Firestorm

38

Holt gave a muffled cheer. Doc grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.

"You hear that, sir? The Taiwan folks are coming with jets and choppers, could be here anytime. Left Taiwan twenty minutes ago."

Murdock heard it through a haze. Damn morphine. He yawned and blinked, then shook his head. A shiver lanced down his back. His arm hurt like hell.

"Heard. Thanks. Look alive, guys. Security. Pull the line in tighter. Security all around the perimeter. Got a chance to get out of this rat hole, let's not blow it. Damn Chinese could put on an attack any time."

"Red flares, sir. They mentioned red flares."

"Yeah, yeah. Got them here somewhere." Murdock dug out two flares. They were marked red and could be lit and thrown or fired in to the air. "Do them, Holt, when the time comes. Make damn sure it's a Taiwan jet. They'll come from the sea hunting us." Pain washed over him and he grimaced. "Damn, damn it to hell. Fucking damn."

Murdock pushed up with his good arm and looked at Holt. "Flares, they say we should mark our position, or where we want the jets to shoot?"

"Our position, L-T. Red is for a no-shoot location, like to spot a downed flyer by air search."

"Yeah, right. Yeah."

Holt looked at Doc in the gloom. Doc shook his head. "He said no more morphine. Have to gut it out. He can do it. Now let's watch for those damn Chinese ground troops."

The Chinese at the highway directly in front of them lifted up and fired over the embankment.

Holt took a quick look. "Must be thirty rifles out there now," he said.

"Don't return fire," Jaybird said. "They don't even know if we're here or not. Keep them in the dark." The firing from the front continued, but at a slower pace. Soon it was down to a round or two every minute. Dewitt came and settled in beside Murdock. "How you doing, Skipper?"

"Damn good. Am I still conscious?"

"Just a little slug in your arm. No sweat. Hear we're to have some Taiwan Air Force company."

"Anytime now. We mark red, they shoot in front."

"Then we charge through the bodies into the surf," Dewitt said. "I like the sound of that. Everyone can walk. Frazier did good on that assault on the highway. He's no worry."

"I'll make it if I have to crawl," Murdock said.

Red tilted his head and looked toward the sea. "We've got friendlies coming in directly in front of us and low."

Murdock couldn't hear them. "When you're damn sure, Holt, throw out that first red flare."

Holt listened, then nodded. A minute later the sound of the jets was unmistakable. Coming right at you they project little sound. He pulled the tape off the flare and held it.

"Jets just changed direction," Red said.

Then they all could hear the whine of the Mach-2 jets. They slammed overhead at two hundred feet and made the ground shake.

"Friendlies, all right," Red said. Holt looked at Dewitt, who nodded.

Holt lit the flare and threw it twenty feet in front of their ditch. It exploded into a bright red flare that turned the landscape into a red wonderland for twenty yards around. The two jets made a wide turn and came back parallel with the beach. Six rockets streamed from wings of the jets. They hit in sequence up the highway, then walked down and past the red flare, smashing into paving and the far side, blowing the troops there into a mass of screaming bodies.

Dewitt looked at the results. There was no firing from the Chinese in front.

"One more pass," he said. The jets made another wide turn and came in from the other direction. Again rockets and cannon fire blasted the highway in front of the still-burning red flare.

Dewitt stood and shouted. "On your feet, moving out. Be ready with assault fire. Go, go, go."

Holt watched Murdock as he pushed up with his right arm, held the MP-5 in his right hand, and stepped over the ridge of the ditch and into the paddy field. They ran forward in a ragged line. They took no fire as they approached the paved highway. Then two Chinese lifted up to fire at them. Bursts of three rounds from four MP-5's blew them out of their shoes and dead in the sand.

Murdock lagged behind. Then Holt came beside him and urged him on. He took the lieutenant's weapon, caught his shoulder, and helped him to run forward.

"No damn reason I can't run," Murdock brayed in fury.

"It's the morphine," Holt yelled. They heard firing to the front and kept going. Magic Brown waited at the drop-off on the other side of the paving. He grabbed Murdock and lifted him down. Then they all charged into the sand.

Murdock wanted to start singing. He was a terrible singer. The sand felt so good, so natural under his feet. He heard Dewitt shouting. What he said wasn't clear.

Holt stayed with his L-T. They took some ragged fire from well up the beach beyond the rocket attack of the planes. Then they were wading into the water, the Taiwan Strait. How long they had yearned to feel its cold kiss.

Holt listened to Dewitt and dropped the CAR he had been carrying into the surf. He shucked out of his vest loaded with all the combat goodies, but kept the SATCOM radio over his shoulder. Murdock let him take his combat vest off and drop it in the surf. Then they jumped a breaker, ducked under the next one, and were swimming.

Murdock forgot and tried a stroke with his left arm and screeched in pain.

Holt was there. "Don't worry, L-T, we all gonna make it. The Two-IC has us in control. We're all in a bunch and moving offshore. Feels like the fucking tide is going out. We finally got some good luck on our side."

Murdock tried to sidestroke with one arm. It didn't work. At last he rolled on his back and did a flutter kick. He was surprised how well he floated. Then he remembered all of his combat gear was still in China or on the bottom of the Taiwan Strait.

Rounds started slapping into the sea around them. The Taiwan jets must have seen the ground fire. They came back with cannon roaring and two more rockets and the rifle fire ended abruptly.

Dewitt swam back and helped push them along. Soon all thirteen SEALS were within touching distance of each other.

"Hold it this way," Dewitt boomed into the sudden silence of the still-dark Chinese night. "We stay together. Holt told me he put out two sonar beacons. The sub might pick up the signal and help those Taiwan choppers find us. At any rate, we're out of fucking China."

A cheer went up.

Doc swam over and checked on Murdock's wound. The bandage had come off and he was bleeding again. Too much blood. Doc put on another bandage and kept it in place with two rubber bands.

"L-T, you've got to keep that arm quiet. I'll unbutton one of your shirt buttons and you stuff that hand inside your shirt. A kind of sling. Best we can do right now. You can't loose any more blood. You read me, sir?"

Murdock nodded. Doc looked at Holt, who bobbed his head.

They moved away from the coast slowly. The swimming was at the rate of the slowest man. Murdock was feeling a little better. Either the morphine was wearing off or dulling his pain. He didn't know which. He had five or six wounded. He had no communications, he was a quarter of a mile from China, which was still fighting mad. How the hell was anybody going to find them in the fucking Taiwan Strait? He asked Holt the question.

"They'll do it, sir. That's their job. We did ours. Now the pickup guys have to do theirs."

They drifted with the tide, swam a little, drifted again. Dewitt kept the men together. Doc went from one wounded man to the next. Dewitt came over to talk to Murdock.

"We're more than a half klick out in the strait now," he said. "Should be far enough away that Uncle wouldn't mind getting involved. Did that last message say the Navy was going to have some aircraft over this way just before sunrise?"

Murdock said that's what he remembered.

"Take a look to the east," Dewitt said.

Murdock looked and saw the first faint hint of a tinge of light.

Ten minutes later they heard choppers. Half the men cheered. Then they were silent to pinpoint where the birds were coming from. They could be Chinese. They came from off the coast. That was a good sign. Five minutes more and they saw a parachute flare blossom to the east and north.

"A flare," Holt screeched. "They must be looking for us."

"Yeah, but we're not sure just who they are," Dewitt said.

A single bird came closer. Another flare, then another one closer yet. The next flare drifted down slowly about fifty yards from them. Then they saw four more choppers swing into line and all five dropped flares as they came forward directly over the swimmers. They waved and shouted and waved again.

"Looks like they're the good guys or they'd be shooting by now," Jaybird said.

The jets snarled down toward the beach again hitting the Chinese with machine guns and rockets one last time.

The choppers were too high for the swimmers to make out any identifying marks. They slowed and came around and dropped another series of flares. For a quarter of a mile the ocean was like daylight.

"So they know we're here. How are they going to pick us up?" Murdock asked. Holt shook his head.

Then they heard another sound, the heavier, deeper, and more familiar whup, whup, whup of a big chopper.

"Sounds like a CH-46," Magic Brown said.

It came in slow, ten feet off the gentle swells of the strait. It made one pass over them, then made a wide circle and came back moving no more than five miles an hour.

The tail hatch opened and a rope ladder dropped down. The SEALS cheered again. They had made this pickup at sea dozens of times in practice and training. It was a rough pickup method, but sometimes the only one available. Like now.

The big chopper settled down to ten feet off the water and hovered. Jaybird went up the ladder first. It was tricky work, hard physically to control the swaying ladder. Two men grabbed it in the water to hold it fast, then one more SEAL went up, then another.

A head poked out the hatch door with a bullhorn. "We've got a sling coming down. Understand you have two wounded who can't climb."

Dewitt bellowed that the sailor was right. He moved toward the far side of the ship where another hatch opened and a sling dropped down. They towed Murdock over there and got the sling around his shoulders without hurting his left arm. On signal he was lifted up and away.

Frazier went up on the next drop of the sling, and then Ronson. His leg was bleeding badly again. Holt and Dewitt stroked over to the ladder and climbed it into the glorious interior of the big chopper.

Before Dewitt sat down he made sure that Doc was tending to his patients. Then he sat beside Murdock.

"We made it, Skipper. By God, we got out of fucking China."

Murdock couldn't say a word. All he could do was nod.