Battleground

27

Murdock knelt beside Lincoln where he lay in the rear of the 6 x 6 truck.

"Hey, Line, how's it going?"

"Not the best, L-T. I heard about the gas tank. So why are you guys hanging around here? Hit the road. Hike a little. I can take care of myself. Just leave me my MP-five and I'll be fine."

Doc Ellsworth moved in and checked the bandages. He changed both front and back and eased Lincoln down. "At least the bleeding has stopped, Line. You stay quiet and don't bust it open again, y'all hear?"

"Hear, Doc. Now get the troops out of here."

"Quinley, get up here," Murdock called. He crawled into the truck. "Yeah, L-T?"

"You're staying here as a rear guard with Line. Figure the two of you can stop anybody coming up this road."

"But L-T, Line said-"

A stern look from Murdock cut Quinley off in mid-sentence. "Yeah, L-T. The two of us should be able to hold this spot for the rest of the day. I'll have my shotgun and one of them Kalashnikovs with the thirty-round magazines."

Line started to say something, then shook his head and eased down on the bed of the truck.

Murdock put the rest of the platoon in motion. He had twelve men besides himself to face whatever was ahead. He hoped that would be enough.

They hiked up the road at a good pace, with Red Nicholson out ahead of the rest of them by fifty yards as lead scout. He watched the tracks on the dirt trail, and kept a lookout for any bushwhackers who might have been left to harass the troops.

They rounded two more curves in the road, and then it straightened out across a small meadow. Ahead, almost into the woods again, they saw the weapons carrier. It had stopped in the middle of the road.

Red dove into the ditch, and the rest of the platoon followed him.

"Can't see any troops around it, L-T. Just sitting there," Red reported.

"No fire coming from it. Work up and check it out. But don't get yourself killed."

Red sprinted ahead ten yards and dove into the ditch.

Nothing happened around the rig.

Red did another spurt with the same results. He lifted up and used binoculars. He checked the whole area twice, then stood and ran for the rear of the Army vehicle.

No shots sounded. A moment later, he vanished around the side of the weapons carrier.

"L-T, nobody home," Red said to his lip mike.

The SEALs moved up quickly and looked at the vehicle but didn't touch it or anything around it. They knew too well about booby traps in equipment and gear abandoned on purpose.

"Ran out of gas, my bet," Red said. He scanned the ground beyond it, and waved the platoon forward. "Now the big guy is hoofing it like the rest of us." Red soon saw that the Kenyans had kept to the road, where it was easier walking.

"How many men?" Murdock asked Red.

"Hey, I ain't no Chiricahua Apache who can track a pussycat across a lava field." He shrugged as they kept walking. "My guess is maybe ten or twelve. No more."

The platoon hiked for fifteen minutes, but had no way of knowing how far ahead the general and his men were. Most of the SEALs carried two weapons now, including one of the heavy AK-47s. But they didn't complain. The side that ran out of ammunition first was bound to lose this battle.

Red fell in step beside Murdock. "L-T, you know, if they split up and left twelve trails the way the Indians used to do, eleven of them would get away and be home free. This way we get a shot at all of them. If we catch them."

The flat crack of an AK-47 jolted into the mountain silence, and the round slanted past Murdock and dug into the road. The men darted into the ditches on each side or behind trees.

Murdock got off the first shot when he saw movement in the roadside brush two hundred yards ahead. "Use your AKs," Murdock said on the Motorola. The SEALs slammed ten rounds into the brush, then more on the other side of the road. Would they put just one man as a rear guard?

"Hold it," Murdock said to the lip mike. "No more fire. I think he's bugged out."

They went into the brush, and worked up to where they had seen the shots come from. No one was there. Red showed them where the man had trampled down some grass and weeds and broken off some branches to have a clear field of fire.

Back on the road, Murdock moved them out faster. They needed to catch the men ahead, not just chase them. He wondered if the Kenyans were heading for a specific spot or were just on a frantic run.

Murdock changed his usual formation, and spread the men out at ten-yard intervals to make a less-enticing target. He and Red took the point, and moved out fifty yards.

They came around another turn, and saw the road slanting upward again. The hills were getting higher, the ravines sharper, but still there were more trees and brush than Murdock liked.

Red held up his hand and went down on one knee. "Take cover, L-T," Red yelled, dove, and rolled to the side of the road.

Murdock sprinted five yards into the brush just as he heard a machine gun pounding out rounds from somewhere ahead. The rounds were aimed on the other side of the road toward Red. He rolled again, then lunged into the brush and behind a sturdy hardwood tree.

Murdock touched his mike. "Hold it, platoon. Take cover. We've got an MG up here somewhere. Red and I'll check it out. We move up on each side, Red. How in hell did you know he was there?"

"Saw something that didn't compute, L-T. Wasn't an animal, so had to be the rebs up there somewhere. Then there was the click of something metallic."

They worked slowly uphill in the brush, taking care not to break a dry branch or scuff dead leaves. The brush and vines were thick enough so they could see only twenty feet ahead. Murdock figured the MG had to be 250 yards up the hill. If the men working the weapon stayed there, the SEALs could even the odds more. Maybe he could encourage the Kenyans to stand pat.

"DeWitt. Move somebody up to see around the bend and put some rounds up the road. Ten or twelve. See if you get a reaction. Keep your fucking heads down."

Murdock and Red kept easing forward. He heard the slap of the AK-47 rounds, then an answering chatter of the machine gun. Good. Sounded a lot closer.

"About a hundred yards," Red said in his mike.

"Sounds right. Figure he's on my side." Murdock moved up again. The MG sputtered out more rounds down the roadway, where DeWitt must be baiting him. The sound helped cover Murdock's cautious movements. When he figured he was twenty yards from the machine gun, Murdock went on hands and knees and slipped under and through the brush, carrying his AK-47.

He stopped suddenly. There was a small opening in the brush, and he could see the MG in the ditch with some fallen logs dragged in front of it as a shield.

Fifteen yards. Three men worked the weapon. One feeding in a belt of ammo. One on the gun behind its bipod and resting the gun on the log. The third man looking around the barricade down the road.

Murdock stripped two fraggers off his harness, then changed his mind and used one HE, and one WP. He pulled the pins on both, and threw the fragger first, then the white phosphorous grenade.

The fragmentation grenade hit six feet from the gunner, and bounced once on the soft forest floor, then rolled forward almost to the edge of the ditch four feet from the machine gun. Murdock threw the WP quickly. The HE went off with a deadly whump. The machine gunner slammed forward over his weapon. The ammo bearer was thrown sideways. Four seconds after the first explosion, the WP went off, showering all three with the sticky, unstoppable burning phosphorus. The third man took a dozen globs of the material on his uniform. He tried to brush them off, but they burned through the cloth into flesh and bone and kept on going. He screamed again and again, until Murdock had an open shot at him and put him dead in the ditch.

Murdock touched his lip mike. "Move up, we're clear here."

They had a brief conference in the woods beyond the three dead Kenyans. Red Nicholson came back from scouting up front. He said it was all clear for at least a mile ahead past another small hill and around the side of a little valley.

"How's the ammo?" Murdock asked. Three of the men had used up their AK-47 ammo and discarded the heavy rifles.

"That damned AK really chews up the rounds in a rush," Ron Holt said.

Most of the others had two or three magazines left. "Ammo is going to be critical on this one," Murdock said. Use it, but with some caution. When we're out, we're out."

"Anybody hit?" Doc asked. Nobody replied. "We're going to go double time now. Magic, how many rounds left for the big one?"

"Last magazine, and it's getting heavy as hell. Find me a target, L-T."

They went ahead on the trail of a road. Red stayed a quarter of a mile out front now, keeping in touch with the Motorola.

Murdock kept them at the slow trot for a half mile, then went to a walk but with a long ground-eating stride.

They met Red Nicholson at the next corner. He pointed upward. The road took a long turn and headed up a sharp slope.

"See those figures on the road?" Red asked. Magic pulled out his McMillan fifty and looked through the scope.

"Oh, damn, yes," he yelped. "I count eight of them." He lifted the big weapon and looked for something to lean it across. Horse Ronson went on his hands and knees, and Magic dropped to the ground beside him and slanted the heavy barrel across Ronson's back.

"Oh, my, yes, this is good," Magic said. He had a ten-round magazine in the big weapon. He sighted through the scope and fired. At once he jerked the bolt to the rear and slammed a new round into the chamber.

He watched through the sight, and screeched when he saw the round hit between two of the men. He sighted and fired again. Then he fired four more times as fast as he could pull the bolt. He saw the men on the road scatter and vanish from his sight. He aimed once more and pulled the trigger, but he knew he was out of rounds.

"Give the bastards something to think about," Magic said.

"You gonna dump the fifty now that you're out of rounds?" Fernandez asked him.

"Shit, no. They might not buy me another one."

They marched again. Nicholson had vanished around a bend ahead of them.

A half hour later, they climbed the long slope and came to the spot where the troops had been when Magic had fired on them. They found one man in the far ditch with half of his chest blown out. The .50-caliber round had almost cut him into two pieces.

Murdock checked his watch. Just after 1400. Should be five more hours of daylight. They had to get this wrapped up before dark, or they could lose the big man in the night and the wilderness.

They marched again. Red held his lead of three hundred yards. The road leveled out some, then rose again. They could see the footprints of the others ahead of them. Red figured there were no more than seven of them now.

It could be getting close to desperation time for the general plodding ahead. The big man must be out of shape. This hike would kill him. What would Murdock do in the general's place? What? He'd make a stand. Find a favorable setup, and try to cut down the odds against him or wipe out the chasers. Murdock considered it, and watched the country on both sides of the road.

The woods closed in again, and Murdock watched closer. Red pulled back so he was one hundred yards ahead of the main body, where the men were still stretched out ten yards apart. That separation was basic combat technique. At ten yards a chance mortar round, grenade or machine gun couldn't get more than one or maybe two men with a lucky hit or a sudden attack.

Murdock was tired of hiking. They had been going uphill now for what he figured was seven or eight miles, maybe more. Some kind of a bird called in the woods. Murdock frowned. He hadn't heard any birds before. He studied the growth on both sides, then took a breath and relaxed.

That was when small-arms fire broke out on both sides of the road. The SEALs were in a cross fire. They hit the dirt, and returned fire on full automatic. The attackers were twenty yards ahead on each side so they didn't shoot each other. Murdock felt a round tug at his shirt sleeve. Then he was down returning fire on full auto with the AK-47.

All of the SEALS, scattered as they were, had perfect fields of fire. The first incoming rounds did the damage. Then the eleven weapons all on full automatic cut a swath through the brush, and the SEALs heard two men scream.

Red came running down the road, but it was over before he got there. Ronson brought his machine gun into play, and riddled the left side of the roadway where he figured the rounds came from.

Ching used his M-4A1, and emptied a new thirty-round clip of 9mm parabellum rounds into the right-hand side. All of the SEALs fired their magazines dry, and slammed in new ones.

"Hold fire," Murdock said into his Motorola. The sound of the weapons trailed off. Murdock stared at the ambush. The general and his men had used their heads this time, waiting for the cross fire.

"Ed, check the left side. I'll take the right. Everybody else cover us. If anybody in there fires a shot, blast them." Murdock lifted up and charged into the brush. He worked ahead carefully, making as little noise as he could. Twenty yards forward he came on the death scene. Two green-uniformed Kenyan troopers lay sprawled in the grass and weeds. Both had been riddled by more than a dozen rounds. They'd had no protection to the front. He kicked the weapons away. Both AK-47's had run dry of ammo.

"Clear right," Murdock said.

"Clear left," Ed DeWitt answered.

Murdock ran back to the road. He saw what he feared he might. Doc Ellsworth was busy. Murdock came up beside him where he worked on Horse Ronson. The big man grinned through what Murdock knew was searing pain.

"He took two rounds in his right leg," Doc said. "Doubt if the bone is broken. He'd be screaming by now if it was. Guess that one round slanted off the bone and came out sideways. No more hiking for Horse."

"Anybody else?"

"Yeah, me. Got a scratch on my left arm," Doc said, and sat down suddenly. His face went white, and he struggled to stay sitting up. He shook his head.

"L-T, could you get me one of them morphine shots. Think I'm going to need one. Oh, one for Horse here too."

It was ten minutes before they got Ronson to the side of the road in a trampled-down patch of grass where he could stay until they came for him. Murdock gave him a WP grenade.

"Hey, Horse, if you hear a chopper coming, POP that Willy Peter out there in the road and we'll be sure to stop by."

"Can do. Go knock down that General Fuck up there. Wanted him myself. Have to give him to you."

Ronson wouldn't let them leave anyone with him. They were down to eleven men. Doc came around and joked about almost passing out. Murdock wrapped up his left arm. Doc could flex his hand. He said he could shoot, and that was what mattered.

Murdock looked up the road. They were coming to the top of this particular hill. It looked as if the road went directly to the summit. Maybe that was the end of the road. It had to lead somewhere. The general might be down to three or four men. Which should make it easy, if they could catch the guy. He shouldn't have much of a lead by this time.

Murdock saw Red Nicholson jogging down the sloping road toward him. He was out of breath.

"Might have something up front," Red said. "Road goes right to some kind of a rock building, an old house or a fort. I know the general and his men are inside. I heard him yelling at them. It's not more than a quarter of a mile ahead."