“We’ll wait them out and see,” Murdock said. “Might put up a white flare out there just to see what’s going on. We’ll do it from here. Keep watch.”
Murdock had Ching fire a flare, and they watched the front. Some of the wounded who had been moving stopped. Other attackers dropped to the ground and played dead.
“Hold fire,” Murdock said. “Just checking them out.”
Guns Franklin came on the net. “Skipper, these locals didn’t fire at the attackers. I tried to get them to, but they said no. After it was over, I asked them why. They said nobody ordered them to fire.”
Murdock remembered that Franklin could speak Arabic. “Franklin, I’m going to ask the colonel the same thing. Let’s keep watch.”
It was more than a half hour later when Murdock heard the engine sounds beyond the wall. They put a white flare out front and saw the vehicle, an older half-track that once was known as a personnel carrier. It had a 50-caliber machine gun mounted on top, round tires in front, and tracks holding up the back half of the rig.
“Let’s take him,” Murdock said on the net and began firing his subgun with the suppressor off for better range. In the glare of the flare, the rig rolled ahead fifty yards and stopped. As the flare faded, Murdock could see men come out from behind the rig. They held something he couldn’t identify.
A second later he knew. Two RPGs blasted into action and slanted toward the wall. One hit the wall near Murdock and didn’t dent it. The second exploded on the barbed wire fence under the wall near Jaybird.
“Machine guns, work that rig’s front tires,” Murdock said on the net. “You guys with forty mikes, let’s stop him. We need a damn close near miss or a direct hit.”
Murdock tried for the driver. The windshield was not protected, and he soon had it shot into a thousand granules of glass. The rig kept rolling forward at eight or ten miles an hour.
Ronson blasted the front tires, flattening both, but the rig kept coming, now at half the speed. The forty-mike grenades dropped in closer, but none had a killing effect.
Then Murdock saw a fiery trail of an RPG that lanced through the air from this side of the wall. It hit the slow-moving vehicle right through the blown-out windshield. The explosion shattered the night and lit up the landscape for a hundred yards. Murdock’s gunners and snipers picked off a dozen men in the light while the half-track burned.
“Who had the RPG?” Murdock asked on the Motorola.
A laugh came first, then Jaybird’s voice cut in. “Dang me if I didn’t hit a bull’s-eye. The bastard locals wouldn’t fire, so I ripped this RPG out of the hands one of them and nailed the sucker. You guys owe me free beer for a month.”
“You’re on,” Murdock said. “How is the barbed wire under that wall?”
“Gone, blown to hell. A wide-open invite inside. Be a damn nice spot for a couple of claymores. We bring any?”
“Should have two somewhere,” Murdock said. “Who has the claymores?”
Ching had one, Quinley the other. “Get them over to that hole in the fence; you’ve all seen it,” Murdock said. “Move it now.”
Every fifteen minutes for the next hour, Murdock had one of his men fire a white flare over the suspected attack area where the troops had come before. He brought the other machine gun over and had Bradford bring around the 50-caliber sniping rifle. Now Murdock felt more ready.
It was nearly 0400 before the attack came. Six RPGs blasted into the wall, and two went over it. Machine guns from the darkness raked the wall and the firing ports. When the MGs stopped, Murdock fired two white flares. The attackers were running toward them. Everyone on the SEALs’ side of the wall began to fire. The machine guns cut chunks out of the hundred men coming at them. HE 40mm rounds jolted into the running mass and chopped down another dozen.
But for the eight guns on that side, there were too many of them. Twenty of the uniformed men charged straight at the hole under the fence. The first one dove under where the barbed wire had been and triggered the trip wire. Three hundred .38-caliber-sized ball bearings exploded out of the claymore, all aimed directly away from the wall and into the path of the shouting soldiers. Eighteen of them fell, mortally wounded.
All along that stretch of the wall, enemy soldiers made it to the wall. Some tried to climb over. Murdock and his men used up their hand grenade supply when the enemies were close to the wall.
Murdock picked off one man who tried to lever over the top of the wall through the razor wire. He took two rounds and fell outside.
“We’ve got two over the wall here,” Jaybird called in the net. “Who’s got them?”
“One down and out,” Quinley said.
“I’ve got the other one,” Ostercamp called. “Hey, he’s just a kid, no more than fifteen.”
“Save the next one for questioning,” Murdock said.
“Mine is still alive but hurting,” Ostercamp said. “I’ll save him.”
Four more RPGs came over the wall and exploded against buildings in back. Murdock sent another flare up and checked out the port. It showed few of the attackers still in sight. “Next to the wall or gone into the hills,” Murdock said. “How’s our ammo?”
“Half gone,” a voice said. “Damn near empty,” another voice reported.
“So conserve and share,” Ed DeWitt said. “That might have been their final hoorah for tonight.”
“Stay alert on the other sides,” Murdock said. “They might think they pulled us all over here and hit at another spot. A flare now and again all around the perimeter wouldn’t hurt.”
The solid, nasty snarl of an AK-47 drilled through the night.
“One of them got inside,” Senior Chief Dobler said. “He’s down on my end. We’re hunting him.”
Two more shots blasted into the night, then silence. The war outside was over for the time being. Murdock wanted to rush down to where Dobler was, but he didn’t want to run into friendly fire. He hunkered down and waited.
“No, not there,” Dobler’s voice came.
“Yeah, right. I see him.”
Murdock recognized Fernandez’s voice.
A few seconds later, the H & G sniper rifle snarled three times, then an MP-5 slashed in with more than a dozen rounds on full auto.
Silence.
“Yeah, clear to the south,” Dobler said.
“Back to your positions,” Murdock said. “I want a casualty report.”
“Yo,” Franklin said. “Picked up a scratch from one of them damn RPGs. Nothing serious.”
“Doc, find him. Where are you, Franklin?”
“West side, south of the fence gully. No big deal.”
Ten minutes later, Doc Mahanani reported to Murdock.
“Skipper, Franklin has a nasty on his left leg. I’m taking him back to the room and get a good look at it.”
“Go, Doc,” Murdock said.
They waited out the rest of the night. Dawn came rolling across the deserted landscape about six. They could see no wounded or dead in front of the wall. All had been carried away. The dead half-track smoldered.
Murdock asked Ostercamp if he still had the prisoner.
“Yeah, and he’s hurting. I wrapped up his shot leg, but he’s a nasty little character. He must be near twenty years old.”
“Let’s take him back to the colonel and see what he makes of him.”
Colonel Khalof was not in his office. An aide said he was in the bunker. He led them to an underground safe house protected with reinforced concrete and double steel doors. The aide rang a bell twice, then twice more. Slowly, the first steel door swung out. The aide rang the bell once, then twice, then once. The inside steel door slid back into the side of the wall.