“Mister DeWitt is right,” said Kos Kosciuszko. “The only way we’ll knock the problem is by blocking it out piece by piece. If the planning’s done right, there’s no such thing as a target that can’t be taken down.”
Murdock thought they were on track. Surprisingly enough, SEALs frequently paid less attention to planning and rehearsal than they needed to. The culprits were usually officers, who thought that because they’d graduated from BUD/S, they were so big, so tough, and so bad that they could just strap on their six-shooters and take out anyone without even trying. But as a wise old chief had told an aggressive young Ensign Murdock years before, the SEAL Budweiser badge might be pretty but it didn’t make you bulletproof.
And whenever time was short and he was tempted to half-ass some small detail of his planning, Murdock remembered the time he’d gotten tapped as a junior evaluator on a Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit Special Operations Exercise. The MEUs went out to sea on six-month deployments, and a SEAL platoon was always part of the amphibious squadron. This platoon had been led by two lieutenants, which sometimes happened. For the exercise they were going to conduct a HBVSS, or Helicopter Visit, Board, Search-and-Seizure, of a suspected hostile merchant ship, something that had been done every day during the Gulf War. The two lieutenants showed up at the planning conference without their chief, and in full view of all the Marines started arguing like a couple of little children over who was going to carry the SATCOM radio. It went on for a while, along the lines of, “I carried it last time.”
“No, you didn’t, I carried it last time.”
Murdock had been appalled. Then the Marines broke in and asked the SEALs how they wanted the Cobra helicopter gunships to deploy. What did they mean? the SEALs asked. Well, the Marines explained, after the SEALs fast-roped onto the deck, did they want the Cobras in a racetrack pattern around the ship, or hovering near the bow to cover the bridge with their 20mm cannon? Oh, came the response. After they’d gotten that straightened out, the Marines asked the SEALs what they planned to do. Head for the bridge, came the reply of the two John Waynes. Okay, said the Marines, but how are you going to get there? What ladderways will you use? What if they’re blocked? Will you breach them or go around? All absolutely elementary stuff. Duh, responded the SEAL lieutenants.
Murdock had felt like slapping the shit out of them. It was okay for SEALs to have a reputation as prima donnas. They were. But not as idiots and non-professionals. He’d never forgotten it, and after that he never went anywhere or did anything without first consulting a chief or a leading petty officer.
“Okay,” said DeWitt. “What about a standoff attack with a couple of mortars?” It never made any sense to walk all the way up to the target if you could stand back and shoot it up from a distance.
“Not sure enough,” said Razor Roselli. “We might damage the place, but we’d never know how well we really did. And no way could we come back and do it again if we didn’t do it right the first time.”
Murdock was measuring a Lebanon map with a ruler. “We’d need at least a 120mm mortar and a shitload of ammo, and that’s a lot to be dragging around the Bekaa Valley at night.”
“A few fast-attack vehicles and the mortars on trailers,” DeWitt responded.
“There’s no ground high enough in a ten-thousand-meter circle around Baalbek where we could observe and adjust the rounds on target,” said Murdock. “We’d use up all the ammo and never hit the warehouse. And like Razor says, even if we hit it we wouldn’t know how much damage we did.”
“We’ve got to get all the way in to the objective,” Roselli insisted. “Okay, we tiptoe in. Now, if we’re not compromised on the way in and the guard force has its head up its ass and somehow we manage to get into the warehouse, we’re not going to have a lot of free time to plant charges. And if we can’t place the charges in the right spots, we’ve got to pack in a lot more explosives. Which is even more trouble.”
“You know what this really looks like,” said DeWitt. “A destruction raid mission for a whole Ranger battalion.”
“I already brought that up,” said Murdock. “It didn’t fly.” At that point Murdock called a lunch break, which for one and all meant throwing on shorts and a T-shirt and trying to get rid of their frustrations with a solid hour-and-a-half workout.
When they got back to the planning room, Murdock said to MacKenzie, “Okay, Master Chief, you were wearing that happy face all during PT, and it wasn’t just the extra atomic sit-ups you made Ed do for missing the count. What did you come up with?”
“We have to do a pseudo operation,” said MacKenzie.
“Meaning?” asked Ed DeWitt.
“Meaning we dress up like the bad guys and drive right up to the front door. Like how the Israelis drove a duplicate of Idi Amin’s Mercedes right up to the terminal at Entebbe. Like the Vietnam SEALs dressed their point men in black pajamas, coolie hats, and AK47’s to give them a little edge.”
“By George,” exclaimed Kos Kosciuszko. “I think he’s got it.”
“So we dress up like Syrian commandos?” asked DeWitt. “Or Hezbollah?”
“Neither,” said Murdock, really warming to the idea. “You don’t dress like someone they’re going to want to stop and chitchat with. You dress like someone who makes them shit their pants and wave you right through.”
“Syrian Presidential Guard,” said Kos Kosciuszko.
“A big limo,” DeWitt burst out. “And a couple of vehicles filled with Presidential Guards. Jeeps, land rovers, Russian Zils, whatever they use. Something we can fly in by helo.”
“Tinted windows on the limo,” said Kosciuszko. “Syrian flags on the bumpers. You don’t know who’s inside, but it’s got to be someone you don’t want to fuck with. That’s the great thing about dictatorships.”
Once the initial excitement passed, Razor Roselli, the wet blanket, weighed in. “That might get us into town without compromise,” he conceded. “But we’ve still got to set charges and get out. And the problem with dressing up like Syrians and then having to deal with Syrians is like the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. They dressed up like Americans and caused a lot of confusion, but they nearly all got bagged because at close range they couldn’t pass.”
Razor Roselli had never yet failed to amaze Murdock.
“It’s like North Korean Special Forces dressing up in South Korean uniforms and slipping over the DMZ,” Roselli went on. “They get caught as soon as they open their mouths, because every Korean can tell the difference between a Northerner and a Southerner.”
“Which means,” Kos translated, “that the uniforms might get us all the way up to the warehouse if we showed up at night. But even if the CIA gave us someone who could speak fluent Syrian Arabic, we ain’t getting invited inside without a lot of shooting.”
That brought them back to earth. Then DeWitt suggested, “Maybe if we bring along something to shoot our way into the warehouses Like a Russian BRDM scout car. The armor will stop small arms, and they pack a big-ass 14.5mm machine gun.”
We could ram our way right through the security.”
“I’m sure the CIA could come up with one or two for us,” said MacKenzie, giving DeWitt an approving nod.
Razor Roselli left the room and returned with the reference book Jane’s Armor and Armament. He flipped open to the Russian BRDM and said flatly, “it won’t fit inside either an MH53 Pave Low or an MH47 Chinook. You’d have to sling-load it under the helo, and I don’t know who we’d get to do a night low-level penetration with a slung load. Especially that kind of air defense threat.”
They all groaned, mainly because they knew he was right. Murdock gave them a break, and everyone went out for coffee or a soft drink …