Murdock called up Holt, who had the SATCOM tuned to TAC One. Murdock took the handset.
"Cobra, this is SEALs North. Do you copy?"
"Roger that, SEALs. This is Cobra Alpha."
"We have some company up here we might need some help on. Convoy of six or eight trucks that look to have troops in them. Figure they came up to give us a good old-fashioned welcome."
"We're five minutes away. Your position?"
"About three hundred yards south of our target. Grove of trees, just behind us. We'll put a red flare on the trucks if they are still there. You coming?"
"On the way. Count the minutes."
Murdock watched the trucks roll into sight. The first two stopped directly across from them, the others to the north. At once twenty to twenty-five men jumped out of each truck and formed up next to the vehicles.
"Let's get out of Dodge," Murdock whispered into his mike. The men crawled back twenty yards until they vanished into the darkness, then stood and jogged away from the road before turning south.
"If they sweep across from the road along that stretch, it'll cover the communications center," Murdock said to Jaybird right beside him. "Then they'll know somebody is here and come looking for us at top speed."
"They can't track us at night," Jaybird said.
"No, but they can get lucky, leapfrog ahead of us. Where the hell is that Cobra?"
A minute later they heard the whup-whup of the chopper blades as an aircraft came from the south. Murdock looked behind them and to the north and could still see the truck headlights burning. One set went off, then another, but that left another six or eight. There was no chance to get a flare on the trucks.
The Cobra made a run on the length of the column, 20mm rounds pounded into the vehicles. Murdock heard one explode as the fuel tank went. Some ground fire lanced up at the chopper, but it didn't seem to be affected.
On the next run from the other way, the Cobra rained on the column with 70mm rockets from the four LAU-68/A pods on its stubby wings. The rockets exploded in deadly fashion along the line of trucks, setting two more on fire and demolishing a third. None of the vehicles would ever run again.
Murdock and his men took advantage of the attack and jogged again to the south. They crossed a side dirt road, went around a group of three houses and outbuildings, and kept moving south. Lam came up to Murdock and fell in beside him. "May have some trouble, Cap. I can hear some guys tailing us. Not sure how many, but they must be from those trucks. They could be damn mad now because they have to walk wherever else they're going."
"Drop back and see if you can find out how many. Don't take any chances, but be good to know."
Lam veered off and set up in a patch of brush. He'd wait for the followers and then get back with the main body.
Lam wormed down into the brush and weeds until not even his mother could find him. He checked his stopwatch. It was three minutes before he could see anyone coming. They had a scout out front twenty yards. Not far enough. Behind them came two groups of men, all with weapons and all jogging. Lam scrunched lower and counted. Twenty men in each group. Forty men on their tail, which was not good.
When the last NK trooper went past, Lam faded away to the left side farther from the tail-end Charlie on the NKs and ran. He kept two hundred yards to the side of the North Koreans as he rapidly caught and passed them.
Lam guessed he was about three hundred yards ahead of the trackers. He used his Motorola.
"Third Platoon. Where the hell are you?"
"In your hip pocket, little buddy," Jaybird said. "You're not as quiet as you used to be, I heard you coming. Small hill ahead and to your right. We're going up it. You can't be more than fifty yards behind. How many of them rice-snappers are there?"
"Forty, and they look like regulars. I'm moving."
He caught up with the platoon a few minutes later, and told Murdock about the men behind them.
The hill had a few low bushes on it, no real timber. Murdock passed the word on his lip mike.
"We'll meet our friends at the top of the hill. Just over the slope find firing positions. Who has Claymores?"
Guns Franklin and Al Adams did.
"Set them up in sequence with trip wires about forty yards down the slope. You know the routine. Aim them to spray downhill and then catch up. Adams put one here. Franklin ten yards higher. Go." Five minutes later, Murdock had his platoon spread out on the reverse slope of the small hill with every man in a good firing position. Adams and Franklin had returned and had the Claymore mines set. All suppressors were taken off to increase the weapons' range.
The Claymore is a chunk of explosive, fronted with two hundred small steel balls. When the trip wire sets off the charge, the explosive blasts the balls out in the direction the mine has been aimed in. They can cut down a dozen to fifteen foot soldiers in single blast.
Lampedusa touched Murdock's shoulder. "They're coming."
Murdock grinned. He couldn't hear them. Lam had ears like an elephant. A minute later Murdock did hear them. He knew they had a lead scout out. Maybe he'd miss the trip wire and they would get a better body count.
Seconds later one of the Claymores exploded with a shattering roar, followed by screams of pain and fury. Nothing happened for almost five minutes. Then Murdock could hear the NKs moving up slope again. The second Claymore burst into the night sky with a roar, and Murdock lifted his subgun and chattered off two three-round bursts.
That was the signal for the rest of the platoon to fire downslope where the sounds had come from. After two minutes of concentrated fire, Murdock gave a ceasefire.
"Let's move," Murdock said. "Not many of them are going to try to follow us, if any are left standing."
They were half a mile down the other side of the hill and looking for a good LZ when Lam came back and shook his head.
"Cap, we've got something ahead. Not sure what it is. Lights up half the fucking sky. Must be some kind of a supply depot or a replacement depot or some damned thing. No secret it's there."
"So, no LZ around here. What about to the left?"
"Some kind of a main highway over there. Lots of truck traffic. You hear that plane few minutes ago? Probably an F-18 just blasted to hell a half-dozen trucks." "So we move to the right. Find us a black hole where we can call down that bird."
Lam nodded and vanished to the right. "We'll take a break here," Murdock said in his mike. "Ed, put out two security, north and south. We're looking for a good LZ."
Lam came back in ten minutes. "Something you should see up here, Commander." He led Murdock and Ed DeWitt over a quick two hundred yards. They came on a small farmhouse with lights in the windows. A woman's screams billowed out of the place. An NK jeep sat in front of the house and one soldier lolled in the driver's seat, evidently sleeping.
"Let's take a look in that window. Ed, keep the driver covered. If he wakes up, take him out."
Lam and Murdock slipped up on the window and lifted up to look inside. It was a one-room house with a bed against the far wall. There a woman lay spread-eagled on her back and tied to the bed. A North Korean officer had just taken off his shirt. Another one was getting into his pants.
"Through the window?" Lam asked.
Murdock nodded. "I'm right, you left." Both weapons had sound suppressors back on them. They each took a side of the window. Murdock let Lam sight in. "Now," he whispered. Both men fired. Murdock's three-round burst took the man trying to get into his pants full in the chest and blasted him against the wall, where he died instantly.
Lam's Colt M-4A1 slashed out five rounds on fully automatic. Three of the slugs hit the NK officer in the neck and the head, putting him in instant touch with his ancestors.
For a moment all was quiet. Murdock pressed against the broken window, but could see no more men inside. He checked Ed DeWitt, who had moved up beside the jeep driver and now wiped the blood off his knife on the dead Korean's shirt.
"Inside," Murdock said. He and Lam hurried throu
gh the front door and saw that the room was clear. Murdock cut the bindings on the woman's hands and feet and pushed a tattered quilt over her naked body.
She hadn't opened her eyes yet. Her sobbing tapered off. Murdock waited a moment. She sat up and motioned to a smaller room to the back he hadn't seen. He went to the door with his subgun ready. Inside the room lay two Korean men, both well over sixty, Murdock guessed. Both had slit throats. He closed the door.
Back in the main room, the woman dressed. She put on flip-flops and pointed outside. There she bowed low.
"Arigato," she said in Japanese.
"Doi tasta maste," Murdock said, trying to remember how to pronounce the Japanese for "you're welcome." He knew he had clobbered the phrase. The woman smiled briefly. She understood. She was about twenty-five, Murdock figured. She bowed again, then hurried off through the night moving to the south.
They met DeWitt at the jeep. He held a fragger in his hand and motioned to the rig.
"Why not?" Murdock said.
Murdock and Lam ran to the right, and Ed DeWitt pulled the safety pin on the grenade, laid it on the fuel tank, and let the arming handle pop. Then he ran like hell away from the jeep. He had four seconds to get clear of the blast.
He made it. The grenade exploded, vaporizing the gasoline in the tank, which led to an instantaneous roaring explosion that melted down the jeep and set some dry grass on fire.
The three SEALs ran for the rest of their platoon.
A half hour later, Lam came back from the right flank.
"Got an LZ, Cap," he said. "No troops around and a nice flat spot with no trees. Should be a piece of cake."
"Let's do it."
They came to the place ten minutes later. Murdock used the land version of the MUGR to give an exact position to within ten feet with the use of global satellite triangulation. Holt fired up the SATCOM and made contact with the Sea Knight on the first try.
"Yes, SEALs, this is Sea Knight Two. Where?"
Murdock gave him the coordinates.
"Any ground fire expected?"
"Negative, looks clean now, Sea Knight. How long?"
"Eight minutes, unless we get into trouble. A red flare on the LZ? We're lifting off now." "You got the flare. Blink your landing lights twice, so we'll know it's you."
"Not many NK choppers out there. Will do."
The SEALs automatically formed a perimeter defense around the cleared spot, all prone and facing outward. Murdock pushed the light on his wristwatch. It was only 2030. They had been on land less than two and a half hours. A damned warm-up. Unless something else went wrong.
Nothing went wrong.
They landed on the Monroe a little after 2130. Don Stroh knew they were coming in, and nailed Murdock as soon as he stepped out of the chopper.
"Good work, sailor. Now the boss has a really important one that we need to talk about. Oh, you have any casualties?"
"Nice of you to ask. No wounded. Now what's this about a really important mission?"
8
US Monroe
Off Inchon Harbor
South Korea
Don Stroh and Murdock talked about the new assignment all the way to the dirty shirt mess, where Murdock had a steak dinner.
"You say this frigate is the largest and most powerful Navy ship that the North has. Why don't you just put an F-18 on it and blow it out of the water with a missile?"
"Because we can't find it when we want to. For instance, the first morning of the war at four-thirty a.m., the frigate showed up three miles off Inchon Harbor and shelled it for fifteen minutes. Then before it was light, it vanished back north into some of the many inlets and harbors up there."
"The whole U.S. Navy can't take care of one little frigate with what, a hundred and eighty men that's about three hundred and forty feet long? I don't believe it."
"True. Second day it did the same thing, and just after dark today it shelled the harbor and the city, then slammed out of there at twenty-four knots and we never laid a hand on her. But we know where she hides out."
"You didn't find her with all the air the Navy has during daylight hours?"
"She vanishes. Now we know why. The Caves of Ponhyon."
"The what? Caves? You telling me she slips into a cave during the day? That's an awfully big cave."
"Short of blasting down the whole damn mountain, there's no way we can get her in the cave. Except…"
"Except by the SEALs. Good choice. How do we get in there and get out?"
"You tell me. The admiral wants this one. He doesn't like to get slapped in the face by a little frigate."
"Yeah, I understand that. Let me sleep on it. We can't do anything until tomorrow night. We could meet her leaving the cave, in the cave, or coming back to the cave."
"Give it your best shot. The admiral's really pissed about this one."
It took Murdock a half hour to get to sleep that night. He kept going over the ways they could get to the ship, how they would blow it or disable her, how to get away. It would be wet, that was the best part. A real SEAL-type job for a change. When he drifted off to sleep, he was imagining the long hull of the ship edging out of the largest cave he'd ever seen.
The next morning in the SEALs' ready room, Jaybird and Ed DeWitt were delighted with the idea. By 0830 they had the details.
"Yeah, this will give us something to get our teeth into," Jaybird said.
"Good," the JG said. "I was wondering if I remembered how to swim. How do we go in?"
They worried it.
"Why not an RIB dropped off a destroyer out about ten miles from the target," Jaybird said. "We can get that middle sized one that does twenty-five knots. It's got plenty of range."
"They can carry nine," Ed said. "Do we take two of them and both squads, or just one?"
"Both squads," Murdock said. "We might need the firepower. These NKs get trigger-happy sometimes." "So we would take two of the RIBs," Ed said. "We have them in Coronado. Are there any in the fleet?"
"Get on the horn and find out, Ed. One of the amphibious ships could have some."
Ed left the small table and moved to a phone.
The rest of the SEALs were cleaning weapons, restocking ammo pouches, and repairing anything that had worn out or been broken. Murdock called them around and told them about the new mission.
"Just one little old frigate?" Douglas asked.
"Hell, Douglas can take care of that himself," Fernandez said. "He can piss it to death easy."
Murdock watched the exchange. He didn't like the tone, or the way Fernandez stared at the other SEAL.
"She hides out during the day, so it'll be a night run," Murdock said. "Maybe early, maybe late, we're not sure." As he spoke, he moved to disrupt the war of stares between the two SEALs. He'd have to ask Ed again about the problem. "How we go in there, all depends on what kind of transport they have in the fleet."
"We could go in on our IBS," Lampedusa said.
"Maybe, let's talk about it," Murdock said. "There are some islands and outposts up there where we might get in trouble. A faster boat might be better if we can wrangle it. Talk to me."
"Hell, we know the IBS," Jaybird said. "We know them inside out. The bigger boat can go faster, but it makes a hell of a racket."
"Have to throttle down when we get in close," Quinley said. "We'd want to swim in the last mile or so anyway."
"Hell we can carry a lot more stuff in the bigger boat," Ron Holt said. "We'll want some limpets or some such to put that sucker in the bottom of that cave, or the channel. I'd vote for the new ten-meter-class RIB. It's got Furno 1730 radar and GPS. Get us in and wait for us and snake us out of there."
They talked it over for another half hour, laying out the tools they'd want to take in, the explosives, the limpet mines, TNAZ as well, and the personal weapons. Murdock had the whole picture by 1000. Ed came back from a trip to see some supply officer and at last had a report.
"The amphib Boxer LHD4 has four of the RIBs. They're t
he new ten-meter class, which the XO over there said should work fine. He can have one or two of them here for us within two hours of our call."
"Good, let's you and me go see Stroh and then the XO. Looks like we might have a handle on how to do this one."
The XO was Captain Barney Waterton, former CAG and former Wing Leader and F-14 pilot. He grinned at Murdock.
"Damn, we're in the thick of it here, making more combat sorties than anything since the Gulf War. We're geared up to the max on close ground support and rear-area strikes, and still you SEALs can make the admiral jump. Amazing."
Murdock smiled. "Captain, I understand the feeling. But our boss just slightly outranks everyone on board. Of course this one is for Admiral Kenner. His request."
"Roger that, Commander. Well, your outline looks fine to me. I'll order the two RIBs over here now and you can check them out. They come with a crew of three, but you can cut that to two if you want to. You have all the ordnance you need?"
"Check that out this afternoon, Captain. Your powder room should be able to supply us with plenty. We can go with TNAZ if nothing else."
"You want to swim in the last mile?"
"I understand the NKs don't have much coastal radar, and what they have probably won't pick up the RIBs. A mile swim is a walk around the block for us, sir."
"Right. When will you push off?"
"Captain, I figured with the ride on the destroyer for forty miles north, we'd need to allow an hour and a half. We've decided to hit the cave just at dark, before the frigate can get out of its nest. Dark comes about 1800. We'll need fifteen minutes to move the last nine miles in the RIB, and then a half hour for the swim to shore."
Ed had been adding up the times where he sat beside Murdock. He showed Murdock the figure.
"So, about two and a quarter hours for insertion. We'd need to leave here at 1530 to make our time sked. We don't mind being a few minutes early."
"Sounds reasonable. I've assigned the destroyer Cole DDG 67 for your transport. We'll lift your men and the two RIBs over to the Cole by helo. No sweat there. Have your men on deck at 1520 and we'll take care of the rest. Anything else?"
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