“We circle around it,” Murdock said. “We keep half of our men on this side. Lam, you take Bravo around at ninety degrees to us. We don’t want to be shooting each other. Then we’ll fire some rounds into the trees. We don’t want to kill the civilians.”
“The rebels will use them as human shields,” Ejercito said. “I’ve seen them do it.”
“We won’t kill civilians,” Murdock said. “If they use them as shields to run, let them go. We’ll chase them as well as we can, then examine the village for any hostages or clues where they might be going.”
Murdock called DeWitt and told him the plan. He moved his men where Lam directed, and called Murdock on the Motorola when they were in position.
Alpha Squad had come up, and Murdock spaced them out ten yards apart from the river into the jungle so they had cover and could see the village.
“Alpha only. Each man, ten rounds into the trees. Don’t hit any civilians. We think the rebels are hiding somewhere in the village. Fire, now.”
The nine weapons chattered and cracked as the rounds riddled the tops and trunks of a dozen trees in the compound. The villagers in the open dove to the ground; some ran for huts, others dropped where they were and covered their heads.
In the sudden silence, Lieutenant Ejercito shouted out his demands.
“All villagers stay clam. We have no fight with you. The criminal outlaw rebels now in your village must come out with their hands up. We know you are hiding there. Surrender now and receive a fair trial for any criminal activity. Surrender now.”
Two machine guns and a rifle answered Ejercito, ripping the rounds into the area where he was protected behind a huge mahogany tree. Each of the SEALs had a tree to hide behind during the return fire.
“Take any sure shots you have, Bravo,” Murdock said on the Motorola. Two shots came almost at once, then one more. They heard a scream from the village. A man in white pants ran into the yard. “They are dead. All three of the rebels are dead.”
“Easy, careful,” Murdock said. “DeWitt, what can you see?”
“We nailed two of them. They had no protection from this angle. Shot the third and he crawled off somewhere. We think that was all of them.”
“See if you can find the wounded one and capture him. Don’t take any risks. If he still has a weapon, and uses it, waste him. Go.”
Without waiting, Ejercito sprinted from his cover to the closest house thirty yards across the opening. He drew no fire.
“Lieutenant, take it easy. Careful,” Murdock said on the radio.
They waited.
Three minutes later, the earpieces spoke again.
“We’ve got him, Skipper,” DeWitt said. “He’s alive and has two rounds in his legs. Doing a lot of blubbering in the native language.”
“Ejercito, find them and talk to the man. Pump him for everything you can. We need information. Any hostages here? Where are they? What’s the next rebel camp in this area? Everything he’ll talk about.”
“Yes, sir. I see them. I’ll be busy for a few minutes.”
“DeWitt, search the houses and huts, tell those who speak English that the fighting is all over. Have them come out of their huts. See if there are any hostages kept here.”
Murdock kept his men covering the village. When it was cleared, the civilians came out cheering and shaking hands. The SEALs took it easy in the shade. Murdock went to the hut where the prisoner was being questioned. He had been tired to a wooden chair. He was naked. DeWitt stood in the background.
Ejercito asked the man a question in Filipino, the other official language of the island nation in addition to English. The man shook his head. Ejercito put a four-inch slice across the man’s shoulder. He wailed in pain. Ejercito slapped him twice. The small man looked up, hatred and fear showing on his face. At last he nodded.
“You speak English, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You said there is another rebel camp nearby. How close?”
“Ten miles upstream.”
“This is an outpost?”
“Yes, we report by radio. We smashed the radio when you attacked.”
“How many rebels in the next camp?”
“Twenty, thirty, maybe forty. It changes every day.”
“Is that where they hold the sixty hostages?”
The man’s eyes went wide. “Hostages? I don’t know about any hostages.”
“How long have you been posted here?”
“For three months. Nobody said anything about hostages.”
Ejercito stared hard at the prisoner, who didn’t change his expression. At last the lieutenant nodded and stepped back.
“I think he’s telling the truth. The next step is ten miles. Do we take it now or do Lam and I recon it?”
“We do it now,” Murdock said. “Bradford. Call the chopper on the Motorola and tell him we’re moving ten miles upstream. He should wait two hours, then follow us and find an LZ in that immediate area. Better at nine miles than ten. Do it.”
Murdock motioned to the captive. “What about him?”
“He’s got both legs shot up,” the lieutenant said. “One broken. We can leave him here. The locals will take care of him. Many of them sympathize with the rebels. He can’t hurt us. No way he can run up and warn them ahead.”
“Good, cut him free.” The captive was grinning and nodding.
“DeWitt, any casualties?”
“None. We’re ready to move.”
“Lam, let’s find the trail upstream and we’ll get the men lined up. Single file and keep locked and loaded. Let’s move, SEALs.”
Bradford used the Motorola then and contacted the chopper.
Five minutes later they were on the trail. “It’s a little after 1330. We have two hours to do ten miles. We’ll start with a jog and then speed it up if we have to. Lam, stay ahead twenty. Moving out.”
* * *
It was two hours and twenty minutes before they saw Lam give the down signal. The SEALs hit the jungle floor. Murdock and DeWitt checked in with Lam, who stood behind a big tree and pointed ahead. It was a crudely camouflaged outpost built along the trail behind a huge Philippine mahogany tree.
“I’ve seen two men,” Lam whispered. “Neither one looks over twenty. Both are smoking. I’d swear I could smell pot smoke a few minutes ago.”
Murdock drew his KA-BAR and touched the sharp edge. Lam nodded and drew his. Murdock motioned for Lam to go left and he would go right. Silence was understood.
DeWitt slipped back to the rest of the troops to caution them for absolute quiet. He told the Filipino lieutenant about the outpost.
“Good,” he whispered. “There might be two of them. There almost always are.”
Murdock slid into the brush and jungle growth for fifteen yards directly away from the river and the two rebels. Then he went to his stomach and did a hard right and worked forward, careful not to rustle any leaves or move any branches. He figured he was fifteen yards from the outpost on the trail. He worked that far upstream, then turned at a ninety-degree angle and wormed his way under most of the growth in the fifteen yards he had to go toward the river. After five yards he stopped to listen. He could hear faint voices, then a laugh. Five more yards and he could hear the words plainly. He stared hard through the growth, but it was too thick. He worked forward again. Suddenly the underbrush vanished. It looked as if it had been chopped down to give security to the sentries.
Murdock stopped just inside the fringe and behind a tree. He eased his face around it. There, ten feet away, sat two guards inside the crude outpost. Both had automatic rifles, and wore Army shirts but civilian white pants. Both were smoking, and Murdock recognized the pot smoke at once. No way to tell how high they might be. He snicked the Motorola send button once. He was ready.
He waited. A minute later, he received a return snick in his earpiece. Ten seconds after the second snick they both would charge. Eight, nine, ten, Murdock counted slowly to himself. Then he lifted up sou
ndlessly. Both rebels looked out a small window and along the trail downstream, their backs to Murdock. He took three steps without a sound, saw Lam come out of some brush and take three steps. They nodded, then charged with their KA-BARs held straight in front of them like lances.
One of the guards sensed something behind him and began to turn. Before he could even see Murdock, the commander’s KA-BAR drove into his back. Murdock turned the blade and twisted it sideways into the man’s spinal column.
As Murdock hit the first man, Lam came at the second. His man turned more, and the six-inch blade of the KA-BAR sliced through the uniform, plunged into the man’s side. It tore through part of his lung and daggered deep into his heart, killing him before he could make a sound.
Murdock’s man spilled off the stool to the ground, where he thrashed for a moment; then his cut spinal cord refused to send messages to his body, and his heart and lungs closed down and he gushed out a long, final breath.
“Clear front,” Murdock whispered in his Motorola. Lam moved along the trail upstream.
“Murdock, Ejercito says there often will be two outposts in front of any good-sized rebel force,” radioed DeWitt. “Lam, you copy?”
“Lam. I copy.”
Far off, Murdock thought he could hear a helicopter, but then the sound faded. He wiped his blade on the dead man’s pants and put it back in its sheath. A few moments later the rest of the platoon hiked up and they moved forward on the trail.
Murdock had checked the outpost. There were no phone lines and no radios present. The SEALs should have the element of surprise.
Ten minutes later, Lam called up the officers. Lieutenant Ejercito went along. The four of them watched ahead as four men replaced four men in another guard position. It was not done in a military manner, but they finished the transfer and the four replaced men hiked upstream. All of these men had new Army-type uniforms of dark green.
Murdock heard the rebel radio transmission that came at once. It was in Filipino, and Ejercito held up his hand as he concentrated. Then he nodded.
“The new guards are checking in. All is quiet. They expect no trouble. There has been no word of any new developments on the money payments on the hostages.”
“That’s just dandy,” Ed DeWitt whispered. “But how in hell are we going to take down this guard post without alerting the rest of the rebels that they have some serious trouble coming right at them?”
8
Jungle near Davao
Mindanao, Philippines
“Easy to silence the outpost,” Tran Khai said. “We use the EAR. Ain’t that why I’ve been carrying it all this way?”
“Didn’t think we brought one,” DeWitt said.
“Get up here, Khai,” Murdock said. “Your friends and neighbors need your help.”
“We find the radio the rebels have and take it,” Ejercito said. “Then I can answer any calls in either language before we hit the main camp.” Lieutenant Ejercito looked to Murdock for approval. Lieutenant Commander Murdock nodded. “Your men told me about the EAR. I still can’t believe it,” said Ejercito.
“You will,” Lam said.
Khai came up a moment later and saw the outpost guardhouse. It was made of woven reeds and branches and blended into the surroundings.
“Blow the house down?” Khai said. He looked at Murdock.
“Fire when ready.”
Khai sighted in and pulled the trigger. The familiar whooshing sound came from the weapon; then the reed walls of the hut ahead shivered and wavered. Lam and Murdock sprinted for the guard shack thirty yards away. By the time they got there, none of the four rebels was moving. The SEALs bound them hand and foot and gagged them, then found the radio and waved the troops forward.
Ejercito shook his head in amazement. “And in four to six hours they wake up with no more damage than a slight headache. What a great weapon.”
Lam had moved out ahead, and he reported they were at least a half mile from the main camp.
“How can you tell?” Murdock asked.
“I hear people singing and shouting.”
“Give us plenty of time to catch up before you take on the whole damn rebel camp,” Murdock said.
“Will do.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, they found Lam waiting for them. There was a forty-five-degree bend in the river, which had dwindled down to a stream only twenty feet across and somewhere less than a foot deep. Lam pointed ahead.
“Took a gander round the bend. The camp is there, big sucker. Looks like a village of maybe two hundred huts and some wooden houses. Saw a few of the green-shirted rebels but not that many. Like trying to attack Hometown, Philippines, with all those civilians.”
“We’ll get out of sight,” Murdock said. “You and the lieutenant take a recon. Go all the way around it and get back here in an hour.”
“Hour and a half,” Lam said. “It’s a big place.”
Murdock put one squad on each side of the trail. They were fifty feet back in brush and jungle that was now showing some pines. The SEALs settled into places where nobody could see them unless they stepped on them.
“We wait,” Murdock said on the Motorola.
Waiting was always the hardest part. Murdock filled in the time remembering the last time Ardith Jane Manchester stayed with him at his apartment. It had felt so damn good, so wonderfully comfortable, so… right, that he’d almost asked her to marry him. Almost, but not quite. It hadn’t been a special day. He’d worked with the training routine, come home filthy and tired. Had a shower and then some thin-cut pork chops Ardith had fixed the way he liked them, with mashed potatoes and brown gravy and frozen corn and a mixed green salad with the best Roquefort dressing he’d ever tasted. She wouldn’t tell him where she’d bought it.
Just a nice normal-type middle-class day. Nobody was killed, nobody jumped out of an airplane or dove deep into the sea, or blew up a ship or anything like that. A fine, normal day and evening. Then they made love in the king-sized bed and drifted into a great night’s sleep.
A nice normal day for them was exceptional, and 180 degrees from the usual day for both of them. The next morning he got a call from Don Stroh. They had four hours to be on a plane to God only knows where, and Ardith had a call from the Senate Armed Services Committee. It summoned her to testify early the next day in Washington about some research she had been doing. She had to fly out at noon, only she was heading east, while Murdock and the SEALs were moving west.
Murdock came back to reality suddenly. He frowned. A strange sound. It came again. He grinned, found a rock, and threw it over ten feet and hit Bradford. He was snoring.
The big guy snorted, roused, and stopped snoring. That made Murdock wonder about the call he’d had just before they left, about a warrant for Bradford’s arrest. He hadn’t told the big SEAL about it. No reason to worry him. Maybe it would be all ironed out by the time they got back. Maybe not. He knew that Bradford was in a small group of artists who rented a little gallery down on India Street. Bradford certainly wasn’t counterfeiting old masters, that was for sure. He didn’t do that kind of art. Murdock had taken Ardith down to look at his paintings one weekend.
His earpiece clicked twice. “Yes?”
“Halfway around, Skip. We’ve seen about fifteen green shirts. None in a group, scattered all over the place. No GHQ that we can tell. Have seen nothing that looks like what the lieutenant thinks would be a lockup for the hostages. Where could they escape to? Not too wild about taking on this place without a hell of a lot more data.”
“Yeah, Lam, I hear you. Do the rest of the circuit and then we’ll decide. Out.”
“Bummer,” DeWitt said on the radio.
“Worse than that. Bradford, have you made contact with that chopper pilot lately?”
“Twice, Skipper. He has an LZ about a mile behind the big angled turn in the river. A mile downstream. Best he can do. He’s ready when we’re ready.”
“Thanks, Bradford. How’s the artw
ork selling?”
“Hey, just sold two before we left for three hundred and fifty bucks. I can help pay the rent.”
“Good, Bradford, that’s good.”
The net went quiet for another ten minutes; then Lam came on. “Jackpot, Skipper. We’ve just found a pair of old wooden buildings set back a ways from the rest of the village. Must be twenty, maybe thirty of the green shirts going and coming. No sign of any hostages. We’re about a quarter of the way around the right-hand side of the camp. Best to cross the creek and come up through the brush. Should we take them out?”
“We’re moving, Lam. We’ll take one more look and check it out. I’d say a good chance we get some target practice in before the day is over.”
The SEALs moved across the creek and worked into the jungle brush for fifty yards, then moved upstream. Lam caught them before they passed him. He, DeWitt, and Murdock went for one more look.
A short time later the Motorolas sounded off. “Squads move up. Lam will check you out. Alpha to the upstream, Bravo to the downstream side. Set up where Lam shows you and get a good field of fire. Range will be about seventy-five yards.”
Murdock had whistled softly when he saw the target. The two buildings were old, the traffic heavy. He saw two off-road motorcycles parked nearby. “We’ll use the twenties, three rounds each to start, then switch to 5.56 for the stragglers. Somebody be sure to get those motorcycles with a twenty. Everyone fire your weapon. Not a chance any hostages are in there. Lam says no sign of any hostages anywhere. We take what we can get. Anyone not in position, sound off.” He heard nothing. The men were spread out five yards apart along the far side of the stream across a small clearing.
Murdock sighted down on the open door to the first building. “Fire when ready,” he said, and pulled the trigger. The impact of the 20mm round exploding inside the place came immediately, followed by six more rounds of the twenties, and soon hundreds of rounds from the machine gun, the sniper rifle, and the M-4A1 rifles.
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