Battleground

29

The platoon scout headed down the trail of footprints leading from the now-benign rock fortress on top of the Kenyan hill. The remaining men in the Third Platoon followed stretched out at ten-yard intervals.

Murdock was in his usual place just behind Nicholson, and Ron Holt shadowed the Platoon Leader with his SATCOM radio. The trail wound through the woods, not along the road they had come up. It angled down a slope through heavy trees and brush, but Nicholson had no trouble following it.

At one point on hard ground with little vegetation, he had to do a small circle to pick up the trail, but he found it again and they moved out.

Ten minutes later, Red called for Murdock to come up. He pointed at the ground.

"Fuckers are finally getting smart. They split up. Two of them went each way. I'd say the general is on the trail to the right, but I can't be sure."

Murdock looked at the evidence, and was glad his tracker was along. "Ed, come up," Murdock said in his mike.

Ed DeWitt hustled up, and went on one knee beside Murdock.

"So?"

"Split up, two each way. You take your squad and go left. I'll take the right hand. We want them down before dark."

"How am I going to follow them? I'm no Indian," DeWitt asked.

Red showed him the bent-over grass, the broken sticks and twigs on the ground, the scuffed mulch. "These guys are in a rush and not trying to hide their tracks, L-T. You shouldn't have any trouble."

"Easy for you to say, kemosaby."

"Ed, you have four men?"

"Right."

"Take Doc with you. Nail these guys fast."

Ed called his men out, and they moved down the trail that slanted away at a ninety-degree angle to the other one.

Murdock nodded, and Red hiked out along the other trail. They had gone about two hundred yards through light trees when two weapons fired ahead of them on full automatic. Red Nicholson went down hard and rolled over.

The other four men hit the dirt, and returned fire at the location. The two weapons ahead chattered again on full auto, and bullets sang and ricocheted through the trees and brush. Murdock waved Magic Brown to swing to the left, and Ching to move right. The Platoon Leader and his men fired on the site for another minute. Then Murdock's command on the mike stopped the attack.

They waited. Two minutes went by with no fire from the front. Another minute, and Magic Brown came on the Motorola.

"Bastards are gone, L-T. Nothing up here but a pile of brass."

Murdock got his men moving. Red Nicholson hadn't been hit when he went down — just a precautionary move, as he called it.

He got back on his tracking mission. They moved ahead. Murdock evaluated his squad. They were beaten up. Ching, Doc, Nicholson, and Magic all had gunshot wounds. Ronson was out of it for now. Only he, Jaybird, and Ron Holt hadn't been shot up. He worried about it.

Ahead, Nicholson went flat on the ground, and the rest of them behind at ten-yard intervals dropped as well. Murdock bent over and hurried forward, sliding into the forest mulch beside his scout.

"So, what?"

"I saw somebody up there. Less than two hundred yards. We must be catching up with them."

"Let's go get them," Murdock said. Red moved out faster, charging down the slight slope. He didn't see the trip wire until he was on it. Then he screamed a warning, and tried to dive away from it. The trip wire snapped, releasing the arming spoon, and the grenade went off almost at once.

Red slammed into the ground too late. More than a dozen chunks of the shrapnel tore into his body. Two hit him in the chest, one in the throat, and four more large ones in his belly and legs. The ten-yard interval between men saved the rest of them. By the time Murdock dropped to the ground beside Nicholson, he was choking on his own blood. He looked up at Murdock and gave a small shrug.

"Been a good tour, L-T," he said. Then he gave one last long breath and died.

Murdock slammed his fist into the ground.

"Jaybird, stay with him. Keep some rounds so we can find you when we're ready to bug out of this firetrap. The rest of you, let's go get those bastards."

Magic Brown took over the point. He had left the big Fifty with Ronson when he ran out of rounds, and now moved along the plain trail. Fifty yards ahead he stopped and knelt.

Murdock went down beside him.

"No fucking expert, L-T, but looks like they split up again. One that way, one straight ahead."

"Brown and Holt, to the left," Murdock said. "Ching and I'll take the straight ahead. Let's get this thing wrapped up."

Murdock took the lead now, running when he was sure of the trail ahead, slowing to check the dirt and mulch of the woods floor. The brush thinned out, and he could see ahead thirty to fifty yards. He caught the glimpse of a green shirt vanishing into some trees, and put a dozen rounds into the area.

When they got there, Murdock found no body, only hurried tracks going along the side of the hill. They ran again. This time the brush petered out, and only a few trees remained. Ahead, Murdock saw a figure working along a rocky slope.

Ching lifted his M-4A1 Carbine and fired twice to get the range on single-shot, then flipped the lever and emptied his magazine at the target two hundred yards away.

The Kenyan soldier had turned to look behind him just as the rounds reached him. Murdock figured it was four or five hits. The man crumpled, then dropped his rifle, and flopped on his back.

Murdock nodded. "Yeah, splash one bogie. That one's not the general. Magic has him on the other trail. Let's get to where we left Red."

They turned and began working along their trail to where the dead SEAL lay on the ground.

Magic Brown had started out fast along the trail in the grass and leaf mold, but slowed as he watched for trip wires. He saw that the impressions in the mulch were deep, and hoped it was the general ahead.

Twice they took incoming fire. Both times they did not shoot back. Brown was down to his last magazine in his sniper rifle, and he wasn't sure how many rounds he had left. Then came an opening in the brush, and he saw a figure moving ahead. Three hundred yards. He lifted up and fired twice. The figure moved, and he had a good shot. But when he pulled the trigger, there was no round. He should have noticed when the magazine ran dry.

Ron Holt held fire. The target was out of range of his submachine gun. Both of them ran down the trail. Magic Brown worked ahead of Holt. The radioman tried to keep up, but he couldn't. He came around a small turn in the trail, and saw Brown twenty yards ahead. He put on a burst of speed, failed to see a root sticking out of the ground, and tripped and went down hard.

Holt threw out his arms to break his fall. His MP-5 fell to the ground, and he hit hard. A jolting pain streaked up his arm, and he rolled over. He'd lost the radio, and he reached for it. The stabbing pain caused him to cry out. He looked at his left arm. It hurt like fire. Broken, he was sure.

He gritted his teeth to hold down the pain, and crawled over to the fifteen-pound SATCOM radio. Once it was safe, he touched his lip mike.

"L-T. Holt here. I'm down. Think I broke my fucking arm. Brown is still after the guy over here."

"Hang in there, Holt," Murdock answered. "Get back to where we left Red. We'll make that our assembly point."

Ahead, Magic Brown heard the cry behind him, and figured that Holt was down. It was up to him, with no rounds and a worthless rifle. Still, he carried it. He could bluff with it. Yeah, maybe whoever was up ahead was short or out of ammo too.

He rounded a bend in the small canyon they had worked down to, and ahead, just vanishing behind a rock, he saw the general. Had to be him. The man was huge, tall, and wide. He carried a rifle.

Magic slid behind a large hardwood tree and watched the spot. It was no more than thirty yards ahead. For a minute nothing happened. Then the general lifted the rifle and rested it over the rock that shielded him. So maybe he did have rounds left. One way to find out. Magic surged into sight of the general, then jolted back. The rifle ahead fired almost at once. Good reflexes. At the same time Magic felt a blow on his right hip. He dodged out of sight and stared down at his hip looking for blood.

The holster holding his .45 auto had been almost torn off his hip. He pulled out the big HK Mark 23 and looked at it. The AK-47 round had slammed into it on the side of the slide, denting it inward a quarter of an inch. He tried to charge a round into the chamber. The slide wouldn't move. He tossed the useless weapon aside. What the hell now? He was really out of ammo. He couldn't go back and get Holt's weapon. He scowled. Then his hand brushed his K-Bar.

Magic left his rifle against a tree, drew his knife, and moved into the denser brush to his right. He found what he wanted, a dead branch on the ground two inches thick, six feet long, and fairly straight. He used his knife to smooth the shank of it, then with some all-purpose tape from his vest, taped his K-Bar on the small end of the branch with the blade extending over the end.

He had a six-foot-long spear.

Magic moved silently through the trees and brush. At one point he saw the general through the brush. He was resting below the rock. Twice he lifted up to look toward where Magic had been on the trail.

Magic stepped gingerly along another twenty feet to the rear, then worked out to the fringe of the brush.

General Umar Maleceia sat on the rock thirty feet away and slightly ahead. The general was too far away for a charge even with Brown's spear. How?

Magic found a fist-sized rock, lifted up, and threw it as far as he could beyond where the general hid. The rock hit some brush and made a racket. The general jolted upright and fired three rounds at the noise. Then he fired again, and the round magazine on the AK-47 ran dry. He threw it away. He drew a handgun and looked around.

One more fist-sized rock slanted out of Magic's hand, and crashed in much the same area. General Maleceia fired five rounds into the brush, and then the revolver ran out of bullets.

Magic moved out of the brush into the open to the edge of a stream bed. He walked silently toward the coup leader. When he was ten feet away he called.

"The party's over, Colonel."

Maleceia turned, surprised. He saw the spear and laughed.

"You, a black man, fighting another black man? Don't be stupid. I can make you rich. We'll hike out of here. I have many friends in this area. We'll find transport, get into Tanzania where I can tap a bank account, and the two of us will live like kings. All the food, drink, and women we want."

"Not a chance," Magic Brown said.

The general snarled, and drew a knife. It was an inch shorter than the K-Bar, but just as deadly.

"Come on, nigger," Maleceia said. "Know you hate that name, but you're just a nigger used to taking commands from the white trash over you. I don't see you with any officer's bars on your shoulder. Just a poor little nigger boy working for the massa."

Magic walked forward, the spear in front of him. "You just killed one of my best friends, you bastard. You want to die slow or fast?"

Maleceia held the knife in front the way a fencer would, with the point aimed forward so he could stab or slice either up, down, or sideways.

"Come and get me."

Magic moved closer. He took a swing with the spear at the big man, who stepped back. Magic feinted one way, then drove ahead the other way, and the sharp K-Bar cut a groove a half inch deep along the general's left arm.

"Bastard! I told you I'd make you rich. What else do you want?"

"Everything you own, all the account numbers in Tanzania."

"Said I'd make you rich, not that I'm stupid. I give you the numbers and you kill me anyway."

"Probably. You're not in a good bargaining position." Magic darted forward again, stabbed, missed, sliced, and drew blood from a cut across the big man's chest. Blood soaked his shirt. He glared at Magic, turned the knife, and held it by the blade.

Magic drove in before the general could throw it. The K-Bar on the end of the lance jabbed again, dug into the general's right forearm, and came out leaving a smear of blood.

General Maleceia screamed in fury. He charged.

The move caught Magic by surprise. He backed up a step, sliced at the man's torso, missed, then spun the limb so he held it like a staff, and slammed the large end of it against Maleceia's left arm. He could hear a bone snap. The general growled in pain and came forward again, his right arm back to throw the knife.

Magic dove to the ground with the staff crossways in front of him, came to his feet, and swung the staff like a baseball bat. The wood on the knife end hit the general in the right leg, smashing the leg sideways, and the general went down.

Magic saw the hand go back. He darted to the side, then back, and the thrown knife sailed past him, missing by two feet.

The big black SEAL moved in slowly on the fallen general. The man held up both hands, but must have known they would be little defense.

Suddenly Magic was tired. Tired of the chase, tired of the man's insults, tired of seeing his buddies killed. He leaped forward, wielding the spear like a long knife. He slashed it at the general's chest. The Kenyan ducked, and the blade bit into his neck, severing one carotid artery and his jugular vein.

Magic continued the swing of the blade, reversed it, brought it back, and with both hands on the shank, drove the big blade deeply into Maleceia's heart.

Magic dropped to one knee. He panted. Blood spurted from the general's neck wound for a few seconds, then stopped. The general's uniform was starkly red. His eyes stared unseeing at the small clouds drifting past the sun.

The black SEAL touched his mike. "L-T, clear down here. The general is dead."

Murdock slumped down beside Red Nicholson's body. "Good, Magic. Reverse up the trail to where we left Red." The dead man would be going out with the rest of the SEALS. Almost never did a dead SEAL get left on the battlefield. The general was down, their main mission over. He wondered how DeWitt had fared.

"DeWitt, what's happening over there?"

"Yeah, Murdock. We nailed one of them. The other one is so damn sneaky we can't find him. Just melted into the brush somewhere."

"Don't sweat it, get back to the trail. We need to find a space open enough for our chopper. Get back to the main trail, and we'll hook up. Watch for an LZ."

Holt came out of the brush a few minutes later. He carried his sub-gun in his right hand. His left arm hung at his side and pain etched his face.

"Damn sorry, L-T. Tripped over something running flat out."

"Happens. Can you work your magic box?"

"Oh, yeah. Heard the general is wasted. Good. Magic did it, knew he could."

"Kick up the antenna and let's try the tac band for the carrier. She still the Rover?"

"That's a Roger."

Holt opened the radio cover, and set up the antenna to align it with the Milstar satellite orbiting at 22,300 miles above the earth in a synchronous journey around the equator. It might not matter, but he aligned it anyway.

"Rover, this is Murdock, can you copy?"

There were some pops and whines out of the set; then the voice came over the small speaker.

"Murdock, this is Rover."

"We're ready for that pickup. We're ten to twelve miles, maybe more, northwest of Nairobi in some hills. We'll use flares when we hear the bird. Two hours? I have 1715."

"Yes, two hours. Be dark by then, Murdock. Spot an LZ with small fires if you can. Any enemy action expected?"

"No, Rover. Mission accomplished on the papa bear. We lost one Kenyan soldier, but he's probably still running. We'll find an LZ."

Magic came up the trail and dropped beside Nicholson. He shook his head. "Damn, never should have happened. Red stayed on point too fucking long."

"Wouldn't let anybody else walk it," Holt said.

"Yeah, we should have out-muscled him," Magic said. "Goddamn it to Hell. Damn lousy fucking way to die."

They moved up the trail they had used since leaving the rock house. Magic picked up Nicholson in a fireman's carry and marched up the trail without a word.

By the time they found DeWitt and his men, they were less than a quarter of a mile from the rock house. DeWitt suggested they use the open spot in front of it for the LZ. Murdock agreed.

They hiked to the rock house and checked. The cleared spot in front was more than big enough for a safe landing.

DeWitt put two men to gathering up dry grass, twigs, and larger limbs they could use to light for signal fires when they heard the chopper. They laid four fires at the sides of the LZ, and waited for the signal to light them.

Doc looked at the men who had been injured or shot since he saw them last. He put a wooden splint on Holt's left arm and gave him a pain shot.

Murdock sent Ching and Bishop down the road to find Ronson. "See how close you can find a good LZ down there," Murdock said. He gave them two flares and one more WP grenade. "We'll get picked up here, then go down for you there. We shouldn't have any trouble finding the truck where Lincoln and Quinley are. Just be a matter of spotting an LZ down there." The two took off hiking down the road.

"Who has any ammo left?" Murdock asked the men who had flaked out on the ground. "I've got about half a magazine. Anybody else?"

Three more men had a few rounds. Murdock set them on the perimeter facing outward. "Let's have a little fucking security here," he said.

It was dark and 1922 when they heard the big chopper. DeWitt's men lit the four fires, and blew them into flames. Soon they burned brightly. The big bird made one pass, then dropped down and sent a tornado of dust and debris at the men as it settled on the ground. The big chopper blew out two of the fires. The men stomped out the last two, carried Red Nicholson to the bird, and laid him gently on the floor.

Murdock called on the Motorola, but couldn't raise Magic Brown. They all climbed on board, the bird took off, and traced the road with a searchlight.

Murdock tried again, and Brown came in scratchy but readable.

"Yeah, Bird. About a quarter of a mile more. Good LZ on the left. I'll put up a flare." They landed, and brought in Horse and the two others.

Ten minutes later, they found Lincoln and Quinley by the Kenyan truck, picked them up, and headed home.

The pilot told Murdock they might not have enough juice to get all the way to the carrier. She was supposed to steam within four miles of the coast to cut down on flight time.

"We're pushing the limit in this baby even without all the hardware," the pilot told Murdock.

"If it's only four miles, we can swim that with no sweat," Murdock said.

"Yeah, maybe you can," the copilot yelped.