Murdock frowned. “Quinley?” Murdock asked.
“Yeah, Cap. I was in the damn second truck. My luck, right? All of a sudden I’m in the air flying into the fucking brush. Hit a tree damn solid, but didn’t bust nothing. I think everything works.”
“Who was on board with you, Quinley?”
“Who? Yeah. Who was it? Not sure. Not remembering too damn well. Oh, now I have it. Yeah, Ostercamp.”
“Where is he?”
“Don’t know.”
“Cap, Fernandez,” the Motorola said. “Just arrived. Didn’t see anybody else. We’ll search the brush around here. Oster ain’t on board this side of the truck. It’s burning now. Hope to hell there ain’t no HE rounds in there.”
A grenade exploded on board the truck.
“Keep back. There’ll be more of them if there was one,” Murdock said.
“Found Ostercamp,” a new voice said.
“Ed. Where is he? Is he wounded?”
DeWitt came back at once. “He’s not bleeding, doesn’t seem to have any broken arms or legs. He was wrapped around a tree and he’s talking but not making much sense.”
“Get him away from that truck and bring him up front. Get all of his gear you can find. Some may still be on the truck. Take your squad up ahead near the jeep. See you there. Alpha Squad, on me at the jeep in front. Move now.”
Murdock and Dobler hit the shoulder of the road and ran forward to the jeep, where the Colombian captain waited. Captain Orejuela called to Murdock.
“You get them? Is it safe now?”
Murdock stopped beside him and scowled. “Where the hell have you been? Go back there and get your drivers to go around that burning truck. It’s a complete loss and no way to salvage the ammo until the fire goes out. You can come back here with a squad of riflemen to protect it until you can salvage it. Now, get those trucks moving so we can get away from here. If there were two shooters, there might be fifty nearby. Move it, Captain.”
DeWitt came up, leading Ostercamp. He seemed dazed to Murdock, not injured.
Mahanani had been on the other side of the SEAL, trying to talk to Ostercamp. “Yeah, man, come on, tell me where we are. Colombia, right? Yeah, we’re here in Colombia. Some fucker put an RPG up our asses and we’re trying to work out of it.”
“RPG?” Ostercamp said.
Mahanani’s face erupted into a big smile. “Oh, yeah, man, you’re coming along. You hurt anywhere?”
“Hurt?” Ostercamp said. “Yeah, head hurts. Scraped my damn arm.”
“Hey, buddy, we’ll get you back on a truck, and you’ll be doing fine.”
Murdock heard the exchange. The jeep and the first six-by moved ahead to make room for the other rigs behind them as they drove around the still-burning truck.
“No chance to find their weapons, Murdock,” DeWitt said. “We’re missing Ostercamp’s MG and Quinley’s G-Eleven.”
“We’ll get some replacements flown in from the ship,” Murdock said. He used the lip mike. “Let’s mount up, same rigs as before. Mahanani, you take Ostercamp in your truck. Quinley, come on the first truck.”
He waved at Captain Orejuela, who stood up in the back of the jeep at the head of the column.
“Let’s move it, Captain,” Murdock shouted. The line of trucks drove away from the still-burning rig behind them.
The rest of the trip went without incident. They wound higher into the Cordillera Occidental, the sharp range of mountains that worked north and south along the coast of Columbia. Just the other side of the peaks on the Cauca River, they came to the key southern city of Cali.
At one time, Cali had been one of the two huge drug cartel operations in the country. They traded punches with the Medellin people far to the north. Now the power had been usurped by the Medellin people, and they held a rigid, army-protected control over all of the drug business in the country. That made the Cali area safer for Ex-president Manuel Ocampo.
Twice on narrow mountain passes, the convoy had come to army roadblocks. These were what President Ocampo called his Loyalist Forces, those 40,000 troops who had remained loyal to him and the principles of democracy.
At the first roadblock, Captain Orejuela told the officer in charge about the attack, and he sent back ten men in a truck to push the burned-out rig off the road and to recover the undamaged ammunition and weapons before the guerrillas stole them.
They drove into what Captain Orejuela told Murdock would be an army compound five miles from the city. Cali was the size of San Diego, 1.9 million people. Most of the ex-president’s men were in camps around the city, with defensive postures facing north and east.
As soon as the trucks stopped, the SEALs off-loaded and asked what to do with their supplies.
Captain Orejuela hurried up and apologized.
“A detail was supposed to meet us here,” he said. “I’ll go find them. We have quarters for you and your men and all of their supplies. Just a minute.”
The SEALs relaxed.
Ostercamp was on his feet but not moving quickly. The rest of them took his gear and his supplies off the truck. Murdock and Mahanani looked at him.
“How you feel, Ostercamp?” Murdock asked.
“Sir, feel good, sir.”
Murdock frowned. It was the chant from the Tadpole training Ostercamp had taken three or four years ago.
“Where are we, Ostercamp?”
“On the grinder, sir.”
“Sit down and stay put, Tadpole,” Murdock said. “I’ll get back to you.” Murdock and the medic moved away.
“Not good, Captain. That concussion must be worse than I figured.”
“We’ll find out what kind of medical treatment they have here, then I want you to get Lam and Ostercamp checked out. I’ll find you as soon as I have the others straightened away.
It was ten minutes before the English-speaking Captain Orejuela came back.
He apologized again, got them back in the trucks, and drove two miles across the camp to a barracks set apart from the others.
It took them a half hour to find and unload the SEALs’ part of the munitions and ammo that hadn’t been on the second truck.
“Figure we lost about 10 percent of our goods,” Senior Chief Dobler told Murdock.
The wooden barracks hadn’t been used for a while. The captain called his jeep and told the driver to take Lam, Ostercamp, and Mahanani to the hospital. They had just left when Murdock heard explosions.
“Bombs,” he said and darted outside. He saw two jet fighters swing around, drop their bombs, then head his way using 20mm cannon on a strafing run.
“Take cover,” Murdock bellowed. One of the two jets turned in to a low-level attack directly at their newly found barracks. Murdock dove behind a low rock wall and ducked his head as the rounds jolted into the wooden building and exploded.
10
Even as he heard the rounds exploding, Murdock estimated the damage and casualties. The fighter came in low and flat. That meant the rounds from his cannon would hit the ground and anything in the way once every twenty or thirty yards. All the rounds might miss the barracks.
He dumped that thought when he heard another round explode somewhere nearby. He wondered if the Bull Pups could have adjusted range fast enough to hit the plane. He decided the laser operating unit couldn’t react fast enough with the target moving at 500 to 600 miles an hour.
The jet slammed overhead and vanished.
Murdock pulled up his head. No fire. He saw a soldier down in the company street a half block north. He ran to the barracks door.
“I just hate it to fucking hell when some asshole is shooting at me and I don’t have a chance to shoot back,” Jeff Jefferson said. He wiped one hand over his black face and said it again.