When they got out of here, Murdock was going to make every effort to contact that pilot in person and take him apart verbally and physically if possible. The bastard had run out on them. Yellow-bellied out, and Murdock would have some satisfaction.
“You never leave your men behind in combat.”
It was a principle that every officer had to commit to. This fucking pilot chickened out and flew away when the first mortar round hit. Murdock let his anger rage as he walked along. He was going to write up a scathing letter of objection, critical and asking for a reprimand, a letter in the officer’s permanent personnel file, and a court-martial if possible.
Murdock came out of his reverie with sound in his earpiece.
“Looks like some trouble up ahead,” Lam said.
“What?” Murdock asked.
“Not sure, come on up, skipper and take a look.”
Murdock called a halt and put the men down, then moved up to where Lam lay at the top of the ridge looking down the reverse slope.
“A blocking force?” Lam asked.
Murdock looked down in the small valley. Six hundred yards ahead he saw six wall tents, cooking fires, a dozen men moving around the tents, and a squad of eight lined up in front of the area for an inspection or getting ready to go out on patrol.
“Infantry, for damn sure,” Murdock said.
“Bet they have patrols out blocking every possible route through this area,” Lam said. “There could be fifty to seventy-five troops in that camp.”
“So we don’t tangle with them,” Murdock said. “Even with the twenties, because we don’t know where all of their men are. Let’s not make the ones not in camp mad. We work around and through them, and hope we get a break.”
Murdock looked around. “Best bet is we go down this ridge to the valley, up the other side and over that ridge. Gives us about a mile away from the camp. Then we work west and watch for any ambush patrols just sitting there waiting for somebody to walk into their traps. We also look for roving patrols and individual sentries. With that many men they can flood this area.”
Before either of them could move they heard a jet passing over them and thundering away to the west, then it turned north.
“Never hear those suckers until they go by you when they’re that close,” Lam said. “Think he saw us?”
“No. He was looking at the camp down there. Checking on it. Probably in radio contact with them for any help they might need. We better get moving.”
It took the SEALs almost an hour to get away from the Chinese camp and into the next ravine-like small valley and back on their way to the west.
Murdock wondered how long the Chicoms had been in that blocking position. If they had just arrived by chopper, they might not have a lot of patrols out yet. His platoon might get lucky and slip through.
Lam edged up to the lip of another ridge and looked over. They had to go down the other side and across a larger valley with the hint of a stream in the bottom. In the center of the valley beside the now-dry streambed, stood a tree. In the shade of the tree sat six Chinese soldiers, evidently taking a break and eating from their rice rolls that usually were slung over their shoulders.
“Skipper, our luck ran out. We’ve got a six-man patrol up here on our route.”
Murdock hurried up to the spot and looked over.
“Looks like they will be there for a while. Can you see any radios?”
“Nope. Check it with your Pup scope.”
Murdock put the scope on the six and shook his head. “No radio, but a few twenty rounds could be heard in here for five miles.”
“Skipper, don’t look like we can go round this one without backtracking four or five miles. I’ve been watching this ridge to our right. That’s the way we’d have to go. It’s a sheer cliff two hundred feet high. Not a rat’s ass chance we can get up it. We go through these guys or we backtrack a mile out of sight and try to go past them on the left. Which I don’t recommend.”
“Done,” Murdock said. “DeWitt, take a look at this,” Murdock said in his Motorola.
The tall, slender (j.g.) came up to the spot and swore when he saw the patrol. “They settled down there to keep house for a month or so?”
“Looks like it. No chance to go around them on the right. We could go back a mile and try to get past them on the left.”
“More Chicoms over there, it’s a bet,” DeWitt said. “Hell, we have to go through them and then run like hell west before the rest of those Chicoms come boiling in here to see who’s shooting.”
“Agreed. We move up the ridge to the closest spot to the patrol, then do it.”
It took them fifteen minutes to move along the side of the ridge to the spot Lam had picked for the attack. They spread out five yards apart and set up. The Chinese patrol had finished eating and the men were sitting around waiting. The targets were less than two hundred yards away.
“Fire on my command. Ten seconds should do it. All weapons. Ready… fire.”
The fourteen weapons cracked, chattered and blasted. The machine gun belted out six-round bursts. The twenties exploded on contact riddling the standing and sitting Chinese infantry. Two crawled behind rocks and returned fire, but they didn’t seem sure where the rounds came from. Murdock saw one of the men hiding behind a rock and lasered a round and fired. It exploded ten feet over the rock shredding the back side of the hiding spot with deadly shrapnel.
Twelve seconds into the firing, Murdock called a cease-fire.
Only one Chinese soldier still stood. He raised his rifle, then fell flat on his face.
“Let’s move, people,” Murdock said. “Down the slope through that little valley and up the other side before our Chicom friends get some support. Go, go, go.”
Murdock trotted down the easy slope with the others, double-timed across the small valley edging around the dead Chinese. One of them lifted a pistol and took six SEAL rounds in his chest.
Murdock used the mike as he jogged along. “Okay, logic time. This last hit means the Chicoms will figure out in about twenty seconds where we’re headed. Not sure how much farther we have to go, but even if it’s two miles, it gives them plenty of time and space to set up a surprise for us. How?”
“Send in a pair of choppers with troops to cover four or five of the valleys we may use,” Lam said.
“Could, what else?
“Same choppers could bring in a small tank?” Jaybird asked. “They have birds big enough to lift that much?”
“Unknown. Other ideas.”
“A pair of chopper gunships, like our Cobra. The kind built for strafing and rocketing ground targets. They would know to stay out of range of our twenties.”
“Yeah,” Murdock said. “Three ideas that could happen. So now we work on ways to counter all three of them. So work on them, and in the meantime we blast our way over this fucking ridge and get out of eyesight of the bodies back there. That’s in case they have any sub-five-minute mile runners on their Chicom teams.”
They soon topped the ridge and worked at a slower pace down the far side. Again it was slab rock, some decomposed granite and a little more sparse growth of grass and a bush here and there.
“Lam, how far have we come since we turned west,” DeWitt asked on the mike.
“Six, maybe eight miles,” Lam said.
“So, if we only had ten to twelve to go, we could be within two to four miles of the border.”
“Hell of a long choggie when a hundred bastards are shooting at you,” Howie Anderson said.
They worked down a two-mile-long razor-thin valley that had a dry streambed in the bottom. More growth showed now, with a scattering of brush along the streambed.
Thirty minutes after topping the ridge line, they were though the valley and moving up another ridge. Lam edged to the top and stared over it. Then he stood and waved them forward. They were halfway down the slope before they saw the two camouflaged Chinese armored personnel carriers. Both moved out and machine guns on the hatches p
ivoted toward the SEALs.
“Scatter,” Murdock bellowed and the SEALs darted different directions until they were twenty yards apart. They hit the ground, and at once the heavy machine gun fire came their way.
“What the hell, Skipper,” Jaybird barked. “Our twenties won’t touch those babies.”
“About the size of our V-three hundred Commando APCs,” Anderson said. “Which means they could have ten troops inside each one.”
“Bull Pups, dig out your armor-piercing rounds and load five in the mag. Then let’s see what we can do. Sound off when you’re loaded and ready.”
Forty seconds later the five men with Bull Pups were ready.
The enemy machine guns chattered again. They were heavy, fifties, Murdock decided. Big enough to tear a man’s arm off at the shoulder.
“Fire two rounds of twenty each,” Murdock said. He sighted in without the laser and fired. Worked the sight and fired again. Murdock watched the target through his six-power scope. He saw two of the rounds hit and explode with no penetration. One jolted through a viewport and must have exploded inside. The vehicle veered off course and came to a stop.
“One lucky hit,” Murdock said on the mike. “What do we do with the other one?”
“I’m hit,” a SEAL shrilled in his lip mike.
“Who?” Murdock asked.
“Canzoneri. Caught a splatter of one of their rounds off a rock. Not too bad. I won’t be running any marathons for a while.”
“Mahanani, can you get to Canzoneri?”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
The armored personnel came closer. “She’s at six hundred yards,” Ed DeWitt said. “Bull Pups, work the treads. If she turns left or right, get on the side of the treads. If not, hit them head on.”
The twenties spoke again and again, but the APC plowed ahead over the hard ground and flat rock.
“Who has the EAR?” Murdock asked.
“On my back,” Ostercamp said.
“Charge it and get ready to try for any kind of a port that thing has. Fire when you’re ready. Aim at the nose of it where there could be concealed ports. We might get a lucky bounce.”
“Cap, we’ve got ten grunts out of that first APC. They’re moving up,” Jaybird said.
“Seven hundred yards. Bradford and I will go at them with our Pups, rest of your stay on the baby tank.”
Murdock sighted in, lasered and fired. Bradford fired about the same time. Murdock sighted in again as the rounds hit. Four of the Chinese went down. He fired again and so did Bradford. This time three more men slammed into the ground and didn’t move. The last three men ran behind the dead personnel carrier.
Murdock heard the familiar whoosh of the EAR. They had used it effectively at four hundred yards. He wasn’t sure if it would reach out five hundred. The EAR blast sent up a gout of dirt and dust well in front of the tank. Short.
“Wait on the EAR until the APC gets to four hundred yards, then fire five times.”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
Murdock had been sighting in on the APC. It suddenly hit some glazed rock and one tread slipped slewing it almost sideways. Four Pups barked and rounds slammed into the tread rollers and exploded. One had been an AP round, which bored through some linkage and then exploded. The APC came back on line for the SEALs but the left track wasn’t working right. It kept turning the carrier off course to the left.
At four hundred yards range, Ostercamp fired the next EAR round, waited ten seconds for the charge to build and when the red light flicked on, he fired again. Both rounds hit the APC. At first there was no obvious effect. Then gradually the rig began to slow. Ostercamp punched another EAR round at it, and then a fourth. This time the armored personnel carrier came to a stop. Only two men came out the back. They began to run to the rear, but stumbled and waved their arms to get their balance, then fell into the rocks and dirt of the high country of China, and started a six-hour nap.
Murdock waited. No more men came out of the stalled rig. He looked at his Bull Pup. He had only six rounds left. “Ammo count on the Pups,” he said.
When the men checked in, they averaged five rounds per man.
“Hold fire on the twenties unless we absolutely need them,” Murdock said. “Use the five fifty-six instead.”
“Lam, what do you see up there?”
Lam had taken out his eight-by-thirty fieldglasses and stared down the valley. “Not good, Skipper. I wondered why those two men ran to the rear. There are at least three camouflaged tents back there a mile and half. Big enough to hold twenty men each. They could still have forty men ready to fight. Must be some kind of a check point. Not sure but there could be a chopper on the ground almost behind one of the tents. They know we’re here. Men running all over the place. I see no vehicles.”
There was some dead air on the Motorolas.
“Medic, how is Canzoneri?”
“Gouge out of his right leg. Took out a chunk of flesh and bled like a stuck hog. I’ve got it bundled up, but he’s gonna need a crutch to walk and we’ll distribute his equipment and weapon. Not ready for duty.”
“Noted, Mahanani.”
“I’ll be a shit-faced mama whore,” Lam exploded. “They just formed up in squads and now are marching this way in diamond formations. A whole fucking bunch more than just forty. I’d say over a hundred. Commander Murdock, what the hell are we supposed to do now?”
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“What do we do?” Murdock echoed. “First we pull back over the ridge and set up on the reverse slope. When they get in range of the twenties, we hit them with ten of our remaining twenty-five rounds. We take assigned sectors to do the most damage. If that doesn’t stop them, we run like hell into the valley behind us. There’s enough real dirt down there so we vanish.”
“Vanish like in hide holes?” Jefferson asked.
“Exactly. Now, let’s get over that ridge line.”
The waiting was the hardest. They had moved back to the ridge and went over it, then set up with weapons primed and ready, thrusting over the ridge, and aimed eleven hundred yards down the slope. The Chinese would be still in the valley when they came in range. Murdock hoped that they didn’t split up into flanking units.
“Fifteen hundred yards,” Lam said. “Remember, shooting downhill you’ll get a distortion. Will that make any difference on the lasered sights?”
“We’ll find out,” DeWitt said.
The troops below seemed to be moving slowly. They acted like they were on an ambush patrol checking every bush and gully. Another five minutes before Lam sounded off.
“I make it eleven hundred yards, Commander. A hundred yards inside our Bull Pup range.”
Murdock assigned all five guns to the target with each one a different sector. “I’ll fire one round for range and we’ll check it,” Murdock said. He lasered in on the point of the men in his sector and fired. They saw the flash a second before the sound of the twenty exploding slammed past them like a thundering herd of buffalo.
“Yeah, on target,” Lam said putting down his fieldglasses.
“Two rounds each on your sectors,” Murdock said and sighted in again. All but one of the ten rounds were on target. The Chinese hit the ground after Murdock’s first shot. They made a better target that way for an air burst. Two men ran to the rear. One whole diamond formation was neutralized with dead and wounded.
Two other formations regrouped, and with what must have been strong leadership, began walking forward.
“Let’s move it,” Murdock said. “Down to the dry river-bed. Twenty yards apart. Should be enough loose sand down there to make the holes easy. Go, go, go.”
They jogged down the slope.
“Twenty minutes,” DeWitt said on the net. “Should take the Chicoms twenty to get up that slope the way they’re moving. So we need some fast action of the digging.”
The SEALs came to the streambed and spaced out along it facing the ridge they had just left. Then they dug with their hands and their K-bar knives, m
oving enough sand to lay down in the hole and then pull the sand over them as total camouflage. Only their faces would show and the muzzles of their weapons pointing at the ridge line.
All the men worked hard. Canzoneri had given his weapon and combat vest to buddies and Mahanani helped him make the trip down to the dry streambed.
“Hurts like hell, Maha. Maybe one of those capsules when you get time.”
Both were digging in the sand with their combat knives. Mahanani gave Canzoneri a shot of morphine, then made sure he was covered and ready before he finished his own hole.
“Short time,” Murdock called. The last man slid into his hole and pulled the last bit of sand over his arms and chest.
They were good. Murdock looked ahead and could see only one lump of sand that looked unnatural. It should work.
Again they waited.
Murdock has positioned himself so he could see the ridge line they had just left. That’s where the first Chicoms should appear.
Another five minutes crawled by before Murdock saw the first Chicom head lift tentatively over the ridge line and then vanish. Two more took a look, then another, probably an officer, edged up and used fieldglasses.
“Our company has arrived,” Murdock whispered into his lip mike.
The Chinese became bolder. One man sat on the ridgetop. Another stood and pointed his rifle down into the small valley. The enemy troops were less than two hundred yards from the SEALs. If they marched across the streambed they would probably step on one of the SEALs. If they kicked one man out of the camouflage it would be a close-in deadly fight, and the SEALs would not have a chance. Would they come down?
As he watched, Murdock saw three men slide over the edge and move forward. Good move, send out a patrol. The three men moved with nervous hesitation. They looked across the valley and at the far ridge line. It was a thousand yards away, but they had been hurt before at that range. If the patrol kept coming, Murdock knew two of them would miss the SEALs. One man would be inside the group. He couldn’t see exactly where. Then they were so close, Murdock ducked his face into his hand and slid his cammy colored floppy hat over his head.
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