They rolled again. Lincoln tried to read the fuel gauge. Ching told him the tank was half full. The headlights worked and he was pleased about that.
"Ahead, some lights," Ching said. "Maybe a small village."
"Maybe a roadblock," Murdock said. "No reason they should have one way out here, so they probably do."
They drove closer, and the lights showed three vehicles parked across the road. One rig blinked its lights at their truck.
"Blink back," Murdock said. "They blinked three times. Blink back three times."
Lincoln did, and a moment later they felt bullets slamming into the hood, radiator, and windshield. Glass shattered over the three in the front seat, and Lincoln swore as the Chinese engine coughed twice and went dead. The truck rolled to a stop a hundred yards from the bright lights of the roadblock.
"Out, everyone," Murdock barked. "We'll see if you guys remember your land-warfare training. We knock out that roadblock and take one of their vehicles. Let's go now. The right side of the road. Go, go, go."
26
As the SEALS bailed out of the six-by-six they saw a rocket coming. They scattered and flattened on the road and in the ditches. The RPG went off with a cracking explosion as it hit the cab of the truck and shattered it. Fuel vapors exploded a second later blasting the truck into small pieces. The SEALS crawled away from the burning hulk as fast as they could.
Small-arms fire tore into the ground around them, but all the men made it to the right-hand side of the road and into a field that held a long row of brush and row crops beyond.
"Red, out front. We'll be crawling until we get away from that damned fire light. Combat formation, let's go."
Red led the crawling force, with Lieutenant Murdock right behind him shadowed by Ron Holt. He still had the radio that could be zeroed in on the satellite and give them communications with anyone in the world.
"Yeah, I got it," Holt groused when somebody asked him. "The damn thing weighs a ton and I got to keep lugging it around. I know, I know, it could save our butts this time. Yeah. Right. You want to carry the fucking radio?"
Nobody did. The thirteen SEALS worked slowly out of range of the light then rose to a bent-over position and moved cautiously toward the roadblock. It would have been better to attack it from both sides, but now they had no chance to get men on the other side of the road.
"We go with what we've got," Murdock told Red when he came back to say that the Chinese had set up a barricade behind the two army cars and a light truck.
"We get there and put half our shooters on the far side of the barricade and half on this side, so we'll have them in a kind of cross fire."
He sent Dewitt ahead with five men, and he kept six. Each squad had an MG and a sniper rifle. It should work.
Murdock found his firing position less than fifty yards from the roadblock. He settled his men in a small ditch that probably was for irrigation. Dewitt had to circle around the roadblock by two hundred yards and then get back into position at the road. When Dewitt was ready he'd give three clicks on the radio.
They waited. Murdock wondered if he should get the men out of their wet suits and into cammies. It would take some time. They'd have to find a secure place. He hesitated. He hoped that they soon would be back in the water, and the wet suits would give them the insulation they needed for a long swim.
He heard three clicks on his earpiece, and fired one three-round burst from his MP5. It was almost out of range, but it was the signal for the rest of them to start shooting.
By prearrangement, Murdock's men fired first. That brought return fire from the roadblock and pinpointed the shooters for Dewitt and his crew who had filtered in behind them.
Magic fired with his sniper rifle, and grinned now and then when he laid in a perfect shot and a defender screamed and went down.
Then Dewitt opened up with his men and after a two-minute burst of fire from Second Squad, Murdock could hear no fire of any kind coming from the roadblock.
"They bluffing or are they down?" Murdock said into his lip mike.
"Looks like they're all down. I see only one man moving."
There was one more round from the Second Squad.
"Skip, I'd say they're all down. Only five or six of them. Want us to move in?"
"That's a Roger," Murdock said. His squad had heard the exchange, and now he stood. The rest of First Squad did as well, and they charged the fifty yards to the roadblock. The Chinese were all down. One wounded man tried to crawl away, and took a round in the head.
"Lincoln, check the vehicles," Murdock said into his lip mike. "The rest of you see what we can use of their weapons. Look for any more of those rocket-propelled grenades. We need them. The AK47's will be a good backup. Gather them up and find all the ammo for them you can."
Lincoln ran up and checked out the two cars and the small truck, all Chinese Army-issue. He came back to Murdock.
"All of them run. Looks like the truck would suit us best. Be crowded, but we put three in front and get the rest of us in the back."
"Do it," Murdock said.
Doc came up with three RPGS. "Red found two more. These mothers could come in handy."
"Give three to the Second Squad, we'll keep two," Murdock said. "You have an AK47?"
Doc shook his head and went hunting.
Lincoln fired up the truck and they climbed on board. Murdock made a wick from an old shirt he found and stuffed it into the fuel tank of one of the cars. It came out soaked with gasoline. He stuffed it halfway back in the gas filler tube and told Lincoln to get the truck moving. When it was out of the blast zone, Murdock lit the gas-soaked rag and ran like hell for the truck.
It was thirty seconds later before the car's gas tank blew up with a whooshing roar. It set the second car on fire, and Murdock and his crew rolled down the road, south for a change. He just hoped this rig didn't run out of gasoline.
The paved road ahead of them was dark. Ching said they must be heading south according to the stars. "No lights down there so it can't be Amoy. We should be ten klicks south and west of the town by now."
As they drove, Murdock told his men to get out of their wet suits and into their cammies. "Second Squad change first, then the First Squad. Do it fast." They pulled out of the wet suits and dug out the cammies from the waterproof pouches.
They pulled onto a side road and parked while Lincoln changed, then went back to driving.
"Now we're better set up for a land war," Murdock said. "I'd much rather that we can run this sweetheart right into the surf and we can float out of it into Mother Ocean and take a swim."
"Not likely," Lincoln said. "Headlights coming at us, maybe a mile off."
"Find a place to pull off the road and out of sight," Murdock said. "First damn traffic we've met. Out here it must be military. Not one hell of a lot of cars or trucks on these roads at night at least."
They were in a flat area with no hills, no trees. Lincoln waited as long as he figured he could. Then he took a small dirt road to the right, cut his lights, and drove along the twisting road for a quarter of a mile. He shut down the engine, and they waited for the headlights to come along the road. Murdock sent Red Nicholson to get close to the road and check out the rig.
Headlights showed down the road five minutes later. From the growl of the engine, Murdock knew it was some kind of a truck, maybe a six-by-six like they used to have. If so, it could carry twenty troopers. The truck slowed when it came to the road where they had turned off. It stopped for a moment, then moved on, and was soon out of sight down the road.