Free Direct Action by Keith Douglass Page A

Kosciuszko. “The only way we’ll knock the problem is by blocking it out piece by piece. If the planning’s done right, there’s no such thing as a target that can’t be taken down.”
    Murdock thought they were on track. Surprisingly enough, SEALs frequently paid less attention to planning and rehearsal than they needed to. The culprits were usually officers, who thought that because they’d graduated from BUD/S, they were so big, so tough, and so bad that they could just strap on theirsix-shooters and take out anyone without even trying. But as a wise old chief had told an aggressive young Ensign Murdock years before, the SEAL Budweiser badge might be pretty but it didn’t make you bulletproof.
    And whenever time was short and he was tempted to half-ass some small detail of his planning, Murdock remembered the time he’d gotten tapped as a junior evaluator on a Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit Special Operations Exercise. The MEUs went out to sea on six-month deployments, and a SEAL platoon was always part of the amphibious squadron. This platoon had been led by two lieutenants, which sometimes happened. For the exercise they were going to conduct a HBVSS, or Helicopter Visit, Board, Search-and-Seizure, of a suspected hostile merchant ship, something that had been done every day during the Gulf War. The two lieutenants showed up at the planning conference without their chief, and in full view of all the Marines started arguing like a couple of little children over who was going to carry the SATCOM radio. It went on for a while, along the lines of: “I carried it last time.” “No, you didn’t,
I
carried it last time.”
    Murdock had been appalled. Then the Marines broke in and asked the SEALs how they wanted the Cobra helicopter gunships to deploy. What did they mean? the SEALs asked. Well, the Marines explained, after the SEALs fast-roped onto the deck, did they want the Cobras in a racetrack pattern around the ship, or hovering near the bow to cover the bridge with their 20mm cannon? Oh, came the response. After they’d gotten that straightened out, the Marines asked the SEALs what they planned to do. Head for the bridge, came the reply of the two John Waynes. Okay, said the Marines, but how are you going to get there? What ladderways will you use? What if they’re blocked? Will you breach them or go around? All absolutely elementary stuff. Duh, responded the SEAL lieutenants.
    Murdock had felt like slapping the shit out of them. It wasokay for SEALs to have a reputation as prima donnas. They were. But not as idiots and non-professionals. He’d never forgotten it, and after that he never went anywhere or did anything without first consulting a chief or a leading petty officer.
    “Okay,” said DeWitt. “What about a standoff attack with a couple of mortars?” It never made any sense to walk all the way up to the target if you could stand back and shoot it up from a distance.
    “Not sure enough,” said Razor Roselli. “We might damage the place, but we’d never know how well we really did. And no way could we come back and do it again if we didn’t do it right the first time.”
    Murdock was measuring a Lebanon map with a ruler. “We’d need at least a 120mm mortar and a shitload of ammo, and that’s a lot to be dragging around the Bekaa Valley at night.”
    “A few fast-attack vehicles and the mortars on trailers,” DeWitt responded.
    “There’s no ground high enough in a ten-thousand-meter circle around Baalbek where we could observe and adjust the rounds on target,” said Murdock. “We’d use up all the ammo and never hit the warehouse. And like Razor says, even if we hit it we wouldn’t know how much damage we did.”
    “We’ve got to get all the way in to the objective,” Roselli insisted. “Okay, we tiptoe in. Now, if we’re not compromised on the way in and the guard force has its head up its ass and somehow we manage to get into the warehouse, we’re not going to have a lot of