“We won’t hurt you,” Lam said, watching the girls. All but one tried to cover themselves up with their hands. “How did they bring you up here?”
The one with the largest breasts, who was not covering them, laughed. “Oh, yeah. Brought us up in a helicopter. My first ride. They paid us good too. A thousand each for the day. They brought in the luau. Only one of them speaks English.”
“Which one?” Murdock asked.
By then they had all four Chinese tied with the riot cuffs on ankles and wrists.
“The youngest one. We call him Well Hung.” The girl laughed.
Murdock went up to the man indicated and hit him with a backhanded slap that knocked him over where he sat on the ground.
“You speak English,” Murdock said.
“Yes. Some.” The man sat up, scowling.
“Did the helicopter bring the bomb up here?”
“Yes, but you’ll never find it.”
“Is it up in the crags up there?”
“Perhaps.”
Murdock slapped him again, toppling him the other way. Murdock saw that the girls were getting dressed. Good. He looked down at the Chinese officer.
“How many men do you have up here?”
The officer sat up with an effort. “Only half of a platoon. Twenty men. Bomb will go off up here and vaporize most of the island.”
“Including you and the rest of your men.”
“True. We are volunteers and know of our fate.”
“Only, the bomb won’t go off. We’ll find it first, and you’ll spend the rest of your life in a prison.”
The Chinese man’s face twisted a moment. Then he shook his head. “No, it can’t happen. We have planned too well.”
“Like your invasion down below? Invading this section of the island has absolutely no military benefit whatsoever.”
Murdock looked at Lam. He was talking to one of the girls. “Lam, call up the troops. Keep them out of sight in the brush. We might as well put this luau food to good use.”
The girls smiled, went to the pit, and began taking out the food and putting it on plates that the Chinese had provided.
“Looks like the package you can buy at some stores,” Lam said. “Your own luau all put together with instructions, food, plates, and drinks.”
“Good invading army technique for feeding the troops,” Murdock said.
It was the best lunch stop the SEALs could remember. There was even cold beer, which Dobler rationed out one can per man. Murdock told the girls that he had to leave them there, but there would be a helicopter to come back and pick them up before dark.
Lam had eaten fast and worked on up the trail watching for any outposts. He came back a half hour later.
“Clear up for another six hundred yards, Cap. Then there’s a detail of six or eight men at a log barricade. Looks like they have an MG and some other weapon set up there. The slant up to the pinnacles is no more than a hundred yards behind them.”
“Any way we can bypass them?”
“None without dropping down five hundred feet into a gully and then climbing back up those damn slanted rock walls. They are set up on this little ridge top we’ve been working up for the last mile.”
“So we take them out. We’ll give the guys another ten minutes on the roast pork.”
A short time later the food was all gone, except for the poi. Only Lam and Mahanani dug into the poi. There was plenty left.
Murdock put Bravo Squad in the lead as they moved up to the roadblock. Lam brought them to within two hundred yards of the Chinese. The SEALs worked slowly, cutting out clear fire lanes at the log barricade ahead.
Ed DeWitt checked his men. “Only six or eight of them up there. We do them with the twenties. Half of you on impact, the others on laser airbursts. Let’s do it.” He fired three rounds from his H & K G-11 sub gun. Then the heavier weapons fired.
DeWitt watched with satisfaction as the first two airbursts exploded directly over the log barricade in the tree branches, showering the men below it with shrapnel. He could see fifteen feet of the trail in back of the barricade before it faded into the trees. Two Chinese tried to run up the trail, but another airburst overhead blasted them into the ground and they didn’t move.
The heavy machine gun pounded out six rounds, then went silent. A few rifle rounds came from the log barricade. Then even they stopped.
“Cease fire,” DeWitt said into the Motorola. He watched and waited. A plaintive cry came from the barricade. It sounded again, then trailed off into silence.
“Take a look,” Murdock said on the lip mike.
Ed DeWitt and Train Khai jolted away from the cover, darted twenty yards ahead, and then froze behind trees. No fire came from the logs. They worked the move and took cover twice more. Then they used assault fire and ran flat out for the barricade. No return fire sounded.
Moments later the earpiece spoke.
“All clear front,” DeWitt said.
The SEALs moved up and occupied the roadblock. Lam had scouted the route ahead, and came back quickly to Murdock.
“Trouble ahead, Cap. There’s a trail with switchbacks every twenty feet or so. About a sixty-degree slope. The whole fucking thing is without any cover and wide open to fire from the top, which is about sixty yards above. How the hell we get up there without getting slaughtered?”
“At the top, is it a cave or open on top?”
“Looks open to me. Oh, twenties?”
“You called it. Listen up, troops. Alpha Squad will take the hike. Bravo to give cover fire. We want all Bravo to have the Bull Pups. So trade off. We need eight shooters on this. Airbursts, so laser the top of the wall up there. Any questions?”
“When do we stop the cover fire, Cap?” Canzoneri asked.
“Depends on the situation and the terrain,” Bradford cracked.
“Precisely,” Murdock said. “We’ll let you know the second we start to feel your hot shrapnel. We’ll let you get in a dozen shots before we start up. Maybe you can blast them all to hell and we won’t get any return fire. But don’t count on it. Anything else?”
“The bloody bomb going to be up there?” Dobler asked.
“Tell you that in about a half hour,” Murdock said. “Ed, get your men set up and fire when ready.”
Murdock pointed to his men in the sequence he wanted them. He would be in front, Lam right behind him, then Holt, Bradford, Ching, and Dobler as Tail-end Charlie.
A minute later the first round fired and Murdock looked up at the rock pinnacle. The round exploded in the air just behind the front of the wall. He heard a scream from above. Then a half dozen more rounds hit, drowning out all other sounds. When the last of the dozen rounds exploded high on the pinnacle, Murdock waved his men forward and began moving up the switchbacks on the trail.
At once he saw why the trail took the sudden turns. It was nearly straight up but not quite. He soon looped his sub gun over his back so he could use his hands to help climb the slope. It became steeper as they moved upward. Now he could hear some shots coming from the top, but they gradually tapered off. He paused and looked behind him. One of his men sprawled on the ground. It was Dobler.
“DeWitt, check on Dobler. Get him back out of the line of fire. Looks like he’s been hit.”
“Two men on the way already,” Murdock’s earpiece told him. He surged upward again.
The big SEAL officer couldn’t remember how many turns he had made on the switchbacks, but the top still looked a long way off. Then a chunk of shrapnel sang past his head and he used the lip mike.
“DeWitt, cease fire. That’s a hold-it. Cease fire with the twenties. Use the five-five-sixes. Should help keep their heads down.”
“That’s a Roger.”
Murdock surged upward. The top looked closer now. He couldn’t make out any shots being fired from above, but there still could be. He made one more switchback and scanned the area ahead. He was only ten feet below the opening into the fortress. He swung down his sub gun, flicked off the safety, and charged up the last slope and darted into the opening.