Flashpoint

24

Six SEALs charged out a back man-sized door and saw the problem. Murdock heard Jaybird firing already. He went prone and lifted his Bull Pup. Yeah, too close. The trucks were within two hundred yards of them. He aimed and tracked the first truck and fired a 20mm round.

“Thirty dollars’ worth,” he whispered.

The round hit the side of the truck and exploded. The rest of the twenty rounds were hitting now. One truck took a direct hit in the engine, and fire gushed from the hood as it veered to the left and ground to a stop.

The second truck kept coming. Somebody put a round into the right front tire, and when the tire blew, the truck careened in a sudden turn to that side, lifted high on those side wheels, and then settled back to the roadway and spun around to a stop.

Murdock watched the third truck try to turn away from the slaughter. It took two twenties at the same time, one penetrating the windshield before it exploded in the cab and the other one hitting one of the wooden bows holding up the canvas top and exploding with the shattering spray of shrapnel that cut down half the men riding in the back of the rig. The truck kept rolling with no one alive behind the wheel. Then it slowed and stopped.

Soldiers had been spilling out of the trucks as they were hit. Now they assembled and put down fire at the SEALs. They were only 200 yards away. Murdock burrowed lower behind an oil drum and considered. He touched his lip mike.

“We’ve got two CARs that can fire forty-mike rounds. Get them up front here fast.”

Ron Holt had one, Ostercamp had one on his back. They slid behind some wooden boxes in back of the building, and Murdock talked to them.

“We need some HEs on those assholes out there. About two hundred yards. Drop in a few, and let’s see what they do.”

The SEALs fired two rounds each. The first one came in short, the next three walked up the line of winking muzzle flashes. The volume of rounds slowed from the Colombians.

“Four more each,” Murdock said. “We have the rounds?”

“I have four,” Holt said.

“Down to three, Cap,” Ostercamp said.

“Do them.” The other SEALs kept up their 5.56-round fire from the Bull Pup’s smaller barrel. Seven more 40mm HE rounds dropped in on the soldiers and killed and wounded a dozen more. In the dimness, Murdock could see several men running back the way they had come.

“Keep them moving,” Murdock said. When they were 400 yards away and he could barely see them, he caught one with a laser spot and fired a twenty. It reached the required turns and exploded with the proximity fuze fifteen feet off the ground. In the flash of the round, Murdock had seen three men running. He figured all three of them were not running anymore.

“Cease fire,” Murdock said.

The silence closed around them like a thick audio fog. A man screamed somewhere in front of them. Another voice in Spanish harangued the first. Then all was quiet.

Murdock left two men on guard and took the rest back inside.

“Lam, where’s our next target, the ether?”

“Not sure, Cap. There are two big buildings to the south about two hundred yards. Want me to check them out?”

“Go. We’ll finish here and meet you halfway. Canzoneri, you ready with those charges?”

“That’s a roger, Commander.”

“Set them for ten minutes. The soup here is cooked. All the coke is melted we have time for. Ninety percent gone, I’d say. Maybe fifty, seventy five million dollars’ worth.”

“Let’s get out of here, troops. South side. Now.”

They assembled and moved out a hundred yards south and waited. Canzoneri told them there were two minutes to the blasts. They turned to watch the packaging and shipping building.

The explosions were an anticlimax after the others. The great noise and rush of air blasted past them, then one side of the big building blew out and half the roof caved in. The SEALs went flat on the ground as the brilliant blast of light flashed past them, then was gone.

Lam ran up and dropped. “Yeah, all this fun and fireworks, too. Found it, Cap. It’s the second building down here. First one looks like a barracks, so I stepped softly around it. We’re off maybe three hundred yards from it.”

The SEALs took a short hike. Murdock rubbed his left wrist where the bandage was. It hadn’t hurt him, but he knew the bullet hole was still there. It itched. Did that mean it was healing? In the heat of action, he didn’t even realize he had a weak left wrist. Now it throbbed, but no real pain. At least the round had missed the bone. Hell, he’d get it looked at later.

They found the building with the ether inside. Lam said he had seen no exterior guards. The place didn’t even have a lock on the door. They went in and found no guards. There were enough barrels of ethyl ether to keep the syndicate in production of cocaine for some time. It took seventeen liters of ether to produce one kilo of cocaine.

Murdock studied the storage area through his NVGs.

“I figured there would be more here,” Murdock said. “Jaybird, give me an estimate on the number of barrels.”

Jaybird ran down the rows of barrels and came back.

“Three rows of barrels three wide and two high. Each row is ten barrels long. That’s one hundred and eighty barrels, Cap.”

“Canzoneri?”

“Same as last time. Only six charges this time out. We’ll use a half pound for each bomb. Give me five minutes, and I’ll have them in place. Hey, guys, I need some donations of TNAZ.”

“Go,” Murdock said.

Four SEALs went outside, one at each wall of the building as guards. They saw only activity around the packaging building. A small fire had started, and they could see figures trying to put it out.

Lam was on the prowl to find the landing strip.

Seven minutes later, the SEALs left the ether building and hiked away five hundred yards toward some far lights. The big blasts came right on schedule. The TNAZ set some of the ether on fire, blasting the liquid ether around the place like burning torches, and soon the rest of the barrels cooked off, blew their caps, and erupted into a massive blast that flattened the building and sent a gigantic fireball and mushroom-shaped cloud into the sky. The SEALs could hear the drums raining down in front of them. Some were still burning like bright bonfires.

The SEALs shielded their eyes.

“You guys do good work,” Lam said on the net. “Found the fucking landing field. It’s about a mile to the west. Could be on our way out of this cocaine garden as well. Look to the west. You’ll see a glow from the lights of Plato. I’ll find you as you come this way. I’ve seen no security out here. They all must be fighting fires.”

“We’re moving,” Murdock said as he touched the SEALs near him and they hiked toward the west in squad diamond formation. Murdock always thought of the diamond as a defensive/offensive setup. With it, half the squad could do assault fire to the front, and the other half could give protective fire to the rear. It was almost a perimeter defensive formation, and it was good for a lot of reasons. If all the men went to ground and pointed outward, they would have a perimeter.

They found nothing to slow them down as they jogged the mile toward the west. Lam picked them up at the halfway point and talked with Murdock and DeWitt.

“Couldn’t see it all, but there’s a couple of buildings and a windsock and what looks like a concrete runway maybe three-quarters of a mile long. Saw four twin-engine transports, like the old DC-3s. Maybe a little smaller.”

“Sounds like a perfect setup for the twenties,” DeWitt said. “We can stand off and blast them into rubble until we start a fire.”

“I’ll go with that. How close are the planes parked to each other?”

“Thirty yards apart, at least. Also in the area are two small Piper Cub type planes and three trucks, six-bys, by the look of them.”

“Good, let’s hold here a minute.” Murdock used his Motorola. “Holt, we need to do some long-range talking. I’m in front.”

Holt hurried up and pulled the fifteen-pound SATCOM radio out of its nest and aimed the antenna. He gave Murdock the handset. “We’re on voice, Commander.”

It took Murdock three tries a minute apart to raise the carrier Jefferson.

“Rover, this is Home Base.”

“Home Base. We’re in the ninth inning here. One more contact, and we’re ready to exfil. What would contact time be if the chopper left soon?”

“Rover, we have a problem. Stroh wants to talk with you.”

There was a pause, then Don Stroh came on.

“Yes, tall friend, we have a glitch. State is all over us like a clawing tiger. They’ve been getting flack from Colombia for two days about incursions, invasions, air attacks, and acts of war. State has tromped on our toes and ordered the CNO not to allow any more air incursions of Colombia.”

“No chopper pickup? Come on, Stroh, you’re hanging us out to dry again.”

“Hell, not me, it’s the State Department and the President.”

“They invaded us first, the embassy. Damn. You expect us to walk out?”

“It’s only sixty miles.”

“Oh, yeah, and across a range of mountains that make the Rockies look like anthills.”

Murdock saw the SEALs crowding around, listening to the speaker on the SATCOM and his talk.

“No suggestions, Mister Christian in Action Guy?” Murdock asked.

“Steal a chopper and fly it out?”

“I’m not checked out to fly a chopper or anything else.”

Murdock turned off the handset and stared at the radio. The speaker came on.

“Do the best we can to get the order lifted. Might take a day or two. Be ready to receive daytime at noon, three and six.”

“If that’s the best you can do.”

Jaybird pushed through the men to the front. “Hey, Commander, we’ve got four DC-3 types out front. Why not steal one of those?”

“Can you fly one?” DeWitt asked.

“No.”

“As I remembered your files, none of our men has a ticket to fly a DC-3 or any other aircraft,” DeWitt said.

Murdock began to grin. “We can’t fly them, but someone over there at the airfield sure as shit can. We don’t blow up those craft, we move in and capture them and a pilot. We blow away a few of them until one says he’ll fly us out rather than get his head shot off.”

Jaybird let out a short cheer. “Damn, I’m good. I knew we had to steal one of those gooneys. So I forgot about a pilot.”

The tactical plans changed. The SEALs came up on three sides of the administration building. It was medium-sized, and Murdock hoped it also housed the pilots. They went in silently. One guard on duty had fallen asleep. He would never wake up. They found the office, a records area, then a hall with a dozen doors. Lam listened to three of them and heard snoring at the last one. He tried the handle. The door was not locked.

Murdock went in with his NVGs on. Two men in a two-bed room. Both had pictures on the wall. Each showed a man beside a plane. Murdock clamped his hand over the first man’s mouth and shook him awake. He pulled the man out of his bed. He wore shorts and a T-shirt. Murdock propelled him into the hall.

Ken Ching was there and questioned him in Spanish.

“We won’t kill you if you stay quiet and answer our questions, all right?”

The Colombian nodded.

“Are you a pilot?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fly the twin-engine transport outside?”

“Yes.”

“Is it fueled and ready to fly?”

“Yes, all fueled full.”

“Is the plane loaded or empty?”

“Empty, to be loaded tomorrow.”

Ching told Murdock the gist of the talk, and they hustled the pilot outside. It took five minutes for the pilot to go through his preflight check. As he did, the SEALs examined the interior. It was set up to haul packaged cocaine in liters, but there was plenty of room on the floor for fifteen SEALs.

Canzoneri used the last of his TNAZ and C-4 and planted bombs in the three other transports, the two small planes, and three trucks.

“Ready to activate the timers when you are, Commander,” Canzoneri said.

Murdock put all the men on board, told Canzoneri to set the detonators for ten minutes, and race back on board.

Ching held an MP-5 submachine gun on the pilot as he slid into the cockpit seat.

“When I tell you to, you start the engines, and at once taxi away from these buildings. You do it damn fast, understand?” Ching told the pilot. “Any problem, and you’re dead where you sit.” The Colombian had been sweating profusely since he was jerked out of his room. Now rivelets of sweat worked down his cheeks.

“All on board,” Murdock bellowed as he closed the door and pushed the locking arm in place.

“Vámonos,” Ching said, and the pilot started the engines and almost at once began to taxi away. Behind them lights snapped on in the main building. Men ran out in their underwear, carrying long guns.

“Faster!” Ching told the pilot in Spanish.

They raced down the runaway, and Ching ducked as a bullet slammed through the cockpit side glass and buried itself in the roof. They kept rolling.

“Get us out of here,” Ching’s radio spoke. “We’re taking rounds through the fuselage back here.”

“Faster,” Ching yelled in Spanish. There was no wind. They could take off in this direction. Ching watched the ground speed. He didn’t know what speed the ship needed to get airborne. At last the plane shuddered, then lifted gently from the ground and turned at once to the left and climbed.

The pilot looked at Ching and nodded.

“We’re in the air,” he said in Spanish. “But we took a lot of rounds. The flaps don’t respond. I’m not sure I can fly this machine very far.”

“All you have to do is get us to the coast. Set a course due west.”

The pilot looked alarmed. “That means going over the Montes de Maria. They are over ten thousand feet high.”

“Ceiling on this crate is much higher than that,” Ching said, hoping he was right. “We can get over them easy.”

He switched to English on his radio. “Murdock, we have a small problem up here.”

The platoon leader came into the cabin with a question on his face.

“Pedro here says we have to go over the mountains, something Maria to the west. Up to ten thousand feet. He’s not sure if he can make it.”

The right engine sputtered, almost died, then caught again. The pilot pointed to one of the fuel gauges and yelled in Spanish.

“He says the tank was full, now it’s half empty. They must have hit the fuel tank with the rifle fire.”