There was a soft laugh, then the man whose speech had a trace of English accent came again.
“Oh, yeah, you’re good at acting, too. Now, turn your ass around real slow, so I can watch your bastard eyes as I gut shoot you and see you learn what real pain is. Now, turn slow, slow, and don’t get near that weapon in your hideout. Easy, now.”
Jefferson turned with short, shuffling steps until he faced the man. He was six inches shorter than the SEAL, but the Ingram with a long magazine made him just as tall and twice as ugly. He wasn’t black, but he wasn’t white, either. Some kind of Iranian, maybe.
“Now, shithead, how many of you American SEALs here, a whole platoon?”
“Like I said, I’m on guard duty here for some special friends. We don’t got to tell you bastards nothing.”
The gunman slammed a pistol down across Jefferson’s head, and he staggered back a step.
The pffffftttt came softly. The short Iranian in military cammies standing in front of Jefferson staggered to the left. Something blasted out the side of his head and took bone, blood, and gray matter with it. The small desert animal sounds shut off at once when the silenced weapon spoke. The terr collapsed to the left, dropping the Ingram from dead fingers before he hit the ground.
“Jeff, you all right?”
The whispered words came from the front, where a dark figure crouched near a stack of missile boxes.
“Oh, yeah, dandy now that this dude is dead. Mahanani?”
The big Tahitian/Hawaiian rushed forward and touched the dead man’s throat for a moment, then grabbed the Ingram and with one hand, and dragged the corpse back between the displays.
“What took you so long?” Jefferson asked.
“Playing with this bang-bang shit is not my forte,” Mahanani said. “You do the missiles yet?”
Jeff shook his head, and they both worked bombs into unlikely places where they wouldn’t be seen come daylight.
“Look at these things,” Mahanani said. “A whole damn stack of Stingers. Even these with the two-point-two-pound warhead can bring down a fighter or a commercial airliner. They’ll do Mach one for three miles. Damn, where do these fuckers get this kind of shit?”
“Buy them or steal them,” Jefferson said. “We done here?”
“Yeah, I come up to you just at the right time. I saw another guard, but I went around him.” Mahanani looked closely at Jefferson. “Man, you been under a gun before. He really spook you?”
“He said he knew I was a SEAL. How the hell he know that? Who was he?”
“Iranian, from the looks. I’ve seen them before. Now, let’s get those last missile stacks over there. Shit. Look, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Almost ten feet long, with twenty pounds of warhead. They’ll do Mach two at least and reach out for ten to twelve miles. Man, where do they get this shit?”
They heard AK-47s stuttering to the north of them. An MP-5 answered on full auto.
“Getting hot in here, brother,” Mahanani said. “We better do these two and split.”
“I’m with you, buddy.”
They put two quarter pounds of TNAZ on the inside boxes of the missiles. The blast would create a sympathetic reaction and should explode each of the Stinger warheads. Their propulsion systems also might ignite, and they could take off like twisted snakes in a circus.
The two SEALs moved away from the missiles, working straight back for fifty yards, and joined the other men who had finished planting their bombs.
Ten minutes later, all the SEALs were there.
Lampedusa had come back from a scouting mission. He talked to Murdock a few minutes, then the leader gathered them around him.
“Any casualties?” He paused and looked around in the darkness. Nobody spoke up. “We ran into more security than we figured. I’d say at least a company is working up the street. They won’t think to look for bombs, but we’ll need to blow them as soon as we get back a safe distance. So our job is half done. Better shag it out of here.
“Lam has found our new home. About three hundred yards over, there are some small dunes that get up to fifty feet. Highest ground around here. We’ll get on the far side and work out our firing positions. Squad order, ten yards apart. Soon as we get into position, Canzoneri is gonna blow them. Let’s go do it.”
Ten minutes later, they had their firing spots picked out and customized as much as possible. They would fire over the top of the dune from the safety of the reverse slope as necessary and have a clear run for the beach, which was now about 600 yards behind them. The tide would change that one way or the other.
“Okay, Canzoneri, you ready?”
“All set, Commander.”
“Then do it. Any sequence you want.”
“I’ll start down where the troops were and work up toward us. We should be clear back here.”
Canzoneri took a black box from his combat vest and lifted a two-foot telescoping antenna and looked at Murdock. The commander gave him a thumbs-up.
Canzoneri pushed the toggle switch, and at once the far end of the display line erupted in a series of explosions. They were followed by sympathetic detonations that lit up the countryside for half a mile.
The SEALs ducked below the dune.
Canzoneri walked the explosions up the display half mile. As one died down, he triggered the next one.
“Incoming!” somebody shouted.
One of the missiles launched itself and made a winding trail a hundred feet into the air, then slammed straight at the SEALs but kept the altitude and went all the way into the Gulf of Oman, where it detonated.
Now they could see other missiles bouncing across the land. In flashes of light they saw the tents burn away, saw one six-by truck explode, and the fuel from the tank set two other trucks on fire.
The jet fighter went up in a huge mushroom cloud as the aviation fuel exploded, showering blazing JP-3 over a hundred yards of displays.
Two minutes after Canzoneri triggered the first bomb, the last section exploded in a roiling gush of flames and nearly white-hot light. The 105 artillery shells detonated with withering karumph sounds and dirt, tents, and displays flew every which way.
“Holt,” Murdock bellowed. “Get your big ears on, we’re hauling ass now. Move it, everyone. Straight for the wet. We get SATCOM going before then. We’re bound to have company soon.”
“Captain, we’ve got some trouble.” It was Jaybird.
Murdock caught the message in his earpiece. “What, Jaybird?”
“Spotted a vehicle with lights on patrolling behind us. He made two circles, then stopped and conferred with three men in front of his headlights.”
“So?”
“I used my glasses and I saw him use a radio, a handi-talki type. My bet is he called for some more troops or maybe some air support to work this area.”
“Possible. We keep moving, we should be wet before they can find us. Holt, where’s the damn SATCOM?”
“Need to stop a minute and get the antenna aimed,” Holt said. “Take about two minutes. Can we do that?”
“Hold it, troops,” Murdock said on the radio. “Move to the reverse slope of this small dune so we’re out of sight of the blast. For a few minutes it’s SATCOM time.”
They stopped behind the dune. Jaybird crawled up so he could watch the smoke and destruction of a few million dollars’ worth of useless rubble. Holt aimed the antenna and passed the handset to Murdock.
“Set for voice, Commander.”
He hit the Send button. “Floater, this is Petard. Read me?”
They waited a moment. It stretched out. He sent out the message again. On the third try, someone replied.
“Petard, this is Floater. You’re early.”
“Change in plans. Blew the field early. We nailed the whole half mile. Nothing left out there but smoking rubble. They had the army guarding the place. Total destruction. Rounds still exploding. On our way for a swim. Time is 0115. Need a wet pickup in thirty minutes.”