Flashpoint sts-11

by Keith Douglass

  “Looks worse than the day you were hit,” Mahanani said. He treated both sides of the wrist, put compresses over the wounds, then bandaged it tightly and wrapped the bandage with inch-wide 3M Transpore sticky tape.

  “Should keep you until we get back in the wet. If that starts hurting, you give me a holler. Checked Dober’s thigh, and it looks worse than your wound. Who fed you guys those indestructible pills, anyway?”

  “Got them from you, corpsman. Now get some sleep.”

  DeWitt watched Murdock a minute. “That arm giving you trouble?”

  “No, it’s fine. Now you get some sleep.”

  Ed held his finger to his lips and pointed down the hill. They saw four men in cammies like theirs moving slowly upward as if following a trail. Murdock ducked behind a larger bush and waited. The four men kept coming, some chattering, some looking up the hill.

  “We sure they have only blanks?” DeWitt whispered.

  “We shoot beside them, they’ll hear the lead. We don’t let them use their weapons.”

  By then the four men were twenty yards away. They frowned, argued among themselves, then came on. When they were ten yards away, Murdock and DeWitt sprang out, firing two two-round bursts from the 5.56mm barrel of the Bull Pup. They shot beside the men so they could see the bullets.

  Murdock and DeWitt charged the men. Two had dropped their rifles and held up their hands. The other two half lifted weapons, then lowered them. One chattered something in Spanish.

  Ching ran down the trail to the group. “He said you’re not supposed to have real bullets. You’ll get in a lot of trouble.”

  “Tell them we’re not in his game,” Murdock said. “The game is over for them. Tie them up. We’ll leave them here when we leave. Somebody will find them before they starve to death.”

  Half the SEALs woke up with the firing. They helped put the plastic riot cuffs on the four Colombians and stashed them at the side of the trail. They stacked their rifles neatly and went back to their improvised bunks.

  “If anyone comes looking for them, we get the troops up and bug out over the hills to the south,” Murdock said. He had Ching pull guard duty, and he and DeWitt vanished into the brush for some sleep.

  One of the SEALs highest on the slope was Senior Chief Dobler. He hadn’t slept. He kept thinking about home and his wife and family. How was Nancy holding up? He wondered if the two women were meeting with her and helping her.

  He hoped so. His family was tremendously important to him. He had been on the point of quitting the SEALs several times in the past year. Nancy was so insecure, so worried about him, about the kids, about everything.

  Dobler remembered when they were first going together. He could remember the exact time when he first saw her at that little dance in the community center. He had been nearly twenty-two years old and sure that he would be a bachelor forever. It just seemed the best way to go. No responsibilities. No one to answer to every night. No one to explain what happened if he lost his pay in a poker game. No one…

  That soon became unimportant. He saw Nancy, and she twirled when dancing with someone else. Her eyes lit up and her face was ecstatic. She was simply the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He cut in on the couple and whirled her away and longed to see that same expression on her face. He had taken her home from the dance.

  “Hey, pretty Nancy. I’m going to marry you. Did I tell you that?”

  She looked up at him and laughed. “Hey, no offense, but I’m shooting for a higher goal. Some rich guy who can take care of me and buy me all sorts of diamonds and cars and furs and boats and we go to Las Vegas and drop a few thousand and we don’t even notice it. Oh, my, yes. I want to marry a rich man. Now isn’t it just as easy for a girl to fall for a rich guy as it is to fall in love with some handsome sailor boy?”

  He said he figured it was. At her place there was a porch without a light, and he eased up close and looked at her, then lowered his face toward hers. She didn’t back away or protest. He kissed her gently, then again. The third time, she had her arms around him and pushed close against him.

  They went out every night for two weeks, then he had to go on sea duty for six months. When he came back, she was there, waiting for him, and two months later, they were married.

  She hated his six-month sea duty, but it came and went. The first time after they were married, she was pregnant with Helen. She cried and asked him to quit the Navy. He explained it wasn’t a job you could walk in and quit. He had signed for four years. Two were up, but he had two more to do. She begged him to quit after the hitch was up. He promised they would talk about it.

  Somehow, they never did. Then one day he came home and found Nancy on the floor, nearly dead by her own hand. That was when he talked with her mother and discovered Nancy’s sensitive nature and her suicide attempts when she was in high school.

  This last one had been the worst. He thought he had lost her. Even now he wasn’t sure. Yes, she had moderated, she had come down from her manic stage, but how long could she hold? Most important, would the two other SEAL women be a positive influence on her?

  He stared himself right in the face and knew the way he was going. He had eighteen years in the Navy. He could do the last year and a half standing on his head. It didn’t have to be in SEALs. He slammed his hand against the ground.

  Damnit, if he had to, he would quit the platoon and go back to administration or some other nonfield assignment in the SEAL Team operation. With his clout, he could find a berth for a year and a half. Then he’d consider getting out of the Navy for good. It all depended on how Nancy reacted to this mission and his absence. He knew she’d go half crazy when she saw his shot-up thigh. No way he could keep that a secret.

  But first, they had to get out of this trap. How could their own government write them off this way? How could they ignore fifteen U.S. citizens on foreign soil where the embassy had just been invaded, the diplomats held captive, and by now the embassy totally destroyed. How in hell could his own government do that to him?

  Twenty feet below where Dobler worried, Murdock came awake and alert. He felt his lip mike in place. “Who’s on guard duty?” he asked softly in the set. No one responded. It was almost dusk in the woodland. He rose silently and moved down the hill to the lookout point. Bill Bradford sat there with his weapon across his knees, looking through a bush down the hill.

  “Bradford?”

  The man turned. “Hi, Cap.”

  “Didn’t you hear my last transmission?”

  “Not a whisper. Try it again.”

  Murdock spoke into the lip mike.

  “Damn, I’m down. Could be the battery. We have spares? Oh, yeah, that little package in the waterproof. Watch this spot for me for a minute, and I’ll go get a new battery.”

  “Go.”

  Murdock studied the last of the landscape he could see. He could hear no guns chattering. Maybe the war was over until daylight for the game players. He hoped the tanks had gone back to their base. It was so frustrating. He knew they couldn’t be more than three to five miles from the sea, yet somehow they couldn’t get there.

  Hell, they were going to head due west with dark and go around or through anybody or anything that tried to stop them. They had the firepower and the incentive. Besides, he was getting hungry.

  He tapped his mike. “Wake up call, crew. Time to rise and shine. We’re heading for the water. With any luck, we should be back in some warm, dry bunks before the night is over. Anybody want to take a hike?”

  He got various comments over the net. Five minutes later, they were assembled and ready to move.

  DeWitt came up to Murdock in the darkness. “We better cut these four soldiers loose, Cap. Don’t see how they can hurt us. Somebody must know we’re in this general area. We’ll take their rifles and throw them away.”

  Murdock thought about it a minute. “Go,” he said. The men couldn’t believe they were set free. Ching told them they were lucky to be alive. That they should rush b
ack to their units and say only that they got lost and misplaced their rifles.

  Lam led them out due west, down the hill, over part of the heavy tracks of the tanks, and along a small stream heading for the sea.

  Lights showed to one side a half mile away. Murdock guessed they were the war games camp. They didn’t have out any patrols or security. Around a small hill they saw more lights, and the clanking of heavy metal on metal.

  Lam stopped for Murdock to come up. “Has to be the tank company,” Lam said. “They are working on tracks or rollers, something with a heavy sound.”

  “Around them,” Murdock said.

  “You don’t want us to steal a tank and ride in style to the beach?” Lam asked.

  “Not unless you can get fourteen guys hanging on the outside of the rig.”

  They detoured and kept going. Murdock thought he could smell salt air. Lam said no way.

  Dobler realized with a start that he was limping. He hadn’t noticed it before. Just a little limp, a quick move with his right leg so it wouldn’t have to take his weight so long. Damn. In the dark nobody could see it.

  Nancy would shit purple if she knew he was wounded. He had made Murdock promise not to let her know until they got home and he could do the talking.

  A mile on west, they heard loudspeakers. Ching listened closely but could catch only a few words.

  “ ‘Enemies of the people of Colombia,’ that’s all I can understand, Cap,” Ching said.

  “What the fuck is going on up there?” Murdock asked. DeWitt and Jaybird shook their heads.

  “Could be a beach blockade,” Dobler said. “Somehow they knew we were SEALs in the other places. Why not here, too? They know we go to water. They knew where we were. This must be one of the closest places to get to the Caribbean Sea.”

  “Lam, Jaybird, on me. Let’s go see.” They worked their way silently through the dark night along the stream, which had now grown into a good-sized river thirty feet across. Beyond the fringe of trees bordering the creek, they could see farmland and a few houses here and there. Most had lights on.

  Six hundred yards from where they stopped, the three SEALs bellied down beside a fallen tree trunk and peered over the decomposing top.

  They saw a highway, and beyond it the crashing surf of the Caribbean Sea. The highway was easy to spot. Two huge searchlights shone on it, turning the night into noon. Not even an ant could crawl across that blacktop road without being seen.

  “The searchlights are easy,” Lam said. “The twenties with impact hits. Then a charge.”

  “Where are their support troops?” Jaybird asked. “They must have a couple of hundred riflemen guarding the area with the searchlights.”

  “Just beyond the blacktop roadway, the beach drops off ten, fifteen feet,” Murdock said. “They could have the troops down there waiting. A surprise party.”

  “The searchlights are reaching out about a hundred yards,” Jaybird said. “So they cover a spot two hundred yards wide. We could shoot out the lights, with most of our guys down in the dark on the other side of that light. That way we’d go across at a spot they didn’t think they would have to defend.”

  “Unless they figure that’s what we would figure,” Lam said with a big grin.

  “We can’t stay here all night. Lam, you have your Pup. You stay here with your ears on. We get the platoon in position down the way, I’ll give you a go on the lights. You nail both and run your ass down to where the rest of us will be waiting. As soon as you get there, we go across the fucking road.” Murdock whacked Lam on the shoulder.

  “Give us twenty minutes to get into position.” Murdock and Jaybird took off at a run to get back to the platoon.

  27

  On the Coast

  Northern Colombia

  Murdock moved his men as close to the highway as the terrain permitted. He had cover to within forty yards of the road. He and the rest of the platoon were fifty yards from the searchlight with the beam pointed the other way. It was dark on this side for as far as he could see to the south.

  He used the Motorola. “Okay, Lam, take out the lights.”

  The sound of the 20mm round exploding on the nearest six-foot-high searchlight came almost at once. The light died. A moment later, the other light two hundred yards away exploded as well, and the beams of light coming toward where the SEALs lay snapped off.

  “Let’s move up slowly, watching everything,” Murdock said. “Go now. Walk. We don’t want any surprises. Over this highway and then we hope to make it to the beach in a rush. Easy now.”

  The line of SEALs spread ten yards apart moved toward the moonlit blacktop road. They heard some voices to the right where the searchlights had shone. No sounds came from directly ahead. They worked through a shallow ditch at the side of the highway and went up the shoulder. Murdock watched the far side of the roadway where it dropped off six or eight feet to the beach sand. He could see nothing.

  The flat crack of an AK-47 on full auto slammed through the silence. “Get down,” Murdock barked into the network. The fourteen SEALs went prone in the small ditch as a dozen weapons opened up across the highway, directly in front of them. They had just enough cover in the ditch to keep from being slaughtered.

  “Grenades,” DeWitt shrilled into the Motorola. The SEALs had started out with six hand bombs each. They had used some. Fourteen grenades sailed across the blacktop and vanished on the other side. They went off in a staccato of death against the gunmen defending the road. One grenade had been a WP, and its bright burning streamers of white phosphorus lit up the night sky for a dozen seconds.

  The SEALs saw a few heads showing over the rim of the roadway. A barrage of fire barely skimming the road surface made direct hits on four of the curious heads. One Colombian soldier began screaming and couldn’t stop.

  The rifle fire from across the road ceased.

  “Pull back,” Murdock said into his lip mike. “Back to some cover. Those trees will be best. Go, now.”

  They sprinted for the trees and made fifty yards before the defenders could send more shots after them. Murdock took a squad check. Lam called in from behind them.

  “Why didn’t you guys wait for me?” he asked.

  Murdock heard DeWitt get a net check. Five men came on the set. DeWitt waited a minute. “Quinley, are you with us?” There was no reply. “Quinley, can you hear me?”

  As DeWitt called, the Colombians launched another round of rifle fire from their secure position in the drop-off across the highway.

  The SEALs took cover behind trees and a small hump of land.

  “Ed, we can’t go look for Quinley now. We’ve got to reduce those forces over there.”

  “Yeah, how?” DeWitt asked.

  “How close can these twenties explode in an airburst?” Jaybird asked.

  Murdock frowned. Everyone had talked about long range on them. “Let’s find out. We’re back about fifty yards. I’ll laser a round at the far edge of the pavement and see what happens.” Murdock leaned around the tree, sighted in on the shadowy edge of the pavement, found the focus spot, and pulled the trigger. He still wasn’t used to the heavy thump of the recoil from the 20mm round. The shell exploded in an airburst almost at once at the far edge of the pavement.

  “Yes,” shouted Jaybird.

  “Two twenties for every Pup shooter,” Murdock said. “Laser the far edge of the pavement. Should work.”

  They fired and the ten airbursts rained death down on the Colombians hiding behind the drop-off.

  The return fire from the highway cut off. In the sudden silence they could hear some screams, an order barked out, and then no voices at all.

  “Mahanani and I are going to find Quinley,” DeWitt said.

  “Go,” Murdock said. He considered storming the roadway now. The chance that the Colombians had pulled out was good but not sure. How many men would he lose if there was even a squad left there with the AK-47s? Too many. He’d wait on Quinley. The man might be seriously wounded.
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  No firing came for three minutes.

  “Murdock. Just found Quinley. He’s gone. Took a round through the side of his head. KIA. Should I bring him back there, or are we going over the side here?”

  “Have Mahanani check over the far side for any hostiles. Sorry about Quinley. We take him with us.”

  “Yeah. Take him. Mahanani is checking. Oh, he just went over the side below the highway. Must be clear. He’s back up.”

  Mahanani bent low and ran back to where DeWitt lay.

  “Yeah, slaughtered about fifteen of them. Spread all over. Equipment, ammo, even food. Bugged out anybody who was alive. We should be able to get down there and then make a run for the surf. Figure it’s about fifty, maybe seventy-five yards off. Almost no waves.”

  “Murdock, you hear Mahanani’s report?”

  “Yeah. Both of you go over the side and check each way for thirty yards. Want to be damn sure.”

  “On our way.”

  The two SEALs dropped over the lip into the sand and sprinted. DeWitt went right, Mahanani left. Moments later, they hit the net.

  “Clear right,” DeWitt said.

  “Clear left,” Mahanani said.

  “Moving in. We’ll bring Quinley with us. Set up some protection both ways.”

  “Skipper, there’s some kind of a pier sticking out into the sea south maybe a hundred yards from where I am. A few boats along it. Look like fishing boats.”

  “Noted. Thanks.”

  Five minutes later, the SEALs dropped over the side of the highway into the sand. They moved twenty yards left to get away from the dead bodies and began to stow their radios in the waterproof compartments on their combat vests.

  “Somebody coming from the right,” Lam said. “Vehicle with no lights.”

  “Down, everyone,” Murdock called.

  The rig came closer, then a machine gun chattered from a mount on the vehicle. Lam put a 20mm round into the gun flashes. When the round hit, it detonated, silencing the machine gun and probably killing the driver. The jeep’s engine sputtered and stopped.