Lieutenant Birnbaum shook his head. “Just isn’t our day. I should have seen that damn MiG come up from the side. He didn’t fire any missiles so I wasn’t concerned by his blip. Figured I had worse trouble from the two MiGs firing missiles at us.”
“Trouble, Cap,” Lam said on the Motorola. “I’ve got at least twenty Chicom troops moving my way. They are on a search and destroy, kicking every shrub, digging into every nook and cranny. I figure they are about half a mile out. What the hell do you want me to do?”
24
Murdock listened to Lam’s report of the Chinese troops.
“Only twenty. Any more coming out of the bushes down there?”
“That looks like all of them, Cap.”
“We should keep them away from this area. Use your Bull Pup on them and I’ll send down three more Pups to help. The damn chopper has to be coming in soon. Open fire when ready.”
Murdock looked around. “I want three more Pups down five hundred to help Lam. Three of you, move now.”
Four SEALs lifted up and ran forward. At the same time they heard the report of a 20mm round going off ahead of them. The fourth man at the rear, slowed and stopped. The other three charged down the slope.
“Yeah, love this gun,” Lam said in the net. “First two rounds put them on the ground. Don’t know how many will get up. I lasered them on the first man and it worked perfectly with an air burst. Oh, yeah, like fish in a barrel. I’m still way out of their range. They must be about seen hundred yards down there.”
“Three more Pups coming. No chopper yet.”
As he said it, Murdock heard the sounds of choppers coming toward them. Yes.
“Choppers inbound,” Murdock shouted.
“Flares now on the LZ,” DeWitt barked into the Motorola.
“Lieutenant, let’s get the commander up and moving. Bradford, Ching, give us a hand here.”
Both U.S. Navy 46 choppers came down the slope and settled into the landing zone.
“Choppers on the ground,” Murdock said into his lip mike. “Lam and three buddies, bug out of there and get back up here for a ride. Move now.”
The three men carried the unconscious pilot out of the depression and thirty yards up the slope to the 46 chopper. The rear hatch had been lowered and they carried the pilot inside. The lieutenant stayed with him. Chin and Bradford came out and ran back to the area to pick up their weapons.
The first mortar round came in with no warning. It exploded fifty yards up the slope from the choppers. The 46 closest to the SEALs with the pilots on board, lifted off at once before anyone could even yell at the pilot. Murdock screamed at him but he was gone. The second chopper stayed on the ground.
“Load up, all SEALs load up on the last chopper. Move it guys. Somebody has a damn mortar within range.”
Two more mortar rounds landed and the SEALs dove into the rocks and dirt. One exploded with a furious blast twenty yards from the chopper. The SEALs were still in the dirt when the second bird revved up and began to take off. A mortar round landed ten feet from the nose of the big chopper and sliced jagged shrapnel through the cockpit, killing the pilot instantly and knocking out the engines. The bird settled to the ground and a fire erupted in the engine compartment.
“Take cover,” Murdock bellowed into the lip mike. “Scatter, I want twenty yards between men.” He looked downslope and saw the four SEALs moving toward him.
“You Pup men coming up the hill. No rush. We just lost our ride out of here. Lam, how are the Chinese?”
“Three or four of them ran back to where they were, hidden behind a hill or some bush. Fifteen of them must be out of action, dead or badly hurt. No shit, no chopper?”
“Not unless you want to roast marshmallows. The pilot and his backseat man got away in the first chopper.”
“So we take a hike?” Lam asked.
“Unless we can sprout wings damn quick.”
“I’ll stay down here two hundred and see if the Chicoms come back. We gonna move during daylight?”
“Better, unless we want to eat off the abundance of the land.”
Murdock went back to the tree and sat down. DeWitt came up a minute later. The two men looked at the still-blazing chopper. None of the three-man crew had escaped. They were killed by the mortar round or the fire.
“Nothing we can do for those three crewmen. Can’t even get their dog tags. That burning chopper is going to be a beacon for the Chicoms to come find us. We better get moving.”
“They did it to us again.”
“We should be getting used to it,” Murdock said. “We’ve got one MRE per man, no local sustenance, and twenty-five miles to hike uphill. We better haul ass. Anybody get hurt from those mortar rounds?”
“No, but the mortar means there are more Chicoms somewhere on the reverse slope of one of these ridges,” DeWitt said.
“Call in Lam. As soon as he gets here, we choggie.”
“Choggie?” DeWitt asked.
“Hangover from the Korean War where they used choggie bearers to pack food and ammo. ‘Choggie’ came to mean to move, to hike, to run if you could.”
“Thanks for the military history lesson.”
The SEALs came in from their spread-out spots they took for the mortar barrage and gathered around the tree. The three Bull Pup shooters came back, and Lam made it a couple of minutes later.
“I’ve got fourteen heads,” Jaybird said.
“Hiking time. Up this slope and then another one and maybe then downhill and to the border. Maybe. We better get moving. Anybody hurt or wounded?” Murdock looked around. Nobody sounded off.
“Okay, let’s go, ten yards between men. Lam in front by about a hundred. We’re outa here.”
The first two miles went quickly. Murdock worried about the mortar but no more rounds were fired at them. The Chinese could be moving up a squad with a medium mortar and digging it in ahead of them to set up a greeting. Could.
There had been no response from the Chicoms who had been moving up the ravine that Lam took out. Murdock decided they had been on a flushing patrol, not one moving against a known enemy. So were there any more of the probing units of twenty or more men searching these valleys and ravines? He hoped not.
Suddenly Murdock felt a chill race down his spine. This was it. He was living on the edge as almost no one could these days. He was afoot and twenty-five miles inside of red, Chicom, fucking China and had taken enemy fire. It didn’t get any hairier than this. Now all they had to do was get out of this death trap.
Two more miles up the hill and Murdock called a halt. He kept the men spread out. The rise came sharper and sometimes they had to use their hands to help get up a slant. Lots of it was slab rock from some giant lava flow a million years ago.
Murdock checked his watch: 0736. Time enough for that bird to get back to India and report in. The pilot had to see the other chopper hit and burning. Murdock could imagine the report of a hot fire fight that pilot and crew would give to justify their leaving without a full load.
“Think they’ll send in a chopper to lift us out?” DeWitt asked.
Murdock shook his head. “Not a chance. Think what a wild tale that crew is going to spin about how much fire they took. They might even have a hole or two from shrapnel. Oh, hell no, they won’t risk losing another bird in here just for fourteen fucked-up SEALs.”
“Yeah, I agree. We need any more scouts out?”
“Lam can do it to the front. No way we can maintain scouts on each flank. Damn walls are getting steeper.”
DeWitt checked ahead. “This ravine is petering out on us. In another two miles we’ll have to go up the side of the ridge line and hope it gets us to the top of this one and then someway to get down the reverse to the next ridge. How many you guess we’ll do?”
Murdock put away his compass. They had been heading almost due south. He figured they were inside the long point of China that daggered south between India’s Sikkim area and the small nation of Bhutan.
&n
bsp; “It might be simpler to head west and get back across the border to India. If any of our ridges or valleys aim that direction. This whole neck of China can’t be more than fifteen miles wide at the broadest, and it comes almost to a point the farther south we go.”
“It might come down to which route China gives us,” DeWitt said. “Right now I’d bet that they will attack us before we get to the top of this long ravine.”
They moved again. Murdock put Lam out two hundred and increased the space between his men to twenty yards. He kept watching the ridge to their left. He didn’t know why, unless it was because he had a feeling the mortar rounds came from that side. He went to the Motorola.
“Lam, anyone. See anything to the ridge on the left? I have a bad feeling about it.”
“That’s where the mortar rounds came from,” Lam said. “I checked one ground hit. It’s not obvious like an artillery round, but I figured the spray of rock was more to the right than the left. So the round came angling in from the left.”
Twenty minutes later the ravine ended in a sheet of rock wall of ninety degrees. Lam had scouted left and right and he pointed to the right. That’s when the first mortar round came in. The Chicoms hadn’t set in their base plate yet so they couldn’t get any accuracy until it was solidly in the ground. The first round was off downhill and onto the side of the ravine wall to the right.
The SEALs had bunched up at the wall. Now Murdock bellowed at them. “Spread out. Two men with Pups go up that left wall and see if you can find that gun. I want it out of there.”
Just as Bradford and Ostercamp started up the left slope, rifle fire erupted from the top. The two dove for protective boulders and scurried behind them. The scattering SEALs also found large rock boulders they could hide behind.
The mortars fired twice more, once short, the other one long.
“Have us bracketed,” Murdock said. “Stay down. Bull Pups, I want two rounds each along the top of that ridge left. Laser the top of the ridge and hope for an airburst that will sweep the backside clean. Fire when ready.”
Murdock lifted his Pup and lasered the light on the top of the left ridge three hundred yards upslope. He fired. He saw three air bursts before his hit with another air burst. The firing from the top slowed, but didn’t stop. Four more rounds went off just above the ridge top and the firing from there stopped suddenly.
“Bradford and Ostercamp, on up to the top and hunt that—”
A mortar round went off just off where the SEALs hid behind rocks.
When the round went off, Ostercamp and Bradford hit the ground, but when the shrapnel stopped singing, they jumped up and ran up the slope. Soon they were grabbing rocks with their hands to help them get up. Behind them they heard four more mortar rounds go off. They charged faster, panting for breath, legs stinging from the buildup of toxins. Another twenty feet.
A Chinese soldier lifted up ahead and swung his rifle around. Bradford drilled him with three rounds from the 5.56mm barrel and he slammed backward out of sight.
Two more mortar rounds hit below as Bradford and Ostercamp bellied up to the ridge line and looked over. Forty yards down the slope a gun squad of four men worked the mortar. The SEALs saw two infantrymen on the top of the ridge looking over. Ostercamp pointed at the infantrymen and then at himself. He hosed down the two men with six 5.56mm-rounds each, while Bradford slammed three 20- mm rounds into the mortar crew.
The gun toppled over, blown off its bipod. Two of the men on the gun went down with multiple and fatal shrapnel wounds. The third man carried a round toward the assistant gunner. He dropped it and tried to run, but Ostercamp’s three rounds of 5.56mm slugs cut his stomach open and he died in seconds. The fourth man vanished behind some rocks.
The two SEALs studied the ravine. It was a twin for the one they had just come up. Far down Ostercamp pointed to a blob. It had to be a mile away. “What is it?”
Bradford put his Pup scope on it. “A damned Jeep. No wonder they got ahead of us. Range?”
Ostercamp had his Bull Pup up as well and sighted in. “More than a mile. Range on these pups is only twelve hundred. Let’s laser it and try a couple of rounds. Shooting downhill we get more distance. Might scare them.” They laser sighed on the jeep, and fired. The two rounds air burst forty yards short of the target, but enough shrapnel slammed that way that the jeep-type rig dug its wheels as it raced down the slope and out of range.
“Give the bastard something to think about,” Bradford said. He saw something and fired a quick shot from the 20mm at a rock twenty yards from the ruined mortar. A man screamed, lifted up and tried to fire a rifle, then crumpled and didn’t move.
“We’re clear up here,” Bradford said in his Motorola.
“Come on down,” Murdock said. “We’re going up the other side. Thanks for silencing that mortar. We picked up a couple of scratches in the exchange. Nothing to worry about. We’re moving.”
“Cap, we scared away a vehicle of some kind, jeep-like. It went blasting out of range down the ravine. We won’t have to worry about that mortar or those infantrymen.”
“Roger that.”
It took the SEALs ten minutes to work up the sharp incline of the right-hand side of their ravine. Once on the crest, they saw that it angled into a far higher ridge in front of them that was slanting more to the west. Murdock checked his compass.
“Yes, let’s get down that slope and into the valley down there, more of a ravine, maybe thirty feet wide at the bottom, but it will be easier working to the west.”
They hiked.
Twice in the next hour they heard aircraft. Once it was a pair of what they figured were MiGs slanting across the sky up high and well to the north of them.
The second aircraft was a chopper. It worked away from them, then came back. Murdock decided it was following the ravines, hunting for them. This time it was closer.
“Let’s find something to hide under or around. Rocks, shrubs, anything and get dirt and rocks over you. Can’t tell how close this bastard will come.”
They covered up as well as they could. There wasn’t enough dirt and growth here to do a perfect job. Anyone with good glasses from five hundred feet could pick them out. Murdock lay in his small depression next to a boulder and behind a small shrub and hoped.
Then it was too late. The chopper swung over the ridge and aimed right for them. It turned away from them, and flew up the canyon to the source two miles away.
“Hold tight, he’ll be back” Murdock said in the Motorola. “Be ready for him. If he finds us and fires, we take him out with the twenties. Be ready to fire.”
They waited.
Five minutes later the chopper came back. It slowed fifty yards from them, then came forward again, slow, then hovered. It was about two hundred feet and the rotor wash blew away some of the sand on the ground.
Then the Chinese bird inched forward until it was over the first SEAL. In a quick move the chopper pilot turned the bird in a small circle around the SEALs and the door gunner got off a murderous burst with a 30-caliber, door-mounted machine gun aimed directly at the SEALs.
25
With the first muzzle blast from the machine gun, four SEALs fired with their twenties. The machine gun rounds splattered into the rocks around the SEALs. Three of the four twenties hit the bird and exploded on impact. The gunner slumped over his 30 caliber before he could fire again. One 20mm round detonated inside the cockpit, shattering the instruments, killing the pilot and sending the craft into a whirling and gyrating dance as it dove power on into the ground and exploded fifty feet from the SEALs.
“Any casualties?” DeWitt asked on the Motorola.
“Only the Chicoms in the fucking chopper,” Jaybird chirped. “That was a big bird, a lot like our forty-sixes. Must be used for transporting troops. So I wonder where they are?”
“Yeah, Lieutenant, I’m not exactly a casualty, but I’ve got me a little scratch,” Guns Franklin said, his voice missing its usual twang.
“On
it,” Mahanani said. He lifted from the ground and looked around for Franklin. He was at the edge of the group. The medic ran to him and knelt in front of Franklin. He couldn’t see any blood.
“Where, buddy?”
“Arm, a ricochet I’d guess. Fucker hurts like my arm was blown off.”
Mahanani saw some blood then, halfway up Franklin’s left forearm. He peeled back the cammy shirt gently.
“Yeah, just a scratch, Guns. About three inches long and to the bone. Gonna need some stitches in there. I’ll use some butterfly bandages to pull it together.”
Mahanani dumped antiseptic on the wound, then pulled it together and bound the whole thing with a roller bandage.
“There you go, Guns. You want a morphine?”
“Hell, no, just a damn scratch.”
“Fit for duty, Commander, and ready to roll,” Franklin said to his lip mike.
“Yeah, we better move,” Murdock said. “If there’s any more Chicom air in the area, this burning chopper is another damn signal flare to them where we are. Let’s choggie.”
They hiked.
Lam kept them on a generally western course, heading into the closest friendly territory, the Sikkim area of India. Murdock wondered if there would be any border guards. India and China had never been on good terms. Now with the overflights and the shoot downs, tensions could be running high. Even so, he figured that border guards up in this remote most northern part of India were unlikely.
They moved out for an hour down the small valley, then had to go up and over another ridge when the valley turned south. They were on the side slope with no vegetation at all when they heard a jet plane.
“Down and don’t move,” Murdock barked into the Motorola. “We don’t know where he is or if he’s coming this way. We play it safe.”
They waited for five minutes.
The jet sound faded and was gone.
The SEALs moved again to the west.
Murdock couldn’t help but think about the pilot on the first 46 that bugged out on them. It was mortar fire, not pinpoint target shooting. Chances were that the bird would not have been hit at all, even with a fire-for-effect, six-round salvo from the Chicom mortar men. A mortar is an area weapon, not a direct targeting one.
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