“Understand. Stay dry if possible for now. Will reply in five.”
Murdock gave the handset back to Holt. He still marveled at the SATCOM system. The SATCOM radio worked with the Milstar satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles over the equator. It was officially the AN/PRC-117D, and it weighed fifteen pounds and was only fifteen inches long and three inches square. It had voice, data, or video transmission capability and could squirt out an encoded message in a hundredth of a second, foiling any enemy trying to triangulate its position. It could broadcast at a strong 10 watts of power for longer range or drop down to.1 watt for short distances and dangerous situations.
“Commander, we may have some trouble,” Jaybird said. He had taken the NVGs to watch the blast scene. Murdock went up to the top of the dune and looked over. Murdock saw a line of four six-by trucks on their side of the destruction. One truck stopped every hundred yards and dropped off ten men, then moved on.
Lam moved up to the top of the dune with the other NVGs. “Three trucks, twenty men to a truck, about sixty of them,” Lam said.
As they watched, they saw the men fan out in a line of skirmishers in a perimeter defense pointing at the SEALs. The Iranian soldiers went prone and some began digging in with entrenching tools.
“Too little, too late,” Murdock said into his mike. “Nothing to guard anymore.” Murdock took out his field glasses and scanned the ruins before him. He saw the shells of six trucks, both the blown-apart jet fighters, and skeletons of other equipment that had all been blasted and burned beyond any possible use. He looked at Holt.
“Holt, how long has it been since their last transmission?” Murdock asked.
Holt checked his wristwatch with the timer. “Two minutes, sir.”
“Yeah, it goes fast when you’re having fun.”
Nobody heard the visitors until they were almost overhead. Then two Iranian jet fighters thundered across the scene. They came in at less than three hundred feet and scattered the smoke and ashes in the display. They made sharp turns and returned with throttles back for a slower look, then raced away to the north.
“They must have been baby-sitting the display, watching for any kind of an air attack,” Murdock said.
“Commander, we’ve got company,” Senior Chief Dobler’s heavy voice said on the Motorola.
“Where and how many?” Murdock asked.
“Coming around the end of the display. Still about five hundred yards away, but they’re heading straight for us. Two armored personnel carriers.”
“I see them,” Murdock said. “Must be doing thirty miles an hour. Bradford, you see them with your fifty?”
“Lined up in my sights with armor piercing, Cap’n. Locked and loaded.”
“Take them.”
The heavy crack of the big .50-caliber McMillan M-87R sniper rifle blasted into the darkness of the Iranian coastal desert. The first round was followed by four more. The second heavy AP slug bored through a chink in the front armament and splashed the radiator and continued into the engine itself before it exploded, shredding wires and lines, dumping the vehicle to the side, dead on the sand.
The second vehicle came closer. Two .50-caliber rounds on the driver’s section made the rig veer to the left, but it kept coming. The fully tracked vehicle looked like a small tank. Inside, it could carry eight to ten fully equipped combat infantrymen.
Men sprayed out of the downed machine. They were 300 yards away.
“Let’s take them down,” Murdock said.
Up and down the line of SEALs, the carbines spoke along with the two machine guns and sniper rifles. Within ten seconds, the last of the ten Iranian soldiers spun and died in the sand from the accurate fire by the SEALs.
The second rig kept coming, angling now directly at where the firing had erupted against it. The rig had one exterior-mounted machine gun. Murdock figured it was a 12.7mm, which could do the SEALs a great deal of damage.
“Make up some impact bombs with your TNAZ,” Murdock said into the lip mike. “Tape the impact fuses around the quarter-pound chunks. We need to blow that sucker’s tracks off.”
The AP carrier continued for the center of the SEALs’ line but slowed and stopped when it was fifty yards off. Bradford had fired five more times at the rig but couldn’t find a weak spot that his rounds would penetrate. He saw three of them bounce off the slanted armor.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Jaybird asked on the Motorola.
“What would you be doing?” Senior Chief Dobler asked.
“Hell, I’d be wanting to know what was behind these dunes. Who my enemy was and his strength and weaponry.”
“About what he’s up to,” Murdock said. “Maybe waiting for some help. He could call those jets back to make a strafing run. Now they know where the target is. Spread out, twenty yards between us. Holt. Get your electronic ass up here.”
Holt had the SATCOM ready to go when he slid in beside Murdock and gave him the handset.
“Set for voice,” Holt said.
Murdock took the mike and let out a deep breath. “Petard here. We’ve had visitors. Now more are showing up. Your five minutes are wasted. Time we got wet. Any air support over here? Come back.”
The transmission went out in a thousandth of a second in a burst that was impossible to trace.
To Murdock’s surprise, an answer came back at once.
“Floater says no chance of any friendly air. Get out of there as soon as practical. Wet pickup will be ready in thirty.”
As they spoke, Murdock saw more Iranian army troops come from in back of the ruined display, form up into twenty squads of spread-out infantry, and begin a slow march toward the dead armored personnel carrier only fifty yards from the SEALs’ cover.
“More company,” Lam said. “Looks to be about a hundred and forty of them, all small arms, no heavy stuff or MGs. They have five hundred yards to go to get to the armored rig.” He could barely see them through the pale darkness.
Just then, the Iranian jets paid another call. This time they were only 200 feet over the ground. The SEALs felt the wind whiplash around them as the jets sucked the air after them.
Murdock scowled. “In about fifteen minutes, we’re going to have more trouble than we need. A hundred and forty troops with a mad on, one machine gun on that AP carrier, and those two damn jets rigged for air-to-ground fire.”
Jaybird grunted. “Yeah, but then that’s about our usual odds. Looks fairly simple to me. We take out the ground troops when they get close enough. Hell, they’re in the open. Then we blast that junior-sized tank with TNAZ and hightail it for the wet.”
Murdock lifted his brows with wonder. Jaybird was always the optimist. Just then, the Iranian jets came blasting over again, evidently taking one more look before they started shooting.
“Net check. You homies spread out? I want twenty to thirty yards between your SEAL bodies. Sound off.”
All fourteen men responded. Murdock looked up. The Iranian troops were within 200 yard of their position. The armored personnel carrier started its engine and began to move forward slowly. Just then, he heard the Iranian jets. Something had to give. In another two hours it would be daylight.
3
Murdock watched the armored personnel carrier moving forward, it’s 12.7mm machine gun swinging slowly side to side, searching for a target. In the distance he could hear the jets making their high-speed turns. The Iranian infantry had come out of their prone positions and moved forward at a deadly pace.
“Jaybird, what’s the universal signal to mark a target for fast-moving jets?”