Ron Holt carried one of the RPGS. Murdock motioned him forward. Holt put the shoulder-mounted launcher in place and flipped the arming switch, then zeroed in on the machine gun emplacement and the truck behind it. He gave Murdock a thumbs-up sign. Murdock held up his finger and motioned sharply to Holt.
He fired.
The blast of the rocket in the tunnel was like a swarm of angry bees. If left a fiery trail for twenty meters, then exploded on the sandbags and the truck. The vehicle's gas tank blew up in a gushing ball of fire that sent two guards still alive running. Magic Brown and Red Nicholson brought the two down with their silenced sniper M89s.
A siren wailed somewhere ahead.
The fire effectively blocked the tunnel. They could feel the heat, but they were far enough away to avoid any problems.
Murdock gathered his troops.
"Now we're alive and with sound. They know someone's here. When that fire simmers down, we charge past it. There will be a reception committee somewhere on the other side. First two men through are Ronson with his machine gun and Magic. Charge past the heat, hit the deck, and give us some protective fire down whatever is ahead. This damn tunnel has to end soon."
They heard sporadic gunfire from beyond the flames, but no rounds came near them.
Murdock looked at Ching and Horse Ronson. "You both still have the juice?"
They nodded. They carried the new explosive, the TNAZ that had more punch than C4.
The fire burned lower. Murdock hadn't heard any shooting from beyond the flames for five minutes. "Let's go," he said.
They charged the flames. Brown and Horse Ronson roared to the front, shielding their faces as they burst through the open area past the still-flaming truck and into the smoky darkness as the tunnel continued beyond.
The air-conditioning sucked the smoke away from Murdock and his men as they continued down the passage. It was larger here and they could see bright lights ahead. Brown and Ronson flopped to the sides of the tunnel and looked for targets. They saw none. They didn't fire.
Murdock and the others caught up with them and nodded. He put Ronson on point and they moved down the corridor silently, black-on-black heavily armed figures coming out of the smoke.
Sixty meters ahead the down-sloping tunnel ended in a huge natural cavern. It was set up as a manufacturing layout, with assembly tables, overhead wires and beams, and what looked like a "clean" room at the far end.
The SEALS saw no one. Either a shift had finished work or there was no work in progress.
Four Chinese guards with automatic rifles surged from behind the clean room and opened fire.
The SEALS dove behind whatever cover they could find. Magic Brown caught one of the Chinese with a round to the chest and he quit the fight. The other three advanced behind the workstations on the floor of the big cavern.
The flat crack of the AK47S on full auto-fire sang through the cave. The gunners were forty meters away and advancing. Murdock checked his men. He used his mike. Radio silence was no longer required. Who had the best arm? They hadn't brought any grenade launchers.
"Horse, you have any fraggers?"
"A shit-pot full."
"Toss a pair down that way to discourage the bastards."
Horse sent the first four-second-fuse hand grenade over the top of the assembly tables heading for the three Chinese. It landed short, bounced once on the concrete floor, and air-blasted fifteen feet from two of the shooters. Both went down with multiple shrapnel wounds in the face and neck. The last Chinese tried to run for it the way he had come in.
Magic Brown tracked him and fired. He missed. His second round connected and the runner tumbled into eternity.
Murdock listened to the silence for a few seconds, then looked at Ching. The Chinese SEAL shook his head.
"Hell, I don't know. No more signs. We want the bomb storage, right?"
Murdock nodded. He scanned the area ahead. Two tunnels led out of the assembly area. Both had heavy doors on them. He chose the one on the right.
Doc Ellsworth carried their other RPG. Murdock brought him to the front of the unit.
"Blow that door into fucking hell, Doc. Then we'll see where it leads."
Doc grinned. Although he was a medic, he carried all the arms and had the killer instinct of every other SEAL. He'd been through BUD/S like the rest of them. At times he was too gung ho and Murdock had to hold him back.
He sighted in, checked his back-blast area to make sure it was clear, and fired. The round went downhill to the heavy wooden door. It bounced off the concrete and slanted up ten feet to hit the door to the left of center.
The explosion was magnified in the cavern. For a few seconds Murdock couldn't hear. Then the sensation came back. Already he had the troops moving. They charged the door, kicked aside some splinters, and surged through into another tunnel. This one was not finished with concrete. It looked more like a miners' tunnel, but was high enough and wide enough to be used by small trucks.
They worked along the tube for fifty meters and came to a guard station. It was not manned. Another thirty meters ahead they came into another huge natural cavern. It was more than fifty meters high and three times that wide. It had formed in the shape of a large oval, and there was no way out of the large cave besides the way they had come in.
In the center of the big cavern there was a small structure that looked like the top of an elevator shaft. Around it were what seemed to be worktables of some sort. There were a dozen small electric forklifts that could be used to move a nuclear bomb.
The rest of the cavern was empty. The floor had been paved only along two strips, one leading to the elevator-type house, and another leading away from it, circling around and coming back to the access tunnel.
Murdock could find no armed protection. His men stayed in the mouth of the tunnel for cover. Murdock used his sectioning method of examining the area. He sectioned it off and checked every possible place that could hide troops or offer cover. He found none. He had returned to the mouth of the tunnel, and was just about to order his men forward, when a section of the floor just behind the elevator shaft opened and two machine guns with gunners on them lifted to the surface. Two more sections came out, and twenty armed soldiers stood with their weapons pointed at the cave entrance.
A voice came over a loudspeaker in Chinese. Ching had moved up beside Murdock, and translated the words quietly as the voice sounded.
"Idiots. Don't you know that your presence here and any powerful explosion could activate one or more of our nuclear devices? How stupid can you be. You must be from Taiwan. Yes, they are this stupid. Lay down your arms and surrender. If you try to resist, you will be crushed immediately."
Murdock used his radio mike. "Snipers get in position. When you're ready give me a signal."
The four men moved forward to the very front of the tunnel and got into places from which they could fire.
"Take out those machine guns first. The gunners, the ammo men, then the troops. We've got a thirty-meter range. Our MP5's will help. As soon as the MGS are down, bring up our HK 21A1's and settle the matter."
Murdock got four single tsks on his radio.
"Go," he said. Four silent rounds jolted through the cavern and knocked both the gunners and loaders away from their machine guns.
The MP-5's opened up on the rifle troops. They fired back, but had no real targets. The 9mm whizzers from the MP-5's kept the Chinese troops prone until the HK SEAL machine guns got in position. The rifle fire from the Chinese slackened, then stopped. No one moved in the defensive position.
When all firing stopped, there was a pause as some air-purification device sucked the smoke and cordite smell out of the air. The Chinese voice spoke again.
"You are not easily discouraged, but we have ways of handling that, Ching translated.
"You have five minutes to clear this facility. At that time doors will close sealing in this complex. It will then be flooded with enough poison gas to kill everyone inside with
in sixty seconds after inhaling it. There will be no escape. If you don't leave, you all will die. You have five minutes starting now."
"The voice is bluffing us about flooding this area with poison gas," Murdock said. "Unless it's contact gas, it would take hours to get enough gas in here to kill anyone. Forget it. We move on the shaft in the middle. Fire only at a definite target. Now. Go, Go, Go."
The eight men of Third Platoon lifted off the deck and stormed the small shaft in the middle of the cavern. It was only thirty-five meters away. There was no opposition. Not a shot was fired.
Murdock came around the side of the shaft, which was made of heavy steel plates, and looked at the front. It was an elevator, and evidently fully operational. The door stood open.
"Sign says safe occupancy by no more than ten people," Ching said.
"Ching, Brown, Doc, we're going for a ride down. The rest of you spread out and keep this thing operational. If it's clear down there, we'll send it back up for reinforcements. Bring down two more men and leave Holt and Nicholson up here for security. We want to be sure we can get back up this shaft."
Murdock waved the men on board. Ching studied the control panel.
"Only two operational buttons, L-T. One is down, the other up."
"Let's go down, Ching, and see where the hell this goes to and what the cluster-fuck in July is down there."
Ching pushed the button. The door closed and the elevator started down.
Murdock nodded. Now they would see what the Chinese had developed in their nuclear weapons program.
11
Friday, May 15
2048 hours
Tayu Island
Just off Mainland China
The enclosed elevator car felt like a tomb for a moment. Then Murdock looked at Ching. "Any indication how far we're going down?"
"None, L-T. It's quite a drop even though we aren't going fast like the ones do in the Empire State Building."
"This will do. When we stop I want us lined up in back of the car. Have your weapons aimed at that door when it opens. We don't know what the fuck we're going to find down here. That guy on the loudspeaker has to be somewhere. He could alert them that we're coming down."
The car slowed and ground to a stop. Doc stood in the center of the rear of the car, his shotgun pointing at the door. It slid open with a slight whine and two Chinese soldiers gaped in surprise at the weapons aimed at them. Their own rifles were slung over their shoulders with muzzles down.
As the doors opened, Doc got off one round from his shotgun. The thirteen.32-sized slugs tore into both men. Half the torso of one billowed with blood and internal organs spewed out. The man beside him had his arm torn off and enough of the slugs drilled into his heart to kill him instantly.
Murdock looked around the door of the car. They were in a much smaller cave, one that looked to be blasted out of granite. Three steel huts were at the near end of the room. It was no more than twenty meters long and about that wide. The overhead was only four meters above them.
Murdock saw no other guards. The four SEALS darted from the elevator to the closest of the steel buildings. They had no obvious doors, no windows. Ching read the sign on the front.
"This sealed container holds two nuclear devices, ready to be given the final charge and the arming detonator."
"Maybe six bombs," Murdock said. "Check the other two huts."
Ching ran to them and came back nodding. "Six must be their total. What now?"
"We mess up everything down here that we can. Those electric forklifts, put small charges on them with two-hour timers. Nothing that will break down the steel doors to the hutches. Get on it now. You have five minutes."
He grabbed Ching. "Let Brown juice the forklifts. Suggestions on how we wreck this place?"
"We don't know how solid those steel buildings are, so we better not blast the ceiling down. I'd say we blow everything down here, then go up the elevator, set a moderate charge with a timer, and send the box down here. Then we blast the top of the elevator."
Murdock nodded. "About what I'd been thinking. Then we blast every tunnel shut as we leave it. Take them a damn long time to haul out all of the rubble. Good, start laying your charges with that TNAZ. Remember, it's more potent than the old C-4 we usually use."
Magic Brown came back in four minutes. "I put one-eighth of a stick on four of the forklifts and latched them together. They all have delay timers set for an hour."
"We're ready. Let's move up the ladder."
Murdock led the four into the elevator and they pushed the up button.
At the top of the ride, the four SEALS stayed at the sides of the car as the doors opened. Rifle fire tore into the back wall of the elevator. The fire let up and Murdock yelled, "Cover us!" He heard MP-5's chattering to the left, and the rifle fire held off. The four SEALS came charging out firing with all the power they had.
Murdock saw the rest of his men crouched behind some upturned tables to the left and sprinted that way.
The four men dove behind the tables just as the Chinese rifles opened up again, the flat crack of the venerable AK-47 on automatic fire.
Murdock skidded to a stop half on top of Jaybird.
"What's happening, Chief?"
"Six of the dry-humpers came out a hidden door down to the left. They fired on us before we knew they were there. We nailed two of them, but four have us pinned down."
"Fraggers," Murdock said. "The range can't be more than thirty meters. How many fraggers we have?"
They found six among the men. The best throwers took the small bombs. "Two at a time, then wait for a reaction," Murdock said.
Brown and Horse lifted up and threw the grenades with the 4.2-second fuses. They didn't let them cook at all. The distance would mean almost instant detonation on contact. Both bombs went off with a sharp roar and they heard shrapnel zinging all over the place. One Chinese soldier screamed.
The firing from behind the tables across the way stopped.
Murdock nodded, and the men threw two more. These dropped over the edges of the tables and went off at once. More screaming came, and then the survivors began to retreat. Brown shifted to his sniper M-89 and picked one soldier off before he could get through the hidden door in the wall. The second one made it.
"Checkout time," Murdock said. "Go, go, go!" He stood with the MP-5 on his hip and charged forward firing three-round bursts at the tables where the Chinese riflemen had been. The other men of First Squad were beside him as they rushed the strong-point where the Chinese had hidden.
They kicked over the tables and sprayed the bodies there with more rounds.
"As you were!" Murdock bellowed, and the firing stopped. "Let's get those charges set so we can get out of here."
Ching and Brown ran back to the elevator. They set two charges, one on each side of the car, and wired them together. Then they wired them to a thirty-minute timer-detonator and punched the down button on the elevator. It still worked. The doors closed and the car headed for the cavern below and the six Chinese nuclear weapons.
As soon as the car cleared, Ching had the second charge ready to demolish the top of the elevator. Nobody would be bringing out any nukes from that cave below for a long time.
"Set that one for half an hour," Murdock said. "Now, let's move out of here. Jaybird, you take the point and keep Brown close behind. Doc, you bring up the rear. Let's move."
When they hit the mouth of the tunnel leading away from the large cavern, Magic Brown had a charge of TNAZ ready. He plastered it against the tunnel ten feet inside from the mouth and set a fifteen-minute timer-detonator, and they moved away. At the end of that tunnel they set another charge with the same-timed detonator. This was where they had blasted in a door with the RPG. Ching set a charge, and dialed the timer for ten minutes.
They hurried across the assembly area. There was nothing there worth blasting. They found the up-slanting tunnel on the far side of the huge natural cavern. There was still the smell of smoke in t
he tunnel. They set another charge in the tunnel twenty feet in from the cavern and positioned the detonator for ten minutes. By now the charges were placed and the timers set almost without missing a step.
Halfway up the long tunnel they came to the burned-out truck and the Chinese bodies. They continued past to the spot where the tunnel branched. Ching put a charge that would block both tunnels, and they continued upward.
A minute later they came to the reception area. Before they got there they heard firing. Murdock recognized the chatter of the MP-5's. His boys from Second Squad were mixing it up with someone.
They got to the mouth of the tunnel and checked outside carefully. The reception area had changed. Murdock found three of his other seven men pinned down behind some upturned tables and the receptionist's desk on the far side. The other four were on the near side behind metal file cabinets and tables.
Rifle fire came from the blasted-open man-sized door. Magic Brown flattened out near the mouth of the tunnel, kicked down the bipod on his sniper rifle, and sighted in on the metal door leading outside. He waited, watching through his scope. Then he fired. A scream sounded outside.
Murdock used his radio. "Troubles, Dewitt?"
"Too damn many. About twenty of them charged through the door. We beat them back, but can't join our forces. Three on the left, and four on the right. We're out of fraggers."
"RPG?"
"Used up."
Horse Ronson had set up his HK machine gun. He signaled to Murdock that he was ready. Murdock put the rest of his squad on the left of the chatter gun. When Ronson opened fire, he slammed nine-round bursts through the metal door. That was when the rest of First Squad charged out the tunnel and around to the left of the room and got as close to the outside door as they could. Brown, Murdock, and Jaybird all threw grenades at the blasted-in doorway. Two of the three went outside and exploded. The third one bounced off the metal truck door and rolled far enough to the right so the shrapnel missed the First Squad.
Ronson cut off his firing. All was quiet outside. Magic Brown threw two more grenades. Both went through the opening and blasted outside. Murdock and his men charged the door, firing their submachine guns through the opening as they ran. Murdock went through the blasted door first and slanted to the right, his Kill House territory.
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