Tropical Terror

15

“I’ve got them coming in from the north,” Lam said. He had the best ears in the platoon. They all looked to the north and soon could hear the bird, then see the ungainly Sea Knight helicopter with U.S. Marine Corps markings on it flitting along the peaks of the Koolau mountain range.

They had moved into an area three hundred yards from where the Chinese chopper had set down. Now there were no Chinese troops in the vicinity. Murdock had no idea where they had vanished.

Dobler threw out a red flare, and then another one hit the LZ. The big chopper circled once, let down slowly, then hit wheels-to-turf.

“Let’s go get a ride,” Murdock said into his Motorola, and the fourteen SEALs trotted toward the idling helicopter. The crew chief waved at them as they stepped into the aircraft. Then at once it lifted off and over the lowest of the ridges, and slanted down the windward side of Oahu toward the coast.

The lieutenant who flew the bird turned to Murdock.

“You Murdock?”

“Right.”

“You pull a lot of weight around here. Rousted us out quicker than we’ve been done before. CINCPAC says they have a track on that Chinese chopper you were chasing.”

“They know where it is now?” Murdock asked, half yelling so he could be heard.

“Yes, but far out of our area. They do tell me that it stopped somewhere around Kualoa Point. That’s at the top of Kaneohe Bay, across from our base.”

“It stopped?”

“Near as they can tell, but since it was over the bay it didn’t set down. Paused there for a while, then moved on. Funny. When it continued, it was moving almost twice as fast as when it came up to the bay.”

“Why?”

“They don’t know. We don’t know. I’m supposed to take you where you want to go. An honest-to-God red-signature order?”

“True. Not so common around here, I understand.”

“I’ve only heard about one in the past two years.”

The chopper circled once and Murdock looked over the area.

“They said right down there. Figured it was just off the point a ways, but they couldn’t tell how far.”

“They were sure it wasn’t on the land?”

“Yes, sir, said it was over the water, at least a hundred yards from the closest landfall.”

“Put us down on the point.”

“Sir, that’s not an authorized…” The pilot grinned. “Hell, I’ve got a red-signature order here. We’re going down.”

Murdock told the Marine pilot to stay on the ground until he gave him an order to take off.

The SEALs prowled around the point of land where the Pacific swells bathed it on three sides. Murdock shook his head. There was nothing they could do here.

“Back on board the bird,” Murdock ordered in his radio. He went up front to talk to the pilot. “Take us back to your base. On the way I want you to get CINCPAC on the radio.”

“CINCPAC? Damn, I’ve never talked to them before. Whatever you say, Commander.”

Just before they took off, Murdock talked to the Pacific Fleet headquarters. The admiral was there.

“Murdock, hear we missed the bomb again. What happened?”

Murdock explained the sequence. “Admiral Bennington, right now we need all of our SEAL gear over here at the Marine air base. From there at Pearl. Especially our underwater gear. From reports by your people, the chopper paused over the bay here for a short time, then took off out to sea. Do your people know if he left the area at a much faster speed than he arrived?”

“I’ll ask them. Your SEAL equipment will be on the way shortly by chopper. Everything in your quarters here. Anything else?”

“Not right now, Admiral, but maybe later. I have a hunch that chopper dropped the bomb in the bay here. All we have to do is find it.”

“That question about speed. You’re right. The chopper came in at a slow rate of speed. When it left the bay it headed out over twice as fast.”

“Figures,” Murdock said. “The bird had a heavy load. By dropping it here they could go a lot faster. Thanks, Admiral. Out.”

Murdock went back and talked to Senior Chief Dobler.

“Damn sorry I acted like a wimp when I took that little scratch on my hard skull, Skipper. Usually I’m not so touchy.”

“Chief, from what the corpsman says, you’re damn lucky to be alive. Another quarter of an inch and you’d be in a body bag. Glad to have you with us. Now take it easy for a while. Could be a slight concussion up there and we don’t want to aggravate it.”

At the Marine Air Station on the peninsula extending out from Kaneohe Bay, there was a truck waiting for the SEALs. A Marine captain met the chopper and introduced himself to Murdock.

“Commander Murdock, I’m Captain Hassleman. I’ve been assigned as your liaison while you’re on-base. Anything I can do for you, just ask. This rig will take us to your temporary quarters. I can arrange an open mess for your men whenever you say. Your equipment from Pearl should be here in about thirty minutes.”

Murdock shook the man’s hand after returning his salute.

“Captain Hassleman, glad to meet you. We’ll need chow soon and some resupply on ammo. Mostly five-five-six and some fifty-caliber AP. What we really need is special twenty-mike laser rounds, but we’ll have to go with what we have. Oh, ask that chopper we used to stand by. We’ll be going back to the other side of the bay as soon as we get our underwater gear.”

“Yes, sir. Soon as we get to a phone I’ll do that.”

“Why not hit the phone first, then take us to quarters? I like that pilot.”

“Right away, Commander.” The captain took off at a trot toward the nearest building. The SEALs crawled into the six-by and waited.

Murdock looked at his watch. It had been a busy morning, but he was surprised to see that it was almost l500. Three hours of sun left if they were lucky.

By the time the captain came back, Murdock had been drumming his fingers on the truck’s fender. They drove away to a faceless building half a mile across the base.

“Captain, we’d like to hold the truck here,” Murdock told the Marine. “As soon as we get our underwater gear, we’ll be going back to the point for a swim.”

“Aye, aye, Commander.”

The SEALs settled into the bunks. Then Dobler had them checking gear and ammo for resupply. He made a list. Murdock used the telephone and got the base clinic. They didn’t have Chief Ronson on the station.

“We did some emergency stabilization and sent him by evac right to Tripler Army Medical Center above Pearl. They have the best facilities for chest wounds. We don’t have any report on him. Sorry.”

Captain Hassleman had ordered box lunches for the men, and brought in a thirty-cup urn of coffee. Their gear didn’t arrive until twenty minutes after the coffee was gone.

“Full underwater gear,” Murdock ordered. “We don’t know what we might find out there. We’re hunting that box with a bomb in it. At least we’ve seen it before. Captain, tell that pilot to warm up his rig. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

They didn’t put on their wet suits. The water temperature was over seventy, Murdock had heard. They put on clean cammies, their water boots and combat vests, and the Draegr rebreathers, and were ready.

It only took the chopper five minutes to find the spot off the point Murdock wanted.

“A hundred yards from the land,” he told the pilot. “Come down to twenty feet and we’ll bail out. Wait for us on the shore. Remember that red-sig order card you have.”

The pilot grinned. “Indeed I do remember. Going down in my logbook for damn sure.”

Murdock hit the water first, followed by his squad. Then DeWitt and his men jumped in. They surfaced and Murdock went over the general instructions again.

“Looking for that damn bomb. Not over a hundred feet here, and the water is clear. Let’s see what we can do. We’ll do a sweep out fifty yards on the surface just hoping. Then we go down to fifty feet and sweep back for a hundred yards. Let’s do it.”

The water was clear, but not a hundred feet clear. They could see down maybe thirty or thirty-five feet. At the fifty-yard mark they came heads-up and waved, then dove down to fifty feet and kept twenty feet apart as they stroked back the way they had come, watching below.

Again, it was too deep. Here and there a small hill showed and they could see the bottom. Nothing but sand. Almost no fish. They would be around the kelp plants and the masses of coral near the shore.

Murdock kicked down another twenty feet and felt a slight tingle in his body, but he ignored it. Now he could see the bottom most of the time. Sand. Here and there, what could have been a shell casing or part of an old car or an aircraft. Sea garbage. He checked his number of kicks and realized he had gone too far. He came up gradually.

The rest of the platoon waited for him on the surface. They swam back to shore where the Sea Knight perched on the side of the sand just off the highway. Six cars had stopped to stare at the bird, along with a city police cruiser. About twenty people milled around.

There was a small cry from some in the crowd as the SEALs came out of the water and dropped on the grassy place next to the roadway.

A young cop came over. “Who’s in charge?”

Murdock waved at him.

“Any trouble here? Unusual for a chopper and a batch of frogmen to be out here on the point.”

“True, Officer. Also unusual for China to invade Hawaii.” He looked at the small crowd. “Have any of these people been here for, say, two or three hours?”

“Got me. Let’s ask them.”

Murdock walked over and waved at the crowd to quiet. When the people settled down, he asked them if anyone had been there for a while. One man nodded.

“Yeah, we were having a picnic down a ways when we saw this helicopter come in low from the land side and hover over the water. Had a sling on it with a small truck hanging under it. It dropped the damn thing in the water. That what you’re hunting?”

“Yes,” Murdock said. “About where did he drop it?”

“Close to where you guys jumped out of that chopper right over there. Maybe fifty yards off the point.”

“Oh, hell, no,” another voice piped up. A tall man with a red beard shook his head. “I been here all morning fishing. Not a damn bite. But I seen that chopper come in too. Must have been a Chinese kind, ’cause it didn’t say U.S. Navy on it. It dropped the damn beer truck, sling and all, it was carrying, all right, but it had to be two hundred yards off the point and maybe half that far back toward the beach.”

“No way,” the first man said.

Murdock thanked them and started to leave.

“Are you frogmen?” a small boy shouted.

“Close enough,” Murdock said. “Actually we’re Navy SEALs. Thanks for your help.”

Murdock went back to the chopper and had the pilot call in CINCPAC. The lieutenant seemed to love making the radio call. He gave Murdock the mike.

“CINCPAC, we’re ninety-percent certain the Chinese chopper dropped the beer truck and the bomb in the water here at Kaneohe Bay. How about a minesweeper with high-intensity metal detectors. They should be able to pinpoint the location of the device.”

“The admiral is already working on that, Commander. Trouble is our top minesweeper detector-wise is in dry dock for a new drive shaft. The admiral has ordered the next-best ship to sail today at 1700.”

“How far is the trip and how fast is the ship?”

“She’s the Chief, MCM 14, a mine countermeasure vessel that can make thirteen knots.”

Murdock frowned. “How far is the run around here? Fifty miles?”

“More like forty. Which means she’ll be on station there in about three hours.”

“Can she work after dark?”

The man on the other end of the radio laughed. “She doesn’t care, night or day, just so she has a search grid.”

“Be glad to give her that,” Murdock said. “I’ll be on the point. Have her send a boat to pick me up when she arrives.”

“We’ll do that, Commander. Good hunting.”

Murdock stared at the mike for a minute, then handed it back to the lieutenant.

“Oh, there’s one more pickup. There are four hula dancers and four naked Chinese officers on that same ridge where you picked me up. I promised the girls I’d get them off the place before dark. Talk with your station and have one of your birds go out and get them. They’re at an open place with a good LZ. Let me know when the girls are safely back off the mountain and the four Chinese officers are in custody.”

“You joking, Commander?”

“Not a chance. Just send the order and attach that red signature to it. I don’t care much about the Chinese, but I want those girls down from there safe and happy before dark.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said, and picked up the mike. Murdock moved out to talk with his men. They had some decisions to make.