A dozen more rounds slammed into the Toyota, and the three men ducked as low as they could go.
“Sounds like two or three of them,” Franklin said. He held his sniper rifle in his hands and jacked a shell into the chamber.
General Domingo took over as if he was shot at every day.
“Franklin, you worm down the ditch past the rig and see if you can get a sighting on the shooters. Canzoneri and I’ll go up the other way. Everyone have a radio?”
He saw their nods. “Let’s move. If you get a target, fire away.”
Franklin crawled, toes and elbows, with his head down and the Colt 4A1 across his forearms. He went twenty feet, then pulled his floppy green hat low and eased up so he could peer over the roadway at the jungle growth.
The best spot for an ambush was a splash of trees about a hundred yards off the road with some rocky places in front. It would make cover for a dozen gunmen. He watched that area, and a minute later saw a glint of sunlight off metal. Franklin concentrated on the spot and saw a flash again. He lifted the Colt up and fired three three-round bursts into the greenery where he’d seen the flashes. At once he dropped down. The dirt over his head splattered on him as half a dozen rounds came back at him. He crawled ten feet on down the ditch, which became a little deeper, and waited.
From up the road he heard gunfire, and then the sound of a 20mm round going off. He darted up for a look, and came right back down. Shrapnel still flew in the same copse of trees he had fired at. There was no return fire. They waited ten minutes.
“Think we nailed all of them?” Franklin asked on the net.
“If we didn’t we scared them to death,” Canzoneri said. “I’m going up and take a look,” Domingo said.
“No,” Franklin barked. “Pardon me, General, but I’m senior SEAL here and I’m in command. Right here I outrank you. I’m moving back up to your position in a series of short runs. If there’s anybody there, they will try for me. If they do, put another twenty in the spot they fire from. You ready?”
“Ready,” Domingo said.
Franklin had never had a death wish. This was about as fucking close to it as he had come. His call. He sucked it up, surged out of the ditch, and ran toward the Toyota ten yards and dove into the sandy ditch.
No shots. He did another dash and was behind the Toyota. He opened the door and looked inside. It didn’t look hit too bad. If the engine was okay and the tires didn’t get flattened…
He made another dash, twenty yards this time, and saw the other two in the ditch. He dove into the dirt just behind them.
“So far, so good,” Franklin said.
“Yeah, you got to play hero,” Canzoneri said. “Now my turn. See that old log right over there? Like they had to bulldoze it aside to put down the road? I’m going over there. Put some cover fire into the trees for me. Then, from there I go to that brushy patch, and should have cover the rest of the way to that bunch of ambush trees. Ready?”
The other two nodded. “Oh, General,” Canzoneri said, “use the 5.56 on that slammer you have. I don’t want to get caught in a shrapnel bath up there.” Then he darted across the road as the two men fired into the trees. Canzoneri slid feet-first behind the three-foot-thick log like a quarterback trying to avoid being tackled. He came up and peered over the log. Nothing came from the spot of trees.
He made two more dashes, then used the Motorola and called off the covering fire. He was in the right bunch of trees a moment later, and found three dead bodies. One with a small round through the forehead, the other two cut up by shrapnel from the twenties.
“All down and out here, three of them. I’ll bring their AK-47’s and a pair of sub guns. Nothing else of value. No radio so nobody knows we’re coming.”
“I’m checking the Toyota,” Franklin said. “Hope to hell they didn’t shoot up the engine or the gas tank.”
Five minutes later, Franklin reported the rig was ready to travel. “One round cut a spark plug wire in half, but I pasted it back together again, good as new. We moving on down the road, or what?”
“Faster we get to Lebak, the quicker we get the hostages out of here,” Domingo said. He grinned. “Just a suggestion.”
“Let’s motor,” Canzoneri said.
They rolled along at over thirty miles per hour now, and the passing lush green of the island reminded Canzoneri of Hawaii. They saw two dirt roads leading off the blacktop going up toward the mountains, but didn’t see any houses or buildings up that way.
“Why is this area so undeveloped, isolated?” Franklin asked.
“We have lots of undeveloped areas,” Domingo said. “The loggers haven’t got into this area yet. It might be a federal preserve of some kind, I’m not sure. I didn’t realize there were so few people on this side of the island.”
“Well, we just passed the ten-mile mark from where we hit the main road,” Franklin said. “All is A-okay so far.”
“Makes me nervous when you say that,” Canzoneri said. “Why were the rebels back there on an outpost and why did they fire at us before they could possibly know who we were?”
“Orders,” Franklin said. “They were told no one would be driving the Toyota down this road. If anyone did, shoot them.”
“So, hotshot, are there any more surprises up this road. Like a block, or a tank, or some more shooters?”
“Probably,” Domingo said. “We better keep a sharp eye.”
Another mile down the track and right along the surf, they came around a corner and found a two-foot-thick log stretched across the road. There was no room on either end to drive around it, even by going into the shallow ditch. They stopped fifty yards away and studied it. Plenty of cover around for snipers. Was it an active block, or just a delaying tactic without any shooters involved?
“Ease up on it,” Canzoneri said.
The Toyota crawled forward, all three men evaluating everything they could see of the brush, vines, trees, and jungle that came down almost to the road on the mountainside.
“Could be booby-trapped,” Franklin said. He put on the emergency brake, shifted into neutral, and opened the car door. No shots came. He checked both sides of the log where it lay on the tarmac, and shrugged. He ran back, jumped in the Toyota, and backed up, then came at the left end of the log.
“Bumper height,” he said. “See the crown on the road? If I can push it enough to get it to roll, this end will keep rolling down and right off the side of the road without moving the other end more than two or three feet.”
The car spun its wheels a moment when the bumper touched the log. The other two men got out and pushed as the Toyota’s bumper shoved ahead with all the horsepower the little car had.
The log rocked, then rocked again. Both men pushed from the side near the end, and on the third try, the big log rolled over and then the top end rolled faster, and soon it was off the road and in the ditch.
“Yeah, let’s chogie,” Franklin shouted.
They drove along the scenic roadway with the crashing surf on one side and the emerald green on the other for four miles before they came up a slight grade and saw a roadblock ahead. It was more than a quarter of a mile away, but Franklin knew what it was.
“Hold off four hundred yards,” Domingo said. “I want to try this laser sighting.” He stepped out of the car and sighted on the truck that had been parked across both lanes of the road. To one side was a sedan, and they saw six or eight soldiers standing around waiting for them.
Domingo fired, then aimed and fired again. Both rounds were airbursts over the truck and car. The soldiers there melted to the ground, splattered with shrapnel from the two airbursts. One man ran behind the truck, which had had its fabric bow roof ripped to shreds. Domingo sighted in on the cab of the big truck. The fuel tank should be right under it. He fired the contact round and it hit on the cab door, blew it off, and exploded inside the cab. A moment later a secondary explosion rocked the quiet beach land as the gasoline tank detonated with a roar spraying burning fuel over the sedan and the last two rebels still alive. Domingo watched it burn for a minute. “I’ve got to get a thousand of these for my troops. We could wipe out every rebel stronghold in the whole Mindanao Island.”