Deadly Force

11

Don Stroh raised his hands in a futile gesture. “What’s a man to do? That’s what the big brass in D.C. tells me, so I toe the mark. I tell you and you follow suit. The word again is: The U.S. Navy SEALs are not to engage in any firefights with the group of men headed by Mojombo Washington who call themselves the Bijimi Loyalist Party. The word is that we can probe, we can recon, but in no case can we fire at or near the camp or at any group of men from the Bijimi Loyalist Party.”

Murdock slammed his hand down on the table. His open palm made a popping sound. “That puts a real crimp in our plans. I was figuring that maybe after we move up on the camp, we give them a show of massive firepower into the trees and brush overhead, and then use a bullhorn and tell them we’re coming in to get the Vice President and any fire from their side would result in massive casualties.”

“Good idea, but now it won’t work,” Stroh said. Murdock and his planning group sat around the table with Stroh working on coffee and soft drinks.

“So what the hell can we do?” Gardner asked.

“Quite a bit is left,” Murdock said. “We know for sure where they are. We know they are lightly armed, mostly with the weapons they stole from the Army and police. We can still probe and recon. Jaybird, get Luke Howard in here. We’re going to do another recon, one on the ground. We’ll try to make contact with the Vice President. There is a horse-and-cart trail up the river. My guess is it goes all the way to the rebel camp. If it’s wide enough for a horse, a dirt bike will roll over it like a superhighway.”

Howard came in with Jaybird. “Howard, I want you and the senior chief to go out and get us a pair of motorcycle dirt bikes. Get the most cc’s you can find. Rent them, buy them, or steal them. With first light Howard and I will be straddling those bikes and moving up the trail. We’ll take our regular weapons, and food and water. I figure about thirty-five miles by land. We should be able to make thirty miles an hour if the trail is used much. We get as close to the camp as we can without attracting any attention. Then we try to move in on foot and make contact.”

“What if the Vice President doesn’t want to come out?” Gardner asked. “He sounded pretty convinced this Mojombo is the Second Coming.”

“We fight that one if and when we get to it. The Vice President outranks us all to hell, but we can say we are operating under orders of the President, who outranks Adams. The President says for the Vice President to come out, so we pick him up and pack him out of there.”

“That could turn out to be a nasty assignment,” Stroh said.

Sadler agreed. “One hell of a mess if we had to do that. We’d have to reason with the man.”

“Are you still here, Senior Chief?”

“Yes, sir. We need some cash, some dagnars, the old spondolics. Will Mr. Stroh provide the loot or will the ambassador?”

“Let’s go talk to the ambassador,” Stroh said, and the three left by the closest door.

“How far you think you’ll get?” Jaybird asked. “I mean, they are bound to have some outposts along the river, and the cycles ain’t gonna be easy to keep quiet out there in the jungle. Hear you coming for two miles.”

“Yes, there could be some outposts,” Murdock said, “but we’ll have to figure out what to do when we get there. Did I see a report that the rebels stole a whole box full of personal radios on one of their raids? If so, they could have good communications between their outposts and the main camp.”

“What are the rest of us lost souls going to do?” Jaybird asked.

Murdock grinned. “Jaybird, you and the JG and the rest of the men are going to do a fifteen-mile conditioning hike tomorrow with full gear. Get you acclimated a little bit better. I noticed you sweating like a pig yesterday.”

“Thanks, Jaybird,” Lam said. “We could have stayed here in the great air-conditioning….”

“Not a chance,” JG Gardner said. “We’ve had some training on the docket all along. In fact, the rest of the day is going to be devoted to an hour of PT and then a road run. Let’s get everyone out of here and form up outside.”

Murdock went with them and participated in the workout. It was one of the mandates of the SEALs. All officers went through the same bash-and-smash six-month BUD/S training that the enlisted men did. They had no special privileges. The only difference was all officers had to score ten percent higher than the EMs. Officers in the platoons also took all the conditioning runs, workouts, and swims the men did. It was a true togetherness operation and it worked. In the field there was no rank, only two squad leaders.

In the afternoon, Sadler and Howard rolled up to the embassy on a pair of motorcycles. One was an older Kawasaki. The second one was a Suzuki. Both were 500 cc’s and had knobby, cross-country tires and shocks. Murdock grinned. He hadn’t been on a bike for more than a year. He used to own three. He slid onto the Kawasaki that Sadler had ridden up, and led out with Howard right beside him. They did a cheap tour of the city, not riding fast, just getting the feel of the bikes and what they could do. When they came back nearly an hour later, both nodded.

“Should work,” Howard said. “Mine is a little short on pickup, but we’re not going to be in any races.”

“Make sure the tanks are full of gas and park them in a protected place inside the garage,” said Murdock. “We want to take off from here a half hour before light in the morning.”

“The bikes will be ready” Howard said. “We take our MP5s on our backs and no combat vests?”

“Sounds good. And plenty of water and some chow. We’ll have the kitchen fix us something to travel.”

“What’s for tonight?” Howard asked.

“The ambassador has planned a special dinner. He wants all of us to attend. We won’t be at the far end of the cafeteria this time. We put on clean cammies, our best manners, and we get a shot at the dining room.”

“I understand there are several women here,” Howard said. “We don’t see much of them.”

“For good reason,” Murdock said. “Everyone will be on his best behavior tonight or there will be five hundred push-ups in the morning.”

Howard chuckled. “I’ll pass the word.”

At six-thirty that night, the SEALs marched into the dining room in squad order. Mrs. Oberholtzer, the ambassador’s wife and a matron of about forty with a generous waistline, immediately took charge.

“Young men, I don’t want you to sit beside each other. Space out around the table. We have more than enough people here to separate you.” She looked at some of the staff and five teenage girls, who stood at one side. “I want to remind you young ladies that you will show proper decorum and manners at all times. So, everyone please be seated.”

Murdock sat beside the hostess, and soon they were into a discussion about Southern California. She had grown up in Escondido and then gone to college in Washington, D.C., where she’d met her husband.

“Are the avocado orchards still there?” she asked. “They were such a wonder and the fruit was so delicious. It’s impossible down here to get any avocados. I would give twenty dollars a cup for a good supply of guacamole.”

The conversation raced around the table as the first course came, and then the second. Most of the SEALs had no idea which of the eight knives, forks, and spoons to use. The men and women who sat beside them gently hinted at the right utensils.

Jaybird had been lucky to be seated beside the eldest daughter of the ambassador.

“I’m Cynthia,” she said as soon as she sat down.

“Miss, I’m Jaybird, or David, I guess would be better. How come you’re here at the embassy?”

“Oh, my father is the ambassador. I’ve lived in eight different countries now, but I wish I could get back to school. Could you talk to my father about my going to San Diego State University? My mother always wanted to go there and she tells me such interesting stories about that area.”

Jaybird was without words for the first time in his life. The young lady couldn’t be more than eighteen, he decided, and had a soft white complexion that proved she didn’t take much of the African sun. He tried to say something, and stumbled. Her eyes were so blue and her smile engaging. He shook his head and tried again.

“Sorry, Cynthia. I don’t know what to say. I’m sure the ambassador wouldn’t have time to talk to me. Why do you want to go to San Diego State?”

“The pictures of the campus are so great. I sent for a catalog last year and it is exquisite. Then the climate is so great and I want to learn to surf and dive in the ocean. I love the ocean, but we don’t have one here.”

“I noticed that.”

They both laughed, drawing the attention of her mother. But the woman only smiled and went back to talking to Murdock about San Diego.

By the end of desert, Jaybird and Cynthia had gone through most of the ritual information exchange of a first-date dialogue, talking about where they’d grown up and what they liked and also about parents and family. Then the dinner was over. Jaybird tried to walk Cynthia back to her room, but a Sierra Bijimi guard at the stairway shook his head.

“Upstairs here is the private quarters of the ambassador,” he said. “Entry is by written order of the ambassador only.”

Jaybird caught her hand and held it a moment, then squeezed it and waved good-bye. He smiled broadly all the way back to his room, where Bill Bradford had just taken out his sketch pad.

“Have a whole potful of ideas I want to get down on paper before I forget them,” he said. Jaybird shrugged and rolled onto his bunk. He was used to going to sleep with the lights on while Bradford worked on a painting or a sketch.

The next day, Howard and Murdock were on the road a half hour before sunrise. They had full tanks of gas, three canteens each, and a packet of food the kitchen had prepared. There were mostly sandwiches that would last all day and lots of fruit. They had been warned against drinking any of the water in the streams no matter how clean it looked.

They cleared the city and took off on the dirt road that led alongside the Amunbo River. They had the road to themselves until daylight. Then they spotted small tractors pulling loaded flatbeds that held fruits and vegetables and firewood. As the morning brightened, more and more rigs hit the road, and the motorcycles were slowed as the carts pulled by horses showed up and nearly clogged the road.

“Must be market day,” Howard said. “We saw that big open market with stalls down at the edge of town yesterday. Lots of empty tables and booths. This must be the day.”

By the time they hit the end of the dirt road, the farmers heading into town had dwindled to only a few. The SEALs kicked into the wide wagon trail along the river and made better time. Now and then a ditch cut across the path where a stream worked its way into the mother river.

It was after 0800 when Murdock held up his hand and pulled to the side of the trail. “Chow stop,” he said. “I’m starved. Did we have breakfast before we left?”

“That we did, Commander. Bacon and eggs and hash browns with toast and jam and coffee. I ate until I almost popped my buttons. You did pretty well yourself with seconds.”

They worked on sandwiches and the first canteen of water.

“Figure we’ve made about fifteen miles,” Murdock said. “The going will be slower the fewer people travel this trail and the farther we get from the city.”

“Right. When do you think we’ll hit the first outpost? He’s got to have one along this trail.”

“My guess is about five miles from his main camp. If he’s at the twenty-five-mile marker, we have another five miles before we have company.”

“Will they be friendly?” Howard asked.

“Would you be?”

“Hell, no. Shoot first and talk later if anyone is still alive.”

“So we move cautiously that last three or four miles to the twenty-mile mark. Maybe even ditch our bikes and take the rest of it on a hike so we can bypass the outpost.”

“Sounds like a winner to me.”

They rode again. The going was rough with washouts, potholes, and sometimes large tree roots exposed from the ground clogging the trail. Murdock doubted if they were making more than ten miles an hour.

A little after 0930, Howard held up his hand to stop. “Commander, figure we shouldn’t make so much noise this far north. Maybe some hiking would be called for.”

“Agreed. We stash the bikes where we can find them and nobody will steal them, then take one canteen and some sandwiches and take a stroll down a country lane.”

A mile up the trail, Murdock paused. He was sniffing the air. “We haven’t seen a village for the past mile or so. But I smell something that shouldn’t be here.”

Howard moved up beside the officer and grinned. “Skipper, sir, you must have led a sheltered life. That, my friend, is good old Mary Jane smoke, pot, the weed, marijuana. Somebody is puffing up a storm up here not more than a hundred yards ahead. Wind must be blowing our way.”

Murdock chuckled. “Hell, you’re right. I wasn’t that sheltered. It’s just been a few years. How about a detour?”

Howard pointed to the side of the trail away from the river, and they moved into the tropical-rain-forest tangle of vines, trees, brush, and creatures slithering along the moist jungle floor. Murdock took the lead using his best silent-movement approach as he went under, over, around, and through the growth, trying not to disturb a branch or step on anything that would screech in terror or break with a crack.

Fifty yards later, he angled back toward the trail and peered through the last foliage that screened him from the path. Twenty yards ahead, he saw a native hut that had been built almost on the trail. It was made of branches and some woven reeds or fronds for the sides and roof. It had a window and a doorway. In the window he could see a man resting his arms on it and looking down the trail. Twice Murdock saw the man sneak a puff on a nub of a cigarette. The man said something softly and passed the smoke to someone else. Howard slid in beside Murdock and saw the exchange. They nodded and headed back into the growth until they were fifty yards past the outpost, then returned to the path.

Now it was little more than a trail, nearly hidden by new plants and in some places vanishing completely, being taken over by the voracious growth of the greenery. Murdock decided it would be a great place to raise tomatoes. Think how fast they would grow. Of course you’d have to cut down some trees and brush so the sun could get in to ripen the fruit.

They hiked steadily for another half hour, and then Murdock held up his hand and they stopped. They listened.

“Rifle fire,” Howard said. “Could be the flat crack of the old AK-47. Must still be a lot of them around.”

“Right, and as deadly as ever. Good range, too. So what are they doing?”

“Target practice. We hear firing for a while, then all is quiet as they check the targets, then more firing. Ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line.”

They both knew the routine. They moved with more caution now. The trail came closer to the river, which had shrunk in size as they’d climbed a gradual incline. Here and there they heard some rapids and saw a little white water. No boat was going up this stretch unless it was a jet-powered boat with no propeller.

“Will there be any more outposts?” Howard asked.

“I’d put in at least one more. From the rifle firing, my guess is his camp is on this side of the river. So we look for another outpost or at least a lookout along here anytime now.”

“We go around him again?”

“Don’t think so.” Murdock said. “If it’s handy, we capture him without harming him. Then we take him with us up where he can help us get through their defenses so we can talk with the good Mr. Washington.”

“That just may be an idea whose time has come. You want me on point?”

They moved cautiously now. There was more rifle fire and it was getting closer, but it still sounded like target practice. They paused at each small turn in the trail and checked ahead. The fourth time they did it, they grinned. A lone cammy-clad soldier with a long gun over his shoulder walked from one side of a small clearing to the other side directly across the trail. Evidently this was his post and he had to walk it in a military manner.

Murdock signaled to the left and they faded into the jungle. Moving silently, they worked up to the far point of the guard’s walking post. It was less than four feet from the jungle itself. Murdock eased up behind a huge tree and waited. The guard walked toward him, stopped, then did an about-face to go back in the other direction. That was when Murdock surged out of the jungle, took two steps, and hit the guard in the middle of his back, driving him forward and into the grass and weeds on his stomach. Murdock’s hand went around the soldier’s mouth holding it tightly.

Howard slid in beside them and fastened the guard’s ankles with plastic riot cuffs, then caught his hands and brought them both behind him and manacled them. Murdock turned him over still holding his mouth closed.

“Now, young man, we don’t want to hurt you. We’re here to talk to your leader, Mojombo. Is he at this camp?”

The wild-eyed man mumbled something. Murdock took his hand away and the man screamed. Murdock’s hand clamped back tight. Howard took a kerchief from his pocket and fashioned a gag around the man’s head and through his mouth. He could breathe but couldn’t yell. They sat him up and Murdock tried again.

“We’re not here to harm you or you’d be dead already. Don’t you agree?” The guard’s eyes had lost their wild look and he nodded slowly. “We want to talk to Mr. Washington. Is he in this camp?”

The guard nodded again.

“How far is the camp? A mile?” The head shook no. “Two miles?” This time a nod.

“If I take off the gag, will you promise not to yell or scream, just talk to us?” The man frowned, evidently thought about it, then nodded. The gag came off.

“Now, Mr. Washington is at the camp close by. Can you take us there?”

“No, there are other guards.”

“How many?”

“Three more. One every half mile.”

“Can we go into the jungle and go around them?”

“No. A rocky wall on one side, the river on the other side. The guards would see us and shoot.”

“Do you have a radio?”

“No, only officers have them.”

“We could capture the other three guards,” Howard said.

Murdock considered it. “Could, but a big risk factor. I have a notion that most of these conscripts are green and any little thing out of the ordinary, they’re going to start shooting. We can’t shoot back. Would put us in a dangerous position. So we go back.” He dug into his cammy shirt pocket and took out a computer-printed message the ambassador had given Murdock before they left.

He unfolded it and showed it to the guard. “This is a message from the U.S. ambassador at Sierra City. He wants to help the Vice President. It tells him to turn on his SATCOM every day at noon and again at six in the evening so the ambassador can talk with him. Do you understand that?”

“Yes. Understand. Who are you?”

“Tell Mojombo Washington that we are U.S. Navy SEALs. We may wind up helping him instead of hunting him. The Vice President must talk to the ambassador every day. Do you understand that?”

“Yes sir.” He frowned. “Are you an officer?”

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock in the U.S. Navy. That’s like a major in the Army. Can you take this to your commander?”

“When my guard duty is over in an hour. That way I won’t get in trouble for leaving my post.”

Murdock grinned. Somebody had trained this boy well. He looked no more than seventeen.

“All right. You do that. At the end of your shift you talk to your sergeant and tell him you have to see Mr. Washington. Here, give him this. It’s one of the new U.S. gold-plated dollar coins. My good-luck charm. Give it to General Washington.”

The guard looked at the coin, read the printing, and grinned. “Yes, I can do this. It will be good on my record.” He frowned. “Can you untie me now?”

It took Murdock and Howard two hours to work back down the faint trail and around the first outpost. Then they jogged down the path toward their bikes. They stopped at the bikes and ate half the sandwiches and drank from the canteens.

“If we push it, we can get back to civilization in three hours,” Murdock said. “I just hope that half the countryside isn’t returning from market day and clogging up the road.”

They were. Murdock groaned. They pulled into the embassy grounds slightly before 1700, just in time for chow at the cafeteria.

The ambassador welcomed the news of the contact. He checked his watch. Dinner was over. “Five minutes to six. Time for us to set up the SATCOM and try to talk to the Vice President. This could be the contact we need to turn round this difficult situation.”