"Gentlemen, this must be where the air base is. Is that correct?" Some heads nodded and someone said, "Yes."
"How many of you have seen a sniper rifle, only one chambered for fifty-caliber rounds? There aren't a lot of them around. The best is made by a small machine shop down in Georgia by the name of Georgia Gun Works. My men are specialists in using this weapon.
"My suggestion is this. The McMillan M87R is accurate up to a mile away. We like to get within a thou sand yards for maximum efficiency. What we suggest is this. The Navy will put my SEALs into the water a short ways off the coast. We'll swim in, infiltrate to within a thousand yards of the targets, and wait.
"Then the Air Force will launch a raid at the air base and get close enough so the North Korean air defenses will come on-line, antennas will display, and facilities vital to the operation will swing into action.
"At that time, the SEALs will be able to identify and locate these devices, then reduce the antennas, hardware, and sighting facilities and anything else we can touch with our fifty-caliber messengers. The M87R's armor-piercing fifty caliber rounds are highly effective in putting hardware and antennas out of commission. We think we can do the job.
"While we're at it, the Air Force raid on the field will be diverted until we have the facility neutralized. Then, when we give a SATCOM go-ahead, the Air Force can get back on course and complete the mission.
"During that confusion, the SEALs will move back to the sea, swim out to a pickup by a chopper or high-speed boat off a destroyer. That's it."
"How many of the fifties do you have now, Commander?" the Air Force man asked.
"We carry three. We will need at least six more. The armorer on board the carrier says he has three. We need to find three more in your stores."
One of the majors spoke up. "We have half a dozen in our recon platoon. We can furnish them to you before you chopper back to the carrier." He motioned to the sergeant. "If this is the course of action we're going to take."
"Any other ideas?" General Reynolds asked. He looked around. Nobody said a word. The general sighed. He looked at Murdock again. "You must be the lieutenant commander who rescued one of my Major Generals three miles inside the North Korean lines."
"Yes, sir."
The general laughed softly. "Good work, Commander. If I could, I'd like to have a copy of your after-action report on that incident. Be good to keep it on file if I need it."
"Be happy to send you one, General."
The oldest man in the room shifted in his chair and stifled a groan. He looked at Murdock again. "Son, are you sure that this will work?"
"No, sir. Fifty-caliber armor-piercing rounds simply don't come with a guarantee, but this sort of action has worked well before. Just to be cautious, you might have the Air Force send three planes over the target in a test run before committing the whole flight. If they don't draw a hail of fire, the whole group should be relatively safe."
The Air Force man nodded. "We've been probing it every day for the past four."
Murdock looked at the general. "Sir, do the SEALs have this assignment?"
The general looked around his staff advisors. Most of them nodded. "I agree, Commander. You and your men have the job. Good luck getting it done, and exfiltrating. No unit in the Eighth could do a mission like this one."
"We'll do our damndest, General. Now, if we could be excused, we'll pick up the weapons and get back to the carrier. We have a lot of planning to take care of."
"You're excused, Commander. Good hunting."
It took them a half hour to sign the paperwork for the fifty-caliber weapons and get them to the chopper and loaded on board. The fifties all had the five-round magazine instead of the ten-rounders the SEALs usually used.
"Ammo?" the major asked.
"Thanks, we've got plenty," Murdock said. "We better get moving."
The major drove them in a Humvee to the airport where the Seahawk that brought them in was warming up. "How far are we from that air base?" Murdock asked Stroh over the scream of the rotor blades as the craft took off.
"That's what we'll have to figure, and how to get you up there and back. A destroyer?"
"Yeah, too far for an RIB. A chopper might attract too much attention. We don't want to have to swim more than a mile or so to shore."
"We'll talk with the carrier guys."
They did a half hour later. They had the CAG, a captain who handled the fleet screen security, and two commanders Murdock didn't know.
"From the Monroe to that town up north is about two hundred and seventy-five miles — if we don't overfly any of North Korea, which we can't do," CAG Olson said.
"A destroyer at thirty knots could get up there in about eight hours," one of the commanders said. "That would be a permanent platform for you, a base of operations."
Murdock nodded. "Okay, up there by destroyer, then we take the two RIBs that we used before and motor in to a half mile offshore and swim on in. We'll have two Motorolas with two in the RIBs.
The RIBs will wait for us to come out. Since it'll be daylight by then, they might move in closer and give us some support with their machine guns if we need it. We'll go in to hit the beach about 0300. That should give us time to get through any coastal defenses, find the airfield, and get in position where we'll have the best shots at the antiair antennas. Then we wait for dawn to bring in the Air Force. We send them a go message on our SATCOM. That way we avoid any problem with forwarded messages through the RIB coxswains and the destroyer. We can contact the Air Force on TAC One. Then the Air Force can send in the attack. We'll have it timed down to about a half hour either way. It will have to be light when the NKs bring out their defenses. Otherwise we won't know what to shoot at."
"You'll take the whole platoon?" Stroh asked.
"Yes, all thirteen of us. Nine fifties and four subguns on guard duty. The destroyer can stay six or seven miles offshore away from any surface radar."
Stroh looked at his watch. "Eight hours. It's now almost three… fifteen hundred. You better get your men ready while the captain picks out the lucky destroyer and we get our two RIBs on board and get you a chopper to that destroyer."
"Have your men ready to travel and on the flight deck in an hour, Commander," the fleet screen commander said. "We'll send the RIBs to the destroyer before you go. We'll have chow for you on the destroyer. We'll assign the Cole to you, that's the DDG 67. Let's move it, people."
Stroh talked to the Air Force by radio, and found they had some aerial recon photos of the North Korean air base and surrounding area. He had them faxed to the Cole, where they would be waiting for Murdock.
Murdock had called Jaybird on the way into the meeting with the CAG and the captain, and told him about the mission and to get the men ready to roll. They would have an eight hour boat ride to get their weapons and equipment checked.
As it turned out, they were dropped on board the Cole moments after another chopper put their RIB boats on the fantail. They had arrived on the destroyer more than an hour before the 1800 departure time.
The SEALs were given a modest-sized assembly room amidships, and there rearranged their weapons. Sterling, Holt, Adams, and DeWitt kept their submachine guns. Everyone else was issued a .50-caliber sniper rifle. All had fired it at least fifty times before.
"Listen up," Murdock said. "We'll go over the mission again. We will be taking an eight-hour ride north near the port city of Sinuju, damn near the Chinese border. Our target is the big air base there south of the town.
"We will be shooting up everything that shows that it is, or even looks like it might be, radar equipment, antennas, firing centers, missile-launching centers, radar of any kind or type. That's our job. We need to blind these folks so they can't see the UN planes coming in.