Locked.
Someone behind in the hall fired at them. Quinley turned, and chattered off six rounds down the hall at two uniformed men. They ducked out of danger. Murdock looked at the door. It was their only way out. He stepped back, waved Salwa and the two SEALs back, and put a three-round burst of the 9mm slugs into the area of the door lock. The panel shook on impact, then swung open a foot.
They darted through the opening, just as the men behind them fired again.
The room was a total surprise. Two naked men with military blouses draped over chairs were in two beds, each of them with two naked women.
Murdock and Salwa grabbed the men’s clothes, and backed toward a far door. Quinley and Washington kept their weapons aimed at naked bodies.
The far door was unlocked.
Salwa peered through the open door with Murdock. Murdock nodded, and the four men hurried through into the next room, a small kitchen.
Beyond that they found another corridor with a door at the far end.
This door opened to the outside. Murdock had no idea which side of the building they were on. He checked outside.
No troops were visible. He looked both ways again through the darkness, and to the right saw a growing light. He frowned, then realized it came from the flickering of flames. The men darted out the door, and ran twenty yards to a parking lot where a number of civilian cars and three military rigs stood.
Murdock hit the Motorola. “Ed, where the hell are you?”
“We’re near the back door where you entered. The fire’s burning nicely, and we have about twenty troops who don’t like us too well.
They keep shooting at us.”
Then Murdock could hear the rifle fire.
“Use the rest of the Second Squad back there to cover you, then start leapfrogging back into the desert. We still have the package.
We’ll try to meet you at that truck we borrowed.”
As Murdock said it, someone from the door they had just left opened up with automatic-rifle fire. Quinley went down beside the front of a car, and peppered the door with his 4.7mm caseless rounds.
“Salwa, can you get one of these personnel carriers started?”
“Give it a try. You have a knife?”
Murdock gave him his K-bar, and the Arab man vanished into the nearest half-track. More fire came from the side door, and now a new threat showed at the front of the building.
“The damn rig with the Big Fifty has swung around on us,” Washington whispered. A dozen rounds slammed overhead.
“Don’t think they want to shoot up their half-tracks,” Murdock said.
A moment later a line of men from the front of the building came running at them with assault fire. The nearest civilian car was riddled. The three SEALs returned fire, and half the shooters went down. Fewer rounds came then, and Quinley put in a new 50-round magazine and fired again.
Another line of gunmen ran forward from behind the first.
Murdock heard the rumble of an engine start.
“Ready,” Salwa shouted. Quinley, Washington, and Murdock jumped in the half-track, and it rolled away from the front of the building, then did a ninety-degree turn, and headed straight for the desert. Two hundred yards into the sand and rocks, the rig slowed, and pivoted around so its .50-caliber machine gun on the front could work the rear of the building.
For the first time, Murdock looked at the fire. It seemed that half the gasoline drums had blown up, splattering burning gasoline over the rest of the stored goods.
Murdock got to the Fifty, loaded in a belt of ammo from a box, and charged in a round. He leveled the weapon at the rear of the complex, and jolted off five rounds.
He was surprised at the force the rounds going off made on the gun itself and the mount.
Murdock touched his mike. “Ed, that’s me on the Fifty. Get your men the hell out of there.”
“Pleased to oblige there, good buddy. We’re on our way. Leapfrog it is.”
“We’re moving out too. We’ll keep their heads down for a while.”
As he spoke, they took machine-gun fire from near the front of the building. The other rig with the .50-caliber whammer had changed targets. Murdock swung his weapon around, and sent two bursts of six rounds at the flashes he could see. The other gun didn’t return fire.
He put six more rounds into the same area, then hit the back of the building again.
“Murdock,” Dewitt said. “I sent Douglas out to get the truck and bring it in to meet us. We should have a hookup in about five.”
“We’ll move north to find you. If you see a half-track coming, it’s probably us. Don’t fire.”
“That’s a Roger. We’ve got one wounded, not serious, but will take some looking at.”
“First we’ve got to figure out how the hell to get away from here without a bunch of El Raza’s men tailing us. Our chopper guys don’t like to get shot at. This bunch could even have some Stinger ground-to-air missiles.”
“Those shoulder-fired kind?” Ed asked.
“Yeah, the kind the terrs use sometimes. We’re coming to find you.”
3
Tuesday, 9 January
Desert near Osadi, Iraq
Murdock settled back in the half-track and watched behind him.
Within three minutes he saw lights coming toward him. They must be some of the other half-tracks of El Raza. He had a choice: try to outshoot them, and give away his position, or continue to roll along without lights, and stay lost in the desert.
“Ed, no lights on your rig. I’ve got lights behind me, but no return fire so they don’t know where we are.”
“That’s a Roger. We’ve met the truck. I’ve got six men inside, and eight hanging on the outside. Where to?”
“We’ve been heading east — that should put us far enough away from the town so now we can cut due south. The border is closest to the south.”
“Will the chopper care?”
“Less Iraq airspace they have to cover, the better they’ll like it.
Can’t tell what good old Saddam might have sitting around here with wings on it, and air-to-ground missiles on the wings.”
“Due south it is. How do we join up?”
“I’ll stop our rig and listen,” Murdock said. “Should be able to hear that grinder of yours out here.”
“That’s a Roger. We’re turning south.”
In the half-track, Salwa had heard the transmission from Murdock.
He looked at the American. “Shut it down now?”
Murdock nodded. The rig stopped and Murdock stepped away as the engine died. He turned slowly trying to pick up some sound. Quinley was beside him.
He touched Murdock’s shoulder and pointed. Murdock turned that way.
“There are four half-tracks chasing us,” Quinley said. “Sounds like more than one engine.”
Murdock thought he heard it, but it faded. It was to the left.
Salwa started the engine, and they moved over the dark desert at ten miles an hour.
“Sometimes there are little wadis out here fifteen feet deep from the runoff,” Salwa said. Murdock nodded. They drove south for ten minutes; then Murdock had the engine turned off and they listened again.
Nothing.
Far off they saw headlights.
“Looks like they’re still going east,” Murdock said. “Let’s hope we lost them.”
Then he saw more lights, two pair that were heading in much the same direction as he was. He hit the mike.
“Ed, you have two rigs chasing you? Headlights to the rear?”
“Yeah. Figured something was back there — they just turned on their lights.”
“Keep on the same bearing. We’ll see if we can come up to the side of those two half-tracks and give them a good SEAL hot-lead welcome.”
They drove faster then. A half-moon gave some help. Salwa had grown up in the desert, and knew even with the lights off how to tell a shadow from a gully, at least now that it was vital. The rigs w
ith lights on were going faster, but Murdock had the angle on them. He figured in another two miles he’d have them at a two-hundred-yard range.
All he had to do was blow their tracks off or kill the engine with the half-track’s mounted Fifty.
Ten minutes later, Murdock could see the lights, and the faint shadows of the rigs themselves. He was at four hundred yards. He closed to two hundred, and used the rig’s mounted machine gun to shoot at the first half-track.
The fifty-caliber spoke loudly in the desert silence. He missed with the first rounds, corrected, and slammed six, then twelve rounds into the side and front of the moving rig. It sputtered and died. The headlights went out.
He saw the second rig stop and turn to bring its gun to bear on Murdock’s muzzle flashes. Murdock got off a ten-round burst, then two more five-round bursts before the other gunner could get in action. He saw the front of the rig dissolve in steam; then the fuel tank blew in a gushing explosion fed by the diesel fuel, and the fight was over.
“Oh, yeah, beautiful,” Ed Dewitt said on the Motorola. “I’d say the two are about a half mile behind us, and they were gaining on us like crazy. Can we use lights now?”
“Hell, no. There are still three or four half-tracks out here hunting us. We join up, get another five miles south, then call for our chopper pickup, and in an hour or two a big dinner. What time is it?”
“Just past twenty-three hundred,” Dewitt said. “Come and find us.
I can loan you about six men.”
“Turn off your engine. Let us know when you can hear us, then guide us in. We can’t be more than a mile or two apart.”
Murdock found the rest of his platoon ten minutes later. They overshot them, and had to come back.
“Got you,” Dewitt said on the radio.
Then Murdock saw the truck with men hanging all over it. Salwa pulled the half-track up beside it, and they redistributed the men for better mobility.
“Let’s have a casualty report,” Murdock said to the men.
Holt came up and showed Murdock his arm. “The slug went on through, no big deal. Doc put some gunk on it and wrapped it up proper-like. I’m fit for duty.”
“But no hundred-foot rope climbs, right?”
“Yeah, that would be tough.”
The second squad wound was only a bullet graze. Doc wrapped it and they moved.
“Let’s keep it quiet now, and listen for engines. Somebody get on top of the truck and look for headlights. Be nice if we had a thousand-foot hill to use for a lookout.”
They watched and listened for ten minutes. Murdock was satisfied they didn’t have any of the hunter half-tracks close to them.
“We’ll motor another twenty minutes due south, then put in our call for the chopper. Everyone watch for headlights out here.”
Twenty minutes later, they had covered several miles to the south, and hadn’t run into any sign of the Iraqi hunters. Murdock called a halt, and they listened again. Then he waved at Ron Holt.
“Fire up the SATCOM. Let’s get out of here.”
Holt took the fifteen-pound radio off his back, and opened the flap with the antenna. He set up the small dish, and aimed it somewhere near where the Milstar satellite should be in a synchronous orbit 23,300 miles over the equator. The radio gave instant communications by the satellite with anyone, anywhere in the world. They could call the President, or their families back in Coronado.
It was fifteen inches high, three inches square, and had power from ten watts all the way down to one tenth of a watt for short-distance clandestine operations. It had the capability of voice, data, or video transmission and receiving, and encrypted each message automatically.
It could send out a lengthy message in a burst of energy less than a tenth of a second long to make it almost impossible for an enemy to find the transmitter.
Murdock took the pad, and typed in his message: “Have package, waiting pickup. Murdock.” He used the MUGR, the Miniature Underwater Geographic locator. It usually worked underwater with an antenna that drifted to the surface, where it contacted the three closest positioning satellites for triangulation to pin down the location anywhere on the globe to within ten feet. He took the reading off the dry-land model, and entered the coordinates in his message.
Murdock reviewed the words, then punched the button to encrypt it, and it was sent a moment later in a quick burst of power.
“Now we sit down and wait for our bird to come, Murdock said. Fayd Salwa had been following the procedure with interest.
“This is fascinating to me,” he said. “When I was in the army we had nothing like this. We had a weapon, and sometimes bullets, and if extremely lucky a truck so we didn’t have to march so far. It wasn’t a good army.”
“These gadgets are fine as long as they work,” Murdock said. “Once we had a SATCOM that took a pair of slugs right in the middle, and it was just fifteen pounds of worthless junk.”
A moment later, a message came back on the SATCOM.
“Help on the way. ETA ten minutes.”
Murdock nodded, and told the troops. How long did it take a chopper to fly ten miles? Only he didn’t know where it was coming from.
The border with Kuwait might be more than ten miles away to the southeast, he knew.
Murdock checked each man. Nobody else had been wounded, no other physical problems. They had been lucky to get in and out with so little damage. It was always a deadly chance going into these blind situations. Sometimes they simply didn’t have enough intel.
Five minutes later, they heard a noise to the southeast. They let the sound grow until they knew it was a chopper. Murdock let it fly directly over them at a hundred feet until he was sure it was a U.S. machine. Then he popped a red flare, and the bird circled around and landed a hundred yards from them.
“Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” Murdock said. The men had been standing waiting; now they started to run across the sand to their air bus out of Iraq.
They were still fifty yards away, when Murdock heard the whooshing sound he had nightmares about, an incoming Rocket Propelled Grenade.
These lethal rockets were deadly, easy to use, and to conceal.
Before he could yell at his men to take cover, one rocket hit the chopper, and then another, and a third. The bird, with its big rotor chugging around, burst into flames; then the fuel exploded, and there was nothing left but fiercely burning bits and pieces of machine and the dead crewmen.
“Hold!” Murdock shouted. “We can’t help the poor bastards! Let’s find the shooters!”
They all hit the sand, and listened. Over the roaring fire of the chopper they managed to hear some high-pitched chatter and a fired round or two. Murdock pointed to the left, where there was a small gully.
Murdock whispered into his mike. “Ed. Take your squad fifty yards south. We’ll move north, then we move up on that gully. A surprise party.”
It took them only a few minutes to get in position, and then move forward. At the edge of the small arroyo, they stopped and peered over the side. It was an armored personnel carrier with a dozen men around it. They were celebrating the destroyed chopper.
Murdock gave his men time to set up; then he aimed his subgun at the closest troops below and kicked off a twelve-round burst. At his signal, the rest of the weapons opened up.
There was no immediate response, as the men below dove for any cover they could find, mostly behind the armored rig. Then gunfire answered the SEALS.
Murdock ducked back a minute, and rolled to the left to establish a new firing position. Half of the men along the lip of the gully did the same thing.
Bill Bradford settled in behind the big M-87R .50-caliber rifle, and zeroed in on the vehicle. The big Mcmillan bolt-action rifle had a ten-round magazine hanging out the bottom of it. Bradford put his eye to the Leopold Ultra MK4 16-power scope, and triggered off the first round.
The AP, armor-piercing, round splattered through the hood and exploded deep inside the diesel engine,
killing any more movement by the rig. He then concentrated on the cab and blasted three rounds in there.
He had loaded the magazine with alternate AP and HE, and the effect riddled the personnel carrier, turning it into an elongated bit of flotsam on a sea of sand.
Murdock rattled off three-round bursts at the dimly lit targets.
The SEALs continued to take return fire, but the men below must have figured they were outgunned. No RPG rounds came their way. The Iraqi troops, or the men from El Raza, must not have been able to tie down a good target.
After four minutes, the firing from below tapered off, then stopped. The survivors evidently knew when to quit, and had faded into the desert night, moving away from Murdock and his team.
“That’s a wrap,” Murdock said on the Motorola.
It was too late to check for survivors in the chopper. The three RPG rounds had brought a nearly immediate fuel explosion, and there was no chance anyone could have lived through the blasts.
“Move out, double-time back to our transport,” Murdock said into his mike. “We need to get away from this fucking grave site. Somebody in that personnel carrier might have radioed in the shoot on the enemy bird, and that will bring all sorts of visitors to this place.”
Holt jogged up beside his commander. “Should we give a report on the chopper, Sir? Somebody back there will be wondering.”
“Right, but in a half hour. By then we should be well away from this death scene. The time won’t matter to that chopper crew.”
Fayd Salwa came up on the other side of Murdock. “Could I offer a suggestion? Distance from that scene is the key, but they will expect us to run directly for the Kuwait border. If they search for us it will be there. My suggestion is that we turn and go southwest, which will put us into Saudi Arabia in about fifteen miles. I know this area.”
Murdock considered it. He nodded. He touched the lip mike. “Men, we’re changing direction a little, southwest instead of southeast.
We’re heading away from where the bad guys will be looking for us. This direction will put us in Saudi Arabia, a friendly nation.”
Pacific Siege sts-8 Page 3