“Will do, Commander. Good idea.”
They kept walking forward. One of the women tripped over something. Murdock helped her up and as he did, his flashlight shone on a rebel body, torn apart, that the woman had tripped on. She gave a low cry and fainted. Murdock caught her, picked her up, and carried her in his arms as they kept moving forward.
Fifty yards down the cave, where the last turn came, Ching took the still-unconscious woman and Murdock ran on ahead.
“Better clear your men out of the entrance,” Murdock said on the Motorola. “I’ll give it one last check before the hostages get there.”
Murdock hurried forward. He was less than fifty feet from the light at the entrance when the bomb went off.
25
The blast knocked Murdock down, and for a minute or two he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. He lay on the cold stone floor gagging and coughing. His eyes were glued shut with dust, and for a moment he thought he was blind. Slowly he realized that it had been a bomb near the entrance. He couldn’t hear a thing. He shook his head and wiped gently at his eyes. He shook the dirt and dust off his cammy shirt and wiped at his eyes with it. Slowly he could see faint light.
Light, there should be lots of light near the mouth of the cave. He had been only twenty feet from the outside. His head hurt like it had been stomped by a herd of elephants. He blinked, wiped his eyes again, and felt the pain of the dust in them. Slowly he wiped them again and tried to look at the light. Yes, there was some still coming in the mouth of the cave. A hole near where the top had been. Rubble, rocks, dirt everywhere.
“Hello inside,” a voice called. Then a shadow at the hole. “Are you all right in there? We’re digging out this hole for you to make it larger. Can you answer me?”
Murdock looked at the hole and the shadow and wanted to yell back, but his voice didn’t work well. He was choked up with the dust. He croaked out some words, but he couldn’t hear them. At least his hearing was coming back a little. Next, maybe, his voice. He tired to stand, made it on the second try, and slowly worked his way toward the hole. It was a mountain of shattered rocks and dirt. He climbed and climbed, and when his strength had almost given out, he pushed one hand through the opening. Someone grabbed it.
“Hello, we have a live one here,” Jaybird bellowed out. “Hang tight there, man, we’re going to get you out of there in a few minutes.”
More than fifty yards behind the entrance, the six hostages and the two SEALs had all been knocked down by the force of the blast. They were still spitting dust out of their mouths and coughing and wheezing in the dusty air.
Lam was on his feet first. He brushed off his uniform, then began helping the people up.
“Yes, the other bomb, but we’re okay. Everyone is fine here, right? Nobody broke anything. Good. Now, we’ll all get up and walk on up to the mouth of the cave. You bet we’re going to get out. We have two platoons outside who will move half the mountain if they have to, in order to get us out. We all ready to move?”
“Yeah, ready,” Ching said. He picked up the woman he had been carrying. She had revived and was asking questions. Ching didn’t bother to answer them; he just carried her forward. The rest of them walked carefully in the tiny twin beams of the pencil flashlights.
Murdock sat beside the hole and slowly pulled himself together. Somebody was talking on the other side of the hole.
“Water,” he said, and then said it again. He reached out through the hole and grabbed a hand and pulled the person closer. “Water,” he croaked, and Jaybird understood him. He gave him his canteen, and Murdock took a mouthful and washed his mouth and spat. Then he swallowed some, then some more. He tried talking again.
“Who’s out there?” he asked.
“Skipper, it’s Jaybird. We’re moving rocks and dirt here to make the hole bigger. Glad they didn’t use one more quarter-pound on that entranceway, or we’d be looking for a bulldozer. You okay, Skipper?”
“Could be better. I’ll move some of these damn rocks.”
Murdock began to pull away rocks from his side of the opening. Five minutes later, when Lam and Ching brought up the hostages, the hole was big enough to sit in and slide through. The hostages went first, then Murdock and Lam, with Ching bringing up the rear. Lam looked up at the brilliant blue sky.
“Oh, yes, daylight, what a wonderful invention.”
Murdock clambered down the pile of smashed rocks and dirt from the top of the cave opening, and sat down under a tree. He washed his mouth out again and blew his nose half a dozen times. The air still didn’t seem clear. The headache wouldn’t go away. Mahanani looked him over and gave him some pills for the headache, then went to look at the hostages.
General Domingo came up.
“Glad you made it, Murdock. You must have been close to the front when it went off. We gave up trying to find the charges. They must have hidden them well. Now, a few matters. We didn’t see anyone coming out of the mountain. The other cave mouth must be highly concealed. We have six hostages here, so we’re still six short.
“We have eight or ten prisoners inside we need to go in and untie and walk out. Juan will work with them until we find out where the rest of the hostages were taken. The next cave would be too easy. I’m sure that Al Hillah had a better backup plan than that.
“I’ve sent the hostages down to the chopper. One of my men will go with each one to assist. Once they are at Lebak, we’ll arrange to fly them to Davao, then on their way. I still can’t believe we lost that helicopter.” He frowned.
Murdock thought of it at the same time. “Right, we never did find that fifty-caliber MG inside the cave. They must have taken it with them. I hope they don’t mount that on the armored personnel carrier one of the rebels said they have. Why haven’t we seen it before now?”
Domingo grinned. “Yes, Commander, you must be feeling better. Glad that blast didn’t shatter you into pieces. I’ve got to get some things done.”
DeWitt had taken over the platoon, and they were moving most of the rocks from the opening. “We still have to get the prisoners out of there after they wake up,” DeWitt said. “The general and I figured it would be easier to let them wake up than to carry them out.”
Mahanani hovered around Murdock like a bantam hen. “Wondering if you had a concussion in there when that beauty blew,” the hospital corpsman said. “If that headache doesn’t go away, we’ll see if there’s a doctor in Lebak.”
“Get out of here and get to work,” Murdock growled.
Mahanani grinned. “Yeah, now that sounds more like my Skipper.”
The helicopter took off shortly, and in fifteen minutes it was back. General Domingo sent all of the SEALs back on the next trip, and said he’d keep his men there and bring out the prisoners as they woke up. He borrowed Murdock’s two-cell Maglite.
Back in their warehouse home in Lebak, the men settled into their bunks and cleaned their weapons. Mahanani brought two-ounce shots of the liberated whiskey and gave them to Murdock and Lam and Ching.
“Medicinal purposes only,” Mahanani said. Murdock downed his in one long pull, shook his head, and then frowned.
“Now, all we have to do is find out where that damned Muhammad went and rescue the other six hostages,” said Murdock. “Any ideas?”
Lam shook his head. “Hard telling. Where can he go? He’s lost the rock house up on the ridge. We busted that, and next he went to his own lair, the Eagle’s Nest. We kicked his ass there. Next he fell back to the cave with the built-in generator and bombs. What has he left? He’s going to need supplies, food if nothing else. Hell, maybe he checked into the local hotel and ordered up room service.”