sight of his rifle to his eye. "The guys have been busy." His rifle cracked once. Even with the suppressor, the sound was uncomfortably sharp and loud. On the camp perimeter, a KorCom soldier pitched headfirst out of a guard tower, struck the barbed-wire topping of the compound fence, and hung there, head down. Kohl shifted targets and fired again.
In the lurid, wavering illumination from a burning fuel dump, Coyote could make out individual figures spilling from the Wonsan Waldorf. The chatter of automatic fire carried across the distance, almost lost in the rising cacophony of fire, explosions, and yelling voices. A building exploded in white flame and collapsed, burning fiercely. The wail of the siren was chopped off as though by a descending ax blade. "There goes the HQ," Kohl said softly. Coyote could only watch and marvel at the slaughter. The SEALS, it appeared, were efficient killing machines.
Minutes passed. Coyote knew from the final briefing earlier that night that Sikes's team was counting on a quick kill and a quick seizure of the camp. The battle for Nyongch'on couldn't be allowed to go on for more than a few minutes, or inevitably SEALs would start dying.
If there were three hundred troops inside Nyongch'on, there were another three thousand in other bases close by… possibly more. By blowing the radio tower, Sikes's men had cut the camp off from its neighbors; with luck, nearby KorCom Army posts would assume Nyongch'on had been hit by another American bomber raid and delay an immediate investigation.