I looked at my watch. Three minutes to go.
Two companies of marines were spread out on the dunes above the beaches, one company to the north and one to the south. They had spent the last two hours getting into position, aided by armored personnel carriers that delivered them to within a few hundred yards of their combat positions.
From where they lay, they could see the plaza and the numerous armed pickups that sat there, and those that buzzed around aimlessly, apparently piloted by nervous drivers.
The guards at the fortress never heard or saw the British Royal Marine commandos. They came out of the darkness like ghosts, cut throats and pulled the bodies into the brush. The whole job took two minutes.
Then they sifted into the fortress through the gun ports. The lieutenant found Captain Penney standing by the kitchen area with his officers and saluted.
“Lieutenant Mick Laycock, sir, Royal Marines.”
Arch Penney’s jaw fell. As the marine held the salute, he realized he should return it, and did.
“The admiral asked me to inform you, sir, that transport has been arranged. Your passengers and crew will be driven to the airport as soon as possible.”
“The airport?”
“Yes, sir. Transports, sir. I don’t wish to be forward, sir, but I suggest you inform your people and organize them as you wish.”
“Yes, Lieutenant … What did you say your name was?”
“Laycock, sir. Royal Marines.”
“Indeed.”
“If I may make a suggestion, sir? You might wish to get your people away from these openings in the wall. As a precaution, sir.”
Arch Penney grabbed the young man and gave him a bear hug.
Bullet Bob Quinn was watching from the Sultan’s bridge. Mike Rosen and High Noon were there, too, sharing the binoculars and night-vision scope. Two other SEALs manned the Big Fifty machine gun, one to shoot and the other to ensure the ammo belt fed properly. Quinn had the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle lying nearby on the deck, but he thought the guys on the beach and the marines on both sides probably had enough firepower. Really, there is such a thing as enough.
Rosen was excited. He could feel the tension, tangible as smoke.
For the last ten minutes Quinn had been watching a boat being launched from the beach. Apparently the holy warriors were coming out again to check the ships and harbor area. The boat was under way now, heading straight for the anchored cruise ship.
Bullet Bob keyed his headset mike. “Vince, do you see the approaching boat?”
“Roger.”
“Take him out when I give the word.”
“Roger.”
Vince was standing on the topmost deck of the liner with an M-3 recoilless rifle on his shoulder. This reloadable weapon fired an 84 mm warhead and could take down anything up to a tank. This one was equipped with an ambient-light-gathering sight, so the boat showed quite clearly on the dark sea. Vince could even see the crewmen. He counted heads. Eight. Fairly small boat propelled by an outboard engine. The exhaust of the engine whispered in the night air.
Another SEAL was on the pilot sponson, actually just inside the ship, waiting, in case the fighters boarded before the bell rang.
Out at the airport, Willis Coffey looked at his watch, misread it and told the guys on his net to start shooting. The sniper rifle boomed, submachine guns opened fire, and within seconds all the Shabab warriors in the five positions they occupied around the airstrip were dead, wounded or standing with their hands up. The CIA team ceased fire and moved in.
As they did, one of the standing men leaped to a machine gun in a truck bed and cut loose. He managed to spray the area and wound a man before he was killed.
When the controller aboard ship said, “Go,” the SEALs on the beach cut loose with submachine guns and M-3s. Aboard Sultan, Quinn’s men opened up on the trucks with the Big Fifty.
On the upper deck, Vince fired his M-3 at the approaching boat. The charge literally went through the boat and detonated in the water, lifting the boat and breaking it in half. It quickly sank, taking most of the men with it. Two managed to stay afloat until the SEAL in the pilot sponson shot them; then they slipped under.
A Shabab lieutenant standing on the balcony of the lair saw the muzzle flashes coming from the beach, aimed his RPG-7 and triggered off a rocket. Fortunately he had launched an antiarmor warhead, which vented its main charge into the sand. One man was injured. Before the holy warrior could reload, he was cut down by a .338 Lapua Magnum slug fired by E.D.
The recoil of the Sako jerked the rifle off target, so E.D. brought it back to the balcony as he chambered another round. He looked for his man, and saw only a hand hanging over the lower railing.
I got him! Holy damn!
E.D. scanned with the rifle scope and found a man who had apparently bailed from a pickup running toward the entrance to the building. It was actually a fairly difficult shot at a moving target, but E.D. didn’t miss this time. The 250-grain bullet striking with about three tons of energy swept the man off his feet, killed him instantly and dropped him on the plaza like a sack of rocks, and continued on its way. It struck a stone a half mile out, ricocheted and plunged into the ground five miles southwest of Eyl.
Meanwhile the trucks in the plaza were being riddled. One was already on fire, with RPG rounds cooking off in the bed.
E.D. chambered another round.
Yousef el-Din heard the racket. It sounded as if World War III had started right outside, all at once. A fervid believer in the efficacy of treachery, he instinctively knew that the Americans had lied. They weren’t coming tomorrow with two tons of currency: They were here now with enough firepower to overwhelm the Shabab’s men, and quickly.
He extracted the radio controllers from his pocket—he had two—and turned them both on. Waited for the little green lights. First the Sultan prisoners.
He looked at the fortress, a massive dark shape up there against a dark sky. He pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
He pointed the device at the fortress and pushed the button repeatedly.
Those damned pirates! Doubtlessly they improperly installed the radio controls and detonator. Incompetent fools!
Well, he still had the unit to blow this building. The batteries and radio control and fuse were installed by al-Gaza, the Hamas expert. It would explode. But the time was not yet. He would explode it when the building was full of Americans. A true believer to the core, Yousef was ready to die. He would take the American infidels with him to Paradise to prove his faith to Allah.
Meanwhile he shouted down the staircase to the men on the floor below. They were armed with RPG-7s. “The fortress,” he shouted. “Shoot at the fortress!”
The fact of the matter was that the fort was a bit too far for the RPG-7 rockets, which had a maximum range of a thousand yards, a few feet more than half a mile. Unfortunately, the fort was almost six thousand feet away from the lair. Yousef didn’t know the range of the rockets; technical matters were a bit beyond him. On the floor below three men fired rockets—lots of back blast that nearly asphyxiated them and their loaders on the spot—that went zipping off trailing fire from their rocket exhaust. The trajectory of one of the rockets was insufficiently elevated; it went into the ground and exploded at eight hundred yards. The other two were elevated enough, but the warheads self-destructed at a thousand yards, making a flash and spraying shrapnel in a cone-shaped pattern ahead of them.
From the lair, the fact that the rockets hadn’t reached the target was not readily discernible in the darkness. Looking up the fiery trail, it appeared the flashes had actually occurred on or around the fortress.