1
Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock squirmed deeper into the rain-forest foliage of the Koolau Mountains just off the Pali Highway overlooking Honolulu, and grinned. This was work? Here they were in the garden spot of the world. In a land where there were twenty shades of green and each one more vivid than the last. The trees and brush were tangled, beautiful, and always lush. Just beyond them he caught the sweep of the green of the valley far below that let him see all the way to the far side of Oahu.
He jerked his attention back to work as he saw a small tree shudder thirty yards in front of him. Somebody out there was damn good. He’d come up through the brush without any indication. Then he’d made one mistake. Murdock heard the chatter of a machine gun to the right. When the hell did they bring up that gun? Another deadly problem to worry about. He and the fifteen men of the Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven were strung out along this upward slant of the Koolau Range in a thin defensive line.
He looked out and checked Honolulu in the distance, with Pearl Harbor just to the northwest. Hickam Air Force Base was down there right beside Pearl. Both famous as the targets of the Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii on December 7, 1941. As President Franklin Roosevelt had said, it was a day that would live in infamy.
Something moved to his left through the tropical growth of the Oahu rain forest. The brush tops wiggled again. Somebody or something worked through the area just below.
He lifted his rifle and aimed at the spot. It was less than thirty yards away. A helmet covered with greenery lifted out of the foliage for just a moment, then went down and out of sight. Yes, one of the attackers. Murdock waited. He’d been a Navy SEAL now for over six years. Patience had been trained into him.
More brush movement, then the man belonging to the helmet, with a camo-painted face, came up in a rush charging forward.
Murdock fired twice. Both rounds drilled into the chest of the rushing soldier and he went down on the ground, a clear kill. Murdock heard the rattle of weapons going off to his left. They were hitting hard over there again. He chanced a radio call.
“Alpha Squad, any casualties?” he said into the lip mike. It was the Motorola MX-300 radio for personal communications. A speaker in his left ear brought the sound through a wire down the back of his neck and through a slit in his shirt, and plugged into the Motorola transceiver secured to his combat harness. A filament mike perched just below his lip.
“Oh, hell, no casualty here,” David “Jaybird” Sterling said. “They got some, though. Nailed me two. One KIA, the other looks like an arm wound. I’m A-okay. The line holds here.”
Murdock had rolled twice just after he fired, and saw six rounds splatter where he had been. He came up behind a huge koa tree. The species of acacia soared over seventy feet above him and the trunk was more than three feet thick. He peered around the far side at the suspect area.
“No casualty here, Skipper. I snuffed one of the bastards and another one got away. He was moving in your direction.” The voice belonged to Ron Holt, Radioman First Class and Murdock’s radio operator.
The woods were quiet for a moment high on the ridge line. Then the peace was spoiled by the faintly hollow sound of a machine gun spitting out rounds as it fired farther to the left.
“Trouble, Skip,” Bill Bradford, Quartermaster First Class, said through the earplug. “Got six of the bastards moving up. One MG you heard and some idiot throwing hand grenades too damn far. Shit, there goes another one. I’m a dead duck if I stay here.”
“Pull back to that pair of koa trees,” Murdock said. “Can anybody give him cover?”
“Oh, yeah, cover’s my middle name,” Harry “Horse” Ronson, Electrician’s Mate Second Class, said. At once his H & K 21-E 7.62 NATO round machine gun began spitting out five-round bursts of cover fire.
Murdock pushed forward two feet and parted some low branches on a young ohia tree. He could see down the narrow ridge the enemy had come up. There were at least forty attackers out there somewhere, with their job to overrun his smaller contingent of defenders who had not had time to dig in and presented a thin line of defense.
For a moment he stared beyond the ridge line to the sharp drop-off to the valley below. Several miles away he could see the soft morning fog burning off over Honolulu. What a marvelous place, Hawaii. If it wasn’t for this current unpleasantness, this would be a true vacation. He grinned. Not really. He wouldn’t have it any other way. This was what they kept training for year-round.
A flash caught his eye. It came from the area this side of Honolulu proper. Yes, the flash was near Pearl Harbor. He frowned. Another flash. Only then did the sound come through, the karumph of a massive explosion.
“What the hell?” Jaybird said on the net. “Those bombs I hear?”
Murdock had his binoculars up and trained on the area. Slowly he saw the pattern.
“It’s Pearl,” he said. “Somebody is bombing Pearl Harbor. No, not bombing, those are missiles. Shit! Look at that one hit. Not a nuke but a damn big payload. Who the hell could be attacking Pearl Harbor?”
“Missiles, that’s a Roger,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt said on the radio. “I count four hits already, one secondary explosion. What the hell is going on?”
“By God, we’re going to find out,” Murdock said. He stood up and made a sign of time-out over his head. “Stop the clock, stop the exercise,” Murdock bellowed. “This training exercise is over.” Just then a red paint ball hit Murdock in the chest and he swore. “Hold fire, damnit. Can’t you Brits understand English? The war games are over. We’ve got the real thing going on down there at Pearl.” He turned and looked around.
“Holt, fire up the SATCOM,” Murdock said. The SATCOM is officially the AN/PRC-117D portable radio. It makes direct connection with the Milstar satellite in a synchronous orbit 22,300 miles over the equator. It’s fifteen inches high and three inches square and weighs fifteen pounds. It can be used to call any spot on earth.
Holt scrambled past some brush and dropped down beside Murdock. He had the small dish antenna folded out and aligned with the satellite, then turned on the set and looked at Murdock.
“What the hell,” Ching said, running up. “Those really missiles hitting Pearl down there? Christ, who the hell is shooting at us?”
A British SAS trooper with heavy camouflage on his helmet and uniform stood up twenty yards away. He ran up to the others.
“Missiles? What the fuck you mean? Missiles, real ones going off down there in Pearl Harbor? Hard to believe.”
“Believe it, Captain,” Murdock said. “We’re going to find out what the hell is happening.”
“Voice?” Holt asked his skipper.
“Yes, on channel two.”
The speaker made the three small beeps indicating that the dish antenna was properly aligned. Murdock took the handset and stared at Pearl Harbor, where two more missiles landed creating large explosions.
“CINCPAC, this is Commander Murdock. Respond. Over.”
Nothing came over the air. Murdock repeated the message, but there was no answer. Two British SAS men stood from the brush in front and hurried up to the others.
“I say, what’s happening down there?” Captain Haworth, leader of the Brits, asked.
“Trying to find out,” Murdock said. “Looks like Pearl Harbor is getting plastered with some kind of medium-sized missiles.” Murdock made one more transmission, but had no reply.
“Go to TAC Two,” Murdock told Holt.
“What the fuck is happening?” Tony Ostercamp said on the Motorola. “The exercise over? You fuckers kidding about real live missiles on Pearl?”