Two minutes later Lam went down on his stomach in the sandy, dry ground and stared ahead. This one was more than a checkpoint. A splash of light showed in a large square ahead where some type of building hovered near the road. A lift gate extended across the width of the highway, and two cars had been stopped and uniformed men inspected the rigs. He heard the talk, but didn’t know Arabic.
“Cap, better come up and take a look and leave the troops down there. We’ve got a bigger post across the road.”
Two minutes later, Murdock bellied down beside Lam and used his binoculars. He swore softly.
“Fucking roadblock won’t bother us, but look at the wire that extends out into the brine. No telling how far it goes. It’s a good old-fashioned double-apron barbed-wire fence. Four feet high in the middle on steel posts and with razor and barbed wire. Then slanting-up aprons on both sides, also of razor wire. Not a thing of beauty to get across without making a hell of a lot of noise.”
“Or getting wet,” Lam said. “Trouble is, the wire might extend twenty feet into the water. At least until it rusts off in the brine.”
“How far are we from the town?”
Lam had been watching the growing brightness of the lights ahead. He’d figured about a mile before he found this blockage. He told Murdock.
“We either get wet now or take out the roadblock.”
“Getting wet is best; then we still have surprise at the palace. I’ll go check on the end of the wire. Hell, we’re not afraid of a little bit of water.”
Lam ran to the wire where it vanished into the blackness of the Dead Sea and wiggled it. Solid. He stepped into the water and eased out three feet. The muddy bottom sloped gradually. He probed with his foot and hit the wire a foot under the water. Lam stepped on the wire construction, and it sagged to the bottom of the sea in the salty mud. With his hand he searched where the four-foot upright should be, but there was none. Just the tapered-down end of the typical double-apron defensive fence. He went back the way he had come to where Murdock lay in the sand.
Ten minutes later, the SEALs had waded around the end of the barrier fence and were wet only to their waists.
“Easy,” Jaybird said. “Why didn’t they have some noisemakers on the fence? Some old beer cans tied together works great, or here in Muslim land some Coke cans would do the trick.”
Murdock now went with Lam on the point. They came to a half-fallen down building that at one time might have been a bathhouse for a retreat or hotel. Now it was almost collapsed and shattered by the elements. They used it for cover for a moment. Murdock took out his NVGs and scanned ahead. The light green landscape showed him no bodies, no movement. He saw two cars parked ahead on the other side of the road. Houses were now in regular rows of blocks across the highway. They had at last come to the town, Murdock decided.
They saw the lights in front of them twenty feet later. The four-foot-high beams of light from giant searchlights daggered across the black sand of the Dead Sea and vanished in the darkness well out into the wetness. Murdock saw the source of the light at once. A pair of huge searchlights that sat about fifty yards inland. They evidently were aimed down a street so they had an unobstructed shot at the beach and the water.
Murdock and Lam went to the sand again and watched, but could see no change in the steady beam of the lights. No rotating, no flashing on and off, just a steady beam that would immediately bathe anyone in their light the nanosecond a crossing was tried.
“Around the bitches,” Lam said. He pointed. “We can get across the road here, go down a block inland this side of the lights, walk around them, and come back to the wet on the other side.”
Murdock checked it out with the glasses. He could find no roving guards along the light beam, and nobody working the other end of the lights. He did see three submachine gun guards walking around the pair of giant, smoking searchlights as the arcs gave off their smoke and odor.
“Move up,” Murdock told the troops on the Motorola. He explained to them on the air what they would do and why. By the time they were in position a block from the light, Murdock and Lam had already crossed the street, walking and fading down the dirt street with occasional houses on both sides.
The rest of the platoon filtered across the road, then into the houses, and detoured around any that had lights showing. Murdock and Lam went fifty yards beyond the smoking-arc searchlights and dropped down to study the area for guards.
“Dogs,” was all Lam could say before two large animals came out of the darkness and without a sound hurtled through the air with snapping jaws searching for their victims’ throats. Murdock rolled to the left and clubbed one of the animals with the butt of his Bull Pup. He hit it in the neck and it went down, then sprang up. Murdock got out his KA-BAR and on the next lunge of the animal, he drove the blade into the dog’s throat and slashed it sideways. Blood flew, and Murdock rolled away from it as the dog came down hard where he had been. It gave a short whine, then turned over and died, half its throat torn away.
Lam had spun to his back, jerked up his knees, and lashed out with both feet as the slightly smaller dog snarled and dove on him. Lam’s boots caught the animal in the chest and lifted the dog and threw it over his head. That gave time for Lam to draw his KA-BAR and slash twice at the animal’s head as it charged him again. The blade tore across a cheek and through one eye, and the dog bleated in pain, dropped its long tail between its legs, and ran into the darkness.
“Watch for dogs,” Murdock said on the radio. “Stay in place while we finish our recon.”
It took them ten minutes to be sure there were no human sentries around the back side of the lights. They floated across the danger zone and filtered back through the streets to the wet. Murdock had no way of knowing where the palace was except that it was facing the water. So they would stick with the salt brine until they found the target and could recon it.
Another block and the lights from ahead increased in brilliance by a factor of four. They moved up as close as they could and not be in the splash. This well-lighted place had to be the palace. Huge floodlights bathed the beach and water in front of the palace. They also highlighted guards. Three worked a fifty-yard post in front of the palace and in a foot from the Dead Sea. Another rank of guards passed each other on the dry sand, and a third line of four more guards hovered around the chalky whiteness of the building that had to be the palace. It was three stories, pure white in the glow of the floodlights, with a large portico-type rear entrance and what could be thirty windows facing the sea.
Murdock brought up Eb and he checked the situation.
“Yes, about what we figured, only more guards. If we try to take out one or more, the rest collapse on us and we’re in trouble. Too damn many to go around. From the lighting pattern, I’d guess all four sides of the palace have guards, about the same number and positions.”
“What the hell can we do now?” Lam asked.
“The oldest one in the book,” Murdock said. “Joshua used it in the Battle of Jericho several thousand years ago.”
“Diversion,” Eb said, grinning.
“Let me check around two more sides just to be sure,” Lam said. Murdock nodded. Lam vanished to the left, still in the dark, heading round the left side of the palace as it faced the water.
“Will he be all right?” Eb asked.
“Best man I have for land warfare. He’s got elephant ears and a sixth sense that has pulled us out of more than one tough spot. Yeah, he’ll be all right.”
Murdock used the Motorola to fill in the rest of the men on what they’d found, what Lam was up to.