“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 soundlessly. 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
“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.”