Echo Platoon (6 page)

What would happen if the tango draining his lizard ran into my SEALs and started shooting?

What would happen if one of my hunter-killer groups hadn’t gotten the “hold” message and started the takedown before we were all in position?

What if Goober or Hammer missed the first shot, and the tango on the monkey board detonated his explosive charges?

What would happen if . . . well, you get the idea.

0320. Butch Wells’s voice interrupted my series of dark nightmares. “Goober’s G2,” which I knew meant he was Good to Go.

“Roger.” I eased forward again. My night vision focused on the monkey board tango. “Engage-engage.”

You never heard the shots because they were using suppressed weapons and subsonic hand-loads. The target on the monkey board just dropped from sight, as if he’d been poleaxed. Well, poleaxed is just about what happens when you’re hit by a 50-caliber slug bigger than a baby’s fist.

I couldn’t see Goober’s target—the guy on the doghouse. But Butch’s voice in my ear told me he’d been neutralized, too.

Yes, it is nice to know that some things
do
work the way they are supposed to.

And then Mustang’s voice played in my ear. “Clear.”

“Roger-roger.” The lookouts had been taken down. Do you know the significance of what that signal meant?

You are correct. It meant we had no time to waste.

If the bad guys inside tried to radio the pair of lookouts and they couldn’t raise ’em, they’d realize that something was wrong. They’d go defensive. They’d put up their guard. Since the two most vital elements of a hostage rescue are surprise and violence of action, I didn’t want these tangos forewarned. Because forewarned, as you know, is forearmed.

By killing the lookouts, therefore, we had committed ourselves to immediate and (here’s the good part) violent action.

0321. We moved forward. I led the way across fifty feet of open ground, scampered up the narrow ladderway that led around the perimeter of the modular housing unit, vaulted a low railing, and scampered along the narrow outdoor passageway that led to the housing unit’s rear hatch. Behind me, I heard the muffled scuff of Boomerang’s booties as he followed in my footsteps.

I waited until he caught up with me. Then Duck Foot arrived. And Nod. We formed up into a four-man train. Eased along a metal bulkhead. Ducked under a pair of shuttered windows (yes, they were closed and darkened but why take chances?) and stacked by the doorway. But now, our positions had changed. Nod, the breecher, stood opposite me. Duck Foot had taken up the rear-guard position. Boomerang and I would go through the doorway first, neutralizing any threats we found.

I pressed my ear to the metal of the door and listened. I heard nothing. I drew back, and
tsk-tsked
into my lip mike. I wanted to know that Randy, Nigel, Gator,
and Timex were in position—stacked just like we were, outside the modular housing unit’s front door. Again—no response.

I do not like getting no response. Getting no response makes me uneasy. Perplexed. Apprehensive.

I was somewhere between perplexed and apprehensive when I heard Rotten Randy’s low growl in my left ear. “Problem, Skipper.”

Have I told you I do not like to hear about problems? Well, I was serious when I said it a while back, and I am serious now.

I waited in silence. Randy’s voice continued: “There’s something nasty about the front door.”

Without warning, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. This instinctive reaction to my surroundings has kept me alive for a long, long time. My body was telling me that something was very wrong here. Very extremely wrong.

First off, I told Randy to shut up RIGHT NOW, and thought about WTF was going on. First of all, we were spending a lot more time on the radio than we should have been. You already know I don’t like to broadcast during ops. A couple of
tsk-tsks,
and we hit the motherfuckers is the way I work. But tonight, all of a sudden the situation has apparently deteriorated so much that my B-team leader has to exfuckingplain the new sit-rep in excruciating detail.

When the light bulb went off, I had to blink, because it was so fucking bright it blinded me.

They were monitoring our comms. They were listening to us. They knew we were here, and they thought they knew where we were. They were waiting in ambush.

Of course they were. It was so fucking obvious. And, having discerned the fact that they were lying in
wait for us, I understood in the depths of my Roguish soul how to defeat them. Once you know there is an ambush, you can overcome it. You can turn it around, and kill your enemy before he kills you.

How? Watch, and learn, tadpoles.

The first element is deception. You must make your enemy believe that he is still in control of the situation. And so, I got back on the radio.

“Tell me about the front door problem, in detail,” I said.

There was a pause. Randy’d never heard me ask for something like that in a situation like this. Then his voice came back at me five by five. “The goddamn thing’s electronic and it’s sophisticated, too.”

“What’s your guestimate about defusing it?”

“I dunno,” Randy’s voice buzzed in my ear. “It’s gonna take me like half an hour to bypass the fucking thing because I gotta make sure they didn’t screw with the interior side of the hatch as well as the exterior.”

Of course, the folks monitoring my conversation knew we didn’t have half an hour. They knew we had to act—soon. Why? Because they’d just heard me say, “go-go-go,” and they knew I couldn’t call a halt to the action once I’d committed my troops. I pressed the transmit button. “Can you blow it and then hit from the front end?”

“Not without causing a lot of casualties inside. The explosives are behind the hatch. If the hatch blows, the force of the charge goes inward—into the room. And my thermal tells me they’ve got folks in the front room.”

“Good guys or tangos?”

“HTF should I know, Skipper? Thermal can’t differentiate.”

I already knew that blowing the door wasn’t an option. Hostage casualties couldn’t be tolerated. Not tonight. Not with the politics of this situation just as explosive as the tactical side. But I wanted to paint a certain picture for the bad guys, and so I played the scene out. “Okay—we switch plans. Can you bottle up the front of the unit?”

“Can do.”

“Then have Gator and Timex bottle it up. You get your ass and your partner’s ass over here double-time. We’ll all hit ’em from the back end at once.”

Randy came back right on cue: “Aye, aye, Skipper.”

I shut my radio down, and silent-signaled Boomerang, Duck Foot, and Nod to do the same. Boomerang looked over at me quizzically. His expression told me that he had no fucking idea what I was thinking. All he knew was that we were about to enter what’s known in the trade as a fatal funnel, and that the bad guys were waiting for us inside.

Indeed, the tangos were following the same course of action I would have taken myself if I’d been them: set the agenda for the attacking team. Make ’em come to you the way you want them to come to you. And then you ambush ’em with great violence, and kill ’em all.

They were trying to fuck me. Well, I’ve been fucked by the best, and lemme tell you I have learned my own fucking bag of tricks.

Here’s what I knew. According to the plans faxed from CenTex headquarters, the modular living quarters had been constructed from two double-wide trailer units—that is, four separate sections covered by a single roof. The trailer that contained the dorm rooms formed the shaft of an irregular capital
T;
the
common living area was the top of the
T
, except that the trailers had been set so that one side of the top
T
was longer than the other.

The vertical shaft of the
T
comprised eight double-bunk rooms, four to a side, all sharing a common corridor. At the bottom end of the corridor was the outside door. At the top, or interior, end of the bunkhouse unit were two bathrooms, one on each side of the corridor. The bunk area was separated from the common room by a short L-shaped passageway, and a hollow-panel door.

The common room itself was wide open. The front entry was a hatch on the far right-hand side of the modular unit as you faced it. The front door opened directly into the galley, which had two long picnic tables and four benches, and a corner kitchen—a four-burner electric stove, a big double-size restaurant quality fridge, a food-prep area, and a microwave. The pantry—what there was of one—was a stowage area above the stove and food-prep area, and a series of deep cabinets below.

To the left of the galley was the big living-room area. That’s where they kept the big-screen TV, with the theater-quality sound system, DVD and videocassette decks, and the rig’s extensive library of girlie magazines. Creature comforts are important to people who work on oil rigs. Above the galley area was a huge air-conditioning unit, with a spider’s web of insulated ducts that ran the cooled air into the living area, the sleeping quarters, and the heads.

Now, the keep-it-simple-stupid way to take this place down, according to the book, was this: we’d hit the front and back doors simultaneously, and swarm both living and sleeping areas, catching the bad guys in between.

But it was obvious that these assholes had read the same book we’d been using. That’s why they’d been so fucking obvious about booby-trapping the front door.

Why? Because they thus ensured that we’d make our assault through the back entrance. Where, of course, they’d be waiting for us.

Not all of ’em. We had eight tangos to deal with. Two had been neutralized. That left six. For argument’s sake, let’s say that one man is a free-floater, who’s roaming the rig. That left five. At a minimum, they’d have one or two with the hostages, so that he/they could start killing them quickly. That left three or four. Of those, they’d probably set one guy in the common room. He’d be the backup just in case Mister Murphy screwed with the booby traps and they didn’t work. He’d probably have grenades and maybe even explosives. The others would set up in ambush positions so they’d have a free-fire zone as we hit the back door.

Whoa. Let’s stop right here, and take the time to war-game this scenario, as it has been submitted.

Action: we hit the place and engage two or three of the bad guys. The remaining tangos wax the hostages—either by shooting ’em or killing ’em with grenades or other explosives. Then having done that, they try to kill as many of us as they could before we overwhelm them and send ’em on the ol’ MCRTA—which as you can probably guess, stands for Magic Carpet Ride To Allah.

My friends, I didn’t like the way the plot played out. I don’t mind sending tangos to meet their maker. But I prefer to do it without allowing them the opportunity to kill hostages or my men and me, before we help them make that one-way trip Allahward.

That’s why I had to rewrite the book they’d written. I wasn’t going to get a lot of time to redraft their manuscript, but I hoped I had enough to make sure the denouement would come out the way
I
wanted it to end: HEA
11
for
moi;
MCRTA for them.

Randy and Nigel appeared. I used my hands to tell them what was going on. I watched as they turned their radios off. Then I shrugged out of my combat gear and body armor and motioned for Boomerang to do the same. Then, motioning Nod to join us, we crept back, double-timing around the side of the dwelling unit, back to the derrick housing where we’d made our ascent onto the rig platform.

There, I opened the emergency fire-response compartment at the base of the derrick and plucked the business end of the small-diameter rubber fire hose from its reel retainer. I made sure the nozzle was shut down, then turned the water on, watching as the hose ballooned as the pressure built up.

I silent-signaled for Boomerang to head back toward the rear of the modular dwelling unit with the hose. My hands told him where I wanted it, and I received a thumbs-up in return.

He and Nod headed out. I made my way through the small hatchway into the derrick housing chamber and peered around. It was empty. I moved toward the helipad. Below the pad itself was a protected hideout for the landing crew. I slipped inside.

Bingo. There it was: a forty-gallon garbage can sat off to the side. I dumped it quietly, removed the crap inside, and checked the plastic bag used as a liner.

No holes. Perfect. Were there any more around? I ran a fast look-see around the area. Nada. Well, fuck it. This one would have to do.

I sprinted back around the chopper pad, and along the rail, bag in hand. Nigel and Randy were waiting with Boomerang, Nod, and Duck Foot at the back side of the housing unit. Boomerang and I grabbed our tactical equipment and reattached it.

Then I jerked my right thumb toward the roofline. Nod nodded—he understood what I wanted. He scrunched down, and made steps out of his legs and cupped hands. I put my foot on his knee then my other in his hands. He rose enough so that I was able to catch the edge of the modular roof, and pull myself up soundlessly.

Silently, I looked down and told Boomerang, Randy, and Nigel to come up and bring the hose with them. The nasty grins on their faces told me they understood what I was about to do.

Nod boosted his shipmates up. Boomerang pulled his size forty-four extra-long frame onto the roof. Nod handed the nozzle of the hose to the lanky SEAL, and then helped the other two shooters roofward. With the deadly, muscular agility of a pride of big cats on the savanna, the three SEALs crept forward, following in my wake. Proceeding slowly, so as not to make any noise or vibration, we made our way across the flat roof until we reached the seam between the dorm unit and the common room unit. Just beyond us and to our left, the big roof air-conditioning unit whirred steadily, its exhaust fan vibrating just enough to mask our movements.

I pulled the wide, thin wooden spool from its pouch on the rear of my CQC vest, unrolled about
four yards of V-shaped flexible shaped charge, and laid it out on the roof in a rough circle, the V of the lead shielding inverted, so it pointed upward.