Firestorm

26

As the SEALS bailed out of the six-by-six they saw a rocket coming. They scattered and flattened on the road and in the ditches. The RPG went off with a cracking explosion as it hit the cab of the truck and shattered it. Fuel vapors exploded a second later blasting the truck into small pieces. The SEALS crawled away from the burning hulk as fast as they could.

Small-arms fire tore into the ground around them, but all the men made it to the right-hand side of the road and into a field that held a long row of brush and row crops beyond.

"Red, out front. We'll be crawling until we get away from that damned fire light. Combat formation, let's go."

Red led the crawling force, with Lieutenant Murdock right behind him shadowed by Ron Holt. He still had the radio that could be zeroed in on the satellite and give them communications with anyone in the world.

"Yeah, I got it," Holt groused when somebody asked him. "The damn thing weighs a ton and I got to keep lugging it around. I know, I know, it could save our butts this time. Yeah. Right. You want to carry the fucking radio?"

Nobody did. The thirteen SEALS worked slowly out of range of the light then rose to a bent-over position and moved cautiously toward the roadblock. It would have been better to attack it from both sides, but now they had no chance to get men on the other side of the road.

"We go with what we've got," Murdock told Red when he came back to say that the Chinese had set up a barricade behind the two army cars and a light truck.

"We get there and put half our shooters on the far side of the barricade and half on this side, so we'll have them in a kind of cross fire."

He sent Dewitt ahead with five men, and he kept six. Each squad had an MG and a sniper rifle. It should work.

Murdock found his firing position less than fifty yards from the roadblock. He settled his men in a small ditch that probably was for irrigation. Dewitt had to circle around the roadblock by two hundred yards and then get back into position at the road. When Dewitt was ready he'd give three clicks on the radio.

They waited. Murdock wondered if he should get the men out of their wet suits and into cammies. It would take some time. They'd have to find a secure place. He hesitated. He hoped that they soon would be back in the water, and the wet suits would give them the insulation they needed for a long swim.

He heard three clicks on his earpiece, and fired one three-round burst from his MP5. It was almost out of range, but it was the signal for the rest of them to start shooting.

By prearrangement, Murdock's men fired first. That brought return fire from the roadblock and pinpointed the shooters for Dewitt and his crew who had filtered in behind them.

Magic fired with his sniper rifle, and grinned now and then when he laid in a perfect shot and a defender screamed and went down.

Then Dewitt opened up with his men and after a two-minute burst of fire from Second Squad, Murdock could hear no fire of any kind coming from the roadblock.

"They bluffing or are they down?" Murdock said into his lip mike.

"Looks like they're all down. I see only one man moving."

There was one more round from the Second Squad.

"Skip, I'd say they're all down. Only five or six of them. Want us to move in?"

"That's a Roger," Murdock said. His squad had heard the exchange, and now he stood. The rest of First Squad did as well, and they charged the fifty yards to the roadblock. The Chinese were all down. One wounded man tried to crawl away, and took a round in the head.

"Lincoln, check the vehicles," Murdock said into his lip mike. "The rest of you see what we can use of their weapons. Look for any more of those rocket-propelled grenades. We need them. The AK47's will be a good backup. Gather them up and find all the ammo for them you can."

Lincoln ran up and checked out the two cars and the small truck, all Chinese Army-issue. He came back to Murdock.

"All of them run. Looks like the truck would suit us best. Be crowded, but we put three in front and get the rest of us in the back."

"Do it," Murdock said.

Doc came up with three RPGS. "Red found two more. These mothers could come in handy."

"Give three to the Second Squad, we'll keep two," Murdock said. "You have an AK47?"

Doc shook his head and went hunting.

Lincoln fired up the truck and they climbed on board. Murdock made a wick from an old shirt he found and stuffed it into the fuel tank of one of the cars. It came out soaked with gasoline. He stuffed it halfway back in the gas filler tube and told Lincoln to get the truck moving. When it was out of the blast zone, Murdock lit the gas-soaked rag and ran like hell for the truck.

It was thirty seconds later before the car's gas tank blew up with a whooshing roar. It set the second car on fire, and Murdock and his crew rolled down the road, south for a change. He just hoped this rig didn't run out of gasoline.

The paved road ahead of them was dark. Ching said they must be heading south according to the stars. "No lights down there so it can't be Amoy. We should be ten klicks south and west of the town by now."

As they drove, Murdock told his men to get out of their wet suits and into their cammies. "Second Squad change first, then the First Squad. Do it fast." They pulled out of the wet suits and dug out the cammies from the waterproof pouches.

They pulled onto a side road and parked while Lincoln changed, then went back to driving.

"Now we're better set up for a land war," Murdock said. "I'd much rather that we can run this sweetheart right into the surf and we can float out of it into Mother Ocean and take a swim."

"Not likely," Lincoln said. "Headlights coming at us, maybe a mile off."

"Find a place to pull off the road and out of sight," Murdock said. "First damn traffic we've met. Out here it must be military. Not one hell of a lot of cars or trucks on these roads at night at least."

They were in a flat area with no hills, no trees. Lincoln waited as long as he figured he could. Then he took a small dirt road to the right, cut his lights, and drove along the twisting road for a quarter of a mile. He shut down the engine, and they waited for the headlights to come along the road. Murdock sent Red Nicholson to get close to the road and check out the rig.

Headlights showed down the road five minutes later. From the growl of the engine, Murdock knew it was some kind of a truck, maybe a six-by-six like they used to have. If so, it could carry twenty troopers. The truck slowed when it came to the road where they had turned off. It stopped for a moment, then moved on, and was soon out of sight down the road.

Red came back laughing. "Now that's the kind of army to be in. There were six soldiers in the back of the six-by-six with a lantern hanging on the inside, and there were four or five naked women with them just loving up a storm."

"Wish more of these Chinese were lovers and not fighters," Murdock said. "Let's get back on the road."

A mile down the paved highway they came to an intersection with road signs. Ching got out and read them. He came back nodding. "We're on the right road. The sign says the coastal town of Hiwang is ten kilometers straight ahead."

Murdock wanted to relax a little, but ten klicks were a long way in kilometers or miles. A damn lot could happen between here and there.

Ten minutes later it happened.

The road had changed from paving to gravel. It was fairly well maintained, but the truck had slowed down to thirty miles an hour to stay on the road. They had just made a forty-five-degree turn when they saw and heard a tank directly in front of them no more than a hundred yards ahead.

Lincoln hit the brakes. Murdock's jaw dropped. Ching swore.

"One of their older models," Ching said. "Has a cannon about seventy-five millimeters and twin machine guns. My suggestion would be that we exit this target as fast as possible."

"Everyone out!" Murdock bellowed. Men jolted out of the three-quarter-ton rig and charged for each side of the road. The tank had paused. Now it rolled forward on its metal tracks making enough noise to rouse a seriously hung-over college freshman the morning after a frat rush.

Murdock used his radio. "The tracks. When he gets close enough we use two of those RPGS for the tracks. One man on each side of the road. Sound off."

Doc Ellsworth chimed in first. "Doc for one on the right-hand side of the road facing the beast."

"Adams on the left. I'll take a shot."

They waited. The tank was naked. No platoon of foot soldiers followed it along the road. Murdock wondered if it was simply moving from one area to another or was it out hunting them?

A minute later his answer came with a single shot from the cannon that sent an HE round into the medium-sized truck they had just left, blowing it into three thousand pieces. Little was left to burn.

The tank kept coming, its great metal treads clanking and creaking as it dug up the road moving at a walking pace. Murdock still could see no troops behind it.

The machine gun on the front opened up splattering the land on both sides of the roadway. Murdock lunged behind a sizable tree and the rest of his men bored into the ground, behind whatever cover they could find.

"Sound off if you get hit," Murdock said in his lip mike.

"Yeah, and if you wind up dead be sure to tell us right away so we keep our records straight."

Murdock grinned, not sure who had cracked the joke. It helped right then. Nobody reported being hit.

The tank was almost even with them. He and his men had gone to ground thirty yards from the roadway. They were ten yards apart from each other in good combat disposal. Murdock heard an RPG fire off. He saw a swoosh of smoke behind the rocket and then the trail as it slanted up a little, then down, and hit the left side of the tank's track and exploded with a punishing snarl.

The big tank shuddered and rolled on for a moment. Then a great grinding and screeching of metal on metal sounded, and the tank chewed up many tank parts before it came to a stop. The motor still roared.

"He's down," Murdock said. "Adams, you have any fraggers?"

"Roger that."

"Get up on top of that sucker and if he pops his hatch, feed him three fraggers and then get the hell off that thing."

"Aye, sir."

Murdock waited. The tank made two tries to get moving. One track kept turning, and spun the tank around in a small circle since the other track wouldn't move at all. As the tank came around, Murdock saw a shadow jump on the back of it and work forward. That would be Adams.

The tank stopped. The machine gun chattered, firing down the road and to the side well away from the SEALS.

Nothing happened for three or four minutes. Murdock was getting ready to haul ass when he heard a clank and the top hatch of the tank lifted up, then swung backwards. Murdock saw the shadow on the back of the tank stand up near the hatch. Then it leaned in and dumped something down the hatch opening. At once Adams jumped off the rear of the rig and stormed for the trees on the other side of the road with his arms pumping like a hundred-yard-dash winner.

One grenade went off with a mild thump, then two more went off, followed by what must have been the rest of the 75mm rounds in the tank. Fire and smoke belched out the tank turret and from view slots at the front.

Murdock nodded. "Men, it looks like we're down to shank's mares. Let's see if those twenty-mile training hikes did you any good. We'll use the road unless we meet headlights or troops. Then we hit the boonies and decide what to do. Let's form up on the road fifty yards beyond the tank and get moving. We're on the road to water. The sooner the damn better."

Murdock called Dewitt and Jaybird up and they worried it. "That tank was looking for us, I'd bet a sawbuck," Jaybird said.

"He could have been a probe, to try to draw our fire," Dewitt said. "Then he'd report us by radio and wait for help."

"Only he don't need help anymore," Murdock said. "He must have got a message off. So we can expect company. Right up this road. Which means we move off the road now a half mile to the right and keep it in our sights as we head for the beach."

"How far, L-T?"

"Jaybird, wish I knew. Last estimate about eight klicks. Let's get an ammo count. How many of those AK47's and rounds we have left. How are the casualties?"

"Frazier is up to speed," Dewitt said. "Fernandez has his arm in a sling. He can't use the eighty-nine. Lincoln has it. Fernandez can fire his Sig.45 if we get in trouble."

"We'll find trouble. They know where we are now. They must be sending in a regiment in trucks to cut us off. They know we're moving toward the coast."

"So hello, Mother," Jaybird said. "Gonna be a hot time on the old China coast tonight."

"Yeah, and maybe tomorrow if we don't get out of here in the next three hours," Murdock said. "Daylight is not our best friend right now."

Murdock led them off the road to the right, moved out a half mile so he could still see the track of a road, and then continued on south.

The moon was three-quarters full. The moonlight came as a big help. Murdock could see a half mile and keep on course. At five miles an hour it would still take them two hours to get anywhere near the water. If nobody objected.

Again someone did object.

Murdock could hear them. He never did see them. Airplanes, big and slow, the ideal kind for dropping paratroops. He shook his head in disbelief. Who else would they throw into this fight to save Chinese face?

He didn't see any of the parachutes open, but by the sound of the three planes he knew when the troops had jumped. Each time the craft's engines speeded up, Murdock could tell by the sound that the troops were away. Three planes, he was sure. How big? Twenty men in a stick? Or more? At least sixty heavily armed Chinese soldiers would soon be up front somewhere watching, waiting, and actively hunting them down like small foxes at an English fenced-in hunt club.

Murdock wasn't sure why he looked up. When he did he saw six white parachutes drifting down directly toward his men. Murdock said "Right above us. Do it."

He lifted his MP5 and fired at the parachutists.