Time, speed, and a good mariner’s eye told Doucan when he was five hundred meters from the beach. Using his red-lens flashlight, he flashed three dots to Beau’s boat. Beau acknowledged the signal.
Duncan turned to the men in back. “Stop the engine.”
Here, his squad would wait for Beau and his team to reconnoiter the landing site.
“H. J.” you keep your eyes on the right flank of the beach. Gibbons, you take the left. Monkey,” he said to his coxswain, calling him by his nickname. “You watch our drift. Keep us pointed toward that sharp rock above the beach. You see it?”
“Aye, Captain, I see the precipice,” Monkey answered, secretly glad that the captain had identified the same shore marker he had been using for navigation.
“It’s a hill, you big asshole,” whispered Gibbons. “Why you gotta use words like precipice?”
“I’m reading a new book,” Monkey replied softly.
“What book?”
“Roget’s Thesaurus. Has to do with a man named Roget who could never decide what word was best when he was talking, so he wrote down all the choices,” Monkey teased. The petty officer’s huge hairy hands eased an oar into the water and with two soundless paddles corrected their head.
“Captain, what is this place? I heard that this is where an Army general named Clark landed during World War II,” H.J. said in a whisper.
He felt the wind in his face. Their voices were being carried out to sea.
Satisfied they could talk and with his voice low, Duncan replied, “Yeah. On the hill up there”—he pointed at the sharp rock that Monkey and Gibbons were discussing—“is an old villa owned by a Frenchman who during World War II offered it to the OSS for a meeting between American and Vichy French officers. I saw some photographs that Navy Intelligence took before we left the Nassau. Library pictures of the place showed a beautiful garden surrounding a white villa with a red roof. Today, it’s a dilapidated wreck. The roof is caved in. The garden is overgrown and the windows appear to be a memory. The intelligence specialist who explained the photographs said the green that was covering the house was ivy gone wild.”
“Why did you go through that much trouble, Captain?”
“It helps to know the layout if you have to fight. The overgrown garden will make a fight inside the compound hard in comparison to the relatively clear countryside surrounding it,” he said, and then after a few seconds added, “Of course, it’ll provide more cover for our infiltration.”
“How about cliff? Huh?” asked Gibbons softly, while he continued to scan the beach. “Cliff is a good word for a hill, but not precipice.
For God’s sake, Monkey, precipice sounds like an f’ing child asking to go to the toilet!”
“Precipice is an acceptable alternative to hill,” said Monkey as he took a compass reading to the cliff to confirm their location. Monkey never trusted GPS, or anything more technical than an outboard motor.
If he didn’t understand it, then it couldn’t be trusted. There were a lot of things he didn’t trust. Radio was another one.
“What time is it?” Duncan asked.
“I’ve got zero one ten,” H.J. replied. “Swimmer scouts should be ashore by now.”
Ashore, the two swimmers pulled the boat with Beau and the chief onto the beach. Beau’s squad broke off into two pairs, after a somewhat marginal effort at caching the boat. Peripheral vision was their best surveillance tool as they moved quickly from cover to cover, ambush-cautious.
Beau and Mcdonald ran west across the backshore along the base of the dunes. Ensign Bud Helliwell and Chief Judiah jogged east, taking the left flank. The two pairs ran about two hundred yards down the beach away from each other before disappearing into the tall dune grass that bordered the beach. Like well-oiled gears, the two pairs unknowingly complemented each other as they searched the landing site.
Once in the grass, both pairs waited a few seconds to see if their sprint along the beach had stirred unwanted notice. Two minutes later, satisfied, they began a stealthy climb toward the top of the hill above the beach. Beau dodged ahead for twenty to thirty feet until he found a suitable flanking position. Then he provided cover as Mcdonald rushed past. When Mcdonald went to ground, Beau sprinted ahead, past the petty officer, who cradled the lone MG-60 for his team. They continued in leapfrog fashion as they conducted the reconnaissance. In that manner, both pairs of SEALs circled the area where they expected to find President Alneuf and company. It took thirty minutes for the two pairs to startle each other near the top of the hill.
“Anything, Bud?” Beau asked Helliwell in a whisper.
“Negative. I didn’t see any signs that anyone has been here lately.”
“Me either. That must be the house,” Beau said, pointing to a dark shadow that stood out against the stairs in the background.
“Yeah, think we should search it?” Beau thought for a moment before shaking his head. “No, our job is reconnoiter the beach. Let’s get the others before we go further.”
Crouched, Beau started down the center of the search area toward the beach. He had taken only two steps when voices from above startled him. Without a word, the four SEALs split apart, taking cover behind nearby rocks.
The voices were in French and came from the direction of the old house. A chuckle turned to loud bass laughter drowning out the normal murmur of conversation. Beau motioned to the members of the team and continued his trek down the hill. Bringing up the rear, Mcdonald followed, with Chief Judiah directly behind him. Helliwell covered their retreat from the house with his carbine. Near the beach, Beau removed his red-shaded flashlight. He flashed the dot-dash Morse code symbol for “Alpha” several’ times to ensure that Duncan’s team received it. He expected and got no reply. Boats usually never flashed toward the shore.
“Bud,” Beau said. “Take a position to the right above the landing. If those above decide to investigate the beach, don’t fire unless you have to.” “Come on,” Bud Helliwell said to Chief Judiah, and the two ran along the beach about fifty yards before disappearing into the dunes.
The sound of an outboard motor drifted in from the sea. “Turn that off,” Beau said silently.
A hundred meters from the beach, as if Duncan read Beau’s mind, he said, “Okay, cut the motor and grab the paddles.”
Duncan lifted his carbine and removed the watertight sleeve from the barrel.
H.J. saw him do this and followed suit. Like Duncan, she shoved her “sleeve” into her front shirt pocket.
They paddled another ninety meters before the surf shoved them the last ten meters onto the beach. Beau and Mcdonald ran to the boat. The occupants hopped out and helped the two pull it over the sand and onto the dunes where the other boat rested. Beau wrapped the bowline around a nearby rock to secure it. Monkey and Gibbons hurriedly draped a cammie net over the hastily hidden boats.
They’d only be here a short time and gone by daylight, so Duncan answered in the negative Monkey’s question about deflating and burying the boats in their bags. How the hell would they reinflate them?
“Anything?” Duncan asked Beau.
“Yeah, we’ve got visitors at the old house.”
“How many?”
“At least three. Didn’t try to find them or count them. I am presuming they are President Alneuf and his party. At least. I hope so.”
“Okay,” Duncan replied. He looked around, memorizing where the rafts were and the lay of the beach. He tried to visualize how the place would look if they had to run down from the top. It would be bloody embarrassing to achieve their mission only to find they had misplaced the boats. In the dark, the boats looked like an extension of the boulders leading down to the beach. In daylight, they’d be easily spotted.