Pacific Siege

25

The dirt and rocks in the landslide cascaded down the slope. The larger rocks rolled faster, bounced, landed, and bounced again. The first few hit the huge boulders. Some shattered, others bounced once more and went past the men.

Tons of rocks and dirt pounded down. The group of huge boulders the men crouched behind acted as a divider for much of the landslide.

The first roll of rocks and dirt hit the boulders and split to each side; then more of the Plymouth-sized rocks nudged the flow of dirt and rocks farther to the side.

The sixteen men in the forward position huddled behind their boulders and waited. The roaring, grinding sound of the landslide enveloped them, then passed by and was gone. The men were covered with a foot of dirt and small rocks, but none of them was injured.

Murdock did a net check, and all seven of his SEALs reported in.

“Just hold in place while we figure this,” he told them on the Motorola.

Captain Radiwitch came up brushing the dust and dirt off his uniform. Lam moved over as well and motioned to Murdock.

“Commander, might have a suggestion. Look at the layout of the rocks up the hill, the big ones. With a little covering fire, we can leapfrog up there to the end of the rock field. The boulders are plenty big enough for cover up to thirty feet from the ledge where the cave is.”

The Russian listened. Murdock took another look at the rock field and nodded. He turned to the commando. “Looks possible, Captain. What do you think?”

Captain Radiwitch stared up at the rocks, then the path the men would take. At last, he nodded. “Eight men fire, eight men move. We go first, you give cover fire.”

“Sounds good.” Murdock brought his SEALs up in a rough line with fields of fire on the top of the ledge, and told them the plan.

Radiwitch got his men in position and pointed at Murdock.

“Let’s do it,” Murdock said to his men. “Sustained fire, real ammo, but don’t run short on rounds. Fire.”

The eight weapons spoke, and then again, and again. The eight Russians darted from rock to rock, working up the hill thirty yards.

They slid behind boulders, and Murdock called a cease-fire.

A moment later the Russians set up a fire pattern on the top of the mountain, and Murdock led his men in a charge toward the spot the Russians had claimed.

They made it, and Murdock tried to remember if there had been any return fire from the top. He couldn’t remember hearing any.

“Hand grenades,” the Russian officer said. His men threw six grenades into the mountaintop fortress. All went off with a thunderous roar. Just after they exploded, the Russians charged up the last twenty yards to the shelf of land. They went in with assault fire, the AKMs and the AK-47’s blasting on automatic. Then the firing stopped.

Captain Radiwitch stood on the top of the ledge and waved.

“Nobody here,” he called.

Two minutes later, Murdock and his men were in the temporary fortress. All they found were three dead Japanese and several weapons that had been ruined by exploding grenades.

Lam explored the cave, then the sides of the mountain. He came back a minute later.

“Small cave to one side of the large one. It has a back door, and a good trail down the mountain on the back side. We’ve been snookered.”

Murdock and the SEALs rushed out the opening and looked downhill.

Five hundred yards down the mountain, they saw two forms slide behind some cover in a gully. Murdock checked the route they had to follow.

There was a large rock slide well down the mountain the Japanese would have to cross.

“Machine guns and Bradford. Set up here and zero in on that rock field. You’re going to have some targets down there soon. Bradford, what’s the range?”

“Eight hundred yards.”

Joe Douglas shook his head as he spread the bipod on his H&K 21E chattergun. “Got to be closer to a thousand.”

“Work it out. The three of you cover that slide area. The minute you see any men on it, start firing. It won’t be us. The rest of you SEALs on me. We’re going hunting.”

Captain Radiwitch listened. He had no machine gunners in his team.

When the SEALs left moving quickly down the trail, he put his men in line behind them.

It was almost ten minutes later when the three gunners spotted figures in their NVGs as they worked into the slide area. The gunners charged their weapons and opened fire. Bradford was short, even firing downhill. Douglas and Horse Ronson blasted the rock slide with five-round bursts. They saw at least two of the Japanese who did not continue the trip. The rest hurried, and some slid down the slope, creating a new, small landslide.

After three minutes of sporadic firing, the gunners checked with the NVGs again. There were no more Japanese moving across the slide.

“Let’s pack up and haul ass,” Bradford said. He had slammed fifteen of the big .50-caliber rounds into the area. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit any targets, but he must have scared hell out of them.

The three big men trotted down the trail, making as good time as they could.

When Murdock and the SEALs came to the rock slide, the guns firing above had silenced. They found three bodies there, and evidence that the rest of the general’s army had kept to the very edge of the slide in some small growth to mask their movements. The SEALs followed.

The moon seemed brighter now. Murdock noticed that it was three-quarters full, and thanked the heavens for their help. The SEALs hurried forward, then stopped to listen. Each time they could hear the Japanese rushing through the brush and more trees below.

The SEALs took a quick break in an open area. Murdock called the captain up. “What’s the maximum range on your rifle grenades?”

“Four hundred meters.”

Murdock grinned in the darkness. “What would you think of sending six rounds out at max range where we think the Japanese general is?”

Captain Radiwitch smiled. “Yes, I like.” He turned and spoke to his men, who quickly readied their rifles and fired six rifle grenades forward where their captain pointed.

They waited for the six distinct cracking explosions of the grenades. They heard no shouts of surprise or wails of pain.

“Worth a try,” Murdock said, and got the men moving again.

An hour later, the sixteen men were in heavy pine timber working down another small hill. Lam said they were still on the right trail.

“They leave a highway of signs,” Lam said. “Some of the troops must be discarding equipment to make their load lighter. I’ve found a pistol, a shirt, and three loaded magazines. They are still ahead of us and we’re gaining on them.”

Murdock looked at his watch. The soft light glow showed him that it was 0505. An hour, maybe two, to daylight. He talked to Lampedusa on the point as they walked through the brush.

“Any logic to his route?”

Lam shrugged. “Not that I can see. Downhill is his trademark right now. I’d guess we’re heading toward the coast. We’re on a small stream that must come out at the beach sooner or later.”

“Any way to cut him off at the pass?”

“Not so you could notice, Skipper.”

“Afraid of that.”

Ten minutes later, the small stream had grown to a roaring river.

Lam figured that the Japanese couldn’t cross over now if they wanted to.

The brush thinned out in the pine woods, but there was still plenty of protection. Lam didn’t consider an ambush by the Japanese. They were running, not looking for a fight.

“Figure there are no more than eight of them, Skip,” Lam said. “My guess is we’re about a half mile behind.”

“Double time?” Murdock asked.

“Yeah, no brush, ground is stable. Let’s do it.”

Murdock told the Russian captain the plan. He shrugged.

“SEALs do it, Russians do it.”

Murdock set up a ground-eating trot that he figured was seven miles an hour. That would be about an eight-minute mile. They should be able to sustain that for an hour.

Lam stayed out in front by thirty yards, and Holt made a connecting file to him. They jogged down the bank of the river, across small feeder streams and up a slight rise, then down to the bank again.

A half hour later, Lam stopped and held the rest. They all listened. Ahead they could hear talk.

“Japanese words, but I can’t understand them,” Ching said. They moved ahead again slower, but on full combat alert. Lam spotted them first. The Japanese had taken a break. None was on sentry duty watching the rear. Two were drinking at the stream.

They were forty yards ahead.

“Don’t kill them,” Murdock said into his mike. He caught the Russian captain. “We capture them. We don’t kill them.” The captain nodded and whispered to his men. Murdock sent Lam and three SEALs into the brush to get even with the Japanese. Lam clicked his mike when he was set. Murdock had moved up the other four SEALs and set up a field of fire.

“Shoot over their heads, three rounds each. Then, Ching, sing out and talk the general into surrendering.”

Murdock began the firing with a three-round burst from his MP-5.

For a moment the woods rang with the gunfire. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Ching bellowed at the Japanese, who had frozen in place. None of them even reached for a weapon.

“General Nishikawa, you are surrounded. You must surrender or your men will be slaughtered like pigs and you will have to watch them die.”

The general stood and turned toward the voice.

“We surrender. My men will lay face-down. No more need to die.

They have been loyal and true. You must urge world opinion to consider the plight of twenty thousand Japanese who can’t worship at their ancestors’ graves. You may approach now.”

The general moved away from his men and sat down on the ground with his back to the others. Murdock and the SEALs moved forward cautiously.

They kept their weapons ready, but none of the Japanese made a move to protest. They were cuffed by the wrists as the SEALs came to them.

Murdock walked over to where the general sat. He took Ching with him.

“Tell the general we respect his military moves, but it’s time now to surrender.”

Ching said it, but there was no comment from the general.

Murdock told Ching to speak to the general again. Ching said the same words, but the general did not turn.

Murdock rushed ahead just as the general toppled over to the side.

When they got there it was too late. General Raiden Nishikawa lay on his side with a ceremonial samurai short sword in his stomach. He had thrust it in, turned it sideways, and sliced through his bowels.

He had died in the few minutes it took the SEALs to approach his position.

Murdock crouched on the ground in front of the general. The man had had a mission and had been willing to die for his cause. At least now he would be with his ancestors. The world would have a martyr for the cause of giving the Kuril chain back to Japan.

Murdock had an idea that he let ferment and grow and expand as he thought about it. Why not? What would be better for this small Japanese man than to be left here on Kunashir with his ancestors?

How? They had no entrenching tools, no shovels, nothing to use to dig a grave. Murdock called Jaybird over and put the problem to him.

“Easy, Skipper. We do like the Indians used to. We find a low place in the land, scoop it out with sticks, lay him in it, then cover him with rocks out of the stream. Then we pile brush on top of that so no animals can get to him. Makes a fine grave.”

Captain Radiwitch came up frowning. “Why didn’t you use your sleep guns on the Japanese?”

Murdock smiled. “Hey, if we had, then we would have had to carry them out to the coast. This way, they walk.” The Russian laughed and went to talk with his men.

“We get him and his Ruskies out of here, then we bury the general,” Murdock said. “We’ll make up a story that the general killed himself and fell into the river and we couldn’t find his body.”

Ten minutes later, Murdock had convinced Captain Radiwitch that he should lead the way downstream to the coast, then contact the Russian hovercraft to come get them. He still had his walkie-talkie, but he couldn’t use it here in the mountains. He also took the Japanese prisoners, who were now willing captives.

When they were gone, the SEALs made a grave for General Raiden Nishikawa, much as Jaybird had suggested. They finished it with a stack of dead limbs and brush that no animal could get through.

Then they marched off downstream toward the coast.

Holt fired up the SATCOM on TAC Two. The planes did not respond.

He tried TAC One, but reception was not possible through the mountains.

“We get to the coast we’ll try it again,” Holt said. “It should work out there.”

Murdock had grilled the seven SEALs on the death of the general.

They had to have the same story. The general had committed hara-kiri with his samurai sword, then toppled into the surging river, and they hadn’t been able to find him.

It took them another two hours to hike down the stream to the coast. Then the Tac One channel worked and Murdock talked to the admiral.

He explained their chase and the final capture and what had happened to General Nishikawa. The admiral said he would report it to the embassy and to Washington.

“Well done, Commander. You need transport?”

“First we have to find the other half of our platoon and about thirty Russians.”

“That would be Lieutenant Dewitt and the Second Squad. When you assaulted the mountain, he pulled back his squad with the Russians and worked back to the coast. One of our choppers picked him up about an hour ago. The Russians commandos with Dewitt are on their air-cushion craft. They radioed to us to come and get the SEALS.”

“Wondered about that. You might tell the Russian floater to move about four klicks north to find their captain and his eight men.”

“Will do, Commander. We’ll see you soon.”

Murdock sat down with his back against a tree ten yards from the beach and watched the waves roll in. The seven SEALs were close by.

“I’d kill for an MRE,” Ronson said.

“Hey, didn’t you bring one?” Jaybird asked. “I thought everyone did. Hell, no, I’m not sharing.”

The six SEALs rushed him, rolled him on the ground, and made certain he didn’t have an MRE in his pack.

“Doc, how about a casualty report,” Murdock said.

“Nothing I know about. Some nicks and scrapes, and Jaybird is getting strangled. That’s about all. We left Washington back at the village with that broken ankle.”

“Yeah, we still have all of our EARS? Count them, Jaybird.”

A minute later he reported. “All present, Commander.”

“Good. Stroh would skin, roast, and feed us to alligators if we lost one of them. We should have a bird here soon. Sack out if anybody wants to.” Murdock grinned. Even before he said it he heard two of the SEALs snoring. Yeah, great idea. His chin dropped to his chest and he slept.