Then a flashlight came on. Murdock closed his goggled eye, opened the other, and took down the man with the light. Unbelievably, he heard Higgins both shooting and calmly reporting on the radio, “Contact, room two.”
A better man than I, thought Murdock, because even though the guy he’d shot was dead, his flashlight wasn’t. It lay on the floor casting a nightmare’s worth of illumination over the room. Now everyone could see him instead of the other way around. Not only that, it seemed as if most of them had started shooting. Muzzle flashes exploded in front of him. Murdock tossed his head back to flip the NVG up out of the way, and kept shooting.
Hundreds of hours and thousands of rounds expended in training saved Blake Murdock’s life. He didn’t think about it; he just fired until his man went down and then shifted to another target. First everyone with a weapon, then everyone standing, then everyone moving. The M-4 magazine ran out just as a screaming face loomed in front of him. M-16’s took a magazine change faster than any other weapon in the world, but there wasn’t enough time. Murdock’s left finger was on the trigger of the M203 grenade launcher, and he yanked the trigger. The recoil banged against his shoulder and the figure in front of him went down with twenty buckshot in his chest from the 40mm M576 multipurpose round. So close was the range that the shot group was the size of a fist, and the plastic pellet cup and cap were blown right into the wound.
Murdock stood panting, smoke curling from the end of his suppressor, the room reeking of burnt gunpowder, dead bodies all over the place.
Lieutenant Murdock might have wanted things kept quiet, but Razor Roselli had trouble with orders that conflicted with his personal survival. He wasn’t about to enter the locked downstairs bedroom door without some preparation. Besides, after all the unsuppressed gunfire he’d been hearing, he figured he was absolved.
He nodded to Jaybird Sterling, who reached behind his back and drew out a Remington 870 12-gauge pump shotgun with the barrel cut down to the magazine tube and no stock, just a pistol grip. Sterling shot the hinges off the door with two solid slugs.
Roselli kicked his side of the door down and whipped in an M-67 fragmentation grenade whose fuse he’d let cook off for a couple of seconds. The grenade blew, and they went in.
Blinded by the grenade smoke, Roselli sensed something thrashing on the floor and fired.
Jaybird, on the other side of the doorway, was sweeping the room with his laser, trying to punch through the haze. A figure sprang up from the floor and rushed across his field of view. Jaybird settled the laser on his target and fired. The figure went down with a hideous high-pitched screaming. Sterling kept shooting until the noise stopped. Nothing else was moving in the room, so he moved forward to take a look. In the laser light the figure turned into a woman with a child in her arms.
“What do you got?” Roselli called over. When he didn’t get an answer, he walked over and punched Sterling’s shoulder. “Whatcha got?” he repeated.
Jaybird was still staring down at the bodies. “Two,” he said flatly.
“I got one, and the frag got another,” Roselli said conversationally. “Room six clear, four tangos down,” he radioed. He pushed the microphone down and yelled at Sterling, “C’mon, let’s get going.” When Jaybird didn’t move, Roselli grabbed an arm and slung him out the door.
Murdock rammed in a new magazine and threw the empty into his vest. Then a new buckshot round into the M203. Nothing was moving in the room. He heard Higgins fire twice, then nothing. “You okay, Prof?” he called to Higgins.
“Yes, sir,” Higgins replied calmly.
The first thing Murdock did was stamp on the flashlight and return the room to darkness. Then he and Higgins toured the room, firing a round into the head of each figure on the floor. Better than a wooden stake through the heart.
“Room two, nine tangos down,” Higgins reported over the radio, doggedly following SOP to the last.
“Save some for us,” came Doc Ellsworth’s voice over the net. “Upstairs secure, two tangos down.”
Damn, thought Murdock, there were a hell of a lot more terrorists in the villa than the CIA had thought. Though the fact that they’d got it wrong wasn’t exactly a surprise.
Beside him Higgins gave voice to his thoughts. “If it wasn’t for all the guns, I’d say we fucked up and hit a Chamber of Commerce meeting or something.”
“Sound off,” Murdock ordered over the radio, and each member of the assault element reported in, alive and unwounded. “Clear and search,” said Murdock. “Let’s make it quick.” The SEALs would now make a hasty search of the villa for documents and intelligence. “Victor Two, any movement?”
“Clear,” reported Ed DeWitt.
Evidently the neighbors knew who lived there, and if a bunch of terrorists wanted to have a spat with firearms that was their own business.
Just as they’d rehearsed, Higgins held open a waterproof dry bag while Murdock shoveled in the contents of the terrorist’s pockets, along with all the papers that had been scattered around the room. Then Higgins used a miniature video camera with a night vision attachment to record the faces of the dead.
Each assault pair reported over the radio that they were done.
“Charges ready?” Murdock demanded.
“Victor 1–2 ready,” said Doc Ellsworth.
“Ready,” said Razor Roselli.
“2–1 ready,” said Miguel Fernandez.
“2–2 ready,” said Ron Holt.
“Pull fuse,” said Murdock. “Everybody out. Victor 2, copy?”
“Victor 2, copies,” said Ed DeWitt, letting everyone know that the security element wouldn’t blow them away as they came out the door.
The charges were 1-quart issue plastic canteens filled with a napalm mixture, a blasting cap, a two-minute safety fuse, and a fuse igniter. The fire would consume the villa within minutes, removing most of the evidence of what had happened.
Murdock stationed himself by the blown door and counted everyone out of the house. He was the last man to sprint across the lawn to the balustrade, where Ed DeWitt and Kos Kosciuszko were laying in the grass behind their HK-21’s, smiling big old smiles and hoping some trouble would pop up so they could lay waste to it at the cyclic rate of 900 rounds per minute.
Murdock went over the seawall and they followed right after him. The snipers covered while everyone strapped on their Draegers. While he worked, Murdock sucked on the plastic drinking tube of the Camel-Bak water bag attached to the back of his vest. It held seventy ounces and didn’t make any sloshing sounds when you moved. After all the heat and exertion he needed to get rehydrated before the swim out.
When they were ready, each swim team gave Murdock a thumbs-up that their equipment was working and slid into the water. Murdock checked them all off like a worried mother hen. He looked at his watch. They’d been in and out of the villa in less than six minutes. It had seemed like an hour.
Then Murdock and Higgins donned their mouthpieces and disappeared beneath the waters of Port Sudan harbor, just as the flames began to light up the villa’s windows.
3