He sensed the men lined up behind him. “We go in soft. Anyone here probably is one of the dog washers. Innocents. Don’t shoot unless fired at.”
He rammed the door open, and the four SEALs stormed inside. They were in a processing shed. More than a dozen large vats took up the entire area of the one hundred-foot-long building. Murdock could see no workers.
They filtered through the spaces around the vats, discovered no one hiding, and went out the door on the far side. Murdock had sent the rest of the SEALs around the building toward the next one.
When the SEALs were in the open, rifle fire erupted from windows of the next building thirty yards away. Return fire came at once from the SEALs. Murdock heard a groan and figured one of his men was hit.
“Scatter,” Murdock ordered on the radio. “Ed, see if you can get half your squad behind them. We’ll keep firing here.” He thought of the 20-mike-mike rounds but knew the range was too short. The explosive rounds wouldn’t have time to arm. He fired with the 5.56 half of the Bull Pup and was pleased with the way it functioned.
He hit the dirt and rolled, fired, and rolled again. The return fire had slackened off.
“Hold fire in front,” Murdock said on the Motorola.
A moment later, a strange silence hovered over the scene. “Who got wounded?” Murdock asked.
“Yeah, just a scratch, Cap. Nothing serious.”
“Senior Chief?”
“Yeah. Picked up one in my right leg. Thigh. I’m still mobile. Carry on.”
“Mahanani, you copy that?”
“In front, I’m coming back. Hold it right there, Dobe.”
Murdock held up any movement until he saw that the medic was talking with Dobler.
“Let’s move up to that building. Find out where the shooters went.”
There was no fire from the structure as they charged it. Murdock and Jaybird went through the door, one diving left, the other right. It was dark inside. The two men waited without moving or breathing, listening.
Suddenly a shadow stormed out of the blackness, a weapon in hand, firing on semiautomatic. Jaybird threw up his MP-5 in a reflexive action, his finger on the trigger at full auto. He saw fifteen rounds jolt into the black figure. Then the Colombian’s finger went slack on the trigger as the form fell forward just past Jaybird and in front of Murdock.
The SEAL commander kicked the weapon away and then kicked the man in the side. He didn’t move or make a sound. Murdock bent down and checked his carotid pulse. Dead. Murdock sat down quickly. His head pounded and he began to sweat. What the hell?
“Hey, Cap, you okay?” Jaybird asked.
“Not sure. Yeah. Okay, took a round in my left arm. Now it’s hurting like hell. Where’d that guy come from?”
“Cap, you stay put, I’m going to clear this place. Looks like an office or storeroom, maybe a little of both. You hold steady there, and I’m back in about a minute.”
Jaybird ran down an aisle, back up another one. He stopped near the front windows a minute, then came running back.
“Can you walk, Cap?”
“Yeah and talk and chew gum. I’m not hit that bad.”
“Let’s get outside. We’ve got two more dead bodies over there by the windows. I only saw three shooting out of here, so I think we have them all.”
Jaybird watched his commander stand, weave a little, then walk steadily out the door they had come in.
“Jack, we need you over here near the front door,” Jaybird said.
The medic was there before Jaybird got Murdock sat down. He motioned at the commander. “His left arm, take a look.”
Mahanani held a pencil flash in his mouth as he examined the officer’s left arm. “About halfway up, and the slug went on through. Gonna hurt like hell for a few days, Commander. I think it missed the bone. I’ll wrap it up and take a better look at it as soon as it’s daylight.”
Jaybird hit the lip mike. “JG, we need you back here. Can you bring your squad around?”
“That’s a roger. What’s the problem?”
“The Cap took one in his left forearm.”
“We’re on our way.”
The SEALs called a halt to the clearing job. They heard no more gunfire but weren’t sure the place was safe yet. DeWitt had the SEALs and Colombians in a perimeter ring around the two casualties. Senior Chief Dobler was growling and feeling better.
“Damn it, I can still walk and run and fight and piss and fuck, so let’s get on with it.”
They told him about Murdock’s wound and he settled down a little. Captain Herrera talked with DeWitt.
“Can the commander finish the job here?”
“Hell, yes. We’re a team, Captain. We function as a unit, and one or two men down doesn’t mean we fall apart. If I get the word from Murdock, I’ll take over command for the rest of the mission. If he can carry on himself, he will. My guess is he’s in a little shock, but he’ll be raring to go in a half hour.”
Murdock called DeWitt over. “Send Lam out and find out how many more buildings we have to clear. Don’t bury me yet, Ed. I’m not about to cut and run.”
“What I was telling the captain. Let me find Lam.”
The corpsman treated Murdock’s wound, bandaged it up tightly, and gave him three pain pills.
Lam came back fifteen minutes later with his report.
“Cap, there are five more buildings we need to clear. One is a barracks, one a kitchen/mess hall, two more processing sheds, and a big storage building that looks like it’s loaded with raw product, finished cocaine, and a lot of fifty-five gallon barrels.”
“See any more hostiles?”
“Not a one.”
“Let’s get on our feet and clear the rest of the buildings,” Murdock said. “Moving out.”
DeWitt looked at Murdock and watched him take his first few steps. He touched Mahanani on the shoulder. “Stay with the skipper,” he said. The corpsman nodded.
They spent an hour clearing the rest of the structures, found one more dormitory filled with workers and the storehouse with the barrels and large plastic garbage cans filled with a white powder that the corpsman said he was sure was cocaine.
They had come back to the storage building, and Murdock surveyed it. “What’s in the barrels?” he asked.
Two SEALs checked them out with their flashlights.
“Ethyl ether,” Franklin said. “What’s ether doing way out here?”
“Ether is a vital element in the final phase of cocaine production,” Ed DeWitt said. “It’s also a colorless, volatile, and highly flammable liquid.”
Murdock swayed a moment, then caught his balance. “Looks like we have some of our fireworks right here. Captain Herrera, can you get your men to wake up all of the workers and get them a quarter of a mile away from the buildings, back along the road?”
“That we can do, Commander. Yes. At once.”
Murdock waved him on. “Ostercamp, I want you to get those trucks and cars we passed and drive them all down away from the buildings. We’ll use them tomorrow.”
Ostercamp took off at a trot.
“Now for the fun part. Ronson and Jefferson. Grab one of those barrels of ether and roll it down to this next building and push it up against the wall.”
Jaybird grinned. “Regular Fourth of July fireworks, Cap?”
“Could work out that way. We don’t want to waste all of our goodies in one bonfire.”
The building the barrel of ether rested against was one of the labs, about a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. Murdock pulled the troops all away from the building and lifted his Bull Pup. He fired six 5.56 rounds into the middle of the barrel. The whizzers ripped through the metal and a waterlike liquid poured out. He fired two more rounds into the barrel, hoping for a ricochet and a spark.