“He has some choppers. Just how many we don’t know. So I’d use choppers or half-tracks and move eighty men into blocking positions along the Saudi border and along the Kuwait boundary. Then I’d sit and wait for us to fall into the trap, or for daylight when my jets could do the job.”
“El Raza doesn’t have any jets.”
“Then whose were those we saw?”
“Probably Uncle Saddam. He may be in the equation now. If so, he’s got all the firepower, and men, he wants. But would he pull El Raza’s chestnuts out of the pot? Why would he?”
“To give Uncle Sam a bloody nose. He’s already shot down one U.S. chopper and should be able to prove it. If he could capture or kill sixteen U.S. military men on Iraq soil, he could shout invasion and all sorts of wild things in the world court of public opinion. And he’d win the round.”
“Good. About what I had decided on, the blocking move. If he has eighty men for each spot, how long a line could he use to be sure to block us?”
“Eighty men at twenty yards apart at night would be the best he could do. That’s sixteen hundred yards. Damn near a mile. Seventeen hundred and sixty yards in a mile. Two eight-eighties that I used to run for the Academy track team.”
“If we hit the screen, we’d have to take out three of the sentries to give ourselves a safe passage between them of eighty yards. Almost a football field. Which I didn’t play on for the Academy.” They both chuckled.
“So, if Lam can spot them in time, and if we manage to hit the wrong spot where they are, we need to take out three sentries in a row,” Dewitt said. “Wish we had bows and arrows. Even our silenced sniper rifles are going to make too much noise.
“Knife work,” Murdock said. “You, me, and Jaybird.”
Lampedusa came back every ten minutes. He was surprised how slowly they were moving, then remembered Gonzalez.
“I can’t see shit up there,” Lam told Murdock. “Don’t look like there’s anybody ahead or behind us. Think we shot the fuck out of that chopper bunch.”
Murdock told him about what he and Dewitt had been talking about.
“Makes sense. Only how do you know they’ll put them twenty yards apart?”
“We don’t. It’s what I’d do in his situation,” Murdock said.
“What if he figures by our hits on his people that we’re heading for Saudi, not the other one, and he puts all one-eighty along that border?”
“Then we’ll have a better chance of hitting his nearly two-mile picket fence, but still just as good a chance of getting through,” Dewitt said.
“Yeah. Okay. I want to be one of the guys with the knife.”
“A volunteer,” Dewitt said.
“We’ll worry about that when you spot those pickets. Remember, this is Iraq. They’ll probably be talking and most surely smoking.
Should be fish in a fucking teacup.”
The pace had slowed. Murdock wondered about carrying Gonzalez. He was 180 pounds. Ronson could pack him for half a mile. Then what? No, they were stuck with the best pace that their wounded man could do.
Murdock went up to see them. Gonzales looked worse. Doc gave him another shot of morphine from the small one-time-use ampoules, and he perked up a little.
“You tell me where you hurt, Gonzalez. None of this hero shit, you understand?”
“Yeah, Doc. Too damn tired to argue.”
“How tired? Like you aren’t getting enough blood to carry oxygen to your muscles?”
“No, just tired. My arms feel like they’re about to fall off, but they ain’t.”
Gonzalez wasn’t wearing his combat vest with his ammo and other items. It usually weighed about twenty pounds. Doc had given the Colt carbine to someone else as well.
“So, buddy, just keep moving them big feet one ahead of the other, and we’ll get out of this chicken-shit country.”
“Amen to that. How far?”
“Not a clue, nobody will tell me. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
Later, Murdock thought he heard an aircraft, but he couldn’t be sure. Nobody else heard it. He was fantasizing. He checked his watch.
It was 0130. They had five hours to daylight. Salwa had put on Gonzalez’s combat vest, and had his Colt. He gave Murdock the .45 H&K pistol.
“I’m more used to a long gun,” Salwa said.
The ravine kept getting smaller and shallower. They were moving upstream. A half mile more and they were back on the desert floor.
They shifted their heading back to the southwest.
Salwa came up to Murdock. “Hey, now I know where I am. We’re near some caves — I don’t remember what they called them. Back in my student days we came here on a field trip. Relations between the countries were better then.”
Murdock gave the Kuwaiti a drink from his canteen.
“I’m remembering a little more about this area,” Salwa said.
“There were several of the large caves. Ancient ones with hints of a previous civilization.”
Murdock put his canteen back on his belt. “How big were the caves?”
“Huge. But it was a long time ago.”
“Might be a good defensive position if we get tracked down,” Murdock said. He took off the NVGs and handed them to the Kuwaiti.
“Take a look around, you might see something familiar.”
Salwa took the goggles, and stared around the landscape for a minute. Then he caught up, and walked again beside Murdock.
“Yes, I did see something. The start of a wadi. It’s nearly on our course. I think if it’s the right wadi, that I can find the caves.”
Murdock talked with Ed Dewitt and Jaybird. They agreed.
Ten minutes later they moved in a slightly more southern direction, and soon found a wadi, or gully, that was small, but grew deeper as they walked along it.
“Yes,” Salwa said. “This is the one. The caves should be less than a half mile ahead.”
Murdock went to the front of the line and checked in with Gonzalez.
He looked decidedly worse than he had a half hour before. As he walked beside Murdock, Gonzalez stumbled, and Doc had to catch him. Murdock talked to his mike.
“Ronson, come up to the front.”
A minute later Ronson came striding up. He took one look at Gonzalez, picked him up like a baby, and carried him forward. He had given his machine gun to Murdock.
“Half a mile, and we take a break,” Murdock said. Gonzalez had closed his eyes. Murdock knew how proud he was to be a SEAL. He didn’t want anyone helping him. Only now it was absolutely necessary.
Murdock went back to the middle of the line, and told Dewitt about the assist. The big problem now would be daylight. Before then they had to have somewhere to hide or be across the border into Saudi Arabia.
The caves might be the answer. That is, if they didn’t run into the blocking force before it got anywhere near light. Murdock wanted to be well into Saudi Arabia by the time the desert sun came up.
The caves would give them good protection for a rest. If the Kuwaiti was right, and if he could find them in the dark.
5
Wednesday, 10 January
Near Wadi al-Batin Caves
Southeastern Iraq
The Third Platoon hiked along the wadi for half an hour. Murdock heard something and hit the dirt, and the rest of the platoon went down as well. He turned. The sound had come from close by.
Fayd Salwa chuckled. “Commander, I’m afraid it’s the alarm on my watch. It’s new, and I’ve never figured out how to turn it off, so I set it at two-fifteen A. M., and two-fifteen P.m. Sorry.”
“False alarm,” Murdock said into his lip mike. “Let’s move.”
He grinned at Salwa. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Just glad we weren’t sneaking up on somebody. At least now I know what time it is.
We have, what, maybe four hours to daylight?”
“Sunup about six-thirty, or oh-six-thirty.” Salwa looked ahead again through the NVG. “Yes, yes. This is the way.
The caves are no more than a hundred yards ahead. We’ll go down a steep place in the wadi here.”
Five minutes later, they had dropped in the gully to twenty feet below the level of the desert. The first cave was nothing but a black hole in a rock wall.
“First one isn’t much,” Salwa said. “Let’s go to the middle one.
It’s huge.”
Fifty feet down the wadi, they came to the second cave. The wadi was open on the top, and the cave showed black and dank on the right-hand side. Murdock took a pencil flash from his vest, and aimed it into the cave. The thin light went only a few feet.
“It’s more than a hundred feet deep, and thirty feet wide,” Salwa said. “The ceiling is up about twenty feet. Lots of room.”
Murdock stared at it. “How far are we from the border, and can we make it there before daylight?”
“From here, four miles. I know. We hiked in when I was in school.
Four miles, four hours, usually no problem.”
Murdock rubbed his jaw. Gonzalez would be a problem. “Take a break,” he said into the Motorola. “Fifteen minutes.” He turned back to the Kuwaiti. “Do any of these caves have water in them, drinkable water?”
“This one does. Far back.”
Three of them carried all the canteens, and found a small spring that came out of seemingly solid rock, gurgled down twenty feet, and vanished underground again. They filled the canteens, and using both Murdock and Dewitt’s flashlights, worked their way back to the front of the cave.
Murdock told Holt to make another SATCOM contact giving their MUGR coordinates. The reply came back quickly.
“You now have a better location. Kuwait border still too hot to cross. Might have a chance since you’re near the Saudi border. Give us an hour to do some consulting with our allies.”
“Not much of an answer, Commander,” Holt said.
“No answer at all.”
Just before the end of the break, Joe Lampedusa, the platoon scout, hit his mike.
“L-T, we’ve got company. Commander, that is. A small vehicle of some kind with bright lights just slid down the steep grade, and is about fifty feet up the wadi. Maybe a dozen men with it.”
Murdock ran for the entrance. The two machine gunners Joe Douglas and Horse Ronson, beat him to it. They went prone, and set up their machine guns, then charged in the first round as silently as possible.
The Iraqi men in the rig left it, and investigated the first cave.
Six of them were visible in front of the headlights.
“They can’t miss us,” Murdock said. “Get two grenade throwers up here,” he told his lip mike.
Kenneth Ching and Guns Franklin slid to the ground and dug out hand grenades.
Murdock waited a minute; then more men came in front of the small rig, and the motor started. Murdock jolted off six rounds from his MP-5SD, and the machine guns chimed in with a series of five-round bursts.
Four men in the headlights went down. The truck’s windshield shattered. A hand grenade burst at the side of the rig showering instant death. The second grenade that exploded was WP, white phosphorus, and it sent unquenchable blobs of the fast-burning phosphorus spraying into the cave, and across four more men, who went down screaming. The sticky substance burned through uniforms, then into flesh, and through it and bones as the soldiers bellowed in agony.
There was no return fire. The men were so caught by surprise, and the fire coming at them was so intense, that all died in their tracks, or ran out of the wadi hoping to escape the sudden death.
Murdock took the men with him from the cave mouth, and charged the jeep with assault fire. There was no opposition. They checked the bodies in the pale moonlight. Only one was alive. He was dispatched with a round to the head. SEALs take no prisoners, leave no wounded.
Five minutes later, the platoon had saddled up, and moved out of the wadi heading due southwest for the Saudi border.
“Only four miles,” Murdock said. “A little over four miles to the border. We can do that standing on our pricks and waving our arms. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” somebody said on the radio. “Who the fuck were those guys?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Murdock said. “Either Saddam’s troops or El Raza’s kin. They’re dead, and we’re going home.”
Gonzalez was doing better. The fifteen-minute break had rejuvenated him. He wanted to walk. Doc told Murdock Gonzalez couldn’t walk far. Murdock had Bill Bradford, the next-largest man in the platoon, walk beside Gonzalez for when he was needed.
They hiked across the barren desert-like landscape for a half hour, and were about to head down a gentle slope when Murdock saw Lam go down ten yards ahead. Murdock and the rest of them hit the desert sand and rocks.
Just ahead in the moonlight, they could see a small campfire. They heard the sound of music, some stringed instrument with lots of weird sounds and the plucking of the strings.
Murdock, Ed Dewitt, and Jaybird crawled up to the scout, and watched the scene below.
“How many men?” Murdock asked.
“Twenty to twenty-five,” Jaybird said.
“More like thirty to thirty-five,” Dewitt countered.
“Yeah, Commander, at least thirty,” Lam said.
“Too damn many of the fuckers to go through them. We take a small detour and quietly move around the sleeping dogs and let them make their music.” Murdock looked at the shadowed faces of the others. “Any other suggestions?”
“Go around,” Jaybird said, and the other two SEALs nodded. They backtracked a half mile, then did a wide roundabout of the camp. They never came within a half mile of it, and when they were safely around, they moved back on the compass course that Salwa gave them.
Before they finished their backtracking, Gonzales fell to his knees. Bill Bradford put him on his back piggyback-style, and told him to hold on. Bradford carried him as if he was a feather pillow.
Twenty minutes later a chopper came out of the dark sky with a searchlight probing the sandy ground. It moved over the land slowly, searching with its long beam.
“Almost a mile away,” Lam said.
“Yeah, but coming this way,” Murdock said. “They must have had a radio contact with that last bunch we took out in the wadi.”
“So we keep going?” Jaybird said.
“Absolutely,” the Platoon Leader said. “Let’s pick it up a little and tell Ronson to break out that Fifty he got from Bradford. We might need it if that chopper pilot spots us.”
“We gonna play Chiricahua if they get close?” Lam asked.
“Fucking right. Best way to become invisible. In the meantime, we move faster.”
They stretched out their stride, and rolled across the desert-like landscape at nearly six miles to the hour. Then the chopper changed directions, and came directly at them. When it was a quarter of a mile away, Murdock hit his lip mike.
“Indian it, you guys. Down and sandy. Cover up everything but your eyes. Move. Now.”
Salwa caught on quickly, and scooped the sand and rocks over his dark clothes while lying prone with his head down. Murdock added some rocks and sand to the civilian, then covered himself. He had taken a good look at his men. They were dispersed at least ten yards apart.
Most looked like lumps of sand and rock. He saw no telltale sign of uniforms, boots, or weapons.
“Ronson, keep that Fifty loaded and handy. Don’t fire unless the chopper spots us and opens up. Then take him out.”
“Roger that, Commander.”
They waited.
Murdock lifted his head two inches, and took a look. The chopper was doing S turns in a good search pattern, but still heading dead for their position. There was a chance they would be in the gully between the S turns, but there was just as good a chance they would be directly under the moving beam. Whoever was on the light did a good job of covering the spots between the turns where the chopper wasn’t directly overhead.
It came closer. Murdock had kept his lip mi
ke free. Now he spoke softly into it. “This is it. He’s about a hundred yards out. It’s down and dirty for us. Ronson, keep it ready but out of sight. Right?”
“Aye, aye, Commander.”
The chopper was at three hundred feet, Murdock figured. An ideal height. It gave enough spread for the light, and kept the chopper low enough so the observers could pick out things on the ground. He hoped they weren’t good at their jobs.
The bird came closer, swung away from them in the S turn, then came back almost directly overhead. Even at three hundred feet the downdraft blew around some sand. Just enough to make it harder to see what the searchlight picked up.
Then Murdock pushed his face into the sand, and held his breath.
The chopper swung back, and angled directly over the length of the platoon.
Murdock could feel the brilliant light moving toward him; then it came directly over him, and he held his breath again. The beam hovered over him a moment, then moved on. At any time Murdock expected to hear a door gunner’s machine gun chattering away, spraying the SEALs’ backs with deadly slugs, but no sound of shooting came.
The whup, whup, whup of a big chopper filled the air, and Murdock let out his breath as the sound faded a little as it edged away. Then it came louder as the Iraqi chopper did another S turn, then started to fade as it kept moving away from them. When the bird was half a mile away, Murdock called the men out of the sand.
“Fucking ants they got here are as big as fucking rabbits,” Joe Douglas said. It broke the tension, and the men brushed off the sand and got back in their double diamond formations. They moved out to the southwest with Lam on point.
Ed Dewitt jogged up, and fell into step beside Murdock.
“That might have been one of Saddam’s choppers,” Ed said. “If El Raza had a few, we must have shot them down by now. But would El Raza call in Saddam’s birds? I don’t know.”
“Could be. I still like the idea that he’ll put out a blocking force. He could do it with the trucks and half-tracks he has left. How is Gonzalez holding up?”
“He’s weaker. Ronson and Bradford are taking turns carrying him.
Slowing us some, but not much. When we gonna get out of this chicken-shit sandbox?”
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