Pacific Siege

24

After a moment of staring, the two officers looked away from each other.

“I wish we had one of them conscious so we could find out where the general went,” Murdock said. He motioned to Lam.

“Make a couple of swings out there and see what you can find. Even in the dark you should be able to see where twenty men went on a hike.”

Lam grinned, and ran into the darkness toward the looming up-thrust of a hill in front of them.

The Russian guide who had come with them from the prison came up and talked with Ching. The interpreter hurried over to Murdock.

“Skip, we might have something here. This guy says he’s been in this area many times. There is a series of old caves high on the cliffs back there. He says it would make a perfect hideout and fortress for somebody trying to hold off a superior force.”

“How far from here?” Ching asked the Russian, then turned. “He says it’s into the mountain where the jeeps can’t drive. Maybe four or five miles, maybe more. None of his group ever went all the way back there.”

Murdock moved over to talk to the Russian officer.

“Colonel Hartzloff, we may have a direction to go.” He told the officer what the Russian guide had told Ching. The colonel motioned to the guide, who was a corporal, and talked with him.

Then the colonel turned to Murdock. “Yes, sounds good. My trackers and my scouts will lead. Your men in the middle and my commandos as rear guard. We will go now.”

Murdock shrugged. Getting there wasn’t the problem. What to do once they found the general would be the tough part. He could wait.

They found Lam coming back to meet them. He lifted his brows when he saw the SEALs in the middle of the line of march.

“What the fuck, sir?”

Murdock shook his head. “Not the time to worry now.” He told the scout what the Russian from the prison had said.

“Good, they went up this way for fucking certain,” Lam said.

They hiked along silently for two miles. Then ahead, a machine gun chattered. Murdock and his men hit the dirt. The Russians went down as well. Murdock and Holt began working forward past the prone Russians.

They didn’t look like blooded veterans right then to Murdock.

The machine gun fired again; then they heard the lower-pitched rounds from the Japanese rifles. The Russians at the front of the column returned fire. Murdock heard the flat crack of the AK47, now called the AKM, and the stuttering fire of a Russian machine gun. He and Holt went faster, pushing past the Russians until they came to the front of the column.

Murdock bellied down behind a fallen pine tree. There were a lot of good-sized pines here higher on the slope.

“Captain, how many up there?” Murdock called to the Russian officer. Radiwitch rolled toward him.

“We don’t know. Four, maybe five. I’ve got a wounded man. They are in a good defensive position among a jumble of rocks. Hard to get a good shot.”

“Let us try,” Murdock said. He motioned to Holt, who had an EAR now as well. They waited for another volley of fire from the rocks a hundred yards ahead, then took turns firing at five-second intervals.

After three shots each from the EARS, they waited. The firing from the rocks had stopped.

“I figured the sound would bounce around those rocks like it did in a room,” Murdock whispered to Holt.

Captain Radiwitch rolled over to Murdock again, and stared at the EAR from two feet away.

“I must have one of those. No more firing from the Japanese rear guard. How did you do that?”

“With these rifles. Captain, do you want to send two men up there and check,” Murdock said.

“I will go,” the captain said. He rose and sprinted forward.

There were no shots fired by the Japanese. Radiwitch ran the hundred yards in fifteen seconds. Another five seconds and he called out loudly in Russian and his men advanced slowly. Murdock and Holt went with them.

The four Japanese rear-guard defenders lay unconscious beside their weapons. Murdock and Holt bound them with plastic cuffs, and Murdock pointed ahead. The Russians talked excitedly for a minute until Captain Radiwitch silenced them.

The Russian commando sent out two point men; then the rest of the Russians and SEALs moved out following them.

They were still on the right trail.

A mile higher on the slopes, they found another rear-guard position. Murdock and Holt had drifted back with the other SEALs and told them about the action.

“That’s why we should be the fuck up front,” Lampedusa said.

Murdock agreed with him, but he didn’t want to antagonize the Russians.

They might be needed later on.

The new rear guard was in a patch of foot-thick pine trees with an open field of small rocks and gravel in front of it. The area looked as though an old landslide had wiped out vegetation there sometime within the past year or two. There was no cover going the last five hundred yards to the position where the Japanese kept up a steady but spaced fire.

Murdock and his squads were still out of the range of the guns ahead. He waited. He felt more than heard a squad of the commandos move through the woods to the right of the open space. Captain Radiwitch was trying to outflank the defenders and get around them. The sound of two grenades exploding in rapid succession came a minute into the Russians’ move. Trip wires and hand grenades, Murdock guessed. He and Holt worked to the front of the safe zone.

Captain Radiwitch came back carrying a dead commando over his shoulders. He dropped him to the ground and sat down hard. A medic ran up and treated the captain’s shrapnel wounds in his leg and both arms.

“Lucky, he said. “One dead, two wounded bad.” He turned and said something to a sergeant, who gave another order. At once a squad of seven men took rifle grenades from their pack and rested the butts of their AKMs, the newest model of the AK-47 standby, on the ground. Each had grenade-launching attachments. The commandos fired at will, each man putting six grenades into the general area of the machine gun and the rear guard ahead.

The machine gun stopped firing. Only an occasional round came from the Japanese rebels above. After another five minutes, Captain Radiwitch led a squad of six commandos through the woods again. They kept to the fringes, sometimes in sight of the spot where the rear guard had been.

Murdock could see them assault the position with full automatic fire. If anyone had been alive before they made the assault, it was certain none were alive now.

The walkie-talkie rumbled, and the Russian commandos got to their feet and moved up the hill. Murdock and his SEALs went along.

At the rear-guard position, Murdock checked the bodies. There were only three men there, with two machine guns and six rifles. All were dead. No chance to question a Japanese prisoner again.

Captain Radiwitch found Murdock.

“Lead out with your men, if you wish,” Radiwitch said. “Your weapons may be more effective in this situation.”

Murdock said they would take the point. He realized that he hadn’t seen the colonel. Evidently he was a commander who directed his men from the safety of the hovercraft.

The trail now wound higher in the hills. The timber was mostly pine now, and thick in places. Other areas were bare rock where nothing could grow. Lampedusa led the SEALs with the Russian scout they brought from the prison. He and Lampedusa communicated with signs. They wound up a valley, over a small hill, and the Russian pointed ahead. They could just make out a peak with a jagged, rugged-looking cliff just down from the summit.

Lam scowled. In the dark, the place looked to be another two thousand feet above them. He figured there was only one more ridge between them and the last slant of the mountain. Would they be in an open field of fire all the way up that last slope?

Lam pointed at the place and tapped the Russian on the shoulder.

“General, Japo?” He pointed at the cliff. The Russian nodded and chattered in Russian, which didn’t help at all.

“If you say so, buddy. We got ourselves some heavy climbing to do.”

Lam had seen evidence of passage recently. He’d found a canteen back a ways. On a bramble, he saw where a uniform had ripped and left a swatch of dark cloth. Now the work was harder. They were not at a timberline, but the rocky terrain prevented any but the hardiest of small shrubs from growing there. That meant there was practically no cover or concealment.

They worked up to the ridgeline and down the other side. Lam had been right. Now it was one long climb up a slant of rock to what must be the general’s hideout above. Lam estimated it was a half mile up the slope. If they were caught out there in daylight, the Japanese could pick them off like targets in a carnival shooting gallery.

Lam looked at his watch. Just after 2200. They had a lot of dark yet. He waited for the troops to catch up. Time they had a conference on just how they were going to get up all this rock without attracting attention.

A few minutes later, Murdock and the platoon came up to where Lam waited. “Need to talk, Skipper.”

Murdock looked at the landscape ahead, and up to the top of the slope. “Up there?”

“That’s what our local guide thinks. I’ve found enough shit to know they came this way.”

Murdock checked his watch. It was 2215. “We should be able to move across this open space in the dark. They might know we’re down here, but they won’t shoot and give away their positions. Ching.”

The lanky SEAL dropped down beside Murdock.

“Tell the captain and his men that we must have absolute silence as we move up from here on. No talking, coughing, no sounds.”

Ching nodded, and headed for the Russian troops just behind them.

“Route?” Murdock asked.

Jaybird had been looking at the shadows in the moonlight. “Looks like there’s a ravine over there a few hundred yards we could use like a staircase.”

“For a ways,” Lam said. “Looks like there’s a rockfall at the far side near the top. That might be how the rebels go up the last few yards to the cliff top.”

“Is it a cliff or a cave up there?” Murdock asked.

“Supposed to be a shelf-like place with a cave behind it,” Lam said.

“So from a low angle, our EAR shots would bounce off the rocks and slant out into space hurting nobody,” Murdock said.

“Let’s hope it looks different by the time we get up there,” Ed Dewitt said from the other side.

“So let’s do it,” Murdock said. “Silent movement, keep our interval. Lam, lead out.”

They worked across the slope to the ravine, and walked up that for two hundred yards; then it ended. It was hard going. The slant of the hill increased, and at times they had to reach down to the ground to help themselves to take the next step. Murdock could hear the sound of the Russian commandos behind them. That was not good. If the general had any sentries out at all, they had to be able to hear the seventy-five men moving toward them.

An hour later they were still a long way from the top of the mountain. Murdock called a halt. Dewitt and Jaybird came up for a talk. Now their voices were whispers.

“How far to the top?” Dewitt asked.

The estimates were from six hundred yards to twelve hundred.

“Where is the closest cover for our eighty-five bodies?” Jaybird asked. They all stared into the softly moonlit night.

“There isn’t any,” Lam said.

“Got to be some somewhere,” Jaybird countered.

They were near the middle of the slope of rocks and dirt that led up to the peak.

“Off to the left more,” Murdock said. “Another wash. Looks big enough for half of us. The rest can stay back farther and be out of the line of fire.”

“Might work,” Dewitt said. “But that gully still puts us six or eight hundred yards from the target.”

Murdock used his lip mike. “Ching, ask Captain Radiwitch to come up for a conference.”

A few minutes later the Russian commando sat down beside the others. Murdock showed him the situation, letting him use the NVGs to check out the top and the new gully.

“What we suggest is that half of our force move into the gully,” Murdock said. “Then I’ll take one squad of SEALs and work up silently as close as we can get to the top. We think that rock field to the left is the access route to the top. Once there, the squad will have cover from any fire from above.”

“Your sleep guns. Can you use them?”

Murdock shook his head at the Russian. “The angle is wrong. We can’t hit the Japanese and we can’t get any bounce effect up there the way we did the last time. We’ll have to move in closer and probably use our regular weapons.”

“How many men up there?” the captain asked.

“We’ve captured or killed nine or ten. That should leave him with maybe ten or fifteen.”

“It’s a good defensive position,” the Russian captain said.

“We’ll try grenades,” Murdock said. “But the overhang on that cliff is going to deflect all but a few chance rounds that get inside.”

The Russian stared at the slope. “You take squad of ten?”

“No, we use eight men.”

“Then I take squad of eight men, we go together.”

Murdock had expected it. Russian pride. “Agreed. Bring your men up. Automatic weapons, lots of grenades, hand and rifle.” The captain nodded and slipped away.

“First Squad, get up here,” Murdock said into his lip mike. “We’re going for a walk in the park.”

Ten minutes later, the sixteen men crouched in the ravine. The rest of the SEALs and twenty handpicked Russian commandos filled the area behind. The rest of the Russians were farther back.

Murdock had been checking the slope above with his NVG. He had monitored the lip of the cliff looming over them, but could detect no bodies and no movement.

He spotted what looked like a trace of a trail that wound through sedan-sized boulders fifty yards ahead of them. Lam checked it and nodded.

“Sure as hell looks like a trail, Skipper. Let’s give it a try.”

Murdock and his men moved out first, slipping quietly up the rocky slope toward the rocks. Lam reached them first, and Vanished behind a huge boulder. Murdock and the rest slid in between the giant’s marbles.

The Russians were close behind.

Murdock looked around his big rock at the cliff above. It was still fifty yards away. He grinned. Now he saw the path. Someone had cleared away most of the smaller rocks and pushed aside larger ones.

The path wound around some of the large boulders slanting upward to the end of the shelf. They provided what could be enough cover for an assault on the cliff. The cave must be just behind it.

Murdock waved at Ching, and he edged up beside him. “Stay undercover and call out to the Japanese general. Tell him we come for his surrender. Enough men have died. He should send his men down without arms.”

Ching moved closer, then called the message over a protective rock.

When he finished, there was a long pause. Then a short reply came back.

Ching looked back at Murdock. “He said never, just the one word.”

Captain Radiwitch came up and heard the exchange.

“Time for Russian power,” he said to Murdock. “My men will blow them out of there with grenades.”

“Captain, it’s only fifty yards. The shelf over the cave extends well out. It’s a hard shot to get a rifle grenade in there. Coming up here, I thought it might work. Now I’m not so sure.”

“We can do it. Do not worry. Russians good with rifle grenades.”

Murdock shrugged. “Go ahead. I hope that none of the misses start a landslide and cover this place up with rocks.”

“Russians never miss,” Captain Radiwitch said. He turned and spoke quickly in Russian. Six men with grenade launchers on their AKMs came forward and found firing positions.

Murdock touched his lip mike. “Our friends are going to try to use rifle grenades to soften them up. Let’s watch it. Some of those little bombs could set off a landslide in this unstable part.”

The Russians began firing. Murdock watched the flight of two rifle grenades. They sailed high, came down short on the bare rocks outside the ledge, and exploded. A few rocks loosened and tumbled down the slope. None came toward the SEALS. Half a dozen more grenades exploded. Murdock saw two shatter inside the parapet around the cliff.

Then three more went off on the face of the cliff below the cave.

It began slowly. Then more and more rocks loosened. A moment later it was a full-sized landslide rumbling down the mountain straight at the SEALs and Russians.

“Watch out,” Murdock shouted. “Incoming from those damn Russian grenades.”