Pacific Siege

5

The Third Platoon hiked along the wadi for half an hour. Murdock heard something and hit the dirt, and the rest of the platoon went down as well. He turned. The sound had come from close by.

Fayd Salwa chuckled. “Commander, I’m afraid it’s the alarm on my watch. It’s new, and I’ve never figured out how to turn it off, so I set it at two-fifteen A. M., and two-fifteen P.m. Sorry.”

“False alarm,” Murdock said into his lip mike. “Let’s move.”

He grinned at Salwa. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Just glad we weren’t sneaking up on somebody. At least now I know what time it is.

We have, what, maybe four hours to daylight?”

“Sunup about six-thirty, or oh-six-thirty.” Salwa looked ahead again through the NVG. “Yes, yes. This is the way. The caves are no more than a hundred yards ahead. We’ll go down a steep place in the wadi here.”

Five minutes later, they had dropped in the gully to twenty feet below the level of the desert. The first cave was nothing but a black hole in a rock wall.

“First one isn’t much,” Salwa said. “Let’s go to the middle one.

It’s huge.”

Fifty feet down the wadi, they came to the second cave. The wadi was open on the top, and the cave showed black and dank on the right-hand side. Murdock took a pencil flash from his vest, and aimed it into the cave. The thin light went only a few feet.

“It’s more than a hundred feet deep, and thirty feet wide,” Salwa said. “The ceiling is up about twenty feet. Lots of room.”

Murdock stared at it. “How far are we from the border, and can we make it there before daylight?”

“From here, four miles. I know. We hiked in when I was in school.

Four miles, four hours, usually no problem.”

Murdock rubbed his jaw. Gonzalez would be a problem. “Take a break,” he said into the Motorola. “Fifteen minutes.” He turned back to the Kuwaiti. “Do any of these caves have water in them, drinkable water?”

“This one does. Far back.”

Three of them carried all the canteens, and found a small spring that came out of seemingly solid rock, gurgled down twenty feet, and vanished underground again. They filled the canteens, and using both Murdock and Dewitt’s flashlights, worked their way back to the front of the cave.

Murdock told Holt to make another SATCOM contact giving their MUGR coordinates. The reply came back quickly.

“You now have a better location. Kuwait border still too hot to cross. Might have a chance since you’re near the Saudi border. Give us an hour to do some consulting with our allies.”

“Not much of an answer, Commander,” Holt said.

“No answer at all.”

Just before the end of the break, Joe Lampedusa, the platoon scout, hit his mike.

“L-T, we’ve got company. Commander, that is. A small vehicle of some kind with bright lights just slid down the steep grade, and is about fifty feet up the wadi. Maybe a dozen men with it.”

Murdock ran for the entrance. The two machine gunners Joe Douglas and Horse Ronson, beat him to it. They went prone, and set up their machine guns, then charged in the first round as silently as possible.

The Iraqi men in the rig left it, and investigated the first cave.

Six of them were visible in front of the headlights.

“They can’t miss us,” Murdock said. “Get two grenade throwers up here,” he told his lip mike.

Kenneth Ching and Guns Franklin slid to the ground and dug out hand grenades.

Murdock waited a minute; then more men came in front of the small rig, and the motor started. Murdock jolted off six rounds from his MP-5SD, and the machine guns chimed in with a series of five-round bursts.

Four men in the headlights went down. The truck’s windshield shattered. A hand grenade burst at the side of the rig showering instant death. The second grenade that exploded was WP, white phosphorus, and it sent unquenchable blobs of the fast-burning phosphorus spraying into the cave, and across four more men, who went down screaming. The sticky substance burned through uniforms, then into flesh, and through it and bones as the soldiers bellowed in agony.

There was no return fire. The men were so caught by surprise, and the fire coming at them was so intense, that all died in their tracks, or ran out of the wadi hoping to escape the sudden death.

Murdock took the men with him from the cave mouth, and charged the jeep with assault fire. There was no opposition. They checked the bodies in the pale moonlight. Only one was alive. He was dispatched with a round to the head. SEALs take no prisoners, leave no wounded.

Five minutes later, the platoon had saddled up, and moved out of the wadi heading due southwest for the Saudi border.

“Only four miles,” Murdock said. “A little over four miles to the border. We can do that standing on our pricks and waving our arms. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” somebody said on the radio. “Who the fuck were those guys?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Murdock said. “Either Saddam’s troops or El Raza’s kin. They’re dead, and we’re going home.”

Gonzalez was doing better. The fifteen-minute break had rejuvenated him. He wanted to walk. Doc told Murdock Gonzalez couldn’t walk far. Murdock had Bill Bradford, the next-largest man in the platoon, walk beside Gonzalez for when he was needed.

They hiked across the barren desert-like landscape for a half hour, and were about to head down a gentle slope when Murdock saw Lam go down ten yards ahead. Murdock and the rest of them hit the desert sand and rocks.

Just ahead in the moonlight, they could see a small campfire. They heard the sound of music, some stringed instrument with lots of weird sounds and the plucking of the strings.

Murdock, Ed Dewitt, and Jaybird crawled up to the scout, and watched the scene below.

“How many men?” Murdock asked.

“Twenty to twenty-five,” Jaybird said.

“More like thirty to thirty-five,” Dewitt countered.

“Yeah, Commander, at least thirty,” Lam said.

“Too damn many of the fuckers to go through them. We take a small detour and quietly move around the sleeping dogs and let them make their music.” Murdock looked at the shadowed faces of the others. “Any other suggestions?”

“Go around,” Jaybird said, and the other two SEALs nodded. They backtracked a half mile, then did a wide roundabout of the camp. They never came within a half mile of it, and when they were safely around, they moved back on the compass course that Salwa gave them.

Before they finished their backtracking, Gonzales fell to his knees. Bill Bradford put him on his back piggyback-style, and told him to hold on. Bradford carried him as if he was a feather pillow.

Twenty minutes later a chopper came out of the dark sky with a searchlight probing the sandy ground. It moved over the land slowly, searching with its long beam.

“Almost a mile away,” Lam said.

“Yeah, but coming this way,” Murdock said. “They must have had a radio contact with that last bunch we took out in the wadi.”

“So we keep going?” Jaybird said.

“Absolutely,” the Platoon Leader said. “Let’s pick it up a little and tell Ronson to break out that Fifty he got from Bradford. We might need it if that chopper pilot spots us.”

“We gonna play Chiricahua if they get close?” Lam asked.

“Fucking right. Best way to become invisible. In the meantime, we move faster.”

They stretched out their stride, and rolled across the desert-like landscape at nearly six miles to the hour. Then the chopper changed directions, and came directly at them. When it was a quarter of a mile away, Murdock hit his lip mike.

“Indian it, you guys. Down and sandy. Cover up everything but your eyes. Move. Now.”

Salwa caught on quickly, and scooped the sand and rocks over his dark clothes while lying prone with his head down. Murdock added some rocks and sand to the civilian, then covered himself. He had taken a good look at his men. They were dispersed at least ten yards apart.

Most looked like lumps of sand and rock. He saw no telltale sign of uniforms, boots, or weapons.

“Ronson, keep that Fifty loaded and handy. Don’t fire unless the chopper spots us and opens up. Then take him out.”

“Roger that, Commander.”

They waited.

Murdock lifted his head two inches, and took a look. The chopper was doing S turns in a good search pattern, but still heading dead for their position. There was a chance they would be in the gully between the S turns, but there was just as good a chance they would be directly under the moving beam. Whoever was on the light did a good job of covering the spots between the turns where the chopper wasn’t directly overhead.

It came closer. Murdock had kept his lip mike free. Now he spoke softly into it. “This is it. He’s about a hundred yards out. It’s down and dirty for us. Ronson, keep it ready but out of sight. Right?”

“Aye, aye, Commander.”

The chopper was at three hundred feet, Murdock figured. An ideal height. It gave enough spread for the light, and kept the chopper low enough so the observers could pick out things on the ground. He hoped they weren’t good at their jobs.

The bird came closer, swung away from them in the S turn, then came back almost directly overhead. Even at three hundred feet the downdraft blew around some sand. Just enough to make it harder to see what the searchlight picked up.

Then Murdock pushed his face into the sand, and held his breath.

The chopper swung back, and angled directly over the length of the platoon.

Murdock could feel the brilliant light moving toward him; then it came directly over him, and he held his breath again. The beam hovered over him a moment, then moved on. At any time Murdock expected to hear a door gunner’s machine gun chattering away, spraying the SEALs’ backs with deadly slugs, but no sound of shooting came.

The whup, whup, whup of a big chopper filled the air, and Murdock let out his breath as the sound faded a little as it edged away. Then it came louder as the Iraqi chopper did another S turn, then started to fade as it kept moving away from them. When the bird was half a mile away, Murdock called the men out of the sand.

“Fucking ants they got here are as big as fucking rabbits,” Joe Douglas said. It broke the tension, and the men brushed off the sand and got back in their double diamond formations. They moved out to the southwest with Lam on point.

Ed Dewitt jogged up, and fell into step beside Murdock.

“That might have been one of Saddam’s choppers,” Ed said. “If El Raza had a few, we must have shot them down by now. But would El Raza call in Saddam’s birds? I don’t know.”

“Could be. I still like the idea that he’ll put out a blocking force. He could do it with the trucks and half-tracks he has left. How is Gonzalez holding up?”

“He’s weaker. Ronson and Bradford are taking turns carrying him.

Slowing us some, but not much. When we gonna get out of this chicken-shit sandbox?”

“Soon, we hope. Soon.”

“Eat dirt,” Lam said on the Motorola, and the Third Platoon went into the Iraqi topsoil. “Commander, you best look at this,” Lampedusa, on the point fifty yards in front of them, said.

Murdock and Dewitt double-timed up to Lam, and went into the dirt beside him. Ahead they could look down a gentle slope. It had probably been made by runoff water over centuries of cloudbursts. In the middle of it, three hundred yards away, they saw three vehicles in the faint moonlight. There were troops around them, evidently eating a meal.

“Oh-three-hundred chow-down,” Lam said.

The officers had their NVGs up and working.

“One weapons or personnel carrier, two smaller rigs,” Dewitt said.

“I’d say maybe twenty-five men.”

“Good uniforms, good equipment,” Murdock said. “That would make them Iraqi Army. Some of Saddam’s outlying troops. They must be looking for us, or may be just in a blocking position.”

Jaybird had come up and checked through Murdock’s NVGs. “Oh, yeah.

Good gear. Definitely not El Raza baby. I move to take out their transport with the Fifty, then get on our horses and run like homeboy bastards for Saudi.”

Murdock took the NVG and checked again. “We put the twenty-one-Es thirty yards apart for convergence. Then we bring Bradford and the Fifty in here. We put twenty forty-mike-mike on them as well, with half HE and half WP. Should do it. Call up the men, Jaybird.”

Five minutes later, the SEALs were in position. Murdock pointed at Lampedusa, who angled his Colt M-4AI with the grenade launcher on it, and the scout fired the first 40mm grenade. At once the Big Fifty and the machine guns and the other grenade launchers fired.

Bradford’s first .50-caliber round hit the larger weapons/ personnel carrier in the engine and blew it apart, which started a small fire. The men below bellowed in panic, throwing away their meals and dodging for cover. The machine guns riddled them, putting a dozen down and dead before they could find any cover.

“Die, you sonsofbitches,” Horse Ronson bellowed over the nine-round bursts of the 7.62 NATO slugs that slammed out of his H&K chattergun.

He aimed and fired again, chopping down a pair of men charging away from the trucks.

Miguel Fernandez zeroed in on a man trying to get out the door of the burning rig. His H&K PSG1 sniper rifle fired, and the Iraqi slammed against the truck door and sagged down dead in an instant.

Al Adams judged the distance with his 40mm grenade launcher and fired. The first round was long. He adjusted and dropped the next two right in the churning mass of frightened men. The WP showered like white waterfalls, and the Big Fifty knocked out the other two vehicles before anyone had a chance to start the engines. There were only a dozen shots fired from below at the SEALS.

Within forty-five seconds it was over. Two of the rigs below burned brightly in the Iraqi night. Bodies sprawled around the vehicles. Murdock guessed eight to ten had escaped into the desert wondering what hit them and how an 0300 supper had turned into a death knell for so many of them.

Murdock checked the scene of the slaughter below again with the NVGs. He nodded.

“Let’s saddle up and get out of here,” he said. “We definitely can’t use their transport.”

Fayd Salwa kept shaking his head. “I don’t see how you did it. So quick, so deadly. These weapons you have are truly remarkable. All I ever had was a rifle that worked sometimes. Truly amazing.” He smiled.

“I’m grateful that we are on the same side in this difficult situation.”

“Good,” Murdock said. “How far are we from the border?”

Salwa thought for a moment, looked around at the moonscape, and nodded. “Yes, I recognize that small wadi back there. I’d say two of your miles.”

“Two miles and it’s oh-four-twelve. Two hours to sunup. We better hustle.”

They marched again. Murdock knew there was no chance to fly in a chopper for a pickup. Not with Iraqis angry and working the border with Kuwait. They would probably be over here along this end of the Saudi line as well.

The SEALs kept hiking. The coolness of the desert night crept into their cammies, and neutralized the sweat. At 0440, Murdock called a halt and looked at Salwa.

“Where’s the damned border?”

“It should be close by,” the Kuwaiti said. “I’ve been here a dozen times. Unless … “

“In two hours it’ll be light,” Murdock said. “They’ll have every plane in this sector up searching for our asses.”

“My mistake somehow,” Salwa said. “I’m sorry. I thought we would be in Saudi Arabia by now. We must be in a slightly different sector.”

“Just slightly,” Murdock said.

They marched across the desert again in the morning darkness.

Ten minutes later, Lam hit the mike. “Better get up here, Commander. I think we found the fucking picket line.”

Both officers and Jaybird went up to where Lam lay in the dirt on a slight rise. Ahead, across a quarter mile of desert, they could see winking lights, and hear some metal-on-metal sounds.

“Could be the damn cooks getting breakfast ready,” Jaybird said.

The NVGs showed a different picture. Even at that distance, Murdock could pick out individuals. The men were in a defensive picket line stretched across in front of the SEALS. It looked like they were spaced about thirty yards apart. He saw no telephones or wire. Some of them could have radios. The SEALs would have to chance that.

Jaybird saw the same thing. Then Ed Dewitt nodded. “Sure as hell it’s their picket line,” he said. “Where do we go through?”

Murdock looked over the line again. Slightly to the left, he saw a concentration of men and a half-track. That would be the center of the line.

“Their center looks to be to the left. We’ll angle five hundred yards to the right, and try for our penetration. Jaybird, Lam, and I will go in with our K-bars. Ed, you’ll have the con if we don’t come back. Try an end run. They’ll be looking for you. Let’s move the troops.”

They hiked parallel with the line for ten minutes. Then Murdock stopped them, and told everyone what they would do.

“When you hear ‘ left, right, and center,’ you come for the center of the slot. We’ll keep our radio transmissions to a minimum.

They might have some kind of receiver that would show up our signals.

Any questions?”

“Wouldn’t silenced rounds do the job?” Fernandez asked.

“Too risky,” Dewitt said. “It’s the noise factor. We can’t take that chance. We’ll work the program. As soon as we get the all-clear, we’ll go through the fence in single file, five yards apart on the double. Don’t let any equipment jangle or make any noise. You know the silent routine.”

Murdock pointed Jaybird at the middle target. He took the one on the right, and Lam had the left one. They moved out like shadows on the desert floor. They were fifty yards from the targets, and crawled the last twenty. Murdock saw that his sentry was smoking. Good, it would hamper his night vision. Murdock drew his K-bar fighting knife and crawled forward.

The sentry moved, flicked his cigarette away, and took six steps toward Murdock. He gave a long sigh, and urinated. He was totally relaxed.

Murdock came out of his crouched position, and surged forward ten feet, his boots pounding the ground. The sentry heard his steps, and half turned. Murdock’s K-bar drove into his side, through his shirt and upward, slicing through part of the intestine and lung, then into his heart.

The Iraqi’s eyes went wide. He started to say something; then his mouth opened in a scream that never made it out of his throat. His knees buckled, and he fell toward Murdock, who caught him and eased him to the ground.

Murdock touched his lip mike. “Clear right.”

Jaybird had the center. He crawled the last thirty yards, slow and sure. Twice he saw his man look out front, scanning the area. Then he seemed to relax, and concentrated on cleaning his fingernails with a small knife.

The soldier’s rifle had been slung over his shoulder with the muzzle pointing down. It would take precious seconds to get the weapon up and ready to fire. Deadly seconds.

Jaybird held two K-bars. One he had balanced for throwing. He held it in his right hand. He moved forward again on his elbows and knees. Twice he had to stop when the man looked across his position.

Closer. He was within twenty feet of the man now. Too far for a throw. He edged closer, six inches at a time. The sentry coughed, and looked to his right. He whispered something that Jaybird couldn’t hear.

Evidently the one he tried to call to didn’t hear him either.

The sentry sighed, reached his right hand into his pocket, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Jaybird worked closer. When the Iraqi soldier’s match flared, totally destroying the man’s night vision, Jaybird lifted up from ten feet and threw the K-bar with one swift motion.

Hours of practice had made Jaybird an excellent knife thrower. The long blade and handle turned over once, and the point of the K-bar drove into the sentry’s chest just to the left of his heart. With the throw, Jaybird had charged forward.

When the knife pierced his chest, the sentry let out a groan of surprise, caught the blade with one hand, and fell to his left. Jaybird was on top of him in seconds, his other K-bar slashing deeply across the soldier’s throat, severing his left carotid artery and jugular vein.

The man gasped once and died as blood drained from his brain.

Jaybird quickly searched the body, found nothing of value, and hit his mike. “Clear center.”

Lam had a tougher target on the left. The man looked hyperactive.

As Lam crawled up to twenty yards, the sentry kept pacing back and forth. He checked the area directly in front of his post, and the landscape on each side as well.

Lam stopped within twenty feet of the sentry. If the Iraqi took a good look directly in front of him, he would be able to make out Lam flat on his belly. Lam brought up a borrowed, silenced MP-5 on single-shot. Just in case. He held the K-bar knife in his right hand.

The sentry made his ten-yard hike on either side, and came back.

Lam knew he couldn’t risk going any closer. He felt around on the ground, and found a fist-sized rock. He’d revert to his old kid games of war in the Oregon mountain brush. He hefted the rock, then threw it at some dead shrub directly behind the sentry. The bush was no more than a foot high, and half of it had died from lack of rain.

The rock hit the dead branches and snapped them, making a surprisingly loud sound in the desert silence. The sentry spun around, his weapon up and ready.

Lam came out of his crouch, took a dozen silent steps toward the man, then surged forward sprinting the last six steps, his arm held in front of him like a lance with the K-bar a straight extension of his arm.

The sentry must have heard him at the last moment. He spun around just in time for the blade to drive deeply into his chest. It missed his heart, but slashed through his lung, and chopped in half a major artery supplying the lungs.

The Iraqi sentry sagged, then slammed backward from the force of the knife thrust. Lam let go of the knife. The soldier tried to scream, but had no voice left. His eyes closed, then opened. His hands reached for weapons that were no longer there.

Lam bent over him, pulled out his knife, and stabbed the wounded man once more, driving his K-bar into the soldier’s heart. He waited a moment, and saw the life fade from the sentry’s eyes. Then he touched his mike.

“Clear left,” he said. Lam crouched over, and ran silently to the right. He spotted Jaybird a moment later, and dropped beside him.

Murdock was on the other side. They each pointed outward in defensive postures. No words were spoken.

Lieutenant (j. g.) Dewitt heard the third

“Clear,” and waved his men forward. All had weapons at the ready, with rounds chambered and safeties pushed off. They walked quickly single file, following Dewitt toward the center position, where Jaybird had vanished. They were five yards apart.

The silent file came out ten yards to the side of the three SEALs covering for them, continued on through, then spread out to ten yards between men. The three sentry-busters moved in at the end of the line, and walked backwards for a hundred yards watching the rear.

They were two hundred yards past the line when a single rifle shot sounded behind and to the right where the center of the picket line had been. “Double time, let’s get out of Dodge,” Murdock said into his mike.

They ran forward. Murdock heard movement to his right. He stared into the darkness, then used the NVGs.

“Hold it in place and in the dirt,” he said into his mike. A second later a flurry of rifle and submachine gun fire erupted to the left.

“I spotted about twenty troops over there just before they opened up. Some flankers. They know where we are. Fire at those muzzle flashes now!”

The stretch of desert erupted with the SEALs’ firepower. The snipers with NVGs picked off targets that showed themselves. Most of the Iraqis were flat on the ground firing at where the SEALs had been standing.

Murdock figured the range: two hundred yards. Maybe less. “How is our supply of forties?” he asked on the mike.

Radio reports came in that they had twenty-four rounds.

“Let’s each man shoot half his rounds. Make them on target, no more than two hundred yards. Fire now.”

The MP-5 weapons were of no use. Silenced, they were effective at no more than fifty yards.

Murdock wished now that he had a long gun. All he could do was watch. He concentrated on using the NVGs.

“Five of them moving up on the left flank,” he said into the mike.

At least three guns shifted fire there, and the flankers fell back dragging two wounded.

The 40mm grenades began dropping on the enemy troops. They took several direct hits along the line of shooters. After taking ten rounds of the grenades, the Iraqi troops surged ahead fifty yards to get out of the barrage, and went on firing.

The two SEAL machine guns worked overtime as the Iraqis moved up, cutting down five of them. “How many out there?” a voice on the Motorola asked. “I’ve got about twenty left,” Murdock replied. “Get those forties back on target.”

Another half dozen of the grenades dropped in on the Iraqi troops.

The firing died off for a moment, then picked up as some of the troops ahead of them made a fast retreat to the rear and vanished — probably into a wadi, Murdock decided.

Then the retreated troops covered for the rest of the soldiers as they raced to the gully and out of sight.

“Hold your fire,” Murdock said into the mike. “Looks like the bad guys have had enough for now. Anybody pick up a wound?”

The net went silent for a moment; then a voice came on, and Murdock was sure who it was.

“Yeah, got a scratch, upper right leg. Hurts like hell.”

“Ching, that you?” Doc Ellsworth asked.

“Yeah, not sure how fast I can walk.”

“Where are you, middle of the line?”

“Front, near the front.”

Murdock ran that way, and saw Doc ahead of him. Doc got there first. Kenneth Ching was down, and holding his right leg.

“Ed, get the rest of the platoon out of here, and take Salwa with you,” Murdock said into the mike. “Due southwest. Move them. We’ll catch up. Watch out for Gonzalez. Trade off on the men carrying him.

Move.”

Doc examined the leg with the help of a shaded mini-flash hung around his neck. “Bullet went through. Looks like it missed the bone.

Hurts like hell.” He bandaged it and got Ching on his feet.

“Limp a little and see if you can walk,” Doc said.

Ching tried. Limped and walked. He made it ten yards with Doc and Murdock beside him. Murdock had Ching’s Colt carbine.

“Yeah, I can make it. Got one of them shots, Doc?”

Ellsworth used a one-time shot of morphine, and Ching perked up.

“Yea, let’s go,” Ching said.

They caught the rest of the SEALs three hundred yards ahead. The main body had slowed. Doc left Ching, and went to check on Gonzalez.

They had stopped, and Fred Washington and Fernandez were taking turns carrying the hurt man.

Gonzalez couldn’t hold on anymore. His eyes were going glassy and he mumbled.

“Fireman’s carry,” Doc said. “It’ll keep his head down and he won’t fall off that way. We better move again.”

Murdock came to the front of the column with Salwa. They kept walking across the desert at a slower pace. The coolness of the desert night crept into their cammies and neutralized the sweat.

Another half mile, and Murdock called a halt. It was almost 0500.

“Salwa, where’s the damned border? Is it marked here?”

“It should be close. I’ve been here a dozen times, unless … “

“In an hour it’s going to be light,” Murdock said. “They’ll have every plane in this sector up searching for us to burn our asses.”

“Sorry. My mistake. I thought we would be in Saudi Arabia by now.

We must be in a slightly different area.”

“Just slightly,” Murdock said, his anger edging through.

Murdock checked on Ching. He was limping worse, but he waved away any help. “Hell, I’m a fucking SEAL,” he said.

They walked for another half hour at three miles an hour on the same compass bearing. The darkness began to evaporate around them. It would be dawn in half an hour.

Murdock stopped the men and dispersed them. He turned to Salwa.

“Now what? Just where the fuck are we?”

Salwa studied the landscape ahead of him. It looked much the same all the way around to Murdock. Salwa turned to Murdock, smiling. “Yes, yes, now I see. We hit the notch. A small area of Iraq that bulges into Saudi Arabia. It’s not more than three miles deep. We hit it almost in the center.”

“Three more miles, you’re sure?”

“No, we’re two thirds of the way there. A mile more. Yes, absolutely. Guaranteed.”

Murdock had just about given the order to move out when he heard the jets. “Figures,” Murdock said. “They can’t miss us out here.” He hit the lip mike. “Company. Probably Migs. Not sure what number, but doesn’t matter much with targets like us. If they spot us, and they almost certainly will, we disperse at least twenty-five yards apart.

Got that? At least twenty-five. We want to be as lousy a target as possible. Let’s stretch out our diamonds now and move. Salwa says we have another mile to the Saudi border. Let’s move out.”

It took the Migs ten minutes to find them. They had been on a grid search, and when they turned and came over the SEALs at sagebrush level, Murdock knew their ID had been confirmed. “Ground fire when they come back,” Murdock radioed. “You know the drill, fire in front of the bastards, long lead. Ground fire can be damned effective. Give it a try.”

The two Migs came one at a time, and the machine gunners and the long gun men had time to fire at both in succession. The jet fighters used their cannon, spraying the area with 20mm explosive rounds.

The trouble with jet aircraft strafing a ground target at five hundred miles an hour is that the rounds land from forty to sixty feet apart, depending on the angle of the aircraft. It makes for a lousy hit ratio on as small a target as the dispersed SEALs were.

After the first pass, Murdock hit the mike. “Casualty report, anybody hit?”

The air was silent a moment. Then Doc Ellsworth came on.

“Looks like Gonzales got hit by some shrapnel on his right leg.

Not too bad. But doesn’t help his general condition. I’ve got it under control. We’ll still have to carry him to the border.”

There were no more casualty reports.

“We hit the sonofabitch?” Ron Holt asked.

“Don’t think we had any hits, Holt. Anybody else pick up lead?”

Silence. “Okay, Doc. Stay with Gonzalez from here on in. Let’s try to get invisible with sand before the birds fly back.” The men spread out farther in the dirt and covered themselves with splotches of sand and rocks, weapons hidden under their bodies.

The jets came again, in the same formation. This time the machine gunners and Bradford with the Fifty had a better idea how to aim. The three men popped up when they saw the planes coming. Bradford picked up the strafers as early as he could, and fired for a nearly head-on shot.

He had time for just one shot, and triggered it off imagining that he could see the flight of the big .50-caliber round of explosive, armor-piercing destruction.

Joe Douglas had his H&K machine gun angled upward to meet the jets as well. Once they got overhead, it was too late. He fired a twelve-round burst as one of the Migs was a hundred yards away. The twelve slugs and the plane met at tremendous speed, and Douglas prayed that he had made some hits.

When the long gun men were sure they hadn’t fooled the pilots, every long gun fired, as the jets screamed overhead at less than fifty feet, then pulled up sharply and started their three-mile-wide circle to come back on target. The second Mig went around normally; then a thin trail of smoke came out of the craft. The smoke increased as the big plane wobbled slightly, then slewed to the left, and began to lose altitude.

The SEALs stood and cheered as the Mig dropped lower and lower until it tried a wheels up landing in the desert at more than 150 miles an hour. It hit, bounced, flipped over twice, and burst into flames.

The SEALs quieted and looked at Murdock.

“Okay, we got a lucky hit. The other Mig turned north, and must have hit his afterburner. We better hit ours too. Form up, and let’s move out.”

Doc Ellsworth fell into step beside Murdock. “Gonzalez is in damn serious condition. I don’t know what that slug hit inside him, but it ain’t good. He could use a doctor about now. We’re carrying him and trading off every quarter mile. Four different guys. We can make five miles an hour.”

Murdock nodded, and Doc went back to Gonzales. Murdock waved Salwa up. “What happens when we get to the border? Are there guards all along it? Wire, trenches, or just a single strand of wire identifying the border?”

“Usually nothing to mark the border. A survey post every six or eight miles. The jets would attract attention from the Saudis. My guess is there will be some kind of mobile force along the border here wondering what’s going on.”

“What part of the Saudi border is this?”

“The Irwado sector,” Salwa said. “That I’m sure of.”

Murdock used his Mike and told Ron Holt to come Up. They called a halt, and Holt set up the antenna and aimed it. Then Murdock typed out a message.

“Advise Saudis in the Irwado sector that friendlies are about to cross their border area inbound from Iraq. Make sure they know we are seventeen friendlies coming in.”

He got a quick response, and hoped that the message would be passed down from hand to hand until it got to the commander of whatever force maintained this sector of the Saudi Arabia border.

They marched.

There was no sign of any more Iraqi troops or planes.

A mile farther on, they came to a small rise, and Murdock called a halt and went up with Lam and Salwa to check it over. Ahead they saw what looked like a small military vehicle. Murdock figured it was a quarter of a mile ahead. He let Salwa look through his binoculars, and the Kuwaiti agreed.

“Yes, a utility rig the Saudis use along the border. Usually only three or four men and an officer.”

Just as he stopped talking, they heard the chatter of a machine gun and rounds sang over their heads. The men pulled back under cover of the rise.

“Who has a green flare?” Murdock said into the Motorola.

“Yo,” Colt Franklin said.

“Fire one high toward the border,” Murdock said.

The green flare sailed high, burst, and floated down on its small parachute. At once another burst of machine-gun fire came over the top of the rise.

Murdock checked the landscape. A small ravine led to the left toward the border. It was ten feet deep. He kept his men under cover of the rise, and moved them into the gully. It had some bends and twists, and should get them within fifty yards of the Saudi patrol.

When the gully began to play out, Murdock lifted up to the top, and checked the Saudi troops. It looked more like they were thirty-five yards away. Salwa was at his elbow.

“Can you yell at them from here and make them understand who we are?”

Salwa bobbed his head. “Yes, I can try. We all speak Arabic. If this doesn’t work, I suggest a white flag.”

Salwa moved up another twenty feet, found a place he could stand, and edged his head over the top of the wadi.

He shouted something in Arabic. Waited, then said what Murdock figured was the same thing again. They waited. In a period of silence, Murdock heard shouting from the other side. Salwa shouted something back to them, then said it a second time. After that he slowly lifted over the top of the gully and put both hands in the air.

He shouted again, and motioned below him.

Again a short silence, then chatter, and yelling from the other side.

Slowly, Salwa put his hands down, and turned to look at Murdock.

“Yes, it’s all arranged. They know who we are but are still suspicious.

Hold your weapons pointing at the ground, and come up one at a time.

I’ll go first. Then another one. Only one man in sight at any one time. I told them you’re Americans, and they are impressed. They saw the jet crash. When I get to them, I’ll explain about our wounded man.

Have the big man carry him out last when you tell him to on your radio.”

Salwa moved out of sight, then walked toward the Saudis. When he was gone, Murdock lifted over the edge, then told the men to come one at a time and slowly, with their weapons down.

Ten minutes later the Americans were across the border into Saudi Arabia. The officer there had radioed for more transport. They had made it. Murdock made a mental note to have a serious talk with Don Stroh about the quality of the CIA’s extraction operations. This one was a flat-out failure.