“Okay, down this way about fifty yards and we should be there. Everything looks different in here.”
They came up on the red building slowly. They saw no one on the street. Murdock had guessed that there would be armed patrols running all over the place by now. Good. The rebels weren’t a real army yet. They must be short on discipline and command. Two vitals for any military operation.
The SEALs lay fifty yards from the red building and watched it. Two guards with the green shirts and pants of the rebel cause stood outside. Both had weapons at the ready.
No lights showed in the one window they could see. Murdock had asked before, and Stroh had said there were no 20mm rounds with WP. They sure would come in handy. Murdock wondered if the small size of the round compared to the 40mm grenades was the problem. Maybe they couldn’t pack enough WP into such a small size to be of much value.
“Bradford, you and I’ll put twenties through that window and see what happens. Give me a ready.” A second later, Bradford did. “Fire,” Murdock said. The two rounds went off almost together. One hit the front of the building; the other went through the glass. The front round killed both guards and blew a hole in the wall as it exploded. The second round blasted inside.
They waited. Nothing happened. No men came out. The place didn’t burn. “Lam,” Murdock said. “Try three rounds of WP on that one. Now.”
Lam fired. The first one was short, the second hit just in front of the wooden structure, and the third dropped on the roof. In the first glow of the WP they could see that the roof was partly nipa leaves, and the fronds burst into fire at once.
“Out of here,” Murdock said. “Lam, which way, and let’s chogie at double time.”
Lam led them back on the street and two long blocks to the road. They charged across it and into the brush and greenery of the rain forest. Once they were fifty yards into the jungle, Murdock called a halt.
“DeWitt, are you and your men in the green?”
“Yeah, we’re out, probably still downstream from you. We’re getting ready to move. We took some return fire, and I don’t know when it happened, but we’ve got one man shot up pretty bad. He says he can walk, but Mahanani said no way. How deep are you in the brush?”
“Fifty yards. Work the road. We haven’t seen any kind of resistance. We’ll get close to the road and wait.”
Murdock moved his squad back so they could see the road and offer defensive fire if needed.
Three minutes later, Lam lifted his head and turned his head so his ear was toward the trail. “Coming,” Lam said. “Not sure who. Somebody. Making too much noise.”
“DeWitt, are you on the road?”
“No, having trouble getting Ostercamp moved. He’s worse than we thought. We’re just past the road in the edge of the jungle.”
“Still coming,” Lam said. “My guess about twenty armed men with all their equipment jingling.”
In the soft Philippine moonlight, Murdock soon saw the men approaching. They were soldiers in a column of fours with their weapons at port and ready. They were less than forty yards away.
“Open fire,” Murdock said. He had no idea what a 20mm round would do at point-blank range, but he was going to find out.
14
Eight SEALs opened fire on the formation. The first three 20mm rounds slammed into the unsuspecting rebels, exploding instantly, shredding the green-uniformed men into masses of bloody corpses.
“Hold fire on the twenties,” Murdock shouted into his mike. The remnants of the rebel formation charged away down the road and into the jungle to escape the SEALs’ continuing small-arms fire. Murdock had switched his Bull Pup to 5.56-round and kept firing. Five or six of the men might have escaped. The rest were down and dead or dying. Screams of agony cascaded over the SEALs from the wounded on the roadway forty yards in front of them.
“Leave them,” Murdock barked in his radio. He tried to listen through the cries.
“Murdock, that you?” DeWitt called on the radio.
“Small firefight. How is Ostercamp?”
“Not good. We’re carrying him. He’s a load. Ten minutes to the end of the town where you should be.”
“Roger that. I’m sending Lam to run up to the chopper and move him as close as possible to us here. Keep coming. We’ve got some carrying help here.”
Murdock looked at Lam. “Leave your vest and your Colt. Trade with Jaybird for his MP-5. Five miles to the chopper. You can do that in forty minutes. Be sure to call out your ID before you bust in on those Filipino Army guys. Pick out a new LZ on your run up there. Close as you can come to us here. We’ll be on the trail, but moving slow with Ostercamp. Go.”
Jaybird had run up with his weapon, and traded and took Lam’s combat vest as well.
“Howard and Jaybird, go back down-trail and find DeWitt and help with Ostercamp. Go.”
Five minutes later, Jaybird came on the radio. “Found Bravo Squad. We’re about three hundred yards downstream from you and moving.”
Ten minutes later the platoon was together again. Mahanani talked to Murdock.
“He’s hit bad in the chest. Bleeding too much. I stopped most of it, but we’ve got to get him to a hospital soon as we can.”
“Lam’s going for the chopper,” Murdock said. “This time we didn’t leave a Motorola with the chopper pilot.”
“Howard took him when he got there,” Mahanani said. “He’s a good man. I’ll take Ostercamp again. We’re going pickaback with him. Best way so far. You and Sadler and Bradford can spell us off. We better move now.”
They went down to the trail and hiked along at the speed of the one carrying Ostercamp. Murdock put out Jaybird as lead scout, and DeWitt served as rear guard back twenty yards. Murdock figured they were making about three miles an hour.
Lam dug down the last mile and tried to go faster. He’d spotted a good LZ about a mile from where he’d left the other SEALs. Now all he had to do was identify and contact. He checked his watch. He’d been gone for almost thirty-five minutes. Seven minutes to a mile, so he should be almost there.
Then he was there. He paused behind a huge mahogany tree and whistled, then called out. “Hey, Army. SEALs here. Don’t shoot. Coming in. Okay?”
“Okay, SEALs, come on in.”
After that it took only thirty seconds to get the Army men in the chopper, the blades whirling, and the engines warmed up. The pilot was told about the wounded man.
Lam tried the Motorola. “Skipper, we’re taking off in about ten seconds. See you there in nine or ten minutes.”
“Read you, Lam, soft and breaking up, but read you.”
“Straight down the river and the new LZ is on the same side,” Lam told the pilot.
“This kid shot up bad?” the pilot asked.
“Yeah, chest, lots of blood. He needs a good doctor, fast.”
They lifted off, and only a few minutes later Lam pointed down.
“That’s it. No rebels around there when I came past.”
The Army men hovered at the two open doors, their submachine guns ready. Wheels touched, and the Army men and Lam jumped to the ground and sprinted away from the bird. Lam headed down the trail. He found the platoon two hundred yards away. Murdock had Ostercamp on his back as he plodded forward.
Howard came up and relieved him.
“Hey, Commander, you look fucked out, my turn,” Howard said. Murdock made the transfer, took a deep breath, and looked at the troops. “The rest of you, double time up to the chopper and get everyone on board. I want to stay here for rear guard. Go.”
A hundred yards from the clearing, Bradford took over the packhorse duties, and then gently laid Ostercamp on the floor of the forty-six.
Murdock counted heads. “Let’s fly, Captain,” he shouted. The bird lifted off with no enemy fire, and Murdock collapsed against the thin skin of the helicopter.