"Might be some more sentries out here," Red said. "We best move our tails around these puppies in a rush."
The platoon moved faster then, around the Chinese camp and on to the east. Gradually the row of hills became lower and lower until they were in a wide river valley. They saw no river.
Ching checked the stars through the clear night and angled them a little to the right to keep on their easterly route.
"Hope to hell we're going the right direction," Magic Brown growled at Ching.
"You and me both, brother," Ching said, his grin showing in the pale moonlight.
They worked ahead slower now. There were buildings here and there. They were in fields now — rice, row crops. Murdock couldn't figure out what it was. At least there were no flooded rice paddies to wade through.
They found a road and moved along it in a nearly eastern direction. Murdock sniffed trying to see if he could smell the salty tang of ocean air. Nothing.
The sound came from behind them and grew and grew until Murdock hit his mike button twice to put the men on the ground. Overhead two jets slammed past them at no more than three hundred feet. They made a thunderous roar as they flashed past, their jet engines showing that their tails were on fire.
"Chinese SU-27's, probably," Ching said. "Russian-built with 2.3-mach speed. But even at six hundred miles per hour that's ten miles a minute. With seventeen hundred and sixty yards in a mile, times ten, that's seventeen thousand six hundred yards they travel in a minute. Breaking that down in yards per second, the plane is moving over the ground at nearly three hundred yards every second. Not a hell of a lot of time to give close ground support for the Chinese troops."
"Just the idea of the jets being here is not good news for our team," Murdock said. "You sure of those figures?"
"I don't have my calculator with me, but if memory serves, that was a problem in a class I had on aircraft recognition."
"Let's keep moving. What are these buildings?"
"Mostly farms," Ching said. "The farmers live in small villages, then come out to their land to work it during the day. The buildings are for tools, machinery, storing crops. No people in them, usually."
Headlights flared in the night ahead of them. They broke into two groups, faded off the road thirty yards into the fields, and lay down.
Two trucks came by, both military. One had a machine gun mounted on the front with a gunner draped over his weapon. Murdock figured he was sleeping and would be awake the moment the truck stopped. Both rigs kept going down the road.
Ahead and to the right, Murdock made out a new ridge of low hills working generally eastward. He shifted his men that way, leaving the road. They were less than a hundred yards away from the road when they heard someone coming.
There was low chattering in Chinese and some shouts. Murdock's men flattened out in a line that would give them maximum firepower on the targets.
They waited.
Five minutes later the first of the group came in sight. Magic Brown swore softly. "Hold fire," Brown said. "L-T. I got them in the scope. They're civilians. Looks like they're farmers coming out to start a long day's work."
"Hold fire," Murdock said in the mike. They lay there as about twenty men and boys tramped past. They were almost ready to get up and move when another band came behind the first. These were women, Magic Brown informed the SEALS.
It was another five minutes before they could lift up and move toward the low hills.
"We better get out of here damn fast or we're gonna be in the middle of a whole swarm of farmers," Ching said. Murdock agreed, and they double-timed down a path between fields, used a road for a half mile, then cut across a field that led into a smattering of brush and trees that were on the first of the row of hills.
By the time they were inside the trees with enough cover to make Murdock happy, there was less than an hour to sunrise.
"We've got to find someplace to hole up during daylight," Murdock said.
"Like where?" Ron Holt asked.
"So what the hell are we supposed to do?" It was Ronson.
"In those other hills I saw what I thought was a cave," Red Nicholson said. "We could look for one around here."
"Yes," Murdock said. "We'll move higher and into the thickest growth of trees we can find. Keep on the lookout for any kind of hiding spot, including caves. Let's go." They worked higher.
The darkness began to recede. There was a slow lightening of the sky ahead of them in the east.
Murdock didn't want to hide his men behind trees for fourteen hours. The Chinese troops would be all over this area come sunup.
Red touched his shoulder. "Sir, down there, that small valley that leads to the east. See that black area almost at the base of the hill?"
"A cave?"
"I can tell you for sure in about ten minutes."
"Go, Red. Run the whole damn way. It's past time we had these troops out of the hot sun."
Red Nicholson took off at a lope down the hill toward the small valley a quarter of a mile over. Murdock watched him run, then looked at the brightening sky to the east and frowned.
28
Murdock checked his watch and then the sky to the east. It was going to be daylight well before 0600 hours. He hoped they would have time. They damn well better have time to go to ground before some Chinese hard-cases found them.
He watched Red vanish into some trees, then work through them and come to the spot he had thought might be a cave. Red looked at it, then vanished. He was back in view a minute later, held his rifle over his head with both hands, and pumped it up and down.
"Move it," Murdock snapped. "Red's found our hidehole. We have about ten minutes to get there and save our fucking SEAL hides."
They jogged and ran down the slope, across a small open place, and into the brush and trees where they had last seen Red. He came out of a hole and grinned.
"We found ourselves a fucking mine tunnel. Not a big one, but big enough and long enough for us to use. Welcome to SEAL House."
Murdock looked at the hole. It had been a mine tunnel. Rocks and dirt had fallen around the opening, reducing it to no more than two by three feet. Trees and brush had grown up around it. There was no sign of a road or even a trail leading away from it. Good. He pushed inside and in the dim light saw the remains of animal droppings, and some small bones, probably from creatures that had been an evening meal for a wolf or a coyote or a fox. Did they have those animals in China? He had no idea.
"Yes, this will work. Everyone get in here and we'll get the place cleaned up a little. Who has the candles?"
Three men brought out candles and lit them. It was surprising how much light they produced in the closed-in area.
"Magic, you and Ronson go out and cut a couple armsful of brush an inch thick and ten feet high and bring it back and plant it in front of our hole so no one can tell it's here. Get back before it gets light. Go."
They hurried out the hole.
"Now, push all the animal shit and bones over into one corner. Then stake out spots and sack out. It's been a long day and we might just not be through with it yet. If any of you have anything to eat, now is the time. No fire, no smoke, no noise." He watched the men settling down along the tunnel. It was eight feet high and about ten feet wide. There were no rail tracks on the floor or any sign that there ever had been.
He moved toward the opening. "I'm going to see if I can find a lookout. No way are we going to be trapped inside here blind and tucked up. Stay here, stay quiet. Jaybird, with me.
They left the hole and checked around them. They could see fifty yards now as the night began to fade into dawn.