Flashpoint sts-11

by Keith Douglass

  “No more firing,” Murdock called. “We’ll see who else comes. Get your gear ready for wet. Set up in an arc around this spot. Lam, watch over the pavement to see if they bring anybody up that way.”

  All was quiet for a minute. Then they heard equipment rattling, jingling. The Colombians were coming. There were no gun flashes to give them away, but every SEAL on the beach knew they were coming. No time to get into the water. Someone would carry Quinley, and that would slow them all down.

  Murdock watched to the right. They must have most of their men there. He checked his situation. They were hard against the six-foot drop-off from the highway for rear protection. Open on the other three sides. Water in front. Beach both ways. No way to see any terrain features.

  They couldn’t use the airbursts without some target to laser. They had no targets at all until the enemy began firing. Claymore? No time to rig one thirty yards in front of them.

  “Anybody have any forties left?” Murdock asked the man next to him and the question flashed around the men. The answer came back quietly. There was one left.

  “Fire it a hundred yards down to the right, and we’ll see what happens.”

  Seconds later, the round was on its way. It arched up high and came down with a deadly explosion. In the flash of light, Murdock could see about twenty men advancing on them in a assault line.

  “Everyone move to the right. Let’s sweep the beach with hot lead. Fire when you’re ready.”

  Gunfire erupted. Ronson’s throaty machine gun chattered out five- and seven-round bursts. The sniper rifles whammed away and the MP-5s on three-round bursts cut in with more fire. They took some return rounds and that gave them better targets.

  Lam had dropped down and used his Pup on two-round fire with the 5.56 ammo. Somebody sent a lasered round into the gun flashes and won an airburst. Then two more twenty rounds hit, and the gunfire from the right slacked off.

  As it did, Lam listened. “Two more vehicles coming,” he shouted into Murdock’s ear. “My guess, two tanks.”

  “Bradford, on me,” Murdock called. The big quartermaster dropped into the dry sand beside Murdock.

  “Give me your rifle. You’re on Quinley. We’re heading for that pier to the left. Go now. The rest of us are coming.”

  Murdock sent them three at a time, the rest keeping up the fire. When they could spot the tanks in the soft moonlight, they dropped in 20mm impact rounds on them. The tanks responded with machine gun fire.

  By then the last of the platoon had bugged out for the pier.

  It was a fishing dock, which projected from a small point of land. In the dark Murdock saw six fishing boats. Two of them on the far side of the pier were large enough to hold the SEALs.

  “Ostercamp. See if you can hot-wire the engine on that second boat. The quicker we know, the better. That tank can fire out to sea just as well as on land.”

  Murdock placed the SEALs in a defensive position around the end of the pier and on two boats on the near side. He doubted if the infantry would make another try, but the tanks would look for them. If they didn’t fire, the tank commander wouldn’t know where to look.

  Murdock found Quinley and shook his head. He had been a good man. Always ready to do his part. The round had bored all the way through Quinley’s skull. Not pretty. They wouldn’t leave him. Murdock could count on one hand the men he had left on foreign soil. Two, maybe three. He checked over the fishing boat they were hijacking. It was no bargain, smelled like fish, but it looked fairly clean. He hoped the motor was working and that they had enough fuel for a mile or so ride to sea.

  The tanks lumbered closer. They sent streams of machine gun fire around at random now, some into the water, others down the highway. The gunners had no idea where their enemy was.

  “I can do it,” Ostercamp called. “Give me about two minutes’ notice, and we can get out and away before that tank knows we’re moving.”

  Quietly, Murdock moved his men on board the boat. Ronson carried Quinley on and laid him on the short deck. The boat was mostly masts to let down with fishing lines, and a big empty center to hold the fish. The men sprawled wherever they could find room.

  Murdock, Ching, and Bradford with his machine gun took the guard posts.

  The engine kicked over and roared into full-blown life. Murdock had two men ready to cast off the lines, and they were moving.

  Ostercamp took the wheel and steered the boat away from the tanks.

  “This ain’t no hot rod, but we should be able to do about ten knots,” Ostercamp called over the roar of the engine.

  “Holt, let’s do some business,” Murdock called. They went to the back of the boat where the engine noise was weakest and made the call to the carrier. They connected on the second try.

  “Home Base, we’re in a fishing boat in the sea and heading due west. Had a few problems, including a couple of tanks, so we couldn’t call earlier. We may be fading in and out due to our motion.”

  “Read you fine, Rover. We’ll have the bird in the air in two minutes. Stay on that due west course. Our ETA a mile offshore there should be in about twenty minutes. Mark. Use a red flare when you spot our bird and go to TAC one for communication. Any wounded?”

  “No wounded. We have one KIA.”

  “Sorry, Rover. We’ll see you shortly.”

  Jaybird came out of the forward hold with a boy about twelve in tow. “Look what I found, Skip.”

  Ching looked over and said something in Spanish to the boy who grinned. He chattered back.

  “Says he’s the grandson of the boat owner and he goes out fishing with them. They were getting ready to go at five A.M.”

  Murdock chuckled. “Tell him he can drive the boat back to the dock when we leave it and have a wild story to tell his grandfather.”

  Ching translated.

  Two minutes later, Lam called out.

  “Fast boat coming up on our bow. Looks like a coastal patrol boat of some ilk.”

  “Can we hide?” Murdock asked.

  “Don’t think so, Cap,” Lam said. “Most of these patrol boats, even the small ones, have good radar. This one must be making about twenty knots.”

  “Most of these patrol craft carry a twenty-five-to-forty millimeter cannon,” Jaybird said. “Also a couple of machine guns.”

  “Range?” Murdock asked.

  “Barely see her, maybe three thousand yards.”

  “When she gets to a mile, we test our Bull Pups on max range. My guess, we might be able to discourage her from getting too close.”

  “Then she can lay off and blow us out of the water with those forties,” DeWitt said.

  “If she has any,” Murdock said. “How is that range?”

  “Twenty-five hundred if the moon is right,” DeWitt said.

  “Get the Bull Pups up here. All five of them. We laser that patrol boat, and when we can see it, we try a round. How many rounds we have left?”

  They sang out with numbers, all with more than fifteen rounds.

  “Good, we might need them.”

  “Two thousand yards and closing,” DeWitt said, looking through his binoculars.

  “Let’s try for a laser response,” Murdock said, aiming his Bull Pub at the oncoming ship.

  “She’s at least a hundred feet long,” DeWitt said. “Lots to shoot for.

  “Range is at a mile,” Jaybird said. He fired. They all waited and watched. Moments later, the round exploded on target over the top of the speeding craft.

  “Fire for effect,” Murdock said.

  The first exploding 20mm round didn’t get a reaction from the patrol boat, but when it took four more rounds raining deadly shrapnel down on the boat, it cut power.

  “The captain is thinking it over,” Murdock said. “Two rounds each, and let’s see what happens.”

  “Eight minutes ETA on the chopper,” Ostercamp said.

  Murdock fired his two rounds and watched through his binoculars as they exploded in airbursts. Eight more rounds went o
ff on or near the ship moments later. He could see that all of the forward windows had been blown out. The radar antenna must have taken a lot of shrapnel hits as well. There was no one on the decks.

  The forty-millimeter cannon on the patrol boat fired. The first round hit short, the second walked up toward the boat. Ostercamp cranked the wheel and had the boat going directly away from the path of the oncoming patrol craft.

  The third and fourth rounds hit well aft.

  “Two more rounds each,” Murdock said to the Bull Pup shooters, and they blasted away. This time Murdock saw that three crewmen were caught on deck. Two of them went down, and the third smashed into the rail and went over the side. The patrol boat kept coming toward them.

  “Bradford, get out that fifty and some AP rounds. Hit the bridge on that craft if you can. We need some help here.”

  Bradford grinned and primed the big bolt-action, fifty-caliber weapon and pushed in a five-round magazine of armor-piercing rounds. He fired, swore, and fired again. The second round jolted through the plating on the outside of the bridge and exploded inside.

  The patrol boat slowed, then swung sharply to the left and went dead in the water.

  “Didn’t think you needed me, right?” Bradford said.

  “Three more, for good measure,” Murdock said.

  Two of the three rounds hit the bridge and gun mount and exploded inside.

  “Two minutes to contact,” Ostercamp said.

  “Keep motoring west,” Murdock said. “That wounded duck back there might still be able to fire his forty. We don’t need any more casualties.”

  It was nearly five minutes before they heard a chopper. It came in high, then low when Murdock threw out a floating red flare. It swung around into the wind and settled toward the now dead-in-the-water fishing boat.

  A speaker from the chopper cut through the sound of the rotors.

  “Welcome, SEALs. We’ll send down a litter for your KIA. He comes in first. Then, if we have time, we drop you a ladder. Anyone who can’t climb the ladder?”

  Murdock gave a thumbs-up gesture, and the aluminum litter dropped down on a line. They let the litter touch the deck and short out the high charge of static electricity it built up from the rotor wash, then they grabbed it and lifted Quinley in and tied him securely.

  A moment later, the litter lifted skyward.

  Ching talked to the Colombian boy.

  “You tell your grandfather we needed to borrow his boat. We didn’t hurt it any, and here is a hundred U.S. dollars to pay for the fuel. You understand?”

  “Many, many dollars. Understand.”

  “You can run the boat?”

  “Sí, it is easy. Drive for Grandfather many times.”

  Murdock watched the ladder come down. Two men held it while the others went up. Jaybird motioned Murdock up, pointing to his wrist. Jaybird was the last man up the ladder, now swaying on the bottom. It’s twice as hard to climb with no one holding the bottom. He made it, and the SEALs inside cheered as the crew chief closed the hatch and the Sea Knight headed back for the carrier Jefferson.

  28

  USS Jefferson

  Near Colombia

  As soon as the Sea Knight came to a landing on the carrier, a formal delegation arrived with a gurney and a body bag. The SEALs stood around as Quinley’s body was zipped up in the heavy black plastic and gently placed on the gurney. They all followed it to the elevator and down to the ship’s hospital.

  A lieutenant without a line on his young face had Murdock sign some papers.

  “We’ll handle your man until we get directions. I understand that the deceased has requested a burial at sea. We’ll need a day’s notice for the ceremony.”

  Mahanani took Canzoneri, Dobler, Jaybird, and Murdock to the emergency room, where their wounds were examined and treated. Most of Canzoneri’s stitches were intact, but one small section had broken loose.

  The woman lieutenant who treated them all stared at Canzoneri a moment longer. “I want to keep you here at least over the rest of the night and tomorrow. There’s some infection starting in that broken-open section, and I want to be sure we catch it right now before it gets bad. The rest of you are released to duty.”

  Murdock thanked her and took the men to their quarters. They dropped their equipment in the assembly compartment they had been assigned to. Murdock had taken the stacks of one hundred dollar bills from Quinley’s shirt before he went in the body bag. He whispered to Canzoneri, who dug out the bills from his shirt before they took him to a hospital room.

  “Let’s take out the cash, guys. No way we can keep eight million dollars. Stack it up on the table here, and we’ll see if we lost any.”

  “Remember, we spent some of it,” Ching said. “A thousand for the truck and breakfast and the guide.”

  “All down in black and white,” Murdock said.

  Everyone took out the stacks of bills and stood around as Murdock and Jaybird counted it.

  “A whole shit pot full of bundles,” Jaybird said. He had counted out ten and stacked them, then stacked the rest next to them. Murdock dug into his shirt again and came up with the last bundles. Murdock told the men to hang around.

  He called the officer of the day and explained the small problem.

  “You kidding, Commander? Eight million dollars in cash? Where the fuck… No, I don’t want to know. I’ll send two armed guards down there right now to guard it until morning.”

  The guards with loaded M-16s reported five minutes later.

  “Eight million in cash?” one of the men asked.

  “Right, and your ass will be in a forty-year-long federal prison if it isn’t all there in the morning.”

  Murdock sent his men to bed, then used the phone again.

  “Commander, can you get a flag officer down here now? A captain will do. I want this cash put in a more secure place.”

  “Damn, I don’t see how.”

  “It’s eight million dollars, Commander, I want it out of my hair.”

  “I could try the XO, Captain Wilson. Yes, I’ll give him a call.”

  Five minutes later, the phone rang in the compartment.

  “Commander Murdock here.”

  “Murdock, is this a leg-puller? Captain Wilson here. The OD tells me you have eight million bucks in cash you want stashed in a safe place.”

  “True, Captain. Fortunes of war. I want to get rid of it and have you sign off on it for me.”

  “Whose cash is it, Murdock?”

  “Yours, I guess. It lately was owned by a pair of big shots in the Medellin drug cartel. They don’t need it anymore.”

  “Christ. Found money. Must be some Navy reg to cover this. All right. Stay right there.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the captain had signed a paper stating that he had taken charge of $8,000,000 from Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock, less about $1,400 in expenses incurred in leaving Colombia. Said cash a result of a raid on the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia.

  The two armed guards stuffed the money in a duffel bag and carried it between them as they vanished up the hall with the captain. Murdock hadn’t even guessed at the time. It was a little after 0400 when he dove into his bunk and slept at once.

  By 1000 the next morning, he was up, dressed in clean cammies, and having breakfast when Stroh tracked him down. He brought a cup of coffee to the small table in the wardroom and pointed at the other chair.

  “Okay if I sit down?”

  Murdock stared at him coldly. “How does it feel to sign the death warrants of fifteen men?”

  “I didn’t make the decision.”

  “Sure, Adolph, you were just following orders. One of my men died because of you. Shot though the head. I want you at his burial ceremony just to know how it feels.”

  “Come on, Murdock. You’ve been in this game long enough. You know the odds. We’re 80 percent politics, 20 percent action. The political always comes first. Always has, always will.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to
like it.”

  “This is a volunteer project. The CNO told you that at the git-go. Any time you want to pick up your marbles, you can walk right out the front door.”

  “Then you pick another platoon leader and con him and his men about the great service to their country.”

  Stroh sipped at his coffee. “May I sit down?”

  “Free country, in places and for some people.”

  Stroh sat down. “How long are you going to pout?”

  “As long as it takes. After this, when we get a ride to the party, we damn better get a ride home from the party.”

  “Almost always works that way. Okay, twice we had a no-fly. It had to be. I fought for you right up to my retirement on it both times. I lost. I don’t have the clout of the Secretary of State or the President and his advisors.”

  Murdock finished his three-egg omelet and hash browns before he looked up. “Just don’t expect any good fishing trips.”

  “I won’t. I’ll plan to be there when the fishing’s at its best. Good news. We don’t have a damn thing on the fire that you guys can help us with. Unusual, but that’s the way it happens.”

  “Good. I need to do some retraining.”

  “Hey, I let you go with the Bull Pups, didn’t I? How did they work?”

  “Good. You’ll see my after-action report, which I’m writing as soon as I can find a computer. This is your price. You get us six more Bull Pups before our next outing. Bribe somebody, pay double for them. We want six more of the prototypes. Best damn weapon I’ve seen in twenty years of shooting. Those damn proximity fuzed twenties saved our asses more than once.”

  “It’s impossible to get any more. They don’t even have prototypes to test at the factory.”

  “Bribe somebody. Get them made. We need them in three weeks. They can turn them out if you put on enough pressure. We practically keep H&K in business.”

  “Okay, I’ll try. Not promising.”

  “You already promised.” Murdock pushed back from the table. Stroh beat him to his feet.

  “Don’t think it would be a good idea for you to show up at our assembly compartment. Some of the guys are not wildly enthusiastic about your hide.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He watched Murdock. “Are you and I okay on this now?”