He looked at the weapons. "Lots of suppressors. That's good. Use them."
As he finished speaking, they heard the whisper of artillery rounds spiraling over head, then the karumph as the heavy rounds exploded along the NKs' main line of resistance.
"Fifteen rounds, then two minutes later the attack to the south," the lieutenant said. "That's your signal to move out. Good luck." Murdock had changed their usual order of march. They would go single file, Alpha Squad first, Bravo second. All of the silenced weapons would be at the head of each squad. Lam would be out in front by twenty yards.
The last 105 round exploded in front, and Murdock used the NVGs to check the landscape.
"Nothing moving out there," he said. "Let's get a two minute head start."
Lam moved out as silent as a fresh breeze. Murdock went second, with Ron Holt close behind him. They kept low, moved from one bit of cover to the next. The land between the lines had been shot up considerably. They were halfway across it when they heard the attack on to the south along the line. They waited. Lam nodded. He came back and whispered.
"Hear men moving to the south. Quite a lot of them hiking that way to reinforce. Sounds good."
Murdock used his night-vision goggles again. He spotted a bunker ahead and slightly to the right. Beside that was an earthwork. He had no idea what might be behind it. They moved ahead again, slower this time.
Lam came to within ten feet of the edge of the berm. A figure rose up over the side of the bunker. Lam fired twice with his silenced carbine and the man vanished over the side. Lam ran hard the last few yards to the berm, and lifted up so he could see over it.
Murdock had seen his move and charged up beside him. They looked different ways along the mound of dirt and the shallow trench. The only man they saw was the dead one lying below in the trench.
"Move, move," Murdock said into his mike. The Motorolas would come in handy on this mission. Lam and Murdock, then Holt vaulted over the mound, hit the other side, and ran straight ahead. They passed what had once been a series of bunkers but now were empty.
Behind him, Murdock could hear his men clearing the MLR and running to catch up with the rest of the platoon. Five minutes later they were clear of the MLR trenches and bunkers, and even one kitchen that had been abandoned to send more men to the attack point south.
They jogged forward. The interpreter they had with them carried a new M-16 automatic rifle.
Murdock told him to come to the front. The man studied the landscape for a minute. He had been briefed on where the brigadier was holed up. He slanted them to the left and they hurried forward.
There were faint light streaks to the east. Murdock kept them jogging forward. The Korean changed his mind and angled them farther to the left. They saw the tops of the trees and the first real light about the same time.
"Yes, right bunch of trees," the Korean guide and interpreter said. They flat out ran the last one hundred yards, crashed into brush, and through it and into the cover/ concealment of the thick growth and a few towering pine trees.
When all his men were inside, Murdock motioned for them to be quiet. Lam and the interpreter moved ahead slowly, checking any spot where the officers might be hiding.
It was full light when Lam came back grinning.
"Found them. Cap. All eight of them are crammed into the center of a thorn thicket so tough and gnarly nobody would want to try to get through it. The major found it for them, from what he said. Inside it's hollowed out and there's enough room to sit down."
Murdock went up with Lam, and found the brigadier general and his major just outside the thorn thicket.
"General, Lieutenant Commander Murdock at your service."
A big grin spilled over the Army man's face. "Damned glad to see the Navy. SEALs, aren't you. Yes, good. We didn't hear any shoot-outs to the south, so my guess is you got here without much of a problem."
"Right, General. Looks like we're stuck here for the rest of the day. We'll see about getting your group back to friendly lines as soon as it gets dark tonight."
"Yes, we figured that. Did you bring us anything?" Murdock grinned. "Sure as hell did, General." He touched his lip mike. "Bring up the packages."
Four SEALs came forward, each unstrapping a pack off his back. They handed them to the general, who laughed and thanked them as he and the major hurried back into the thicket and vanished.
"Why do they get all the good food?" Lam asked.
"Because he's a general, that's why. We set up a perimeter defense, then every other man can sack out or eat an MRE for breakfast. You've never had it so good."
Two hours later, Horse Ronson used the Motorola.
"Cap, you best look at this. Some kind of an armored personnel carrier rolling across fields out to the north. Looks like he'll miss our position by a half mile. Must be one of the older Russian-made rigs. My guess is it has a fifty-caliber MG mounted up front."
Murdock and Lam moved to the northern edge of the half acre of woodlands. Lam checked the vehicle through his binoculars. "Oh, yeah, talk about old. Wonder how they get spare parts for it?"
The Korean slid in beside Murdock.
"Often personnel carrier like that come ahead of column of troops. Could be replacements or just reserves moving up to this sector."
The big rig had stopped a half mile off. Within five minutes, they spotted a column of troops coming over the hill. The men were four abreast and the line at least twenty-five long. A hundred men. All carried weapons, but they couldn't tell just what.
"Will they stay clear of this woodland?" Murdock asked.
"Only come here if they need firewood to cook their meal," the Korean said. "They will have rice roll over shoulder. Full, it good for three, four days. Empty, might steal chickens and roast over fire."
The men watched as the North Korean troops came abreast of their woodland, still four hundred yards away, and continued on past.
Murdock headed back past the hiding spot and heard raucous laughter. He found the entranceway and crawled forward. Halfway there he met the major.
"Major, no more of that laughing. We're in a precarious spot here. Half of those men in there outrank me, but I'm the commander of this mission. Either you or I will chew tail for ten minutes on those officers insisting that they shut up and be quiet. Clear?"
The major grinned. "You better let me tell them. Generals don't like to be scolded."
"Tell him we just missed being investigated by an armored personnel carrier and a hundred armed troops. They went past us four hundred yards to the east. I don't intend to let him and his colonels endanger the lives of my men."
"Right, Commander. I'll impress him with the gravity of the situation."
Murdock found Holt, and talked on the SATCOM with the American contact officer who had escorted them to the MLR.
"Yes, Lieutenant. We're here, no problems. More North troops moving into the area. We'll be coming out at first dark tonight. Hope you can provide us with a fake attack along the line somewhere. We don't want to have to fight our way through more than fifty to a hundred NKs along here."
"You'll have it. Let us know when you leave the hideout, and about when you'll get to the MLR. It's on the books. Everyone here is anxious to get the package back safely."
Murdock grunted and handed the set back to Holt. "Keep the box turned on and tuned to his frequency. Just in case they want to get in touch with us."
"That's a roger, sir."
Murdock touched the Motorola mike. "Listen up, guys. I want every man to build himself a hide-hole. I don't care if a platoon of NKs come through here, I don't want them to see a one of us. Keep in the perimeter defense, but dig in and cover up. Let's get going on that now. Lam, you stay on the northern side watching for more troops coming."
"Roger, Cap," Lam said.
For the next hour the men of Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven worked one of their specialties. They called it playing Chiricahua. That tribe of the Apache nation became so adep
t at hiding themselves in the desert Southwest that they could put a hundred warriors on a flat, desert plain and be invisible. Then when the quarry rode into the trap, they would lift out of the sand and attack. It was said that the only time you saw a Chiricahua was when he wanted you to see him, and that was a fraction of a second before he killed you.
Lam was the best at making a small dug-out hole and camouflaging it with native materials. Here in this woodland i t was easy, with lots of native material to work with. Lam had his hole made and himself hidden within ten minutes.
Lam played a little game with himself. He lay on the point of a slight rise in the woods, which gave him slightly longer sight lines to the north. He sectioned the field, going over each part slowly, critically, watching for any movement, any signs of life.
On his second check of the section farthest north he spotted movement. He watched it again, put his 6 x 30 binoculars on it. Yes, had to be. He scowled for a moment. He had to be sure.
Another two minutes passed and he was sure. He checked his lip mike.
'"Commander, we've got some trouble up here. I'm on point farthest north. You need to look at this."'
"Be right up," Murdock said.
A few minutes later he slid in beside Lam's hide-hole and lifted his own binoculars.
"Just past that farthest-out patch of woods, Cap."
Murdock studied the area. "Shit fucker, what are they doing out here?"
"Moving up to the front, I'd say."
"Yeah, three NK tanks, the big ones, T-62's."
"More bad news, Cap. Now I can make out troops behind them. Must be fifteen or twenty men trailing each tank."
"The worst part, all three tanks are headed directly at this patch of woods," Murdock said.
Then he scowled. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Korean Air Space
Over the MLR
"Cat Two-Twelve, this is Home Base."
"This is Cat Two-Twelve. Go, Home Base." "We have a report of three aircraft heading your direction from the north from our E-2C Hawkeye. Expect some older-class MiGs. They are at fifteen thousand and about forty miles away closing your position at eleven hundred knots. Meet and greet."
"Our pleasure, CAG. Changing course now."
The three F-14 Navy fighters swept into a graceful turn heading due north, their radars reaching out to find the targets.
Cat Two-Twelve was Lieutenant Forest Corey, "Corny" to his buddies. "Got anything yet, Marsh?"
Corey asked his RIO in the backseat. The Radar Intercept Officer, Marshal "Marsh" Landower, had his nose buried in his readout radar screen.
"Nothing yet, Corny. Should be coming up fast. We're closing now at twenty-four hundred knots?"
"Near to it."
"That's twenty-seven-sixty miles per hour or over forty-six miles a minute. We should be halfway there by now."
Corey spoke on the plane-to-plane TAC to his two wing men.
"Gents, they'll probably split when they spot us. We'll take left, right, and middle, as always. Good hunting."
"About time we got some action up here," Pete Platamone said.
"Roger that, Leader man," the other pilot, "Ham" Jones, said. "Free beer for a week for whoever nails the first bastard."
"I've got them," RIO Marsh Landower said. "You're right, they are splitting, still out about twenty miles."
"Stay with them, guys," Corny said. "I've got the middle one."
"No radar-friendly recognition signal from the three," Marsh said. "They are not friendly. I repeat, the targets are not friendly."
"Light them up, Marsh, let's do it."
Marsh had the radar turned on and worked to get a lockup of his signal on the blip on his screen. The MiG was still eighteen miles away and turning hard to the left. "Stay with him, Corny. Almost had him. Damn. Now, now."
"Weapons free, fire when ready," Corny said.
"I have lock-on and… yes, that's a Fox Three," Marsh said. It was the traditional call for a Phoenix missile being fired.
At once the heavy Tomcat aircraft lurched several feet upward as the one-thousand-pound missile dropped from it and the solid-fuel rocket fired, jolting the thirteen-foot-long missile ahead at a speed that would soon reach Mach 5. It left a long cotton white contrail arching into the sky, then turning to the left following the radar input on the target.
The Grumman F-14 is the only aircraft in the U.S. arsenal that can fire the Phoenix. It takes a Hughes AWG-9 or AWG-17 radar/fire-control system, which the F-14 has. The system can be set to track while scanning and lock onto six separate targets while simultaneously guiding six missiles to their targets at the same time.
With its 127-mile range, the Phoenix would have no trouble reaching the MiG less than twenty miles away.
Marsh watched the enemy plane's radar blip do quick and sudden maneuvers to try to outwit the Phoenix, but it never had a chance.
The AWG-9 pulse-Doppler radar in the F-14 never lost contact with the MiG. Seconds later the blip dissolved from the RIO's radar screen as the Phoenix slammed up the tailpipe of the MiG and shattered the complex aircraft into metal confetti that rained down on the Korean land below.
"Splash one MiG," Corny reported on the Home Base and plane-to-plane frequency.
"Damn, lost mine," Platamone said. "Bastard hit the deck and then dodged behind a small hill. The Phoenix liked the mass of the hill better than the MiG. He's to hell and gone down there on the deck. Must be scraping his undercarriage on some of those rice paddies."
"Still playing tag with mine, Corny," Jones said. "Almost had him nailed, then he slipped away. There it is. Yes. We've got a Fox Three on the Phoenix. Shouldn't be long now." "Home Base, this is CAT Two-One-Two. Anything cist for us?"
"The Hawkeye shows that your lost MiG is streaking back north less than fifty feet off the terrain."
"That's a splash on the second MiG," the calm voice of Jones's RIO said.
"Halverson, don't you ever get excited?" Corny asked.
"Hey, it was just one MiG. Want us to chase the other one?"
Home Base cut in. "Two out of three, good hunting. Don't chase the third one, Jones. All three of you stay CAP in that general area. You're now about forty miles north of the MLR. Stack at thirty, twenty, and ten thousand. Good shooting."
12
In North Korean territory
Murdock checked the tanks again through his binoculars. They were over half a mile away heading in his general direction, but he had no thoughts that the tanks would charge through the woods when there was plenty of open ground around.
Unless they knew a general and his staff were hiding in this spot.
If the tanks came close enough, the soldiers might send a detail to the woods to gather firewood to heat up their tea.
The Korean scout and interpreter checked the tanks through Lam's glasses.
"Reserve tanks," the Korean said. "Not first-line outfit. Coming up to replace tanks lost so far in battle. Men behind would be replacement for infantry as well, not fighting unit. Many of these reserves are not well trained."
"Hell, at nine-to-one odds you don't have to be well trained," Lam said. "Cap, we just dig into our hide-holes and wait and hope?"
"Unless you have some outstanding suggestions," Murdock said. "I better go check out my own hole. Come on, ROK friend, you need a hiding place too."
Fifteen minutes later the tanks had rolled even with the SEALs but a good half mile to the right. One squad of soldiers broke off from the main body and double-timed directly for the copse where the SEALs had hunkered down. The weather had turned cold again, but at least there was no snow. Only a few patches of white showed along the back sides of ridges. Inside the woods, the ground had not even frozen.
Murdock had put his hide-hole near the edge of the woods where he could see out north and west. He watched the North Korean soldiers jogging toward them. Eight men. He used the Motorola.
"We have eight visitors coming. Absolute silence. They may pe
netrate only the edge of the woods for fuel. If you get stepped on, don't yell about it. If we take out one, we'll have to waste all of them, and that would mean a larger force coming to investigate. We hide today and live to fight another way. Jaybird, crawl in and caution the Army to be absolutely quiet. Stay there. Now, no transmissions."
The first NK soldier edged into the woods, his automatic rifle up and his body alert. He looked over the immediate area, and waved the rest of the squad forward.
The soldiers quickly began to pick up sticks and break them into fire lengths, tying them into bundles. Within five minutes they had seven bundles and worked on finishing the last one. One of the North Koreans swore as he stumbled and fell flat in the woods near a large pine tree.
He got up slowly and shouted something to the others. They laughed. The bundles finished, the eight men tramped out of the woods. As they left, two of the eight stepped directly on Murdock's back where he lay near the trail they had chosen. He bit his lip and weathered the last step, then gave a small sigh.
When the NKs were fifty yards away, Murdock used the mike. "Gone for now. Anybody get stepped on?"
Three men reported being tramped over, and Bradford said somebody fell down on him. "I almost shit right there," Bradford yelped. Major Dan Streib crawled out of (he thicket and walked over to Murdock.
"Heard you had some tanks out here," Major Streib said.
"And a squad of NK infantry who gathered some firewood right on top of us and left without seeing us," Murdock said.
A burst of raucous laughter came from the thistle patch.
"Wanted to talk to you, Commander," the major said. He motioned away from the men, and they walked toward the opening to the hideout.
"The general is so relieved that you're here that he's toasting the men with a few drinks."
Murdock glared at Streib. "You mean we brought you food and booze in those packs?"
"General's orders, Commander. I'd wager that you don't outshout your admiral when he gives you an order."
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