Murdock keyed his radio. “This is One. Rattler, over.” It was the code word to execute the primary attack plan. None of the contingencies they’d thought up would be necessary. The other three vehicles acknowledged.
The four separate fuses that led back to the explosives were taped to the dashboard in front of Murdock. He peeled off the tape and gathered them all up in a bunch in his left hand. He took a deep breath and let it out.
“Time to earn all that combat pay,” said Razor Roselli.
Murdock noticed that the rain had stopped. He didn’t believe in omens, but it gave him a little shiver.
17
Razor Roselli stomped on the gas pedal and the heavy vehicle lurched forward. Blake Murdock’s heart jumped as the wheels skidded on the wet road, but Razor straightened it out.
The chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, bordered the right side of the road. The warehouse it protected was about twenty feet beyond.
When they were just past the midpoint of the warehouse, Razor twisted the steering wheel to the right and took the armored car off the road.
They hit the fence at a shallow angle; any more of a turn at that speed and they would have flipped over. The chain link snapped off the poles and then separated at its weakest point, but a big strip wrapped around the front of the armored car. It didn’t slow them down very much.
Murdock hit a switch on the dash, and there was a hard thump as the four-barrel smoke dischargers on each side of the turret launched eight screening smoke grenades in a circular pattern around the vehicle.
The wall of the warehouse came up fast. Murdock braced himself against the impact, hoping there wasn’t something large and solid, like a forklift, sitting up against the wall inside the warehouse.
The seven thousand-odd pounds of armored car going at forty-five miles an hour punched right through the wall in a cracking explosion of lumber and splinters. If Razor hadn’t immediately stood on the brake, they would have gone out the other side.
As soon as they skidded to a stop, Murdock hit another switch and the second pair of smoke dischargers went off. Only four smoke grenades were launched this time. The other four barrels were loaded with 66mm Haley and Weller fragmentation grenades. These were designed to be launched the same way as screening smoke, but packed a bursting charge surrounded by several thousand steel ball bearings. Just the thing to take care of any unwanted enemy personnel who might be lurking around an armored vehicle.
Not intended for confined spaces, the grenades hit the ceiling and exploded. It didn’t diminish their effect. Murdock and Razor were safe behind the armor, but anyone outside wasn’t.
Murdock activated the fuses in his hand and tripped the last toggle on the dashboard. It armed a mercury switch that would fire the charges if anyone tried to drag the vehicle out or if it took a heavy impact — like the other armored car detonating.
“My door’s jammed!” Razor yelled.
Murdock wrenched his open. “Follow me out!” He fell out the door with his AKM in his right hand and a box that looked like a full-size VHS camcorder in his left. It was a Marconi HHI-8 hand-held thermal imager. The warehouse was filled with the thick white smoke from the grenades, and the imager was the only way they’d be able to find their way out fast. It weighed about ten pounds, and saw objects on the basis of their heat, in varying shades of black and white. Because of this, it could look right through smoke.
Murdock swept the imager around and saw a line of printing presses, machinery, and wooden crates. At least they’d hit the right spot, a minor miracle in American intelligence terms. He could also see the other armored car: Ed and Kos had made it in. The grenades hadn’t got everyone; there were people still running around, but Murdock didn’t shoot. If he did they would know where he was in the smoke. It didn’t fit their public image, but operating in small groups with limited ammunition loads had taught SEALs to avoid firefights whenever possible.
Razor hopped out behind him and paused to lock the door. A small detail, but by the time someone dug up an acetylene torch to try to cut their way inside the vehicle, it would be too late.
The imager showed Murdock the huge hole they’d made in the wall, and he headed for it. There was just enough visibility for Razor to be able to follow him through the smoke, if he stayed close. Then Murdock heard machine-gun fire start up outside.
The Mercedes was parked in the road right in front of the hole Murdock and Razor had left in the fence. Jaybird Sterling had his window down and his PKM machine gun set up on a homemade welded U-mount over the door frame. Another Marconi thermal imager was mounted atop his machine gun feed cover. Doc Ellsworth was still behind the wheel, occasionally tossing beer-can-sized white smoke grenades out his window.
Through his imager Jaybird picked up hot human figures running out from around the far corner of the warehouse. He had his radio set on voice-activated and called out, “Troops, warehouse, north corner,” at the same time he opened fire.
Jaybird’s first burst took two of the figures down. He’d removed the tracer ammunition from his ammo belts; tracer allowed you to see where your rounds were going, but also let everyone else know exactly where they were coming from. He didn’t need it; the imager was so sensitive he could track the hot path of his bullets in the air. As the rounds impacted, the other figures slipped, stumbled, and ran back into cover around the side of the warehouse. The two crumpled forms lay motionless in harsh white contrast against the cooler ground.
Jaybird slowed his rate of fire, but kept shooting at the corner of the warehouse. Imagers couldn’t see through solid objects, but it was easy enough to guess where they had taken cover, and the Russian 7.62-x-54mm rimmed rounds were heavy enough to punch right through the wooden wall.
It looked like the bad guys were pretty well pinned down. Doc Ellsworth was keeping an eye on the houses on the other side of the road, but no one was sticking their nose out.
Then someone started hollering over the radio.
Ed DeWitt, imager in hand, was leading Kos Kosciuszko out of the warehouse when an automatic weapon opened up off to their right.
DeWitt hit the deck at the first bullwhip crack of the rounds going by. Slugs kept snapping overhead. and a few ricochets skidded off the concrete floor. DeWitt made an instinctive decision not to return fire. Murdock and Roselli were somewhere in that direction, and might be in his line of fire. Besides, he could sense that the rounds were coming in blind.
DeWitt didn’t have time to wait for the fire to taper off. Preparing to make a dash for the hole in the wall, he looked back to make sure Chief Kosciuszko was ready. But Kosciuszko was lying face-down on the floor, unconscious. There was no time to check him over. DeWitt sprang to his feet and lifted Kos up bodily into a fireman’s carry. Fortunately, both his AKM and imager were securely strapped to his body, SEAL-fashion, so he didn’t lose them.
There was about a seventy-pound weight differential between them, in Kosciuszko’s favor, but adrenaline and SEAL determination were wonderful things.
DeWitt shook one hand free and got the imager up to his eyes. Waddling as fast as he could under his burden, he headed out of the warehouse.
Magic Brown was firing his PKM at the southern corner of the warehouse. In the edge of his imager he saw DeWitt coming out with Kosciuszko on his shoulders. It looked like a huge body floating along under two tiny legs.
“Kos is down,” he shouted. It went out over the radio net.