Tony Ostercamp took over the wheel. At fifteen miles beyond the last outpost, Tony turned off the lights. There was almost no traffic on the road. He managed it in the soft moonlight. The road hugged the river and went gently downhill with the flow of the stream.
Five miles farther along, they saw lights ahead.
“Headlamps, of two rigs,” Ostercamp said. “They must hear us coming.”
“Turn your lights back on and slow down, then slow again like you’re getting ready to stop.” Murdock lifted the H&K MP-5 he had put on the floorboards and told the men in back to be ready to shoot at the roadblock as they rammed through.
The two rigs were positioned so there was room between them for a truck to get through. As they came closer, Murdock saw that both roadblock rigs were sedans.
“Clip one of them as you ram through,” he told Ostercamp. The race car driver and ex — destruction derby driver grinned.
Fifty yards from the roadblock, they could see six troops standing beside the cars. Half of them showed rifles. Tony slowed again, then shifted into second gear and let the engine grind down.
The guards relaxed. Twenty feet from the roadblock, Tony rammed down on the gas pedal, and the six-by jolted forward in second gear, gaining speed as it covered the ground. He hit the left front fender of one of the sedans, spinning it around as they boiled through the poorly planned roadblock.”
Just before they hit, Murdock slammed a dozen rounds from his submachine gun into the gawking troops. Three of them went down.
As they rammed past the cars, the SEALs in back used their Bull Pups on the small barrel and riddled the rest of the men and the cars with the 5.56mm rounds. Tony shifted into high and raced down the road with the headlights on full.
There had been no return fire.
“Anybody hurt?” Murdock asked on the radio.
“Hail no, Cap,” Fernandez said. “They didn’t know what hit them. We didn’t take a single round of return fire.”
Ostercamp pointed at the odometer. “Fucking kilometers,” he said. “That’s point six two percent of a mile. Ten kilometers say six miles. Thirty kilometers, about nineteen miles. We’ll watch for thirty kilos on the old dial for the next roadblock.”
“Didn’t look like they had radios back there,” Captain Orejuela said, “so there should be no warning for the next roadblock. I’ve heard that it’s larger, heavier, better manned than this first one.”
“So we get past it if we can,” Murdock said. “How far from the next roadblock on to the enemy camp?”
“We figure it’s about thirty kilometers,” the captain said. “There may be more installations leading into the camp.”
“So if we get through number two and then drive twenty kilometers more, we should have run through our luck. We stop and set the truck on fire and haul ass into the mountains.”
Murdock frowned at the Colombian. “Hey, thought you were heading back with the driver.”
“I decided to stay, learn what I can from you. I have my own weapon, a NATO round rifle.”
Murdock shrugged. “What the hell, you stick with me and Lam when we go on our look-see. Have to scout out the camp before we wade into it. Want to know what to expect and where to hit them.”
Later, Ostercamp gave them a readout. “That’s fifteen kilometers, and I don’t see any lights ahead. Why no traffic along here?”
“They stop traffic at night for better security,” the Colombian captain said.
“So they know we’re not supposed to be here,” Murdock said.
“Maybe they see an army truck, they wonder if it’s one of theirs,” Ostercamp put in. “Yeah, that might help us.”
Ten minutes later, they saw lights ahead. Ostercamp blinked his lights as if to identify his truck as friendly.
“I want the MG and long guns through slits in the top pointing front,” Murdock said on his mike. “As soon as we see any sign they don’t like us, we blast them. Everything. This way we don’t have to stop and ambush them. The long guns. Maybe two or three minutes. Look alive, stay alive.”
They were still two hundred yards away when Murdock saw the winking lights of rifle fire.
“Do it now,” Murdock bellowed. He had the Bull Pup out the window and fired the small barrel on two-round bursts. Half a dozen weapons overhead chimed in, and he could see hits on the men ahead. They had a six-by-six truck blocking the center of the highway. A sedan nosed up to the truck on each side, covering the two-lane highway.
“I’m taking the right-hand sedan,” Ostercamp said as he gunned the engine. He was doing almost fifty miles an hour when the heavy bumper of the six-by smashed into the grill of the sedan and rammed it fifteen feet off the road into the ditch. The weapons in back of the six-by kept yammering as the truck plowed past the rest of the roadblock and slammed down the highway, picking up speed. This time there had been return fire.
When shooting stopped in the rear, Murdock used his radio again. “Check for casualties. Anybody hit?”
“Yeah, Cap, Jaybird took a round through his left arm below the elbow. Don’t look too good. Anybody else hit?”
“Mahanani, check each man, we don’t want a KIA not saying anything back there.”
A minute later, the radio came on. “Okay, Skipper. No KIAs back here.”
That’s when Murdock saw the bullet hole in the windshield. The round had missed him. He felt Captain Orejuela slump against his shoulder. In the pale moonlight coming in the windshield, Murdock saw the round, purple hole in the captain’s forehead. Carefully, Murdock touched the back of the Colombian’s head. It was wet and sticky with fresh blood.
“Men, we do have a KIA up here. The captain took one in the forehead. I didn’t notice until just now. He died without making a sound.”
The men were quiet. Only the roar of the big engine and the whine of the tires on the road came through.
“How much farther can we go?” Murdock asked Ostercamp.
“Another five miles, and we better look for a lane we can pull off the highway and hide the truck. Come daylight, they’ll be scouring this road for it.”
“What about the captain?” DeWitt asked.
“We’ll have to take time and bury him,” Murdock said. “Least we can do. Get his dog tags if he has them. We’ll make a map for his family so they can find the grave later.”
Ostercamp looked over at his leader. “Commander, looks like we lucked out. Could have been you or me in front of that slug. Damn lucky. Hey, there’s a lane to the right. Let’s take it and get rid of this truck.”
“Go.”
A half hour later, they had the truck a quarter mile off the highway. They found a spade strapped to the truck and used it to dig a three-foot-deep grave. They piled rocks over the fresh earth when they had the grave filled. Murdock made a map on the back of the area map.
“Back to business,” Murdock said. “We have about two hundred pounds of extra goods we can’t carry. We’ll move them a mile forward and hide them.”
“We going to burn up the truck?” DeWitt asked. He hurried on. “Figured a fire here would be a beacon to anybody out looking for us. There had to be a radio in one of those roadblocks.”
“Good,” Murdock said. “We won’t burn it. Disable it. Flatten all the tires, mess it up proper. Ostercamp, your job.”
It was just past midnight when Murdock checked his watch. They had the extra C-4 and TNAZ they couldn’t carry planted near a tree and covered with brush. It would be easy to find if they needed it to do the job.
“How far we from that camp?” Jaybird asked.
Lam looked up from the map he’d been reading with a pencil flash. “Looks like about ten miles, maybe twelve.”
“Mahanani, how is Jaybird’s arm?”
“Slug went on through, missed the bone. Hurts like hell. Gave him morphine. Wrapped it up damn tight. He’s fit for duty. He made me say that.”