“Damn shame to waste the water,” Lieutenant Hadera said. “But there’s no way we can get it to the Israeli settlers who need it.”
The explosions came then, sharp cracks of brilliant sound and light. The big tanks wobbled; then the water gushed out of them at four ruptures on each one. When the water was gone, flooding downhill into a wadi, the tanks tipped all the way over and rolled down the slope a hundred yards as the twelve men cheered.
Hadera used the radio. “Water pump squad. Done here. Anyone need help?”
“Well done, water pump. You’re too far down there to be of help to us. We’re nearest you. Things in hand here. Report back to your transport and get out of town before they report this raid to their highway units. Go.”
Murdock looked north. He had ten more men up there somewhere. He wasn’t going to be able to do a damned thing to help them.
Lieutenant Hadera thanked them and said he would see them back at the Army base. Sergeant Per gathered his men and they began their hike back to their car.
“About two miles, so shouldn’t be a strain,” he said. When they were a half mile from the spot where they’d left the car and well past the blown-up bunkers, Murdock touched the sergeant’s sleeve.
“Maybe it would be good to send a scout out and check around the car.”
“Good idea,” Sergeant Per said.
“I’ll go,” Van Dyke said. He waited until the rest of the men had dropped to the ground, then jogged forward, careful not to make any noise. He slowed as he came to within fifty yards of the car. Then he stopped and studied the area. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. He couldn’t see much, but there seemed to be no black bulges around the car where there shouldn’t be.
Van Dyke moved forward slowly, one easy step at a time. He made sure his foot did not break a twig or kick a rock before he put his weight on it.
He was thirty yards away when he heard a man near the car cough. Then he saw the glow of a cigarette at what could be the other end of the car. Two of them. It had to be a roving patrol outside the fence. They must have heard the explosions half a mile away. Van Dyke knelt on the sandy soil deciding what to do.
16
Van Dyke knew two terrorists waited for them at the car. There was no cover or concealment. He went to the ground silently, turned his head away from the car, and whispered into the mike, “Skipper, two visitors at car. Hold there.”
Van Dyke remembered a fringe of stunted brush on both sides of the narrow road where they’d parked the car. He lifted up and faded at a forty-five-degree angle away from the car and toward the brush. It would put him about thirty yards from the car. He watched every direction, made sure he didn’t make any noise when his feet hit the sand and stones. The men at the car didn’t move. He saw the cigarette glow again, and the cougher hacked four more times. Good.
Van Dyke made it to the fringe and stepped into the concealment. It was sparse. The two men should be watching the area in front of the car toward the border fence.
After five minutes of hard and careful movement, Van Dyke reached the dirt road forty yards behind the car. He slid in and out of the brush along the road as he advanced. He could see neither of the terrorists. One was near the rear wheel. The cougher must be at the front of the sedan. Which way would he be looking? Outward, toward the fence. That was what he protected.
Van Dyke moved faster then. He held his MP-5 at port arms, ready to bring it down and fire quickly. He wanted to do it all silently if possible. When he was ten feet from the front of the car, he could see the coughing guard clearly. He had one foot on the front bumper staring toward the fence. Van Dyke drew his KA-BAR fighting knife and held it in his teeth as he took the final six quick steps.
The terrorist guard turned just before Van Dyke got there, but he was too late. The butt plate of the MP-5 was already six inches from his skull and descending rapidly. It hit with a ripe-melon sound and the man collapsed. Van Dyke grabbed the fighting knife from his mouth by the blade, drew it back, and threw it at the smoker, who had turned at the sound the first man made when his head banged against the fender on his way down.
The chest was the perfect target and Van Dyke’s throw sailed true, turned over halfway, and the blade plunged six inches into the startled terrorist’s chest. It entered just below his heart. He tried to yell, but couldn’t. He held onto the door handle for a few seconds, then sagged as a large severed artery coming out of his heart pumped all of its blood into his body cavity, and sank to the ground, both hands grabbing at the big knife.
Van Dyke butt-stroked the unconscious man at the front of the car a second time, smashing in his skull, then dragged his body into the brush. When he got back to the smoker, he ground out the still-burning butt on the ground, withdrew his KA-BAR from the dead man’s chest, wiped it clean on his shirt, and pulled the body behind some low-growing shrubs.
Van Dyke used the radio. “All clear. I have a sedan leaving from this point to Ramallah in four minutes. Hustle, you guys.”
“All clear?” Sergeant Per asked.
“Clear as the midnight ride of Paul Revere. In a word, yes.”
“Be there in five,” Per said.
Van Dyke checked the car. They’d had time; they could have booby-trapped it. He used his flash and checked underneath on the muffler. No heat-sensitive bomb. Nothing wired under the hood to go boom when the starter kicked over. He picked up the dropped AK-47’s and pushed them into the car’s trunk. Van Dyke slid into the brush out of sight when he heard the five men coming.
“Friendlies coming in, hold your fire,” Ching called out.
“Welcome on board,” Van Dyke said, stepping out of the brush. “Let’s get this act on the road.”
Murdock looked north as the car turned around and headed back to the Army base at Rama. He wondered how the other ten SEALs were doing.
Jaybird, Jefferson, and Victor had slept most of the way to the target from the Rama Army Base. One of the Israelis with them nudged them awake.
“Close by now,” the squad leader said. He was Sergeant Jacob Epstein, and he told them he’d been on over twenty killing missions into the Palestinian territory. The SEALs could tell a bloodied trooper when they talked to one. Epstein said they were less than a mile from their parking spot. “Let’s get ready.”
The SEALs pushed magazines into weapons and charged rounds into the chambers. Their car edged to a stop near a pair of small buildings on a dirt street that ended in an open field. They could make out a security fence not far beyond the end of the road.
They had been briefed on their target. Their two six-man teams would go after the barracks for trainees, visitors, and workers at the learning center. The driver and squad leader told them there should be about 150 trainees and workers at the site. They should be mostly in the barracks. Epstein’s team would launch a surprise hit on one of the two units precisely at 0100. The other team would hit the near by second barracks in the complex. Both buildings were new and had been in use for less than a year. This secret facility had been exposed after a PLO prisoner captured by the Israeli forces had talked his head off in exchange for his freedom. He’d given them a detailed description of the facility, personnel, and scheduling of classes.
Both Jaybird and Jefferson had 20mm weapons. They would start the operation with white phosphorus through the windows on the ground floor, then HEs through as many windows as they could hit. There should be three or four other strikes by the combo forces in the main area of the camp at the same hour, so any opposition would have to choose what to defend.