He saw a long lighted hallway with two doors leading off it. No windows. He swung the door open and motioned his men forward. They spread out at five-yard intervals.
The first door down the hall was locked. Jaybird opened the second door carefully. Inside they found a kitchen with two men working over a stove. Jaybird's MP-5 dropped them with chest shots. The SEALS saw two more doors leading off the kitchen. They checked both. One led into a dormitory of some type. It was dark and they could hear men moving around in it, and one man snoring.
Murdock motioned for them to close the door. He found a wooden chair, pushed the back of it under the door handle, and kicked the rear legs firmly on the floor. To open the door anyone would have to break the chair legs. It was a stopgap operation.
They looked out the other door. It led into the main assembly room. Murdock studied the place from beside the door. He spotted four guards. Two were on balconies that looked as if they were made for protection. Two more roving guards worked the floor.
He stared at the missiles. They looked like the ones they had seen at the docks. They were about the same size.
Ken Ching pushed up where he could see the missiles. "Same damn ones we saw in the other building," he said. "Where are the smaller ones?"
One of the guards noticed the open door and walked that way. Magic Brown cut him down with his silenced sniper rifle. Murdock gave the sign to open fire, and six weapons at the door quickly put down the two men on the second-floor guard posts.
"Let's take a look," Murdock said in his mike. He directed the seven men. Two went on each side and three down the middle of the room. Most of the sleek rocket weapons were on work stands, upright as if ready to fire. Others lay in boxes for transport. Some looked as if they had a lot of assembly work to be done.
Shots came from ahead. They were not silenced. Murdock ducked behind a stack of wooden crates that would soon hold the missiles and looked around the corner. One Chinese with an old rifle steadied his weapon as he aimed over a closed box halfway across the room.
Murdock lifted his MP-5 and sent a three-round burst at the soldier. Two of the rounds caught him in the side and the chest and he fell backwards, his rifle still on the wooden boxes.
"Clear right," Ron Holt said into his mike.
"Clear Harry Ronson said.
Murdock ran down through the center of the big room until he was sure there were no more men there.
"Clear center," Murdock said. "Ching, check the four Chinese. See if any of them can be questioned."
He looked around the complex. The other missiles had to be there somewhere. He remembered the dormitory. Too many men in there could ruin his whole night.
He waved at Jaybird and Magic Brown and called for Ronson on his Motorola. They crouched behind some missile boxes.
"That dormitory sleeping area. We've got to clear it before they surprise us. We'll use half-a-dozen fraggers and then our NVGS for the rest. It's got to be quick. Let's go." They ran back to the kitchen. The chair was still braced under the door. Horse took it out. They each held three fragger grenades, the trusty M-67's. Magic found a light switch and turned off the kitchen lights. They all pulled down their NVGS.
"Horse and Magic, throw deep. Jaybird, middle. Then get back out the door here and I'll do the short ones. Go, go, go."
Magic opened the door and stepped into the semidarkness. He threw his three grenades as did Horse behind him. They surged back into the kitchen as Jaybird and Murdock threw their middle and short ones.
The 4.2-second fuses on the first grenade went off before Murdock finished his tosses. He and Jaybird bumped into each other getting out the door. They surged to the walls beside the door as the inside of the barracks room exploded with the roar of the grenades and the screams of the Chinese troops.
When the last grenade exploded nearby, the SEALS could hear the shrapnel singing through the door. Then they stepped into the open doorway. Horse was in front of his HK 21A1 machine gun. He chattered five-round bursts wherever his green scope showed Chinese defenders. Magic went down the other side of the aisle and began chopping down soldiers wherever he saw them.
"Magic and Horse take the right," Murdock said into his mike. The four messengers of death began working down the rows of bunks. Now they could see there were about thirty bunks in the room arranged two-high. One shot came from halfway down the right-hand side, and Horse hosed down the area with a nine-round burst.
Murdock saw a figure rise up from behind a metal bunk. He jolted three rounds into the man's chest area, the easiest body mass on a target to hit, and the Chinese slammed backward and didn't move.
Jaybird worked ahead slowly, checking under the bunks and on top of them.
"Clear right," Magic said.
A moment later Jaybird fired a three-round burst and then Murdock heard his words. "Clear left."
They worked back up the aisle between the bunks and hurried through the kitchen. Once in the main room they lifted their night-vision goggles, and Murdock heard a voice in his earpiece.
"L-T, I've got a live Chinese who's able to talk. Could you come up here and give me a hand. He's a tough little guy-"
"Right, Ching. Be right there."
Murdock's earplug came alive again. It was Lieutenant Dewitt. "Murdock, we've got trouble out here. Looks like half a company of Chinese regulars. They know how to fight. We're in good defensive positions but we could use that other MG and Magic out here."
"Copy that," Murdock said. "Horse, Magic, Red, and Doc get outside and lend a hand. Use those forty-millimeter rounds. Move."
"Thanks, Skipper," Dewitt said. "We'll hold the fort."
The four SEALS sent outside went to the rear door quietly. Magic shook his head. "Nobody home," he said. They left the back door and hurried around the side of the building like four black shadows. At once they heard the sharp crack of the rifles out front, then the stuttering sound of a Chinese burp gun.
Magic was surprised that they still used them. The only ones he knew about were the.45-caliber squirt guns the Chinese had used in Korea fifty years ago. They couldn't still have those old weapons, could they?
Back inside the building, Murdock found Ching halfway down the center aisle. A Chinese soldier lay on his back. His right side was soaked with blood. His right arm was shattered and bloody from his shoulder down.
"He's tough and still alive, but he doesn't want to talk," Ching said.
"Ask where he lives," Murdock said.
Ching chattered at him in Mandarin, and the man looked surprised and mumbled something. "See if he has a family," Murdock said. Ching talked to the man again. He seemed to relax a little.
Ching pointed to the missile next to them and asked if it was a Dongfeng DF-15. The wounded man said all of them were. High explosives, blow up half of Taiwanese town, he told Ching.
Ching asked him about the smaller missiles, the ones with the poison gas in them.
The wounded soldier's eyes went wild for a moment. He chattered and waved his arm and talked again. Ching had to stop him.
"He says he knows nothing of the poison-gas missiles. They don't have any here. Never did have any." Then he snorted and said, "all lies. That's what the generals tell them to say. The Chinese people are afraid of the poison-gas missiles. So afraid they move from a place where they are kept." Ching asked him if the small missiles were there, the Dongfeng DF-11. The Chinese soldier didn't answer for a Moment. Then he nodded. "Yes, here, right here, but you will never find them," he told Ching in Mandarin. Ching translated for Murdock.