Seal Team Seven Read Free Page B

provide a useful service in surveying beaches, blowing up obstacles in advance of a landing, and that sort of thing. But the UDTs were closed out in 1983, when they officially became part of the SEALs, correct?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œNow we have SEALs who do everything the UDT did, but who also conduct raids, rescue missions, even intelligence ops many miles inland. I submit that, for all of the branches of the armed forces, special operations are, ah, sexy. They have seduced all of the services, who see them as a means of securing for themselves larger and larger portions of the military appropriations pie.
    â€œNow, in my understanding, Captain, the historic role of the U.S. Navy is ships and sea lanes. They support our ground forces overseas and, through our ICBM submarine force, maintain one leg of our nuclear-deterrence triad. I fail to see why we need these naval commandoes, these Rambos who carry out missions that can just as easily be assigned to Army Special Forces.
    â€œIn short, Captain, we simply do not need the SEALs. They are an expensive luxury we can easily do without. . . .”

0145 hours (Zulu +3) South of Hawr al-Hammar, Iraq
    Once the marsh had extended for most of the twenty kilometers between the motionless black waters of the Hawr al-Hammar and the ancient city of al-Basra to the southeast. North of the lake, the swamps had covered hundreds of square miles between the Tigris and the Euphrates River, stretching almost halfway to Baghdad.
    In the years since the Gulf War, however, Saddam Hussein’s engineers had been busily carving a system of canals and man-made or man-improved rivers throughout the area in an attempt to drain the entire region. The Qadissiya River—dug in 1993 by 4,500 workers in just forty-five days—drained much of the southern Iraq wetlands into the Euphrates, and together with the Saddam River and the Mother of Battles River had already transformed the age-old topography of this part of the Fertile Crescent. Officially, the project opened new land for agriculture. It was pure coincidence that the south Iraq marshes had long provided refuge for Shi’ites, dissidents, and rebels.
    As the intruders worked their way south through the dying marshlands, they encountered more and more signs of habitation. Twice they halted, then took wide detours to avoid sarifas , traditional marsh dwellings woven from the omnipresent reeds with ornate, latticework entrances. The huts, and the slender, high-prowed canoes called mashufs by the locals, were identical to huts and canoes built in this region for at least the past six thousand years.
    Twice too the squad went to ground as Iraqi military patrols blundered past, crashing through the reeds and calling to one another with sharp, guttural cries in Arabic. Another time, as the squad was wading along the muddy banks of a canal, they froze in place, as unmoving and as invisible as moss-covered logs, while an ex-Soviet Zhuk-class patrol boat motored slowly past.
    At last, reeds gave way to clumps of grass and scrub brush bordering an area of dry, sandy soil. At the swamp’s edge, the squad paused once again to rest, and to strip and clean their weapons right down to the springs and followers of their magazines. A blaze of light glared against the sky to the southeast, harsh and intrusive after the silent darkness of the marsh.
    Roselli’s pulse quickened as he studied the source of that light through a powerful pair of binoculars. Five hundred meters ahead, the modern airport of Shuaba had been constructed on land reclaimed from the dying swamp. From a low rise in the ground, Roselli could see the control tower and hangars of the civilian airport. To the right were more buildings and a smaller tower, as well as the barracks belonging to a military air base. Beyond that, against a hillside and barely visible against the glare from the airfield lights, was a small town, the village of Zabeir.
    Directly in front