Three minutes later, Murdock had his message typed out on the screen. He read it again. "Bankrupt, the word is bankrupt. All is well, coming home. Murdock."
He pushed the send button and the machine encrypted the message and shot it out in a burst that transmitted for only a tenth of a second. Bankrupt was the code word meaning the plant, and the bombs, had all been totally destroyed. "Wait for a response?" Holt asked.
"Give them two minutes, then we're moving."
No response came. Murdock had checked his men. Ed DeWitt had done the same. Magic Brown was hurting. He was going to cost them a lot of time before they got wet.
They had heard no response from the nuclear plant. There had been no sound of any troops following them the first half mile. Now they had wound over and around hills, and any sound of pursuit would be hushed. They marched out again. Murdock dropped back beside Kat. "How's it going?"
"Fine. Remember I can out-hike, outrun, out-swim any of your guys. Don't worry about me. I am aware that I haven't fired a shot in anger yet, and I'm still packing this twenty pounds of armament and ammo."
"Hey, maybe it's seven pounds, plus another six for ammo. You're lucky." He paused and watched her in the darkness. "You want to be in a firefight?"
"Not sure, but in the next fifty miles, I'd say it's more than likely that I'll find out. Right?"
"Right. Remember the damned safety." He grinned, and went back to lead the platoon just in back of the scout.
They worked down a slope, and then along a valley for another mile. Murdock checked with Lampedusa. He had a sense about direction, and the best compass in the outfit.
"We're working a little southeast, but I correct every chance I get," Lam said. "This valley looked too damn tempting to pass up."
"I agree. Magic is hurting, that's why we slowed it down. Keep no more than a hundred yards out front."
They hiked on over the barren, rocky hills and gullies, down occasional valleys, and then up slopes again.
Murdock knew they were leaving a trail. Seventeen people couldn't move across this land and not leave a path any child could follow. They made two more miles.
Murdock thought he heard someone behind them in one long valley. He sent Jaybird Sterling back as a rear guard.
"Just hold here for ten minutes, then come along slowly. If you hear or see anything behind us, shag ass up front, and let us know."
Jaybird nodded and began walking to the rear. Murdock grinned, and went back to the front of the column.
Magic Brown's leg was worse. He walked with a decided limp now and had shucked off all of his equipment, including the combat vest. It was all he could do to keep up at a three-miles-an-hour pace. That meant anyone following them must be gaining.
Murdock turned the problem over in his mind again. Not much they could do to speed up Magic. What they had to do was slow down anyone coming behind them.
He watched the landscape. Lam had them leave a narrow gorge and angle over a sharp hill. Just as they topped it, Murdock had what he wanted. He told Lam to get all the men over the ridgeline, and then hold them. He waited for Jaybird to come.
"Got company all right, L-T. Guess they are about two miles behind us. Can't be sure, but it could be forty or fifty men, maybe more."
"Get Adams up here. Let's have a welcome-home party for our Iranian hosts. Get two of those Claymore mines we brought. Have Adams set them on trip wires about a third of the way up the slope. Put two of them in sequence and aim the blasts to go downhill. Then get your asses back up here."
Murdock told the rest of them the plan and had them spread out along the ridgeline just over the top on the reverse slope. As soon as the mines went off, the whole platoon would fire into the same area, hoping to waste anyone left standing.
Murdock settled down beside Kat. She had her MP-5 up and ready.
"This is good for fifty yards with the silencer," Kat said. "Why don't we take the silencers off? No need for quiet out here."
"Good idea." He sent word on the Motorola to have half the men with MP-5's remove the silencer and put them in their packs.
Murdock checked his watch. It was after 0120. A long time to daylight. They waited.
For a moment, Murdock caught the sound of equipment jangling. That had to come from the Iranians.
Jaybird and Al Adams rolled over the ridge, and found places along the shooting line.
"All set, L-T," Jaybird reported.
"We all fire when the second Claymore goes off, Murdock said. "Don't wait for me. Fire on that second blast."
Five minutes later they could hear some talk from below.
A cough.
Then someone called out in Farsi.
"Said something about hurry up, too slow," Franklin reported.
Two minutes more.
The Iranian hillside blossomed with a jagged red-and-yellow light and a rolling, cracking explosion as the first Claymore detonated. The flash of light faded in a few seconds, but the shrill cries of pain and desperation echoed up the hill. The sound of the first explosion had almost faded when the second blast tore through the night.
A half second later sixteen weapons fired down the slope. Murdock had his MP-5 set on three rounds and the silencer off. He chattered out six rounds and looked over at Kat.
She held the weapon tightly, stared down the sights, and at last squeezed the trigger. It spat out three rounds. She nodded, moved the muzzle slightly, and fired again. Then Murdock went back to his own weapon and emptied one magazine, before he hit his mike three times, ending the shooting.
"We moving down there?" DeWitt asked.
"No," Murdock said, making up his mind in a nanosecond. "Let's saddle up and get out of here. Lam out front. Come on, move. Some of the survivors might still come after us." The platoon heard the order on their radios, and quickly moved down the hill, away from the slaughter, half expecting some return fire from survivors who would work their way up the hill and fire blindly in revenge.
After a half mile, they figured no one was going to shoot back at them.
"An even bet that they will wait for dawn, and count up their casualties, then try to get their wounded back to the nuke plant," Murdock said on the radio. "Meantime we make tracks until dawn ourselves, then figure out what to do."
Murdock checked on Magic. He was still walking, but his left arm was over Horse Ronson's shoulder.
"Hell, we can keep up with you Boy Scouts," Magic said. But Murdock heard the voice nearly crack. There was none of the usual bluster the big black man was so good at projecting. They kept walking.
At 0300, Murdock called a break.
Doc changed the bandage on Magic's left leg. He shook his head. It was still bleeding. He put a heavy pressure pad over the wound and wrapped it tightly. The bleeding stopped. He checked his watch. Too soon for another morphine shot.
By the time Doc finished binding up Magic's leg, he had dropped off to sleep. Doc went to Murdock.
"Can we give Magic an hour to sleep? He went out like a baby. He's damn weak, L-T."
"We've got two hours to dawn. He can sleep then. Let him have a half hour, then we get out of here. We've got to find a spot to hole up for the daylight hours."
Murdock had Douglas come up front.
"You said you saw a high-wing Piper Cub-type spotter plane. There wasn't any place I saw near the bomb plant where they could land one. Did it come up from Chah Bahar?"
"My guess is that they have a small dirt strip somewhere in back of the plant. You can land those things on two hundred yards, sometimes less. A bulldozer and two days would scrape out a workable landing field."
"So, it will be in the air at first light. We need to be dug in somewhere. Thanks, Douglas. You and Franklin did an outstanding job going into Tehran. Have to tell me sometime how you got fifteen hundred miles down here."
Douglas waved, and went back to his spot in the Second Squad formation.