Flashpoint

11

Ron Holt looked at Murdock with surprise flooding his face.

“What the hell Stroh mean, we can’t use the Bull Pup? Our whole attack plan is formed around those twenty-mike-mikes.”

“Pretend you never heard him,” Murdock said. “I didn’t hear him say anything about our not using the Bull Pup. We’ve got them, and we’re going to use them. We’ll check for cracks in the receiver, but we haven’t fired any of ours more than ten times, let alone two hundred and eighty.”

“Yeah, take our fucking chances.”

“Don’t tell anyone what you just didn’t hear,” Murdock said.

The next day, they left the camp promptly at noon after a heavy meal at the mess hall. They had the two new long weapons and another ten pounds of C-3 they would use on the trucks.

The six-by they rode in was not new, but the engine sounded good, and Tony Ostercamp pronounced it fit for the 240-mile jaunt. Tony would be driving when they let the Colombian army man out and went on their own. Murdock rode in the front seat along with Captain Orejuela. He’d keep them on the right road.

The highway was two lanes, blacktopped, but not built for speed. The best they did was 45 mph, and that was down a slight grade. They arrived at Tulua about 1650 and stopped for the box lunches that the mess at Bravo had sent with them. It would be MREs from there on.

They passed the second friendly outpost and roadblock about twenty miles north of Tulua, and the Colombian driver moved to the side of the road and got out. He chattered with the captain for a moment, then ran back to the outpost.

Tony Ostercamp took over the wheel. At fifteen miles beyond the last outpost, Tony turned off the lights. There was almost no traffic on the road. He managed it in the soft moonlight. The road hugged the river and went gently downhill with the flow of the stream.

Five miles farther along, they saw lights ahead.

“Headlamps, of two rigs,” Ostercamp said. “They must hear us coming.”

“Turn your lights back on and slow down, then slow again like you’re getting ready to stop.” Murdock lifted the H&K MP-5 he had put on the floorboards and told the men in back to be ready to shoot at the roadblock as they rammed through.

The two rigs were positioned so there was room between them for a truck to get through. As they came closer, Murdock saw that both roadblock rigs were sedans.

“Clip one of them as you ram through,” he told Ostercamp. The race car driver and ex — destruction derby driver grinned.

Fifty yards from the roadblock, they could see six troops standing beside the cars. Half of them showed rifles. Tony slowed again, then shifted into second gear and let the engine grind down.

The guards relaxed. Twenty feet from the roadblock, Tony rammed down on the gas pedal, and the six-by jolted forward in second gear, gaining speed as it covered the ground. He hit the left front fender of one of the sedans, spinning it around as they boiled through the poorly planned roadblock.”

Just before they hit, Murdock slammed a dozen rounds from his submachine gun into the gawking troops. Three of them went down.

As they rammed past the cars, the SEALs in back used their Bull Pups on the small barrel and riddled the rest of the men and the cars with the 5.56mm rounds. Tony shifted into high and raced down the road with the headlights on full.

There had been no return fire.

“Anybody hurt?” Murdock asked on the radio.

“Hail no, Cap,” Fernandez said. “They didn’t know what hit them. We didn’t take a single round of return fire.”

Ostercamp pointed at the odometer. “Fucking kilometers,” he said. “That’s point six two percent of a mile. Ten kilometers say six miles. Thirty kilometers, about nineteen miles. We’ll watch for thirty kilos on the old dial for the next roadblock.”

“Didn’t look like they had radios back there,” Captain Orejuela said, “so there should be no warning for the next roadblock. I’ve heard that it’s larger, heavier, better manned than this first one.”

“So we get past it if we can,” Murdock said. “How far from the next roadblock on to the enemy camp?”

“We figure it’s about thirty kilometers,” the captain said. “There may be more installations leading into the camp.”

“So if we get through number two and then drive twenty kilometers more, we should have run through our luck. We stop and set the truck on fire and haul ass into the mountains.”

Murdock frowned at the Colombian. “Hey, thought you were heading back with the driver.”

“I decided to stay, learn what I can from you. I have my own weapon, a NATO round rifle.”

Murdock shrugged. “What the hell, you stick with me and Lam when we go on our look-see. Have to scout out the camp before we wade into it. Want to know what to expect and where to hit them.”

Later, Ostercamp gave them a readout. “That’s fifteen kilometers, and I don’t see any lights ahead. Why no traffic along here?”

“They stop traffic at night for better security,” the Colombian captain said.

“So they know we’re not supposed to be here,” Murdock said.

“Maybe they see an army truck, they wonder if it’s one of theirs,” Ostercamp put in. “Yeah, that might help us.”

Ten minutes later, they saw lights ahead. Ostercamp blinked his lights as if to identify his truck as friendly.

“I want the MG and long guns through slits in the top pointing front,” Murdock said on his mike. “As soon as we see any sign they don’t like us, we blast them. Everything. This way we don’t have to stop and ambush them. The long guns. Maybe two or three minutes. Look alive, stay alive.”

They were still two hundred yards away when Murdock saw the winking lights of rifle fire.

“Do it now,” Murdock bellowed. He had the Bull Pup out the window and fired the small barrel on two-round bursts. Half a dozen weapons overhead chimed in, and he could see hits on the men ahead. They had a six-by-six truck blocking the center of the highway. A sedan nosed up to the truck on each side, covering the two-lane highway.

“I’m taking the right-hand sedan,” Ostercamp said as he gunned the engine. He was doing almost fifty miles an hour when the heavy bumper of the six-by smashed into the grill of the sedan and rammed it fifteen feet off the road into the ditch. The weapons in back of the six-by kept yammering as the truck plowed past the rest of the roadblock and slammed down the highway, picking up speed. This time there had been return fire.

When shooting stopped in the rear, Murdock used his radio again. “Check for casualties. Anybody hit?”

“Yeah, Cap, Jaybird took a round through his left arm below the elbow. Don’t look too good. Anybody else hit?”

“Mahanani, check each man, we don’t want a KIA not saying anything back there.”

A minute later, the radio came on. “Okay, Skipper. No KIAs back here.”

That’s when Murdock saw the bullet hole in the windshield. The round had missed him. He felt Captain Orejuela slump against his shoulder. In the pale moonlight coming in the windshield, Murdock saw the round, purple hole in the captain’s forehead. Carefully, Murdock touched the back of the Colombian’s head. It was wet and sticky with fresh blood.

“Men, we do have a KIA up here. The captain took one in the forehead. I didn’t notice until just now. He died without making a sound.”

The men were quiet. Only the roar of the big engine and the whine of the tires on the road came through.

“How much farther can we go?” Murdock asked Ostercamp.

“Another five miles, and we better look for a lane we can pull off the highway and hide the truck. Come daylight, they’ll be scouring this road for it.”

“What about the captain?” DeWitt asked.

“We’ll have to take time and bury him,” Murdock said. “Least we can do. Get his dog tags if he has them. We’ll make a map for his family so they can find the grave later.”

Ostercamp looked over at his leader. “Commander, looks like we lucked out. Could have been you or me in front of that slug. Damn lucky. Hey, there’s a lane to the right. Let’s take it and get rid of this truck.”

“Go.”

A half hour later, they had the truck a quarter mile off the highway. They found a spade strapped to the truck and used it to dig a three-foot-deep grave. They piled rocks over the fresh earth when they had the grave filled. Murdock made a map on the back of the area map.

“Back to business,” Murdock said. “We have about two hundred pounds of extra goods we can’t carry. We’ll move them a mile forward and hide them.”

“We going to burn up the truck?” DeWitt asked. He hurried on. “Figured a fire here would be a beacon to anybody out looking for us. There had to be a radio in one of those roadblocks.”

“Good,” Murdock said. “We won’t burn it. Disable it. Flatten all the tires, mess it up proper. Ostercamp, your job.”

It was just past midnight when Murdock checked his watch. They had the extra C-4 and TNAZ they couldn’t carry planted near a tree and covered with brush. It would be easy to find if they needed it to do the job.

“How far we from that camp?” Jaybird asked.

Lam looked up from the map he’d been reading with a pencil flash. “Looks like about ten miles, maybe twelve.”

“Mahanani, how is Jaybird’s arm?”

“Slug went on through, missed the bone. Hurts like hell. Gave him morphine. Wrapped it up damn tight. He’s fit for duty. He made me say that.”

Murdock chuckled. “Bet he did at that. Let’s move out. Five-yard intervals, single file so we don’t leave too much of a broad trail. We’ll keep to the shoulder of the road until we get some traffic. Easier than hiking through this damn rain forest.”

An hour later, they had not met any traffic nor had any come from the rear. The military roadblocks evidently choked off everything. Another four miles, and they saw bright lights ahead.

“Roadblock,” Lam said after he made a quick recon.

“We go around it to the right,” Murdock said. “We don’t want them to know where we are.”

Two hours later, Murdock and Lam edged up to a small ridge top and looked down at the lights.

“Has to be it, Cap,” Lam said. “Small town setup. Looks like a bunch of civilian buildings taken over by the military. I’ve got some interior guards doing their beats. Military vehicles all over the place.”

“So where is the motor pool?”

“Don’t see it.”

Murdock agreed. “Let’s move around to the far side and see what they have there.”

Thirty minutes later, they eased up to the side of a road and looked slightly downhill at the rest of the military complex. It had swallowed up nearly half the small town. Barbed wire fences circled the buildings and open spaces. Beyond the fences, the houses and small business buildings looked strangely out of place.

“Oh, yeah,” Murdock said putting down his field glasses. “There they are. At least a hundred trucks lined up nose to tail on that lot.”

“Got them,” Lam said. “Could be another fifty in that big warehouse. It has a drive-through door.”

“Any trouble getting inside the fence and planting about twenty charges?” Murdock asked.

Lam chuckled. “Not unless all of our guys go blind and deaf.”

“Time is our problem. Not a chance we can get the troops over here and get the charges planted before daylight.”

“So we pull the men over here tonight, find a safe hideout, and wait out the white light.”

“About the size of it,” Murdock said. “Let’s move.”

It was a little after 0400 when Murdock looked at his lighted-dial watch again. Lam had found them a hide hole a mile back in the mountains from the camp. There were no roads nearby, no trails, farms, nor coffee plantations.

They kept two guards out, and the SEALs went to sleep. Murdock took the first guard until 0600, then would rouse Jaybird. It gave him some time to think.

His mistake so far on this mission was letting Captain Orejuela come along. A lucky shot? Sure, but somehow hot lead had a way of picking out the most vulnerable. It would be his last mistake on this detail.

He thought of the SATCOM. No use in contacting Stroh. He’d yell again about not using the 20-mike-mike, which they most certainly would. It was the most amazing small arms weapon Murdock had ever seen. It would soon set the standard worldwide for the best infantry weapon. He wondered if the makers of the system had the patents on the various components or if the U.S. Defense Department held the patent, since they had probably paid R&D money for the development.

Or had they? It was a competition. Were those financed by Uncle or not? Murdock didn’t know. He’d have to find out. Be damned uncomfortable if the Bull Pups went for sale on the open market. If so, he and his men would be fighting against those damn 20-mike-mike exploding rounds before long.

That brought up the wonder of how long he’d be in the SEALs. He had no desire to be in upper management. If he couldn’t be in the field, why be a SEAL? Sure, he could probably get to be XO of some team, then eventually the CO. That might fill out his twenty years. He had no aspirations to move up into NAVSPECWARGRUP-one or — two. So, he would be a field SEAL or back in the blue water Navy.

He was sure he could keep his field status as long as he stayed a lieutenant commander. If he ever was promoted to full commander, it would take a direct order from the CNO to keep him working as a field platoon leader, especially in this current platoon.

He had no idea when the sunrise would be in Colombia a few hundred miles north of the equator. By 0530, it was starting to look a little bright in the east, but it didn’t get much lighter by 0600 when he rolled Jaybird out of his slumber.

“Time to go to work,” Murdock told Jaybird. He mumbled something and tried to turn over, but Murdock sat him up.

“Come on, Jaybird. Rise and shine and smell the coffee. Only we don’t have any coffee and no fires so we won’t have any. You awake now?”

“Yeah, damn it.” Jaybird shook his head and pulled on his floppy hat. “Now, what’s the picture?”

“No change from when you sacked out. We hold here for the day, get all the sleep we can, and get into gear at first dark tonight. You have this end of camp. A Bravo Squad guard should be down there. Let the men sleep in as long as they want to. All they have to look forward to is MREs for breakfast and lunch. Do a two-hour watch and pick the next guard. We’ll want somebody on alert all day.”

Murdock waited until Jaybird made it to his feet, pulled his MP-5 submachine gun over his shoulder, and started looking around.

Then Murdock slept.

Ching woke up Murdock just after 1030.

“Sorry, Commander, but looks like we have some company not more than three hundred yards down this little canyon. Can’t make out what the hell they’re doing.”

Murdock took out his field glasses and worked up where he could see the visitors. The six soldiers he saw had long rifles, maybe AK-47s or the newer ones from Russia, the AK-74, which fired the smaller 5 .45-caliber whizzers.

“What the hell they doing, Commander?” Ching asked.

Murdock set his jaw and squinted at the invaders. “That’s what we have to find out before they blow our whole mission,” Murdock said.