“Damn slight. Depends what the Chicoms have had time to set up as a defensive unit down here in the mud flats. You ever seen such a wide river? Islands all over the place. Just passed a big island on the right that looked like Minnesota.”
“No buildings?”
“Oh, hell no. Looked like it was half marsh and the rest ready to be flooded with the first rain upstream.”
As the light came up, they could see more details along the shoreline. It had pinched in now along another big island and the more firm looking land to the left.
“Trouble,” Dobler said. “Small boat coming upstream. Range two thousand yards.”
Stray bars of light splintered into the darkness from the east. The whole river took on a different tone as the light drove in devouring the darkness.
Ten minutes later they could see the boat plainly. It worked upstream at seven or eight knots.
“Patrol boat for sure,” Murdock said. “I’ll take the wheel. You get everyone awake and out of sight and locked and loaded for bear. We’re going to have a fight with this guy.”
Murdock watched the other boat closely as it approached. They were closing at about twenty-five knots. Soon he could see a machine gun mounted on the front. Was it Chinese or still a Bangladesh craft? He saw no flag. Then he spotted a flag on the stern. What was the Chinese flag? Then he had it. A gold star in the upper left hand corner on a pure red field. Yes. He had no idea what the Bangladesh flag looked like. He stared at the fluttering flag. Then he could see it, a red field and star.
They were still five hundred yards off each other.
“Twenties, fire at will,” Murdock said. He sighted in on the ship without using the laser and fired. Two more rounds came almost at the same time. Two of the rounds hit the Chicom ship and exploded. The first took out the man just crawling behind the machine gun on the fore deck. The second hit the wheelhouse but most of the damage was on the outside.
In close order six more rounds hit the Chinese craft before the crew had a chance to return fire. The man at the helm vanished, the thirty-foot craft plowed straight ahead for ten seconds, then the engine died. With no one at the wheel, the little craft nudged against the current for the last time, then swung to port and began to drift slowly downstream with the current.
Two rifles fired from the small ship, but neither hit the SEALs’ boat. The Chinese patrol boat drifted toward the far shore, and Dobler steered his craft to the opposite side of the half-mile wide river.
By then it was brightly light. The sun was up soon and a warm, humid day approached. Dobler coaxed another knot of speed from the ka-thumping diesel engine and they moved back to the center of the roiling, muddy water.
Ten minutes later Lam called from the center of the boat.
“Chopper coming from due north.”
“Too early for the forty-six,” Dobler said.
“Doesn’t sound like a forty-six,” DeWitt said. “Keep those twenties with full magazines.” Three of the men switched to full mags and waited.
“Still coming downstream,” Lam said. “Engine sound is wrong, so it’s not one of ours.”
“We let him make a flyover. Everyone flake out like you’re sleeping. We might fool him into thinking we’re some of his own.”
“Not likely,” Jaybird said.
Canzoneri spotted it first. “A speck over the far bank at about eleven o’clock looking that way.”
“Yeah, working the bank,” Murdock said. “Might be part of that attack we came past last night. He’s not one of our choppers, for damn sure.”
“He might not even see us,” Lam said.
“No chance, he’s looking for something, somebody,” Jaybird said. “I think he just found us.”
The chopper had picked up speed and turned directly toward them. “Let him have one flyover free,” Murdock said.
By then the bird was only a hundred yards away. Murdock stood with Dobler at the wheel. The chopper came closer. It was a large one for troop transport. two rotors. They could see a machine gun mounted on the door with a man behind it. The helicopter came closer, then did a slow circle around the SEALs in the center of a thirty-yard circle. It moved away, then came back with the door gunner on the right side positioned to fire at them.
“Weapons free, let’s knock him down,” Murdock said. He lifted the twenty and fired twice from the hip, then came up and sighted in on the bird. The door gunner got off one burst, then an exploding 20mm round churned his face into pulp and knocked him out the far door. He was only a minor splash before the chopper took a dozen hits, turned slightly, then the rotors stopped and began free wheeling just before the fuel tanks exploded in one giant fireball and the chopper dropped like a bucket full of concrete and slammed into the water. The craft resisted the water for a moment, then the remains eased under the muddy flood and were gone.
“Home, James,” Jaybird chirped and everyone laughed reliving the tension.
“Sonsobitches, brothers, did you see that asshole explode?” Howie Anderson yelled. “Went up like a possum gutted out by a load of buckshot.”
DeWitt chuckled. “Couldn’t have said it more colorfully myself.”
Where is this damn forty-six we’re supposed to meet?” Train Khai asked. “Shouldn’t he be showing up sometime soon? How long does it take a forty-six to go forty miles?”
“How long?” Lam asked. “At a hundred and fifty-five miles an hour they move about two point five miles a minute, or about sixteen minutes for forty miles.”
“Where the fuck is he?” Fernandez asked. “Hell, it’s been light for over twenty minutes.”
Lam stood and looked around. “Somebody coming. He stared at the sky again, turned all the way around then looked back north. “Yeah, coming fast and it ain’t no chopper. Got to be a jet fighter heading south.”
“We won’t nail a MiG with our twenties,” Murdock said. “And he has twenties of his own.”
“Unless he’s hunting us on purpose, he won’t know we’re hostiles,” DeWitt said. “Not at his speed. We just play it cool and don’t show any guns or objections. Fact is, we could wave at him if he’s anywhere under a thousand feet.”
They waited and watched. Two minutes later the jet streaked over at eight to ten thousand feet.
“Damn, he couldn’t even see us down here,” Jefferson said.
“Good, now where’s my chopper,” Jaybird said.
They worked past another huge island on the left and smaller one on the right. At last the surface of the water seemed to be changing.
“A little salt water creeping in,” DeWitt said. “We should be able to smell salt air before long.”
“That MiG is coming back,” Lam said. “Lower this time, lots lower.”
It came from the south right up the channel and when they saw it they were almost too late. It slashed past them at a hundred feet off the water, slapping them with the jet blast of sound as soon as it jolted pas them at seven hundred miles an hour.
“That time he saw us,” Murdock said. “Now, the question is, will he make a gentle turn and come back and blast us into toothpicks with his twenties?”
They waited.
Two minutes dragged by. They began to grin and relax.
It came at them from the north. The first they heard were the rattling of the rotary guns pumping out 20mm rounds at their boat. Then it roared over them at less than hundred feet and rocked the boat twenty degrees. None of the 20mm rounds hit the boat.
“Missed us, by God,” Chief Dobler screeched. “At that speed one of those rounds hits the deck about every fifty feet. He has to be damn good to do us any harm.”
“He might get lucky, do we abandon ship, Cap?” DeWitt asked.
Murdock figured he had two minutes to decide. The next pass the pilot would get more altitude and concentrate his fire when he dove at them. Snap decision, combat pure.
“Over the side, everyone. Leave everything except your weapon. Kill the engine. If he misses we’ll swim for the boa
t. Swim away from the tub on each side. Abandon ship, now.”
Murdock grabbed his Bull Pup and jumped the six feet into the Ganges. He did a scissors kick as soon as he hit and kept his head above water, then lowered his face into the water and kicked hard and used one arm to power himself away from the boat. He felt the pull of the current. Good, if the boat lasted they wouldn’t have so far to swim to catch it.
Murdock was thirty yards to one side of the boat when the jet came down again. He could hear the plane and he was higher, diving this time to concentrate his rounds. This pass with the 20mm cannon riddled the boat, knocking huge chunks out of the deck on one side. The next pass by the MiG blasted a hundred exploding rounds into the small craft. The wheelhouse vanished and toppled into the water. The deck exploded in a million splinters and the whole left side of the craft caved in as the holes in the bottom let the dank Ganges pour in. A minute later the boat sank.
Murdock looked around. He saw two swimmers.
“Over here,” Murdock bellowed. “Assemble over here.” He looked for the nearest land. One of the many islands poked out of the water ahead and to the left downstream. The two men near him were Mahanani and Jaybird.
“That next island, Jaybird,” Murdock called. The two men headed that way. Murdock yelled again, but could see no other swimmers near him. He surged upward out of the water and yelled at the top of his move. “The island to the left,” he called. “Get to the island to the left.”
Then he swam for the land, holding the Bull Pup in one hand and swimming hard with the other. The current helped and he washed on shore three minutes later. The other two were there yelling into the morning sunlight. They spotted two more men and helped them up the beach. The land here was barely two feet out of the water.
Murdock thought of his Motorola. It was wet and dead. They weren’t made for underwater work. He doubted if any of the men took time to waterproof the little radio set before they dove in. He felt his shoulder and saw that he still had two flares. Some help.
He had four men out of fourteen. Where the hell were the other ten?
13
Where were those guys? Murdock stared into the glare of the early morning sunshine. Another island to the right fifty yards. He squinted. Yes, somebody was over there.
Jaybird came up. “I’ve got five more men on that next little island to the right,” Jaybird said. “Looks like it’s about flooded over. We going over there or have them come over here?”
“Here,” Murdock said.
Jaybird adjusted his Motorola. “Hey guys on that other island. If you’ve got your ears on, Skipper says come over here. See me, I’m waving.”
Jaybird had no response to his call.
“My radio is dead,” Murdock said. “How did you have time to get yours waterproofed?”
“Did that the minute I saw that MiG making his first run. I’ll go up as far as I can on this land and yell at the guys. It ain’t that far away.”
Mahanani came up. “Hey, found two more slippery SEALs. One is talking about a hurt leg, Franklin. Don’t know how bad yet. How many men we missing?”
“Still short three. They must be here somewhere. The current isn’t that strong, no downpulls.”
“Where’n hell are you guys?” Mahanani’s ear piece asked.
“Hey, I’ve got a live one here. Who is this and where are you?”
“Ostercamp you jerk. Three of us found this little reef, sandbar, whatever. We’re sitting in six inches of water but it’s easier than swimming. Where are you?”
Jaybird came running up from where he’d been up the island.
“Good count on that other island, Cap. I’ve got five over there. That makes fourteen chicks in the basket. Everyone accounted for.”
“Good, where’s DeWitt?”
“Must be on the island. They’re going to swim over here. Haven’t spotted the sand bar guys yet, but they can’t be far away. I’ll make another run down the island.”
Mahanani, Lampedusa and Howie Anderson looked at their platoon leader. “So, what the hell we do now, Skipper?”
“First we get the men together. Where are the three sandbar sitters?”
“Where are you guys on the sandbar? Can you see a big island maybe three four feet high anywhere? Probably behind you. How far downstream did you go before you got to the reef?”
“Not sure,” Ostercamp said. “Big island. Small one in front, oh yeah, now I see it. Behind us, maybe, what three hundred yards.”
“Jaybird should be showing up at your end of the island. If you can see him, give him a holler. We’ve found everybody now.”
Murdock moved down the island until he could see where his five men were swimming across the fifty yards from the other one. They came in pairs fighting the five-knot current. The last pair came slower, drifted farther downstream and Murdock saw that one man was helping the other one.
They were going to be swept by the end of the island, but Howie Anderson swam out and pulled them in. The last two were DeWitt and Will Dobler. Dobler was the one getting help. Murdock ran up to them where they both lay on the beach.
DeWitt motioned Murdock to one side. “Will must have taken some shrapnel from one of the twenties. Got him in the upper leg and doesn’t look good. We better get a couple of first aid kits off the men. Mahanani is looking at it. Not fatal, but he won’t be walking much for a while.”
“Glad to see you guys. We’ve got three fish sitting on a sand bar downstream about three hundred yards. Ostercamp and two others. They have a working radio. I took mine for a swim.”
“So what now?” DeWitt asked.
“We’re not moving downstream a hell of a lot farther,” Murdock said.” He looked around, saw Lam, and called the tracker over. “Do a quick survey of the island. Let me know what we have. Any vegetation, where it’s the driest, any concealment. Go.”
Lam took off on a trot heading for the far side of the island.
“I figure we’re still about thirty-five miles from the mouth of the Ganges,” DeWitt said. “Hope that chopper pilot doesn’t get nervous about charging into enemy territory up the river.”
“That’s what we pay him for,” Murdock said.
He rounded up the men he had and moved then down the island. Two SEALs helped as Dobler hobbled along on one foot. The land was a quarter of a mile long, maybe half that wide. There was no vegetation of any kind on this side, just mud and sand. The dry part was three to four feet above the river level. Toward the center of the island it rose to twenty-five or thirty feet. Murdock moved the men up there.
“Mahanani, contact Jaybird and see if he can spot those three sandbar guys.”
Mahanani made the radio call. He waited a minute and looked up. “Jaybird says Ostercamp has Jefferson and Khai with him. All are okay. He says they don’t want to do the swim back upstream just yet. Give them another half hour and they will join us.”
“Good. Tell Jaybird to stay there and keep in contact with them and ride herd.”
Murdock looked at the island. He moved the men to the highest point. It was dry there. They flaked out, tried to get the Ganges silt out of their ears, and dried out a little. Everyone had a weapon except Will Dobler.
Lam caught up with Murdock. “Looks like a little bit of brush and grass over on the far side about halfway down. Might be enough to conceal us if a chopper comes around. That’s about it for this bit of Bangladesh soil.”
Murdock went with Lam to take a look. By the time they made it back to the top of the island, the three reef sitters were back on dry land and telling how hard it was swimming in the grime of the Ganges against that five-knot current.
“What a bunch of wimps,” Howie bellowed. “My grandmother could swim up there and she’s ninety-two.”
Murdock called the men around and in typical SEAL fashion laid out the problem.
“You know our situation here, let’s have some input. What should we do?”
“What the hell can we do to get closer to th
e bay?” Jaybird asked.
“We can’t swim down forty miles with a wounded man,” DeWitt said. “No way. Dobler has the leg wound.”
“Hell I can still swim,” Dobler said.
“Yeah, and we’d have a pack of sharks following down your blood trail,” Mahanani said.
“Our Motorolas are good for maybe five miles,” Howie said. “Oh, shit. I left the SATCOM on the boat. It’s long gone by now.”
Murdock scowled. “Next mission I’m gonna staple the fucking SATCOM to your ears. So, the SATCOM is out. Next I want everybody to make a hide hole here in this brush. It isn’t much, but better than raw sand. Get a spot fixed so you can go invisible at fifty feet. You know the drill. Let’s do it now, and hope that we don’t need it. Be thinking on this small situation we’re in.”
The SEALs moved ten feet apart and scraped out foliage, leaves, and dirt until they could lie down, and cover themselves with the material, leaving only their faces showing. To those they applied new steaks of wet mud to break up the visual image.
They were done in ten minutes.
“Now, any new ideas,” Murdock called. Murdock was next to Dobler and had helped him with his hole.
“The obvious,” Jaybird said. “We wait for that forty-six to come and spot us.”
“Play stranded and lure a boat over and capture it,” Jefferson said.
“Yeah, the place is just teeming with traffic this morning,” Howie snapped.
“Send our two best swimmers downstream, maybe with a float log, and watch for the chopper, and guide it back up here.” Mahanani said it. He was the best swimmer in the platoon.
“Find some native girls and settle down on our island and grow pineapple and sugarcane?” Canzoneri asked with a grin.
“I’m for that one,” Bradford yelped.
“Back to business,” Murdock said. “At least my watch works. We send one waterproofed Motorola with the swimmers. It’s almost eleven hundred. We should have seen that chopper by now.”
“Must be a dozen good-size channels branching off the Ganges,” DeWitt said. “The pilot could have picked any one of them and been wrong.”
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