Free Direct Action by Keith Douglass

this wasn’t one of those situations.
    “I’ll tell you the truth, sir. I don’t have a good feeling about it. I know what I
can
do. I can go in and take out the key players if someone can target them for me. I
may
be able to blow the warehouse. But as far as guaranteeing what’s going to be destroyed in it, you know I can’t do that. At this stage of the game I don’t even know if I can get all the way in to the target, do the job, and then get out.”
    “I hear what you’re saying,” the admiral replied, obviously hearkening back to his days in Vietnam. “If you had a couple of fighter squadrons putting close air behind you as you exfiltrated Baalbek, that would be one thing. But you won’t have that, or fire support of any kind.”
    “Sir, if it can be done, I’ll do it. I just don’t know if it can be done without either an F-117 or an entire Ranger battalion.”
    “Blake, this is a hairy one, but it has to be done. And for a lot of reasons,
we
have to do it. And we can’t fail. You do it
your
way, and if anyone screws with you or tries to force you into anything, I want you to sit right down on your ass and not move until you get on a secure phone with me. That’s an order, you understand?”
    Now Murdock really felt like killing someone for the man. “Yes, sir.”

8
Tuesday, September 5
    0800 hours
    Naval Amphibious Base
    Coronado, California
    “I’m sorry, sir, but this sucks,” Razor Roselli raged. “I mean, this really blows. It’s going to take the whole platoon to pack the demo and do the shooting on this op. The fucking target is in the center of a town right smack in the middle of Indian Country where everyone and his fucking
dog
packs an AK or an RPG, and they all sleep with one eye open because the Israelis fly in and snatch Hezbollah chiefs whenever they can. Now maybe, just maybe, I can infiltrate a platoon through the fucking town and the checkpoints and the barking dogs and get them to the target. As far as getting them the fuck out and home in one piece, I have no fucking clue.”
    “Razor, shut up,” Master Chief MacKenzie ordered. “You’re making my ears hurt. Everyone gets your point. But since the reason we’re here is to see if we
can
do the job, let’s get on with it.”
    Unlike many officers, whose reaction would have been utter horror, Murdock liked what he was hearing. SEALs had died in Vietnam, Grenada, and Panama because they were so motivatedand anxious to accomplish the missions that they ignored the fact that the missions were flawed and the op plans sucked. It had almost happened to him a couple of times, and it wasn’t going to again. He was glad his chiefs had that mind-set too.
    Murdock was also silently patting himself on the back for including George MacKenzie in the planning group. He, Mac, Roselli, Kos Kosciuszko, and Ed DeWitt were sitting in a secure planning room amid stacks of maps, papers, intelligence files, and satellite photographs. Some of it was on computer, such as all the SEAL mission planning checklists, and SOCRATES, the Special Operations Command Research, Analysis, and Threat Evaluation System. Unfortunately, SOPARS II, a computer system which would have automated the whole pre-mission planning process by combining digital maps, virtual-technology terrain models, building blueprints, all the planning checklists, and everything else you needed in a single desktop PC, had been cancelled due to funding constraints.
    It wasn’t that there was no money, just that all the services preferred to step back and let USSOCOM fund projects like that out of its own hide; then they’d swoop in and reap the benefits. USSOCOM was currently having to pay for very expensive helicopter programs, and feeling the pinch.
    DeWitt chimed in. “Let’s do this by the book. Start on actions at the objective and work backward from there to how we’re going to get in and get out. Work from general to specific.”
    “Mister DeWitt is right,” said Kos