Ed Dewitt and Jaybird moved up beside Murdock. “Range to the choppers?” Murdock asked.
“Four hundred yards,” Jaybird said. “We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to stand and fight sometime.”
“Let’s hit them with the Fifty, kill the choppers, then we can take on the troops,” Dewitt said.
Murdock watched the enemy troops move forward cautiously. The SEALs had another ten minutes before the Iraqi soldiers overran them.
“Get Bradford working with the fifty,” Murdock said. “With his first shot we use the MGs on the choppers, and the rest of us with long guns get down on the troops. Go.”
Ed left to pass the word to his men. The sixteen SEALs moved up into a line of skirmishers facing the enemy troops. Two minutes after the decision, everyone was in place, and Bradford fired his first round.
It hit the lead chopper in the engine compartment. Its rotor died where it had been idling.
The other SEALs with long guns opened up on the troops advancing on them. Four or five went down before the Iraqis hit the dirt. The two machine guns chattered at the choppers. One burst into flames. The second one had died in place.
Then Joe Douglas and Horse Ronson turned their machine-gun sights on the advancing troops. When the MGs took over, the Iraqi troops were pinned down. They couldn’t advance into the deadly machine-gun and rifle fire, and they couldn’t stand up to retreat.
Miguel Fernandez with his sniper rifle picked off a soldier whenever he found one moving or showing above the desert terrain.
The firefight was too far away for those men with the MP-5’s.
Murdock used his radio, and told all the MP-5 shooters to crawl to the rear. Thirty yards away was a small wadi that had been dug out by the occasional cloudbursts. He got them into it, then pulled back everyone but the machine gunners. He stayed with the MG men until the rest of the platoon was in the gully.
He signaled for Ronson to cease fire and get to the rear and the safety of the wadi. He used Douglas to keep up firing across the spread of the enemy troops.
They were taking only an occasional round from the Iraqi troops, who had just lost their transport. They could be thinking about the long walk back to their base.
“Let’s go,” Murdock told Douglas. He folded the bipod, and they ran the first twenty yards before the Iraqis realized they weren’t taking fire anymore. A few rounds came, then more. Murdock and Douglas hit the dirt, and crawled. At the same time, the SEAL long guns from the top of the wadi spoke, and silenced the Iraqi weapons.
Murdock and Douglas rolled over the lip of the ravine, and tumbled to the bottom six feet down.
“Let’s move,” Murdock said. “Form up, and double-time out of here, down the gully, and when we get some distance, we’ll bug out southwest.
Move, move, move.”
They ran down the ravine. It gradually got deeper but headed to the south, so they kept in it.
By the time they had been running for five minutes, Murdock called a halt on his radio. “Lam, take a look over the rim, and see if you can spot anybody trailing us.”
Lam crawled up the ten-foot-high bank, and stared back the way they had come. He used his NVGs, and checked out every area he could see.
When he dropped down from the bank, he shook his head.
“Can’t see a rat’s ass of them out there, Commander. Not a farting one.”
“They’re probably trying to figure out if they have any radio to contact their base,” Dewitt said. “If no radio, they’ll have one fucking long hike.”
Murdock turned to Salwa. “Any of this area look familiar to you?”
The Kuwaiti official shook his head. “Not right here. There are wadies like this all over this end of the desert. The rain comes down in bucketfuls, and runs off just as fast.”
“So, it’s southwest again. Let’s get up the bank, and on the move.
The time is now oh-oh-forty-five. We have maybe six hours to sunrise, if we’re lucky.”
Four men went up and over the bank. Before anyone else could climb the bank, they all heard rifle fire from somewhere in front. The four men dropped back down again.
“Whole shitpot full of them not a hundred yards out there,” Lampedusa said. “Looks like they came down another arroyo somewhere and found us.”
Murdock motioned the long guns to the top of the bank. He sent three men with MP-5’s down each way along the gully for thirty yards.
“Look over the top of the bank, and shoot if you’ve got a target,” Murdock told the men with long guns. “We don’t want them any closer.
Let’s use some forty-mike grenades if it looks good. Now.”
He moved up, and watched over the lip of the ravine. He could barely make out a line of Iraqi troops in front. They would go to ground with the first shot. His MP-5 wouldn’t get that far.
“Fire when ready,” he said to his lip mike. The two machine guns and the two sniper rifles blazed and chattered. Murdock thought he saw three men hit in the firing; then the troops ahead dropped into the dirt making poor targets. His men ducked below the ridge as they took return fire.
Lampedusa was back at the top of the bank with his NVG, and his Colt 4-A1. He picked out a target through the Night Vision Goggles and fired.
“Yes,” he said, and dropped down.
Murdock handed his NVGs to Horse Ronson, who popped up with his machine gun and soon fired three five-round bursts, then came back down to his protection.
“Them assholes don’t have no cover out there,” Ronson said. A flurry of rounds slammed over the top of the ravine; then all four long guns went back up, and Lam made it five. The long guns took turns firing to keep the Iraqi troops pinned down, as Lam loaded a 40mm grenade and fired. He was long. He fired a second round, a WP, and saw the flash as the furiously burning white phosphorus rained down on half a dozen of the Iraqi shooters out front.
Down to the left, Murdock heard some firing. He ran that way to find his three men with MP-5’s crouched along the side of the ravine, firing straight ahead.
Murdock felt some rounds slam past him, and he pasted himself against the side of the ditch, then hurried on to his three men.
“Skipper, we caught four of them trying to outflank us along here.
We dropped three of them, but missed the fourth. Figure he’s long gone now heading for the rest of the troops.”
“Let’s look at the bodies,” Murdock said. They were only fifty feet up the gully. Two of them had AK-47’s, and the third some foreign make of submachine gun.
All were dead.
“Bring the two AK-47’s,” Murdock said. “We might need them. And get all the ammo you can find.” Murdock looked at the submachine gun, and dropped it. He preferred his MP-5.
“Stay here and watch for any more of them,” Murdock said. “I’ll bring you back in as soon as I think it’s safe.”
He ran back to the main body. Jaybird saw him coming in the darkness, and intercepted him.
“That first man over the side got hit, Commander. It’s Gonzalez.
Doc says the round went into his upper chest. Not sure if it missed his lung or not. So far no trouble breathing. He can walk, but he won’t be doing much with his weapon.”
Murdock found Gonzalez. Doc was still with him.
“Hang in there, Gonzalez. Doc is fixing you up. We’re almost to the border. A piece of cake from here. Do what Doc tells you, and take it easy.”
Doc went with Murdock off a dozen yards. “Not good, Commander.
Bullet’s up high, might have missed a lung, but it might have punctured it and it could collapse.”
“How far can he walk?”
“Don’t know. I just hope he isn’t bleeding inside. I’ll stay with him.”
Murdock nodded, and checked with Jaybird on the top of the bank.
“They tried one rush, but went down when we opened up again with the MGs. My guess is they are down to maybe twenty who can fight. The odds are getting better.”
“Let’s get all of the Colts up here, and throw out about twenty forty-mike-mike. That’s the best way to rout them. If we can make them run, then we can choggie down our ravine. Don’t know where the hell it’s going, but it’s away from here.”
Jaybird called up the men with the Colt carbines that could fire the grenades. He had five Colts.
“Five rounds each,” Jaybird said. “Alternate HE and WP if you’ve got them. Let’s get this fracas settled.”
Murdock told the MG guys to do twenty rounds each just before the grenades went out. They did.
The grenades fell just after the machine guns tapered off. Murdock watched from the top edge of the bank. He saw one Iraqi leap up, and run to the rear. Good. Five grenades had dropped in, and he could hear some screams. Then the second volley. Just as it ended, two more men raced away to the rear into the darkness.
Murdock used his mike. “You six flankers, come in. We’re going to be shagging ass here in about three.”
Murdock watched the last three volleys of grenades explode on the Iraqi troops. Some were long, two were short, but enough hit the flattened troops to rout them. When the last of the small bombs went off, Murdock used his NVGs and saw six men limping to the rear. Six more leaped up and ran hard back the way they had come.
Murdock used the mike again. “Doc, you and Gonzales head down the gully. We’ll follow it another mile if we can. At least it gives us some protection. We’ll catch up. Don’t push him too hard.”
Gonzalez heard the message in his radio. He snorted. “What the hell he mean, not push me too hard. I’m a hairy-assed, nookie-fucking SEAL, goddamnit. I can keep up with this shitty outfit any day.”
Doc Ellsworth agreed with him. Doc took Gonzalez’s weapon over his shoulder and helped him stand.
“Okay, now nice and easy, RG. We ain’t in no damned race here. We just move, right?”
Doc was surprised how slow Gonzalez walked. The bullet had done more than drill one small hole. It hadn’t come out his back, so it was inside somewhere causing all sorts of hell. Doc hoped that Gonzalez could last for a mile.
Murdock and the rest of the platoon moved out a few minutes later, and caught the slow-moving Gonzalez quickly. Murdock slowed the pace, put Lam out in front, and told him to check the sides of the ravine every few minutes. He had Jaybird riding Tail End Charlie as rear guard.
Murdock figured the pace was about three miles an hour. If Gonzalez could maintain it for two hours, they should be right next door to the Saudi border. A damn big if, he knew.
He called Ed up and laid it out. “War games, Ed. We’re in this situation, and you’re El Raza. You know about where we are. What are you going to do after the choppers didn’t nail us?”
Ed took a deep breath. Murdock had caught him doing that several times when he wanted a minute to think. He shifted his weapon to the other shoulder, and motioned with his right hand.
“First, I’d get some troops out in front of where it looks like we’re headed. I’d cover both of the borders. Say about three miles away from the line. Put a blocking force of all the men I could spare.
We know El Raza had two hundred men at one time. We lowered his force by at least a dozen, maybe fifteen or twenty.
“He has some choppers. Just how many we don’t know. So I’d use choppers or half-tracks and move eighty men into blocking positions along the Saudi border and along the Kuwait boundary. Then I’d sit and wait for us to fall into the trap, or for daylight when my jets could do the job.”
“El Raza doesn’t have any jets.”
“Then whose were those we saw?”
“Probably Uncle Saddam. He may be in the equation now. If so, he’s got all the firepower, and men, he wants. But would he pull El Raza’s chestnuts out of the pot? Why would he?”
“To give Uncle Sam a bloody nose. He’s already shot down one U.S. chopper and should be able to prove it. If he could capture or kill sixteen U.S. military men on Iraq soil, he could shout invasion and all sorts of wild things in the world court of public opinion. And he’d win the round.”
“Good. About what I had decided on, the blocking move. If he has eighty men for each spot, how long a line could he use to be sure to block us?”
“Eighty men at twenty yards apart at night would be the best he could do. That’s sixteen hundred yards. Damn near a mile. Seventeen hundred and sixty yards in a mile. Two eight-eighties that I used to run for the Academy track team.”
“If we hit the screen, we’d have to take out three of the sentries to give ourselves a safe passage between them of eighty yards. Almost a football field. Which I didn’t play on for the Academy.” They both chuckled.
“So, if Lam can spot them in time, and if we manage to hit the wrong spot where they are, we need to take out three sentries in a row,” Dewitt said. “Wish we had bows and arrows. Even our silenced sniper rifles are going to make too much noise.
“Knife work,” Murdock said. “You, me, and Jaybird.”
Lampedusa came back every ten minutes. He was surprised how slowly they were moving, then remembered Gonzalez.
“I can’t see shit up there,” Lam told Murdock. “Don’t look like there’s anybody ahead or behind us. Think we shot the fuck out of that chopper bunch.”
Murdock told him about what he and Dewitt had been talking about.
“Makes sense. Only how do you know they’ll put them twenty yards apart?”
“We don’t. It’s what I’d do in his situation,” Murdock said.
“What if he figures by our hits on his people that we’re heading for Saudi, not the other one, and he puts all one-eighty along that border?”
“Then we’ll have a better chance of hitting his nearly two-mile picket fence, but still just as good a chance of getting through,” Dewitt said.
“Yeah. Okay. I want to be one of the guys with the knife.”
“A volunteer,” Dewitt said.
“We’ll worry about that when you spot those pickets. Remember, this is Iraq. They’ll probably be talking and most surely smoking.
Should be fish in a fucking teacup.”
The pace had slowed. Murdock wondered about carrying Gonzalez. He was 180 pounds. Ronson could pack him for half a mile. Then what? No, they were stuck with the best pace that their wounded man could do.
Murdock went up to see them. Gonzales looked worse. Doc gave him another shot of morphine from the small one-time-use ampoules, and he perked up a little.
“You tell me where you hurt, Gonzalez. None of this hero shit, you understand?”
“Yeah, Doc. Too damn tired to argue.”
“How tired? Like you aren’t getting enough blood to carry oxygen to your muscles?”
“No, just tired. My arms feel like they’re about to fall off, but they ain’t.”
Gonzalez wasn’t wearing his combat vest with his ammo and other items. It usually weighed about twenty pounds. Doc had given the Colt carbine to someone else as well.
“So, buddy, just keep moving them big feet one ahead of the other, and we’ll get out of this chicken-shit country.”
“Amen to that. How far?”
“Not a clue, nobody will tell me. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
Later, Murdock thought he heard an aircraft, but he couldn’t be sure. Nobody else heard it. He was fantasizing. He checked his watch.
It was 0130. They had five hours to daylight. Salwa had put on Gonzalez’s combat vest, and had his Colt. He gave Murdock the .45 H&K pistol.
“I’m more used to a long gun,” Salwa said.
The ravine kept getting smaller and shallower. They were moving upstream. A half mile more and they were back on the desert floor.
They shifted their heading back to the southwest.
Salwa came up to Murdock. “Hey, now I know where I am. We’re near some caves — I don’t remember what they called them. Back in my student days we came here on a field trip. Relations between the countries were better then.”
Murdock gave the Kuwaiti a drink from his canteen.
“I’m remembering a little more about this area,” Salwa said.
“There were several of the large caves. Ancient ones with hints of a previous civilization.”
Murdock put his canteen back on his belt. “How big were the caves?”
“Huge. But it was a long time ago.”
“Might be a good defensive position if we get tracked down,” Murdock said. He took off the NVGs and handed them to the Kuwaiti.
“Take a look around, you might see something familiar.”
Salwa took the goggles, and stared around the landscape for a minute. Then he caught up, and walked again beside Murdock.
“Yes, I did see something. The start of a wadi. It’s nearly on our course. I think if it’s the right wadi, that I can find the caves.”
Murdock talked with Ed Dewitt and Jaybird. They agreed.
Ten minutes later they moved in a slightly more southern direction, and soon found a wadi, or gully, that was small, but grew deeper as they walked along it.
“Yes,” Salwa said. “This is the one. The caves should be less than a half mile ahead.”
Murdock went to the front of the line and checked in with Gonzalez.
He looked decidedly worse than he had a half hour before. As he walked beside Murdock, Gonzalez stumbled, and Doc had to catch him. Murdock talked to his mike.
“Ronson, come up to the front.”
A minute later Ronson came striding up. He took one look at Gonzalez, picked him up like a baby, and carried him forward. He had given his machine gun to Murdock.
“Half a mile, and we take a break,” Murdock said. Gonzalez had closed his eyes. Murdock knew how proud he was to be a SEAL. He didn’t want anyone helping him. Only now it was absolutely necessary.
Murdock went back to the middle of the line, and told Dewitt about the assist. The big problem now would be daylight. Before then they had to have somewhere to hide or be across the border into Saudi Arabia.
The caves might be the answer. That is, if they didn’t run into the blocking force before it got anywhere near light. Murdock wanted to be well into Saudi Arabia by the time the desert sun came up.
The caves would give them good protection for a rest. If the Kuwaiti was right, and if he could find them in the dark.