“Two hundred yards more due south,” Murdock said. “Jaybird, back here with me for the shoot.” Murdock had spotted a building with a light in a second-story window on the cross street where the Authority guards had set up their ambush. He kept track of it as they moved, and when he figured the building was five hundred yards away, he called a halt. Jaybird had been walking beside him for the last two hundred.
“See that light, first one on the left? Laser on that. We can move right after we see how we do.”
They both fired. The two twenties went off in airbursts with a cracking roar. Some small-arms fire followed from the line of troops, giving both Jaybird and Murdock new targets to laser. One of the next two rounds was a WP, and Murdock stared a moment at the perfect circle of death dealing smoking white phosphorus before it fell to the ground and brought screams of agony from the shooters below.
Murdock heard the two SEAL sniper rifles join in the fight as the long guns found the range from the muzzle flashes.
Jaybird put one contact round on the highway twenty yards in front of where they figured the troops were, and he saw the flash and the swath of shrapnel that tore into the thin line of Arabs. Four more shots each with the airbursts, and Murdock called a cease-fire.
“Enough, let’s chogie out of here. Who is helping Bradford?”
“Ching,” DeWitt said. “I’ve sent four men ahead to the checkpoint we saw on the highway. They will take it down and bring back a vehicle to transport Bradford.”
“Good. Any more casualties?” Murdock asked. Nobody replied. “Ebenezer, how are your four friends holding up?”
“All doing well. The prisoners were treated fairly well. Their captors said they were being held to trade with Israel for some Arabs in jail.”
Gunfire sounded to the south of them. The SEALs and guests had closed up to four yards separation, and Murdock had moved to the front along with Lam.
“Our MP-5’s,” Lam said. “No other weapons fired that I could hear. Our boys must have won the day.”
* * *
Ahead a quarter of a mile, Senior Chief Sadler went to ground in the shallow ditch of the highway, and with the other three SEALs drilled the checkpoint with a deadly hail of hot lead.
“Don’t harm those two vehicles,” he had warned his three men. Victor, Mahanani, and Jefferson all kept their rounds away from the two sedans. Two guards had been on duty near the pull-down barrier when the shooting started. Neither one left the area, both down with multiple bullet wounds.
They had planned to come at the roadblock from two directions, but now Sadler changed the order. “We’ll all move up on this side until we can see behind the barricade and the small building. Watch for any movement.”
They ran forward, bending over to make a smaller target. There were no rounds fired at them from the checkpoint. They went to ground again and watched the structure. One of the sedans had a large wet spot under it.
“Damn, a ricochet must have hit the gas tank,” Sadler said. “Six rounds each into the little shed over there. Might be one more of them on the floor.”
They fired, then all lifted up and charged across the highway and thirty yards to the checkpoint. Sadler kicked in the door to the small building and fired six rounds.
“All clear roadblock,” he said on the radio. Victor ran to the undamaged sedan and looked inside. The keys hung in the ignition. He got in, fired up the engine, and without lights drove back up the highway north until one of the SEALs there waved Victor to a stop. He turned around carefully, then opened the rear door and helped Bradford slide into the rear seat. He was groggy again. He was in need of help, and it should be soon. As agreed, Jefferson climbed in the front seat to ride shotgun. They rolled down all the windows.
Murdock came alongside. “Drive down about a mile and a half to where we left the boats. Blast your way through that other checkpoint. It might not even be operating this time of night. Stop at the boat, let Jefferson find it, and wait for us there. We’ve got to make some decisions here soon.”
Murdock went back to his men and led them down the side of the Dead Sea on the hard ground. He took out the long-range radio the Israelis had given him and turned it on, then pushed the send button.
“Grounded, calling High Bird,” Murdock said. He let up on the transmit button and waited. No response. He tried it three more times, then checked the batteries and switches with his penlight.
“Lieutenant Ebenezer up front,” he said on the Motorola. “Get out your long-range radio and see if you can contact High Bird.”
Ebenezer came jogging up a minute later. “I tried it five times, but I get no response. These sets should reach back to Rama Army Base easily. Are they off the air, or did we ruin both of these radios?”
24
Murdock looked at the Israeli Army man. “I heard your transmission, so that part works, and my receiver works,” Ebenezer said. “Let me transmit and you listen.”
He did. Murdock’s receiver worked.
“So, must be some problem on the other end,” Ebenezer concluded. “Maybe they don’t expect to hear from us this quickly and they don’t have their set turned on. These are special radios, so the signal doesn’t come in on the regular base radios.”
“Let’s hope,” Murdock growled. “How far to the boats?”
Fifteen minutes later they came to the spot where they had left the boats. Both were still there and in good condition.
Senior Chief Sadler came up. “Commander, we launch the boats now?”
“Hold for a while, Chief. Mahanani, go up to the road and check on Bradford.”
“Aye, Cap,” the medic said on the Motorola.
“Any reason that chopper can’t pick us up here instead of eighteen miles down-water?” Murdock asked Eb.
The Mistaravim soldier shook his head. “Not that I can see. No problem if they heard the bird now up at En Gedi or not. That was a major concern coming in. I’ll try the radio again.”
There was no response from Rama.
Mahanani came on the Motorola. “Skipper, the Brad here looks lots better than last time I checked. Gave him another ampoule of morphine. No fever. Slug must have missed his kidney and his intestines, so no peritonitis. Says he can walk, but I wouldn’t count on more than a hundred yards. Know he’s feeling better. He called me an ignorant, stupid, beach-bumming half-breed Kanaka bastard.”
“You two going steady?” Murdock asked.
“Naw, just a little contest to see who can call the other one the worst name. He’s one up.”
“Bring him back to the boat, we’ve got to push off. Too damn close to the action here. Tell Victor to stay with the car. Drive it down a quarter mile when we push off and wait for us. We might need the rig later. He’s got his Motorola?”
“Got it on, Skipper,” Victor said.
“Let’s move to the boats and get them ready to launch. Bradford will be in the last one out. Move it.”
Bradford made his way slowly across the sand to the boat. Mahanani hovered nearby, but didn’t touch him. The big man let out a sigh as he sat down in the rubber duck and it slid into the black salt brine. Lam started the motor and took the tiller, and the two small craft began working their way south along the shore.
Four times Lam had signaled with his flashlight, and Victor moved the car along the road to match their progress. By that time it was 0112, and Murdock tried his long-range radio again.
“Grounded calling High Bird. Grounded calling High Bird.”
He waited, and was about to try the call again when the speaker came alive.
“Yes, Grounded, read you.”
“High Bird, looking for a ride. Mission accomplished.”
“Launching in ten, Grounded. Same pickup point?”
“No, closer, about ten miles north of drop-off. No GPU with us, but we’ll give you a white flare for an LZ when we hear you coming in.”
“That’s a roger. ETA your position, about thirty-five. Out.”
The da
rkness seemed to deepen on the black water of the Dead Sea as they sailed south. The Motorolas came on.
“Victor here, Cap. That first checkpoint is coming up. Looks like one light on. My lights are off. Should I run it, blast it? What?”
“Slip up on it, then blast through as fast as you can go. No bar, right? If you see any bodies, fire at them as you go past.”
“That’s a roger, Skipper. Getting ready to blast through.”
The air went silent.
“Oh, yeah, I’m through. Just one guard on the driver’s side. I put four new buttonholes down his chest. I’ll stop a mile ahead and wait for your signal.”
* * *
Three miles north of En Gedi along the Dead Sea west bank, the Palestinian Authority had established a strong point. Captain Khadar smiled as he patted the Israeli long-range radio that they had captured from the three Jew spies two months ago. He understood English and a little Hebrew and he grinned. He knew exactly when an enemy helicopter was coming in. He’d had telephone warnings from En Gedi about the raid on the palace and the dead comrades there. This would be his chance for a great victory. It wasn’t often that the Authority had a chance to shoot down an enemy helicopter.
Since he’d had a report of a helicopter coming toward the Dead Sea early that evening, he had been listening on the Israeli radio. He had to move fast. Ten miles from where they had been dropped off. Easy, ten miles up the Dead Sea bank. He was furious about the attack on the palace. There was a report that The Knife was dead. The killers would pay.
He roused four of his best men and put them in the truck with the stake body. Each of his men had four shoulder-fired RPGs and their AK-47’s. They would drive without lights north along the highway for seven miles, and wait and see what happened. The helicopter would be coming in, probably from due east. As it came down to land, they would shoot it out of the air, then search for the killers who had murdered their hero.
Yes, it would be a glorious day for Allah!
The four Palestine Authority policemen grumbled when they were awakened and told of their task. But they brightened when told they would soon have the chance to shoot down an Israeli helicopter. They cheered as they left the garage where the truck had been kept ready. Now all they needed was some good fortune and they would strike a deadly blow for Allah.
* * *
Murdock estimated they had come ten miles from the strike, and pulled the boats into shore. The men towed them onto the sand and spread out in a perimeter defense around the location. Victor parked the car on the shoulder and came in with the others.
It had been twenty minutes since the Israelis had given them an ETA of thirty-five minutes. Murdock hunched over where he sat, staring south. There was nothing but black on black. One unending bit of sand and black water after another. Not a light or a car or a building.
Lam lay in the sand on the north side of the defense watching and listening for any pursuit by the Arabs. Any trouble would come from that direction, but so far nothing.
Five minutes before the promised ETA, Lam sat up and frowned. Had he heard something from the south? He listened again, concentrated, closed his eyes, and poured all of his strength into his hearing. Yes, faint, but there it came again. The slow grinding of a truck, getting stronger, coming his way.
“Cap, we may have a problem,” he said on the Motorola.
Murdock stirred, shook his head, and answered.
“Something moving this way on the road from the south,” Lam said. “A truck if I hear it right. Moving slowly, maybe trying to sneak up on us.”
“Who would know we are here?”
“That radio transmission you made with the chopper was in the clear, wasn’t it? You gave him our location.”
“Yes. But who else but the Israelis would have a radio that could pick up the signal?”
“Got me, Commander. I just do the listening. Want me to roam south a half mile and see what I can find?”
“Go, be careful.”
Lam came off the sand and ran south along the shore. He carried his MP-5, and wished he had something longer. He ran hard for two hundred steps, then slowed for fifty more. Then he stopped, let his racing heart settle down, and listened.
Yes, the same grinding motor, as if it were crawling along in low gear, making more noise than if it were rolling at ten miles an hour in second.
“Definitely a truck, Skipper. Coming our way. I’m about a quarter up. I’ll do another quarter and see what I can hear.”
He ran again. Had to be a truck creeping up on a known location. How known? Oh, damn.
“Skipper, did the three Israelis we freed have a long-range radio like yours when they were captured? If they did it could be bad news and we’re pinpointed.”
Murdock swore softly. “Ebenezer, did you get that last Motorola?”
“Yes, I just checked with the men. They said they had a radio exactly like ours, but they disabled it before they were captured.”
“Disabled, not destroyed.”
“Correct.”
“Disabled can be repaired. Some friends from the town to the south could be coming to meet us and the chopper. Talk to the High Bird in Hebrew, maybe the A-rab won’t understand. Tell him there could be a problem at the LZ.”
Murdock listened to the exchange. He didn’t understand a word of it.
“Commander, Bird One says he’s five minutes off the Dead Sea. He wants a white flare now.”
“Cap, I’ve got a stake truck with men in the back,” Lam said on the radio. “The road swings wide here; he’s out of range of my MP-5. I can’t stop him. He’s rolling at about forty miles an hour. Be at your position in two minutes.”
“Fernandez, a flare to our south, white, now. Jaybird, get south a hundred and watch and listen for that truck. Use any twenties you have left. Stop the sonofabitch.”
“Roger, Cap. I’ve only got two twenty rounds.”
“Snipers, go with Jaybird. We can’t let that truck get near the chopper.”
The flare popped and floated down. Murdock could hear the bird coming in from due east; then he heard a new sound, a truck engine racing as it drove forward. Jaybird heard the truck and saw a dim outline on the road. He lasered it and fired. The twenty sailed over the charging truck and exploded in the air thirty feet behind it. The truck kept coming. The SEAL sniper rifles began firing.
The dark blob of the truck came closer, and Jaybird fired his last twenty. Just as he triggered it, the truck made a screeching turn to the left away from them, and the round burst slightly in back of the truck, but some of the shrapnel hit the rig.
Landing lights flared from the chopper as it came in closer. The truck skidded off the road into a field away from the gunfire. Lam swore when he saw the rocket whooshes coming from the truck.
“RPGs away,” Lam shouted into his Motorola mike.
“Abort, chopper, abort,” Murdock called into his long-range radio mike. But he was too late. The chopper had found the flare and was powering down on the big rotors as it began to settle in for a landing from a hundred feet.
Three more whooshing sounds came from the truck. Then three more as the RPGs slanted into the air tracking the chopper. The big bird was still fifty feet off the ground, and coming down slowly in a controlled descent, when one of the RPGs hit the fuselage just in back of the side door. The explosion ripped the side of the ship open. Shrapnel from the round blasted through to the cabin, and riddled the pilot where he concentrated on his landing.
The CH-46 turned sideways; then the rotors stopped as the engine blew apart, and the CH-46 crashed straight down and burst into a huge fireball as the fuel exploded.
“Get the truck,” Murdock barked into the Motorola. “Don’t damage it. We need it for transport over the Judean hills. Ed, get your squad out there. Rifles, can you see any personnel? Nail them, but don’t kill the truck.”
Bravo Squad ran toward where they’d last seen the truck. Lam was out there somewhere as well. “We have four people
out here besides us,” Ed said into his Motorola. “No friendly-fire casualties. Watch the truck.”
They ran two hundred yards across the highway and east. Well ahead of them, Lam had seen the RPGs fire, and surged toward the truck to get in range for his MP-5. Now he was less than a hundred yards behind it as it crawled forward. He stopped and sent two three-round bursts into the stake body, then ran again. He heard the sniper rifles cracking ahead and to his right. How did Fernandez get way up there? He heard glass break, and saw the taillights on the rig signal a stop. The driver. Somebody got the driver.
Lam stopped and watched the rear of the truck. He saw one man drop down and crouch beside the back duals. Lam put three rounds into him and waited. Another man went down the other side of the truck, and Lam nailed him with the second three rounds of 9mm Parabellums. He watched, but saw no other movement.
“DeWitt. Two down from the rear of the truck. I think somebody nailed the driver. The rig is dead on the ground. I’m ahead of you somewhere, so don’t target me.”
“That’s a roger, Lam. Move up and clear the truck.”
Lam sprinted the last thirty yards. He found one body in the back of the stake body, then eased around the right-hand side. If the driver was down, there could be someone in the passenger’s side. Just as he reached for the door, it pushed open and a man in a khaki uniform stepped out. He carried a submachine gun in both hands. Lam triggered six rounds into the man’s back from six feet away, and he slammed into the door, dropped the weapon, and slid to the ground dying as he fell.
Lam lifted over the side of the truck and looked into the cab. One body lay draped over the steering wheel. The windshield had shattered and exploded inward.
“Clear on the truck,” Lam said. “Five men down. Any survivors on the chopper?”
Murdock had just walked away from the fire that still raged where the CH-46 had crashed. There was no chance of survivors. Small-arms rounds continued to explode as they cooked off from the heat of the blaze.
“Lam, does the truck still run?”
“Give me two.”
Lam pulled the dead driver out of the cab. The keys were still in the engine. He hoped none of the rounds had hurt the motor or the fuel supply. He used his pencil flash, moved the transmission lever out of gear, and found the starter. The engine ground over four times, then sputtered, then came to life and ran smoothly.
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