The Russian colonel nodded as the translation went on.
“Yes, yes. I like,” the colonel said in English. “I have very bit English.” He beamed. “Yes, we do.”
He turned and snapped orders to some men in the shadows. Murdock watched as thirty soldiers formed up just out of the light and marched off toward the truck with one of the Russians the SEALs had brought with them. “Colonel, should I have my men come over?” Murdock asked.
The colonel looked up and nodded. Murdock used the lip mike and told them to get front and center.
Ten minutes later, the SEALs were on board the Russian hovercraft.
Before the big engines started, Murdock talked to the planes overhead on TAC Two.
“Night Fly, this is the SEAL bunch. Any more action on those truck lights?”
“SEALS, not much. Estimate they are about twenty-five klicks from the town’s lights along the Pacific coast. The movement has stopped.
Headlights are off. Best we can do from up here.”
“Thanks, Night Fly. Tell Home Base we’ve met the Russian air-cushion craft. Have talked with the commander and we’re now on board ready for a fast run up the beach to where you boys saw the headlights stop. We won’t be able to hear you when the engines start.
Thirty Russian marines are now combing the lower part of the island from where you saw the air cushion rig come ashore. They’ll work down to the town.
“We’re linked up with the other seventy Russian commandos for a surprise party for the general up north.”
“That’s a Roger, SEALS. Will relay the information to Home Base.
Good luck down there.”
The air-cushion engines began, and Murdock handed the mike back to Holt.
A minute later they edged down to the water, skimmed over it, and turned north. At forty-five knots it would take them less than thirty minutes to cover the twenty miles northward.
Murdock looked around the vessel. It was 155 feet long, he’d been told, and over fifty-eight feet wide. The troops and gear were all stowed in a hold that was covered. He wondered how the flyboys had decided that the first hovercraft the day before had been empty. He would never know. He tried to memorize as much about the craft as possible. It would come in handy for his after-action report.
The colonel sent the captain to take him to the bridge.
“We want you to see more of the ship,” the Russian captain said.
“The bridge is the best. Perhaps your radio will work from there, and your aircraft can give us some direction.”
It did. The Night Fly team could follow the wake of the air-cushion craft. They had a previous fix on the headlights, and brought the ship into shore as close to the lights as they could determine.
“We can do seventy knots without a load,” the Russian captain said.
“That is much faster than your American air-cushioned boat, the LCAC, which has a top speed of forty knots.”
Murdock laughed. “You win that one, Captain. This is a remarkable ship. You can carry four light tanks and how many combat troops?”
“No secret. It’s in Jane’s Fighting Ships book. We can carry four light tanks, or two medium tanks, and two hundred combat-ready soldiers.”
By that time they were nearing their target. The Night Fly planes had agreed to do a fly-over of the suspect area. They would come in off the sea and across the land so their flaming tailpipes could be seen by the hovercraft pilot. The plan worked remarkably well.
The craft headed for the beach, then diverted a quarter mile south.
“Too many sharp rocks and bad beach for landing,” the Russian pilot explained.
The craft slashed through the Pacific Ocean’s swells, rode the breakers, leveled out on the sand, and raced up the wet part to the dry sand. Then it slid easily over the weeds and small brush to a stop fifty feet from the shoreline.
When the motors cycled down, Murdock heard rifle fire and one machine gun.
“Looks like we’re at the right spot,” Murdock said. “Colonel, like we said on the way up, let my men go out first and try to get the general’s rear guard in a cross fire with our weapons. If we can’t dislodge them, we’ll have your man call you in.”
The colonel, who said he wasn’t wild about getting his men killed, gave a curt nod, and the SEALs left by the rear of the big ship out the tank-access door. First Squad swung to the right and Second Squad moved left. They could hear the Japanese firing.
“Sounds like six or eight men,” Murdock said into his mike. “Let’s get a clear field, then fire at the muzzle flashes.”
Three minutes later Ed Dewitt called on the Motorola that his men were ready. Murdock moved around another ten yards, and found an opening through which they could see the flashes.
“Open fire,” Murdock told his lip mike. He sighted in on one muzzle flash and pulled the trigger. The soft whooshing sound came, and then he heard six more down the line.
At once the number of shots coming from the Japanese trailed off.
Three more rounds hit the defenders; then the last guns in the rear guard went silent.
“Let’s move in and mop up,” Murdock ordered into his mike.
They ran forward, their EAR weapons off safety with ready lights glowing. In the pale Japanese moonlight they found the six defenders.
All had two weapons each. All lay sleeping beside their still hot rifles and the one machine gun.
“Cuff them, and call up the troops,” Murdock said. The Russian with Murdock used the Russian walkie-talkie, and soon the first elements of the Russians moved up. They stared in surprise at the six defenders all unconscious.
Colonel Hartzloff checked the pulse on two of the men, and shook his head. He came up to Murdock.
“Commander, must know about your weapon.”
Murdock laughed. “Colonel, it’s like your Akula-class submarines.”
The colonel took a step backward. “You know about Akula?”
“About them. They are in Jane’s Fighting Ships, right? But we don’t know all the scientific and secret aspects of them. Like this rifle. Now you know about it, but not how or why it works. We must leave it that way.”
The colonel frowned, then shrugged. “We will leave it this way for now. But after we have captured the Japanese general, we will deal with it again.” He paused. “You realize that we have five times as many weapons here as your fifteen men have?”
Murdock smiled in the moonlight. He stared at the Russian commando. “I’m aware of that, Colonel. But have you realized that our weapons are fifteen times as effective as yours are?”
24
Thursday, 22 February
Kunashir Islands
Kuril Chain, Russia
After a moment of staring, the two officers looked away from each other.
“I wish we had one of them conscious so we could find out where the general went,” Murdock said. He motioned to Lam.
“Make a couple of swings out there and see what you can find. Even in the dark you should be able to see where twenty men went on a hike.”
Lam grinned, and ran into the darkness toward the looming up-thrust of a hill in front of them.
The Russian guide who had come with them from the prison came up and talked with Ching. The interpreter hurried over to Murdock.
“Skip, we might have something here. This guy says he’s been in this area many times. There is a series of old caves high on the cliffs back there. He says it would make a perfect hideout and fortress for somebody trying to hold off a superior force.”
“How far from here?” Ching asked the Russian, then turned. “He says it’s into the mountain where the jeeps can’t drive. Maybe four or five miles, maybe more. None of his group ever went all the way back there.”
Murdock moved over to talk to the Russian officer.
“Colonel Hartzloff, we may have a direction to go.” He told the officer what the Russian guide had told Ching. The colonel motioned to the guide, who was a corporal, and
talked with him.
Then the colonel turned to Murdock. “Yes, sounds good. My trackers and my scouts will lead. Your men in the middle and my commandos as rear guard. We will go now.”
Murdock shrugged. Getting there wasn’t the problem. What to do once they found the general would be the tough part. He could wait.
They found Lam coming back to meet them. He lifted his brows when he saw the SEALs in the middle of the line of march.
“What the fuck, sir?”
Murdock shook his head. “Not the time to worry now.” He told the scout what the Russian from the prison had said.
“Good, they went up this way for fucking certain,” Lam said.
They hiked along silently for two miles. Then ahead, a machine gun chattered. Murdock and his men hit the dirt. The Russians went down as well. Murdock and Holt began working forward past the prone Russians.
They didn’t look like blooded veterans right then to Murdock.
The machine gun fired again; then they heard the lower-pitched rounds from the Japanese rifles. The Russians at the front of the column returned fire. Murdock heard the flat crack of the AK47, now called the AKM, and the stuttering fire of a Russian machine gun. He and Holt went faster, pushing past the Russians until they came to the front of the column.
Murdock bellied down behind a fallen pine tree. There were a lot of good-sized pines here higher on the slope.
“Captain, how many up there?” Murdock called to the Russian officer. Radiwitch rolled toward him.
“We don’t know. Four, maybe five. I’ve got a wounded man. They are in a good defensive position among a jumble of rocks. Hard to get a good shot.”
“Let us try,” Murdock said. He motioned to Holt, who had an EAR now as well. They waited for another volley of fire from the rocks a hundred yards ahead, then took turns firing at five-second intervals.
After three shots each from the EARS, they waited. The firing from the rocks had stopped.
“I figured the sound would bounce around those rocks like it did in a room,” Murdock whispered to Holt.
Captain Radiwitch rolled over to Murdock again, and stared at the EAR from two feet away.
“I must have one of those. No more firing from the Japanese rear guard. How did you do that?”
“With these rifles. Captain, do you want to send two men up there and check,” Murdock said.
“I will go,” the captain said. He rose and sprinted forward.
There were no shots fired by the Japanese. Radiwitch ran the hundred yards in fifteen seconds. Another five seconds and he called out loudly in Russian and his men advanced slowly. Murdock and Holt went with them.
The four Japanese rear-guard defenders lay unconscious beside their weapons. Murdock and Holt bound them with plastic cuffs, and Murdock pointed ahead. The Russians talked excitedly for a minute until Captain Radiwitch silenced them.
The Russian commando sent out two point men; then the rest of the Russians and SEALs moved out following them.
They were still on the right trail.
A mile higher on the slopes, they found another rear-guard position. Murdock and Holt had drifted back with the other SEALs and told them about the action.
“That’s why we should be the fuck up front,” Lampedusa said.
Murdock agreed with him, but he didn’t want to antagonize the Russians.
They might be needed later on.
The new rear guard was in a patch of foot-thick pine trees with an open field of small rocks and gravel in front of it. The area looked as though an old landslide had wiped out vegetation there sometime within the past year or two. There was no cover going the last five hundred yards to the position where the Japanese kept up a steady but spaced fire.
Murdock and his squads were still out of the range of the guns ahead. He waited. He felt more than heard a squad of the commandos move through the woods to the right of the open space. Captain Radiwitch was trying to outflank the defenders and get around them. The sound of two grenades exploding in rapid succession came a minute into the Russians’ move. Trip wires and hand grenades, Murdock guessed. He and Holt worked to the front of the safe zone.
Captain Radiwitch came back carrying a dead commando over his shoulders. He dropped him to the ground and sat down hard. A medic ran up and treated the captain’s shrapnel wounds in his leg and both arms.
“Lucky, he said. “One dead, two wounded bad.” He turned and said something to a sergeant, who gave another order. At once a squad of seven men took rifle grenades from their pack and rested the butts of their AKMs, the newest model of the AK-47 standby, on the ground. Each had grenade-launching attachments. The commandos fired at will, each man putting six grenades into the general area of the machine gun and the rear guard ahead.
The machine gun stopped firing. Only an occasional round came from the Japanese rebels above. After another five minutes, Captain Radiwitch led a squad of six commandos through the woods again. They kept to the fringes, sometimes in sight of the spot where the rear guard had been.
Murdock could see them assault the position with full automatic fire. If anyone had been alive before they made the assault, it was certain none were alive now.
The walkie-talkie rumbled, and the Russian commandos got to their feet and moved up the hill. Murdock and his SEALs went along.
At the rear-guard position, Murdock checked the bodies. There were only three men there, with two machine guns and six rifles. All were dead. No chance to question a Japanese prisoner again.
Captain Radiwitch found Murdock.
“Lead out with your men, if you wish,” Radiwitch said. “Your weapons may be more effective in this situation.”
Murdock said they would take the point. He realized that he hadn’t seen the colonel. Evidently he was a commander who directed his men from the safety of the hovercraft.
The trail now wound higher in the hills. The timber was mostly pine now, and thick in places. Other areas were bare rock where nothing could grow. Lampedusa led the SEALs with the Russian scout they brought from the prison. He and Lampedusa communicated with signs. They wound up a valley, over a small hill, and the Russian pointed ahead. They could just make out a peak with a jagged, rugged-looking cliff just down from the summit.
Lam scowled. In the dark, the place looked to be another two thousand feet above them. He figured there was only one more ridge between them and the last slant of the mountain. Would they be in an open field of fire all the way up that last slope?
Lam pointed at the place and tapped the Russian on the shoulder.
“General, Japo?” He pointed at the cliff. The Russian nodded and chattered in Russian, which didn’t help at all.
“If you say so, buddy. We got ourselves some heavy climbing to do.”
Lam had seen evidence of passage recently. He’d found a canteen back a ways. On a bramble, he saw where a uniform had ripped and left a swatch of dark cloth. Now the work was harder. They were not at a timberline, but the rocky terrain prevented any but the hardiest of small shrubs from growing there. That meant there was practically no cover or concealment.
They worked up to the ridgeline and down the other side. Lam had been right. Now it was one long climb up a slant of rock to what must be the general’s hideout above. Lam estimated it was a half mile up the slope. If they were caught out there in daylight, the Japanese could pick them off like targets in a carnival shooting gallery.
Lam looked at his watch. Just after 2200. They had a lot of dark yet. He waited for the troops to catch up. Time they had a conference on just how they were going to get up all this rock without attracting attention.
A few minutes later, Murdock and the platoon came up to where Lam waited. “Need to talk, Skipper.”
Murdock looked at the landscape ahead, and up to the top of the slope. “Up there?”
“That’s what our local guide thinks. I’ve found enough shit to know they came this way.”
Murdock checked his watch. It was 2215. “W
e should be able to move across this open space in the dark. They might know we’re down here, but they won’t shoot and give away their positions. Ching.”
The lanky SEAL dropped down beside Murdock.
“Tell the captain and his men that we must have absolute silence as we move up from here on. No talking, coughing, no sounds.”
Ching nodded, and headed for the Russian troops just behind them.
“Route?” Murdock asked.
Jaybird had been looking at the shadows in the moonlight. “Looks like there’s a ravine over there a few hundred yards we could use like a staircase.”
“For a ways,” Lam said. “Looks like there’s a rockfall at the far side near the top. That might be how the rebels go up the last few yards to the cliff top.”
“Is it a cliff or a cave up there?” Murdock asked.
“Supposed to be a shelf-like place with a cave behind it,” Lam said.
“So from a low angle, our EAR shots would bounce off the rocks and slant out into space hurting nobody,” Murdock said.
“Let’s hope it looks different by the time we get up there,” Ed Dewitt said from the other side.
“So let’s do it,” Murdock said. “Silent movement, keep our interval. Lam, lead out.”
They worked across the slope to the ravine, and walked up that for two hundred yards; then it ended. It was hard going. The slant of the hill increased, and at times they had to reach down to the ground to help themselves to take the next step. Murdock could hear the sound of the Russian commandos behind them. That was not good. If the general had any sentries out at all, they had to be able to hear the seventy-five men moving toward them.
An hour later they were still a long way from the top of the mountain. Murdock called a halt. Dewitt and Jaybird came up for a talk. Now their voices were whispers.
“How far to the top?” Dewitt asked.
The estimates were from six hundred yards to twelve hundred.
“Where is the closest cover for our eighty-five bodies?” Jaybird asked. They all stared into the softly moonlit night.
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