"Jaybird didn't know I was going to do that," Murdock said. "He reacted properly under an extreme stress situation. As SEALS we always have to be ready for the unexpected. That's how we stay alive and make sure the other guys die. For the next half hour or so we're going to throw live grenades. No horsing around. These little bombs kill people."
The SEALS sat up and then stood.
"Fernandez, go into the bus and bring out another case of fraggers. The rest of you line up and get ready to throw some. Those cardboard boxes out there are open on the top. Whoever puts a grenade inside any of them gets a three-day pass.
"You'll each throw three times, one M-67 at each of the three boxes. Better hit the deck after that first twenty-yarder."
Jaybird led off the line. He was long on the twenty-yard box, came within six feet of the thirty-yard one, and was short on the forty.
The shrapnel kept flying. Jaybird moved all the men but the thrower back another twenty yards as a precaution.
One of the new men, Harry "Horse" Ronson, was the only one to drop a grenade into a box. He hit the thirty-yarder and blew it into pieces. They were nearly finished throwing. Jaybird sent a man out to replace the shrapnel-torn box.
Murdock was the last man to throw. He picked out one of the WP grenades and threw it as far as he could. It sailed five yards beyond the last box and burst into a star pattern of fiercely burning white phosphorus trails. When the smoke blew away, Jaybird led the SEALS out to make sure there were no smoldering fires in the sparse grass and shrubs of this far end of the Mojave Desert. White phosphorus burns so hot it will burn right through anything flammable. That includes an arm or a leg if the sticky WP hits a person. When the SEALS came back, Murdock was ready for them.
It was 1537. The sun burned down with an attitude and the men had finished their canteens, filled them, and drained them again. Someone said a working man in the desert needed seven quarts of water a day to survive. At this point Murdock believed the figure.
"Now the fun stuff begins," Murdock told his troops. "Grab your TO weapon and a spare canteen of water. We'll take the usual load of issue ammo, and our blessed HK forty-five hideouts. Get the gear from the trailer and report back here on the double."
Murdock got his own load. He carried the MP-5 and six loaded magazines. He filled a canteen to join its brother on the other side of his utility vest and hit the desert again.
This was the outback of the armpits of the far end of the desert. Nobody complained about some booms or autoweapon firing out here. There was nobody to complain. The village of Niland at one time had had 1,200 people. He didn't know how many were there now. It was six miles away to the south and west. There was a numbing, vacant area of sage and hills and sand across the Chocolate Mountains to the northwest for forty miles before a hiker would find another road, Interstate 10, running between Blythe and Indio. There were a lot of miles of wilderness to get lost in.
One dirt track of a road crossed about in the middle of the parcel, but it was seldom used. Murdock turned and looked at Lion Head Mountain, the highest point in the Chocolates. It rose only 2,090 feet. The low mountain range was close to the Salton Sea, which is 235 feet below sea level. Might be interesting climbing the peak in the dark.
When the men assembled, Murdock put Jaybird in control of Second Squad and laid out the general plan.
"We usually march around at four miles an hour. Fifteen minutes to the mile. This afternoon, after that big meal, we'll be moving out at six miles an hour or exactly a mile in ten minutes. To do this we'll start with a half mile hiking and a half mile jogging at a smart pace. At the end of the first two miles, we'll check our watches and see how we're doing."
Murdock looked his men over. There were no questions. Nobody griped about the training run or the hot weather which had resulted in their cammies showing dark sweat splotches. These men were the professionals. They knew that to stay alive they had to be in top shape every day. A mission might grab them tomorrow. Besides, as every SEAL knew, "The only easy day was yesterday."
"Let's go. Combat spacing, five yards between men. Let's do it."
He didn't tell them anything about the mountain. He'd have a surprise for them on that score. The hill itself was about ten miles from where the bus sat. A nice little twenty-mile jaunt, plus some other goodies.
Before they started the march, Murdock asked them a question. "How many of you have a compass?"
Four or five men called out, "Yo-o-o-o-o." A batch of hands went into the air.
Murdock nodded. He had taken a sighting on the mountain before, and now headed across country for the spire. They hiked the first twenty minutes, then jogged for the next twenty. There was a lot of grumbling and adjusting equipment and lashing down gear that tended to bounce around as they ran.
The two HW men groaned under the twenty-five-pound HK M-88, but they all kept going.
There was no bantering now, no good-natured insults or jabs or barbs. Now they were professionals doing their job, staying in shape and enduring another hike that could be a long one. The mile in ten minutes didn't faze the SEALS. That speed was drastically slow for a track-and-field man. Many marathoners ran twenty-six miles at slightly over five minutes to the mile, but they weren't packing along forty pounds of gear on their backs.
Murdock kept up the pace. His butt hurt again and his legs started to burn in back where the shrapnel shards still had to work their way to the surface. He gulped three Motrins without the aid of water and kept going.
After the first half hour, the sun was still beating down on them like the messenger of doom. The desert wouldn't start to cool off until an hour or two after sundown. Murdock looked at the bright orb up in the cloudless sky. The sun would be with them for at least two hours yet.
They alternated the running and walking. Then, just as they came up a small rise, Murdock pulled out a fragger and pitched it thirty feet to the side well out of range and with no chance of hurting anyone.
The moment the grenade went off the SEALS as a man flopped into the dirt and chambered a live round in their weapons. Murdock flipped the fire selector on his MP-5 to three round bursts, swung the barrel down, and jolted off two three-round bursts into the area where he had thrown the grenade.
Taking their cue from their leader, the SEALS on that side of the line immediately fired into the same area. The men on the far side faced outward acting as security.
Murdock stopped shooting. "Clear!" he shouted. The word was repeated down the line and the men ceased fire.
The squads changed now from a garrison-type march to a combat order. They did it silently as Murdock gave hand signals. First in each squad came the point man, then the Squad Leader. For the Second Squad Jaybird filled in for Ed Dewitt. Next in line was the radioman dogging the L-T's heels. The AW man with the heavy M-88 was next. The fifth man was the grenadier, who often carried a CAR-15 with a grenade launcher attached. In this case the medic for the platoon walked with the First Squad as the grenadier.
The sixth man in a squad combat march was the second AW man, with an M-88 on this training run. The seventh man was normally the Platoon Chief, and the last man was the rear guard who watched to the rear and did a lot of walking backwards to cover the rear on a 180-degree arc.
Murdock kept up the pace. They passed through some sharp arroyos where desert cloudbursts sent sudden floods of water down every gully digging them deeper and sweeping everything in front of them. The water, much needed, often came so fast, little of it could soak into the parched ground and it ran off into temporary streams.