Seal Team Seven #20: Attack Mode (14 page)

The SEALs nodded.

Stroh lifted his brows. “Sounds good to me.”

A seaman came in with a sheet of paper and handed it to the CAG. “Here’s a report from our observation run on Utrik Atoll. She’s larger than the last one, has a runway that could accommodate an F-14, and there are three turboprop-type transports waiting on the hard-surface runway. The lagoon has a good channel through the coral and a fair-sized dock, but only ships under forty feet are at the docks right now.”

Murdock stood. “Captain, I’d say that report is all the more reason we have to stop that freighter in mid-ocean. If it gets to the atoll and can unload again, we’re going to have four planes to track instead of one.”

On the carrier deck, Murdock watched the two F-18s blast off and then hurried to the CIC. The CAG talked with the lead pilot.

“Hunter One, let me know when you get the ship in sight, then just after you buzz her. Both of you get down to no more than fifty feet over her stack.”

“Be a pleasure, CAG.”

“Hunter One, you guys buzz her and then I’ll try to contact her by radio.”

“That’s a roger, Home Base.”

“How long?” Murdock asked.

“Three or four minutes if the ship is where she’s supposed to be.”

“Those Eighteens move right along.”

“Depending on the altitude, around twenty-six miles a minute,” the CAG said. “They are a joy to fly. Damn, sometimes …” He looked at Murdock and grinned. “An old pilot’s dream.”

“Home Base, this is Hunter One. We have the ship in sight. The configuration fits. When we do the fly-over, I’ll check the deck to find the loading crane. The outline is as called out.”

“Roger, Hunter.”

“Dropping down on the deck, here we go.”

There was a moment of dead airtime. “Yes, Home Base. I’d say this is the right freighter. Some asshole from the deck fired at me. I saw the muzzle flashes.”

“Good. Hold there, Hunter.” The CAG took a mike and pushed the talk button.

“Freighter
Willowwind
, this is the U.S. Navy. We have just done a courtesy fly-over. Your vessel is in violation of U.S. laws and we are authorized to seize it. Cut your forward speed to five knots immediately and answer me on this hailing frequency.”

The CAG let the button up and waited. There was no reply. He waited two minutes by his watch.

“
Willowwind
, I repeat, cut your forward speed to five knots and answer on the hailing frequency.”

This time the speaker spoke. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, U.S. Navy. Your planes just maneuvered dangerously close to us and we’re filing a criminal complaint. This is the
Challenge
out of Singapore. Keep your planes away from my ship.”

“
Willowwind
, you have three minutes to cut your speed or you will be fired upon. Do you understand, three minutes? Cut your speed to five knots at once.”

“I’m filing a criminal action complaint against you in the World Court and the International Maritime Congress. Keep your planes away from my ship.”

The CAG picked up a different mike. “Hunter, that was piped through to you. You heard. Make a run, both of you, and fire ten rounds each over his bow. Do it now.” “Wilco, Home Base, making approach now from two miles. Lining up thirty yards off his bow, firing ten rounds now.”

Twenty seconds later: “Hunter One has fired.”

A few seconds later another transmission: “Hunter Two has fired across his bow.”

The CAG took the hailing frequency mike. “Now you’ve been warned. You have five minutes to cut your power and bring the
Willowwind
down to five knots forward. Otherwise you will be seriously damaged by twenty-millimeter rounds from the two planes you have seen. Five minutes.”

“Idiots. I refuse to talk with you anymore. This is the
Challenge
out of Singapore, not that other name. We will be filing complaints and lawsuits as soon as we dock.”

“Before you sign off, you should know that we have
intercepted your two surface boats and have captured them and the four crates of plutonium that they carried. Your plane, the Spartica that flew out of Bikar Atoll, was shot down over the Caroline Islands. You’re out of options. Give it up now.”

There was no response on the hailing frequency this time.

“Shot down?” Murdock asked.

“He can’t have any contact with it. A little juice.”

“They won’t slow down,” Murdock said.

“Correct, but we’ll give them the five minutes.”

“Then what?”

“Then we fire twenty rounds into the bow of the ship.”

“If that doesn’t stop them?”

“Then our Eighteens will be instructed to fire fifty rounds each into the bridge, which will destroy her ability to navigate, and she’ll go dead in the water.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Murdock said.

“The men have a cargo worth maybe a billion dollars on the open market. They will do everything they can to keep control of it. We have to figure out what else they might try.”

“Their options are grinding down to damn few.”

The CAG looked at his wristwatch. “That’s two minutes and counting on my stopwatch.” He scowled and rubbed his face with one hand. “I’m wondering about my two men up there. Neither of those pilots has ever fired a shot at a live target before. What are they thinking?”

“Captain, probably about the same thing you were thinking when you were in the same situation, several years ago. Not that much changes.”

“True, Murdock, so damn true. Mine was a boatload of Viet Cong working up a river. They fired at me first, at least. What a day. I never want to go through that again. That first time you know for certain that you’re going to kill a group of men. … damn.”

“This is Hunter One, how is your stopwatch doing, Captain Home Base?”

“Four-twenty-eight and counting. You might as well
get into your attack mode and line up. One pass each, make it about thirty rounds each. You have guns free in twenty seconds. Keep your rounds all in ten percent of the bow section.”

“That’s a roger, CAG. Lining up and making a run.”

All the men in the CIC waited and listened. The tracking scope showed the
Willowwind
moving along at the same fourteen knots.

“Hunter One and Two reporting. Firing runs are completed. Standing by for additional orders.”

The hailing frequency speaker came on.

“U.S. Navy, it’s time you need some facts. You have hit our ship with gunfire and killed six sailors from the original crew. You can disable or sink us, I’m sure. But before you consider that, hear this. We have certain packages on board. If we encounter any more threats or any more Navy presence near our ship, we will drop overboard four of the packages. Each is fitted with two pounds of C-5 explosive. The timer detonators on them are pressure rigged, so when they hit a hundred-foot depth, the pressure will set off the C-5, resulting in a huge blast and the destruction of the lead shielding and the escape of the material. As you know, this will turn this section of the South Pacific into a dead zone for five million years.

“This is not a bluff. We have nothing to lose by contaminating this section of the ocean. The fault will be on your head, and the people of Micronesia will forever hate you. So stand down. Recall your planes and leave us alone, or we will drop the packages. We will do this in the open ocean, or at any of the atolls we stop at. Remember the words, Dead Zone.”

Murdock looked at Captain Olenowski. “The bastards will do it. They can drop them all over the Pacific and still have plenty to sell. Somebody said there are a hundred of the crates on board?”

“There were. We now have four of them in our nuclear storage area.” The CAG rubbed his face again and shut his eyes. He didn’t open them. “Recall the two Eighteens,” he told an officer. “Their mission is over. We’ve
got to come up with some other plan.” He opened his eyes and watched Murdock. “They tell me you’re an idea man. I hope to God you get some good ones for this little problem that we have. A meeting in the conference room in twenty minutes. Bring all of your brain-power men with you.”

Twenty minutes later in the conference room, Murdock, Gardner, Sadler, Jaybird, Lam, and Canzoneri sat around the table. Also on board were six Navy officers and Captain Olenowski. The CAG brought them up to date.

“We’ve pulled our planes back from the freighter, but have her under electronic watch. She is just now anchoring off the small atoll Utrik. It’s a little after twelve hundred. Meaning we have a lot of daylight left. What are our options?”

“Sir, I suggest we go in with Eighteens and knock out those three air transports on the landing strip,” Jaybird said. “It’s a calculated risk that they are there solely for the purpose of moving the plutonium. What else would require three transports that size on this atoll? If we’re wrong, we compensate the owners.”

“Won’t they drop plutonium in the sea?” the CAG asked.

“Not a chance, Captain,” Jaybird said. “That’s a bluff. These terrorists wouldn’t have sophisticated pressure detonators like that. They are extremely hard to get. Almost no call for them. They might make a drop, but the packages won’t explode.”

“Petty Officer, can you guarantee that?” the CAG asked.

“No, sir. But it’s the most logical conclusion.”

“If we take out the three transports, we cut down the chances they get away with more of the plutonium for the open market,” Murdock said. “I’d vote with Jaybird on this one.”

“What about the other plane?” Senior Chief Sadler asked.

The CAG looked at one of his papers. “We have had
contact with it since it passed to the south of Guam. It headed for the Philippines and there the AWACS lost it in a jumble of air traffic. Authorities at all air facilities in the Philippines have been alerted for the plane and have agreed to hold it for us and to place the pilots under arrest.”

“If they find it. Captain,” JG Gardner said, “say you’re flying that plane. What refueling spot would you pick? Certainly not a big city airport. I’d go to the smallest dirt strip I could find with a gas pump.”

The CAG nodded. “So we may not have him yet. We’ll keep working at it. Now for this one. I agree on the three transports. We can’t wait until dark, we go in now and blast them with twenty-millimeter cannon. Damage them enough so they can’t fly, but don’t totally destroy them.”

“You could ask the pilots to try to shoot their tails off,” Lam said.

The CAC wrote out an order and gave it to a petty officer behind him, who vanished out the door.

“Okay, consider the three birds plucked and in the kettle. Now what can we do?”

“There’s another way we can put the freighter dead in the water,” Murdock said. “While she’s anchored, we can blow her screws off. She probably has two.”

“I like it,” Jaybird said. “We go by Sixty within ten miles of the island, then dump out our Rubber Duck and motor in to a spot a half mile off the atoll. Leave one man with a Motorola in the Rubber Duck, and the rest of the squad goes in underwater to the freighter. We hang on the charges with five-minute timers and swim away.”

The CAG looked at Murdock.

“That certainly would strand them at the atoll,” Murdock said. “We can do it with one chopper and one squad. The JG will take in his men. A simple, quiet in and out.”

“What about the plutonium dumping?” the CAG asked.

“We’ve already blown that one with crippling the transport planes,” Sadler said. “If they drop it, they drop it. We’re calling their bluff again.”

A seaman brought the captain a sheet of paper. He read
it and looked up. “Two F-18s have just launched. They are heading for the atoll with guns free to knock out those three transport aircraft. We should have some results in about five minutes.”

In the air over the carrier
Vinson
, the two F-18s hooked up in a loose formation and headed for Utrik Atoll.

“Home Base, this is Kilroy One and Two heading for the target.”

“That’s a roger, Kilroy One, your guns are free for the three transport planes on the airstrip, but not the freighter. Confirm.”

“Roger, the three aircraft on the airfield, but not the freighter. Kilroy Two, you copy, little buddy?”

“Copy, One. You take the lead, I’ll follow in and clean up.”

“Roger that. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“I’ve got some clouds low and hazy at one o’clock low.”

“Should be it, Two. Give us another minute.”

A minute later the radio speakers came on again.

“Home Base, have acquired visual on target atoll, we’ll make one low-level pass to scare any civilians away from the craft, then do our strafing run.”

The pilot could see the atoll clearly now and the runway at the south end. At the north part of the runway near some buildings he spotted the three aircraft, twin-engine transports. He had been at two thousand feet and now slanted down and slammed over the aircraft at two hundred feet. He made a turn to the right and came around and lined up with the target again. This time his thumb was on the 20mm firing button. He put his sights on the tails of the planes and dove in. He fired from four hundred yards, angling as sharply as he could for more rounds on targets. He could see the tail section of the first plane disintegrate as he slashed overhead, pulling out of his angled attack at less than a hundred feet over the water on the far side of the narrow atoll.

Behind him Kilroy Two slanted down and fired twenty
rounds at the second and third planes. After the run, both planes made a right turn again and came back to look at the targets. All three were out of action. Two had their whole tail sections blown off. The third one had the rudder flopped over and serious damage on the rest of the tail assembly.

“Home Base, this is Kilroy One.”

“Go, Kilroy One.”

“Mission completed, three birds lost their tails. We’re coming home.”

“Well done, Kilroy One and Two.”

In the conference room the CAG received a note. “The three planes have been knocked out of action. Now we’ll see if the terrorists make good on their threat and drop the plutonium.”

“The sooner we hit her screws the better,” Murdock said.