Firestorm sts-5

by Keith Douglass

  It took four minutes to get the troops in line and ready. Then Murdock aimed in with the AK-47 he carried and fired off three rounds.

  That was the signal for the rest to start firing. The two machine guns blasted five-round bursts and the sniper rifles jolted. Murdock put on his NVG, but it didn't help much at this range. He saw one parachuter go down, then another one. He figured on eight of them by the number of white chutes. The SEALS took some return fire, but it was not organized. He guessed that the officer or noncom in charge had been one to feel the wrath of SEAL lead early.

  "Cease fire," Murdock said into his radio, and the fire from the rise slowed and then stopped. Below they saw two men running away from them.

  Murdock frowned as he realized this meant the Chinese now would have another fix on their location. He checked with Ching, who studied the stars a minute, then angled the SEALS just past the dead Chinese jumpers on a due-east course. The damn water had to be over there somewhere. Murdock knew it.

  "Where the fuck are the rest of those jump troops?" Jaybird asked Murdock.

  The platoon leader shook his head. "Scattered. Maybe not by design, could have been tricky winds. Night jumps are always a hazard for us. It must have been for them. I've got Red hunting a spot we can hole up for a while and make a radio call. It's time we ask our uncle for some help."

  "Didn't think he could do that."

  "Won't hurt a hell of a lot to ask. We've got no more than two hours of darkness left. Something's got to happen pretty soon or we're stuck in the middle of goddamned China in the daylight."

  They found a small hill with heavy woods, and Murdock had Holt break out the AN/PRC-117D SATCOM radio. He removed the disc antenna, folded it out, and lined it up with a satellite in synchronous orbit with the earth and 22,300 miles overhead.

  They had agreed to talk in the encrypted frequency that the carrier could pick up offshore. On the second try the carrier answered.

  "Captain, we've run into some trouble. We're about five miles inland maybe five klicks south of Amoy. Could use some air support and a pickup by a pair of Blackhawks."

  There was a pause. Then the speaker came on.

  "Yes, understand your problem. As we talked before, such operations are absolutely prohibited by the Chief himself. Any chance you can get to the coast?"

  "Not in the two hours of darkness we have left. At night who will know what aircraft come in here for us? You can key in on our position from this signal. We have wounded. We need air support right now while we're not under attack."

  Don Stroh's voice came over the speaker.

  "Murdock, you know we can't do that. Why the hell you so far inland?

  Don't answer. Tell you what. We'll ask the Taiwanese Air Force to give you some support. It's their damn war. We'll get back to you. Find a hide-hole and crawl in. This could take some time. We don't even have direct radio contact with Taipei. Hold on there, man. I'll move mountains for you if I can. Oh, did you take care of those ships and the missiles?"

  "That's a Roger, sir, to both. No gas on Taiwan. Our situation is that right now we need some air support or a miracle, and I'm about fresh out of miracles."

  "Go to ground. Find a good hide-hole. I'll talk with the folks in Taipei."

  "I don't like the idea, but looks like we have no choice, We'll do what we can and give you another call once we're situated. Murdock out."

  He put down the mike and scowled. The platoon had heard the conversation.

  "We've got two hours to find a place to hole up that will keep us out of sight during the daylight. Not a chance any of our people or any rescue planes are going to come looking for us tonight or in the sunshine tomorrow."

  "Hide where?" Jaybird asked. "This is fucking China, remember?"

  "We could dig individual holes if we had entrenching tools," Murdock said. "We don't, so that's out."

  "Maybe find a briar patch like we did in Lebanon," Jaybird said.

  "Wrong kind of vegetation here," Magic said.

  "So we keep moving toward the ocean," Murdock said. "Maybe we can luck out and miss the rest of the patrols and get to water in two hours."

  "Ye, maybe," Jaybird said. "Don't count on it."

  They formed up in their usual combat order and kept on moving to the south and east. They topped a small rise and Red came back and talked to the L-T.

  "We've got something up there, but I'm not sure what it is. Looks like a small village, but it could be an army camp, Seems like a lot of noise for a village."

  Murdock went up and took a look. They stared down a gentle slope at lights four hundred yards ahead.

  "Yeah," Murdock said, looking through the Starlight scope on Magic's 89 sniper rifle. "Military all right. Take a look. A damned Chinese company or maybe two companies. Must be three hundred men down there."

  "So they'll have out security and ambush patrols and the whole damned routine."

  "Probably," Murdock said. "We go around them. Which side?" They checked both sides of the quarter-mile-wide camp. On one side they saw a small stream, and on the other a low row of hills slanting down from the ridgeline they had been following.

  "Ridge?"

  "Yep. Looks like these troops have just been trucked in here or marched in and they're setting up their camp before they sack out for a few hours. Then they come look for us with sunup."

  "We better move."

  They told the platoon what was ahead of them. The men kept their weapons ready to fire, moved into single file, and took Red Nicholson's lead along the far side of the ridge and, they hoped, past the Chinese.

  They hiked silently for ten minutes. Then Red stopped them with two clicks on the mike. Everyone hit the dirt. They waited.

  Murdock moved silently forward. Red hovered behind a tree looking ahead.

  The Platoon Leader couldn't see a thing through the darkness. Murdock heard one silenced round from Red's CAR-15, then a soft groan and silence. Red darted forward, his K-Bar out in his right hand.

  The radio clicked once and Murdock hurried forward. A dead Chinese soldier lay in the trail. Red had just finished relieving him of his AK-47 ammo and rolled him down a small slope.

  "Might be some more sentries out here," Red said. "We best move our tails around these puppies in a rush."

  The platoon moved faster then, around the Chinese camp and on to the east. Gradually the row of hills became lower and lower until they were in a wide river valley. They saw no river.

  Ching checked the stars through the clear night and angled them a little to the right to keep on their easterly route.

  "Hope to hell we're going the right direction," Magic Brown growled at Ching.

  "You and me both, brother," Ching said, his grin showing in the pale moonlight.

  They worked ahead slower now. There were buildings here and there. They were in fields now — rice, row crops. Murdock couldn't figure out what it was. At least there were no flooded rice paddies to wade through.

  They found a road and moved along it in a nearly eastern direction. Murdock sniffed trying to see if he could smell the salty tang of ocean air. Nothing.

  The sound came from behind them and grew and grew until Murdock hit his mike button twice to put the men on the ground. Overhead two jets slammed past them at no more than three hundred feet. They made a thunderous roar as they flashed past, their jet engines showing that their tails were on fire.

  "Chinese SU-27's, probably," Ching said. "Russian-built with 2.3-mach speed. But even at six hundred miles per hour that's ten miles a minute. With seventeen hundred and sixty yards in a mile, times ten, that's seventeen thousand six hundred yards they travel in a minute. Breaking that down in yards per second, the plane is moving over the ground at nearly three hundred yards every second. Not a hell of a lot of time to give close ground support for the Chinese troops."

  "Just the idea of the jets being here is not good news for our team," Murdock said. "You sure of those figures?"

  "I don't have my calculator wit
h me, but if memory serves, that was a problem in a class I had on aircraft recognition."

  "Let's keep moving. What are these buildings?"

  "Mostly farms," Ching said. "The farmers live in small villages, then come out to their land to work it during the day. The buildings are for tools, machinery, storing crops. No people in them, usually."

  Headlights flared in the night ahead of them. They broke into two groups, faded off the road thirty yards into the fields, and lay down.

  Two trucks came by, both military. One had a machine gun mounted on the front with a gunner draped over his weapon. Murdock figured he was sleeping and would be awake the moment the truck stopped. Both rigs kept going down the road.

  Ahead and to the right, Murdock made out a new ridge of low hills working generally eastward. He shifted his men that way, leaving the road. They were less than a hundred yards away from the road when they heard someone coming.

  There was low chattering in Chinese and some shouts. Murdock's men flattened out in a line that would give them maximum firepower on the targets.

  They waited.

  Five minutes later the first of the group came in sight. Magic Brown swore softly. "Hold fire," Brown said. "L-T. I got them in the scope. They're civilians. Looks like they're farmers coming out to start a long day's work."

  "Hold fire," Murdock said in the mike. They lay there as about twenty men and boys tramped past. They were almost ready to get up and move when another band came behind the first. These were women, Magic Brown informed the SEALS.

  It was another five minutes before they could lift up and move toward the low hills.

  "We better get out of here damn fast or we're gonna be in the middle of a whole swarm of farmers," Ching said. Murdock agreed, and they double-timed down a path between fields, used a road for a half mile, then cut across a field that led into a smattering of brush and trees that were on the first of the row of hills.

  By the time they were inside the trees with enough cover to make Murdock happy, there was less than an hour to sunrise.

  "We've got to find someplace to hole up during daylight," Murdock said.

  "Like where?" Ron Holt asked.

  "So what the hell are we supposed to do?" It was Ronson.

  "In those other hills I saw what I thought was a cave," Red Nicholson said. "We could look for one around here."

  "Yes," Murdock said. "We'll move higher and into the thickest growth of trees we can find. Keep on the lookout for any kind of hiding spot, including caves. Let's go." They worked higher.

  The darkness began to recede. There was a slow lightening of the sky ahead of them in the east.

  Murdock didn't want to hide his men behind trees for fourteen hours. The Chinese troops would be all over this area come sunup.

  Red touched his shoulder. "Sir, down there, that small valley that leads to the east. See that black area almost at the base of the hill?"

  "A cave?"

  "I can tell you for sure in about ten minutes."

  "Go, Red. Run the whole damn way. It's past time we had these troops out of the hot sun."

  Red Nicholson took off at a lope down the hill toward the small valley a quarter of a mile over. Murdock watched him run, then looked at the brightening sky to the east and frowned.

  28

  Sunday, May 17

  0513 hours

  Hills near coast

  Amoy, China

  Murdock checked his watch and then the sky to the east. It was going to be daylight well before 0600 hours. He hoped they would have time. They damn well better have time to go to ground before some Chinese hard-cases found them.

  He watched Red vanish into some trees, then work through them and come to the spot he had thought might be a cave. Red looked at it, then vanished. He was back in view a minute later, held his rifle over his head with both hands, and pumped it up and down.

  "Move it," Murdock snapped. "Red's found our hidehole. We have about ten minutes to get there and save our fucking SEAL hides."

  They jogged and ran down the slope, across a small open place, and into the brush and trees where they had last seen Red. He came out of a hole and grinned.

  "We found ourselves a fucking mine tunnel. Not a big one, but big enough and long enough for us to use. Welcome to SEAL House."

  Murdock looked at the hole. It had been a mine tunnel. Rocks and dirt had fallen around the opening, reducing it to no more than two by three feet. Trees and brush had grown up around it. There was no sign of a road or even a trail leading away from it. Good. He pushed inside and in the dim light saw the remains of animal droppings, and some small bones, probably from creatures that had been an evening meal for a wolf or a coyote or a fox. Did they have those animals in China? He had no idea.

  "Yes, this will work. Everyone get in here and we'll get the place cleaned up a little. Who has the candles?"

  Three men brought out candles and lit them. It was surprising how much light they produced in the closed-in area.

  "Magic, you and Ronson go out and cut a couple armsful of brush an inch thick and ten feet high and bring it back and plant it in front of our hole so no one can tell it's here. Get back before it gets light. Go."

  They hurried out the hole.

  "Now, push all the animal shit and bones over into one corner. Then stake out spots and sack out. It's been a long day and we might just not be through with it yet. If any of you have anything to eat, now is the time. No fire, no smoke, no noise." He watched the men settling down along the tunnel. It was eight feet high and about ten feet wide. There were no rail tracks on the floor or any sign that there ever had been.

  He moved toward the opening. "I'm going to see if I can find a lookout. No way are we going to be trapped inside here blind and tucked up. Stay here, stay quiet. Jaybird, with me.

  They left the hole and checked around them. They could see fifty yards now as the night began to fade into dawn.

  "Up to the left," Murdock said. They worked through some trees and light brush to a spot fifty yards above the tunnel. Murdock settled down behind a fallen log. There were trees and brush in front and behind him. There also was a good view of the valley in front of them.

  "Good cover and concealment," Jaybird said. "I'll take the first watch. We can get here and back to the tunnel without being seen. Keep your Motorola turned on."

  "Right. Come daylight we should be able to see east for four or five miles. Hope to hell we can see the surf out there somewhere."

  They both stared through the half-dawn, but could see no more than a quarter of a mile. They spotted their two woodcutters moving back to the tunnel with branches. By the time Murdock got down to the tunnel, the two men had half the brush jammed into the ground and woven together so it would stand up. It was two feet in front of the opening, and tied in with some other trees and brush to look natural from the front.

  Murdock nodded. "Yeah, that will do it. Thanks. Inside now and get some shut-eye. No telling when we'll be up and moving again."

  "If it's before dark tonight you can count me out," Magic said. "I'll have my butler take care of it for me."

  Ronson took a swing at him, missed, and they stepped into the tunnel.

  When Murdock got inside, he found Holt near the opening. He had the SATCOM radio set up and held the dish antenna. Murdock waved at him.

  "Yeah, Holt. Good idea. Set up that dish outside the hole. We can work behind the screen out there. About time we check in with Don Stroh and see how he's coming along with our Taipei friends."

  Three minutes later, he sent an encrypted message by the burst technique so if the Chinese had radio locators, they wouldn't have time to triangulate on their position.

  "This is Afterburner calling Stroh land. Anybody home?"

  "Afterburner, we're hot and ready. Only thing is, our friends in Taipei aren't exactly welcoming the idea of helping you."

  "They know the whole China plan to take over their island?"

  "They do, have for two days."
>
  "Talk tough to them, Stroh. You know the territory here. You know how these people think. Find a handle on them and start yanking it around."

  "Love to. If you have any suggestions they will be appreciated. We got through to Langley and they have no help. Right now I'm burning up the telephone trying to find somebody in Taipei I can trust. Will let you know when I learn anything."

  "We're in a secure area here. Should be good for the next fourteen to fifteen hours of daylight. By then I hope you have some great news for us. Otherwise all we can do is run for the beach and hope to hell we can find it. Murdock, out."

  He gave the handset back to Holt. "Keep the receiver turned on. We should have plenty of battery. They might just try to contact us. Camouflage it somehow so it won't show up in the daylight."

  Murdock looked around. It was daylight. Only the screen of brush and small trees brought back by his men kept him from being a target for any Chinese soldier looking this way. He stepped through the hole inside and felt a little better.

  Lieutenant Dewitt rose up from where he had stretched out on the dry tunnel floor.

  "Maybe no news is good news, Skipper. Doc has tended to Fernandez and Frazier. Both are comfortable. Fernandez is the worst hurt. He needs some real medical treatment. If we don't get out of here for two days, he could lose his arm."

  "We'll be out of this tunnel and charging for the beach as soon as it gets dark tonight, Lieutenant, I guarantee you that." Murdock hoped that was true. Guarantees were easy to give. He didn't have the least idea how he was going to make good on his promise.

  29

  Sunday, May 17

  0658 hours

  On board the USS intrepid

  Taiwan Strait

  Don Stroh had long ago stripped off his tie and discarded his suit coat. He had been talking to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. They had exchanged more than a dozen encrypted rapid-burst transmissions via the satellite. He had forgotten what time it was in D.C., but it didn't matter. Nobody slept or ate when a crisis like this was underfoot. His last message came through from the director: