“Not unless you want to roast marshmallows. The pilot and his backseat man got away in the first chopper.”
“So we take a hike?” Lam asked.
“Unless we can sprout wings damn quick.”
“I’ll stay down here two hundred and see if the Chicoms come back. We gonna move during daylight?”
“Better, unless we want to eat off the abundance of the land.”
Murdock went back to the tree and sat down. DeWitt came up a minute later. The two men looked at the still-blazing chopper. None of the three-man crew had escaped. They were killed by the mortar round or the fire.
“Nothing we can do for those three crewmen. Can’t even get their dog tags. That burning chopper is going to be a beacon for the Chicoms to come find us. We better get moving.”
“They did it to us again.”
“We should be getting used to it,” Murdock said. “We’ve got one MRE per man, no local sustenance, and twenty-five miles to hike uphill. We better haul ass. Anybody get hurt from those mortar rounds?”
“No, but the mortar means there are more Chicoms somewhere on the reverse slope of one of these ridges,” DeWitt said.
“Call in Lam. As soon as he gets here, we choggie.”
“Choggie?” DeWitt asked.
“Hangover from the Korean War where they used choggie bearers to pack food and ammo. ‘Choggie’ came to mean to move, to hike, to run if you could.”
“Thanks for the military history lesson.”
The SEALs came in from their spread-out spots they took for the mortar barrage and gathered around the tree. The three Bull Pup shooters came back, and Lam made it a couple of minutes later.
“I’ve got fourteen heads,” Jaybird said.
“Hiking time. Up this slope and then another one and maybe then downhill and to the border. Maybe. We better get moving. Anybody hurt or wounded?” Murdock looked around. Nobody sounded off.
“Okay, let’s go, ten yards between men. Lam in front by about a hundred. We’re outa here.”
The first two miles went quickly. Murdock worried about the mortar but no more rounds were fired at them. The Chinese could be moving up a squad with a medium mortar and digging it in ahead of them to set up a greeting. Could.
There had been no response from the Chicoms who had been moving up the ravine that Lam took out. Murdock decided they had been on a flushing patrol, not one moving against a known enemy. So were there any more of the probing units of twenty or more men searching these valleys and ravines? He hoped not.
Suddenly Murdock felt a chill race down his spine. This was it. He was living on the edge as almost no one could these days. He was afoot and twenty-five miles inside of red, Chicom, fucking China and had taken enemy fire. It didn’t get any hairier than this. Now all they had to do was get out of this death trap.
Two more miles up the hill and Murdock called a halt. He kept the men spread out. The rise came sharper and sometimes they had to use their hands to help get up a slant. Lots of it was slab rock from some giant lava flow a million years ago.
Murdock checked his watch: 0736. Time enough for that bird to get back to India and report in. The pilot had to see the other chopper hit and burning. Murdock could imagine the report of a hot fire fight that pilot and crew would give to justify their leaving without a full load.
“Think they’ll send in a chopper to lift us out?” DeWitt asked.
Murdock shook his head. “Not a chance. Think what a wild tale that crew is going to spin about how much fire they took. They might even have a hole or two from shrapnel. Oh, hell no, they won’t risk losing another bird in here just for fourteen fucked-up SEALs.”
“Yeah, I agree. We need any more scouts out?”
“Lam can do it to the front. No way we can maintain scouts on each flank. Damn walls are getting steeper.”
DeWitt checked ahead. “This ravine is petering out on us. In another two miles we’ll have to go up the side of the ridge line and hope it gets us to the top of this one and then someway to get down the reverse to the next ridge. How many you guess we’ll do?”
Murdock put away his compass. They had been heading almost due south. He figured they were inside the long point of China that daggered south between India’s Sikkim area and the small nation of Bhutan.
“It might be simpler to head west and get back across the border to India. If any of our ridges or valleys aim that direction. This whole neck of China can’t be more than fifteen miles wide at the broadest, and it comes almost to a point the farther south we go.”
“It might come down to which route China gives us,” DeWitt said. “Right now I’d bet that they will attack us before we get to the top of this long ravine.”
They moved again. Murdock put Lam out two hundred and increased the space between his men to twenty yards. He kept watching the ridge to their left. He didn’t know why, unless it was because he had a feeling the mortar rounds came from that side. He went to the Motorola.
“Lam, anyone. See anything to the ridge on the left? I have a bad feeling about it.”
“That’s where the mortar rounds came from,” Lam said. “I checked one ground hit. It’s not obvious like an artillery round, but I figured the spray of rock was more to the right than the left. So the round came angling in from the left.”
Twenty minutes later the ravine ended in a sheet of rock wall of ninety degrees. Lam had scouted left and right and he pointed to the right. That’s when the first mortar round came in. The Chicoms hadn’t set in their base plate yet so they couldn’t get any accuracy until it was solidly in the ground. The first round was off downhill and onto the side of the ravine wall to the right.
The SEALs had bunched up at the wall. Now Murdock bellowed at them. “Spread out. Two men with Pups go up that left wall and see if you can find that gun. I want it out of there.”
Just as Bradford and Ostercamp started up the left slope, rifle fire erupted from the top. The two dove for protective boulders and scurried behind them. The scattering SEALs also found large rock boulders they could hide behind.
The mortars fired twice more, once short, the other one long.
“Have us bracketed,” Murdock said. “Stay down. Bull Pups, I want two rounds each along the top of that ridge left. Laser the top of the ridge and hope for an airburst that will sweep the backside clean. Fire when ready.”
Murdock lifted his Pup and lasered the light on the top of the left ridge three hundred yards upslope. He fired. He saw three air bursts before his hit with another air burst. The firing from the top slowed, but didn’t stop. Four more rounds went off just above the ridge top and the firing from there stopped suddenly.
“Bradford and Ostercamp, on up to the top and hunt that—”
A mortar round went off just off where the SEALs hid behind rocks.
When the round went off, Ostercamp and Bradford hit the ground, but when the shrapnel stopped singing, they jumped up and ran up the slope. Soon they were grabbing rocks with their hands to help them get up. Behind them they heard four more mortar rounds go off. They charged faster, panting for breath, legs stinging from the buildup of toxins. Another twenty feet.
A Chinese soldier lifted up ahead and swung his rifle around. Bradford drilled him with three rounds from the 5.56mm barrel and he slammed backward out of sight.
Two more mortar rounds hit below as Bradford and Ostercamp bellied up to the ridge line and looked over. Forty yards down the slope a gun squad of four men worked the mortar. The SEALs saw two infantrymen on the top of the ridge looking over. Ostercamp pointed at the infantrymen and then at himself. He hosed down the two men with six 5.56mm-rounds each, while Bradford slammed three 20- mm rounds into the mortar crew.
The gun toppled over, blown off its bipod. Two of the men on the gun went down with multiple and fatal shrapnel wounds. The third man carried a round toward the assistant gunner. He dropped it and tried to run, but Ostercamp’s three rounds of 5.56mm slugs cut his stomach open and he died in seconds. The fourth man vanished behind some rocks.