Murdock came awake groggy and unrested. He checked his watch. Past 1020. His feet hit the deck and he groaned. When was he going to learn how to wake up bright and alert? He could do it on patrol or a mission where it counted. Without a mission it was groggy time.
Murdock made it to the officers' mess in time to eat, and sat there a target of opportunity when Don Stroh walked in.
"How goes the war?" Murdock asked as Stroh sat down with his usual two cups of coffee.
"Can't tell yet. The Eighth Army is glad the Monroe's fifty-eight planes are set up to make ground attacks. Been a big lift for the Air Force guys." He paused. "Didn't catch you when you got in last night. How did it go?"
"Wet. We got in, did the job, and got out without anyone wounded. That's good news for us."
"Great. I guess by this time you've figured out that you SEALs are firemen on this mission. Bound to be a lot of small fires to put out on a dumb-assed war like this one. Fact is, it isn't even a war. The President and the Congress haven't said it is. What we're doing is responding to an attack on a treaty ally, and supporting this ally with all of our capability." He frowned. "Well, not with all of our capability. No nukes are going on this one."
"Good. Now what is that little twitch under your right eye all about? Usually it means something is afoot."
"Afoot? You're kidding. I haven't heard that word since I was in the seventh grade in Connecticut. Mrs. Ambrose always used it. We got tired of hearing it."
"So, Stroh, what?"
"Hate to tell you. I told Eighth Army it was an Army job for a team of sappers. Some bird colonel said they had tried three times. It's a bridge across a river. No way around this river for ten miles each way."
"The NKs have tanks on the far side and they own the bridge and want to bring the tanks over when they get their resupply, right?"
"Yeah, you hear something?"
"Just the wheels grinding around in your head. Stroh. Why can't the Army blow up a bridge?"
"High ground. The NKs have the high ground on the north side. It's two hundred feet above the south side of the river. They just blow away any try our guys make for the bridge. They control a quarter of a mile with their machine guns and some fancy quad-fifties they have."
"I thought the Air Force had smart bombs."
"Oh, yeah, they do. The Navy has laser-aimed bombs too, but somehow they won't do the job right. The Army doesn't want to blow the bridge into kindling. Just disable it so the NKs can't get across it."
"Then when the Eight Army decides to go north, they want to have the bridge repaired for their tanks in quick order."
"Something like that."
"You have pictures?"
" 'Deed I do. young man. Plenty. Some marked with where the Army tried to get their charges anchored before they got blown away last night."
Murdock took the sheaf of eight-by-ten glossy photos and worked through them. They showed the bridge, its supports, the river below, the banks on both sides. '"Can you do it?" Stroh asked.
"Give me a couple of minutes here, sharp stick. Lots of things to consider." He picked out one shot of a side view of the bridge and another from almost overhead.
"We can give it a try. See this section right here?" Murdock pointed to the lead-in to the bridge from the concrete roadway behind it.
"Yeah, it's on the far side of the bridge."
"It's the only place that can be blown out without damaging the structure of the bridge itself. We blow out that twenty-foot approach and the tanks got nowhere to go."
"Yeah, but what about our tanks that want to get across?"
"Easy. Send a tank out there with an engineering team to put up an emergency twenty-foot bridge. Those guys can do that in about three hours. Then shoot over the tanks and you're on your way."
"You sure this will work?"
"Hell, no, Stroh. Nobody gives guarantees these days. It could blow down the whole damn bridge. It's a risk."
Stroh emptied his second cup of coffee. "Easy talk, but how the fuck do you get over to the far side of the bridge to blow it? The NKs have that whole structure zeroed in with machine guns."
"We go in and they never see us."
"How?"
"I have to give away all my secrets?"
"Damn right. If I'm to get a go from General Reynolds."
"We go in upstream a quarter or half mile, come down the flow, and get out under the bridge. We go up underneath the bridge where the NKs can't see us, set the timers, go back to the water, and go underwater downstream another half mile and get out on the south side."
Stroh looked at the pictures. Slowly he nodded. "All right. You have the right explosives?"
"TNAZ."
"Right. Let me talk to the general. I'll get a go from him, but I'll warn him that the bridge should be fit for use, but it might not. It's a better risk than using smart bombs."
Without a good-bye, Stroh stood and hurried out of the mess. Murdock ordered another plate of hot cakes, and made it into the SEALs' assembly compartment just after 1120.
Jaybird had the platoon working over equipment. Murdock scowled remembering thai he still hadn't gotten any higher rate for Jaybird. He was sitting in a senior chief petty officer's slot and still was first class. Murdock was going to twist some tails somewhere. The guy deserved a higher rate and more pay.
"'What gives, Cap? Do you have that gleam in your eye again?"
Murdock grinned. It was hard to fool Jaybird. "Not sure. Might have another job to do tonight. If it's a go. Don is talking to General Reynolds now over at Eighth Army. Just never can tell. How are we fixed for line?"
"What kind and how long, sir?"
"Man-weighted for at least a hundred feet. We'd have to have at least six of them."
"Nothing like that in our gear. I'd wager we can pick up some line like that from the big boat here."
"Hope so. Why don't you check it out as a possible."
"Right, Cap. Rope work. Yeah, I like rope work. At least a hundred feet? No sweat, Cap. I'm on the phone."
Murdock still had the envelope of pictures. He pulled Ed DeWitt to one side and showed them to him. Ed looked up.
"So, a bridge?"
"Yeah, look at that first on-ramp-type section before it comes to the first bridge main supports."
"Okay, not all that sturdy. We gonna blow it?"
"Could we blow that section away and not damage the integrity of the main span?"
"Yeah, should work. We'd have to get the juice in the right spots. Yeah, I'd say it would work." He looked up. "Stroh must have caught you. He was here looking."
"In the mess. He's talking with General Reynolds over in Eighth Army now. They want the bridge taken out, but so they can use it later."
"Engineers could throw a tank-proof span over that twenty feet in two hours."
"Yeah, I gave them three hours in the dark." "How we get in?"
"Wet. Come down the current underwater. Get out right under the span. Then use ropes over the upper areas and go up the lines."
"How far is it from mud to beam up there?" Ed asked.
"Sixty, maybe seventy feet?"
"My guess is about sixty-five. We'd need a hundred and thirty feet of half-inch line."
"We can get by with three-eighths-inch if it's nylon braid."
Murdock called in Lampedusa, Bradford, and Jack Mahanani. They looked at the bridge and listened.
"So they control both sides of the land and we go in wet, right?" Lam said.
Jaybird came back from the phone. "Hey, yes. What's a Navy without some line? We can get whatever we want. They said a hundred feet in nylon would be easiest to use and get through the water. We can pick it up whenever we need it."
The phone rang and Franklin picked it up.
"Commander," he called, and held up the handset.
Murdock took the instrument and listened. "Right. We'll be ready to get out of here just before dark and move in and pick up a friendly local guide. We can get supplies we need here. Right."
Murdock hung up. Everyone had stopped talking and looked at him.
"Gentlemen, get your gear ready, we've got a wet job to do. We'll use the rebreathers and the water is going to be muddy. We'll shove off from here in a helo about 1700."
DeWitt kept looking at the photographs. He had one out that showed the top of the bridge and the slope above it.
"Cap, looks like there's about a hundred yards from the crest of the hill back there to the bridge. That area must be under fire from the south side. Be fine if we could have some 105's or some fifty-calibers warm up those areas on call. Give the NKs something to think about besides somebody playing with their bridge."
Murdock grunted. "Yeah. Good idea. Get in touch with Stroh and have him put you in contact with the commander in that sector. Set it up so all we need to do is use the SATCOM and ask for the rounds to start. Make it on call. We're not sure when we'll be getting in there. My guess is it would go best after midnight."
"Sounds good. Give the artillery a chance to zero in some firing concentrations to use when we call for them."
Then the platoon gathered around and they began to plan the mission.
"Everybody going, or could eight men do the job?" Jaybird asked.
"Security, we need everyone to give the guys on the ropes some security," Les Quinley said.
"Everyone," Murdock said.
"How many men on ropes?" DeWitt asked.
They kicked it around, looked at the structure of the bridge, and decided that six could do it. They could scramble up the far bank to get their ropes over, then go up the ropes and plant the charges.
Murdock picked out the five men besides himself who were the best at the rope climb on the O course. Franklin, Adams, Lampedusa, Ching, and Sterling.
They decided they'd use smaller charges of TNAZ on the areas next to the main support, and larger charges back where the bridge met the land. That way the whole section should be blown off and drop into the river below.
Ed DeWitt found Stroh, who made the call to the Army people and contacted the commander in the sector where the bridge was. They had concentrations of 105's on the ridgeline behind the bridge. Yes, they would lay in ten rounds on call from the SATCOM to their TAC frequency.
The SEALs left promptly at 1700 in a reliable CH-46 Sea Knight, and set down at dusk near the MLR about ten miles west of Panmunjom. Here the bulge made by the North troops was about seven miles beyond the old DMZ. An ROK captain met them. He would coordinate the artillery. He gave Ron Holt the frequency to use. Holt dialed it up and made immediate contact with the artillery. The ROK soldier there even spoke English.
They were a quarter of a mile from the river. The SEALs wore their jungle cammies, combat vests, rebreathers, and fins. They figured they wouldn't be in the water long enough to need the wet suits.
They found the right spot, then sacked out for three hours. Just at midnight, a guide led them to the water. Murdock and the climbers went in the water first, then DeWitt and the rest of the men. Everyone knew precisely what to do. The timers would be set for ten minutes and coordinated precisely to be activated at the same time.
Each of the climbers carried a 125-foot coil of nylon rope. They figured eight charges would drop the end section of the bridge. They brought twelve bombs all packaged and ready to go.
Murdock eyed the roiling water. It was still in near-flood stage from recent rains. "Buddy lines," he said. "Lam and I will lead. Ed, bring up the rear. No stragglers. Let the current take you, but stay underwater. Don't overshoot. It's only a little more than a quarter mile."
They walked into the water and slipped under the muddy flow. Murdock had no way to count strokes or tell distance. He surfaced twice. The third time he saw the bridge coming up fast.
He stroked for the far shore. The river was about forty yards across here. He and Lam came out directly under the bridge. He left Lam at the water's edge to bird-dog in the rest of the men, and went to check on the bank under the bridge. There was a small piece of dry land about twenty feet wide, then the slant up of the bank to the bridge sixty feet overhead. He could climb it with no problem. He went up and tied off his rope to one of the support girders.
No problem for the hot new explosive TNAZ. By the time he got back to the river, all but two men were out of the water. Ed had them in defensive positions. The four other climbers moved to the dry area and looked up at the bridge.
"That section is longer than we figured," Jaybird said. "It's at least thirty feet. No sweat. We use the same eight charges and blow the fucker right out of there without hurting the rest of it."
"Let's get to it," Murdock said. "If it stays this quiet around here, we'll use the 105 rounds for our getaway. Up the hill. On that rope. We'll hit the girders and take our assigned spots. The faster we work, the quicker we get back to breakfast."
Murdock went up the rope he had just tied off, got to the top, and swung up on the first girder. Under the roadway was a pair of X-shaped box girders on their sides. The charges would go on the ends of the X's on top and bottom on both sides.
Murdock went to the far end of the first girder, and planted the TNAZ bomb where it would cut the steel in half and leave that part of the bridge without support. Above him Lam put a charge on the girder there. The other four men worked their positions. It took them less than three minutes to get the charges in place.
"Ten minutes on the timers," Murdock whispered to Lam. In the dark they couldn't use signs. Murdock contacted two of the other men, and Lam talked to the last two. They all returned to their charges.
"Now," Murdock said loud enough so all could hear. They pushed in the timers on the petards, activating the timers; then all six worked carefully back to the bank and went down the rope to the ground.
Murdock found Holt.
"Crank up that mother and get some artillery in there," he said.
Lam made the call, got confirmation.
"On the way in two minutes, Cap," Holt said.
"Gentlemen, let's get the hell out of Dodge. We've got about five minutes to bang time."
Before they could move, a machine gun chattered on the edge of the bank above them. Rounds slapped into the ground and the edge of the water.
Murdock and the others sent return fire at the MG's position. It stopped for a moment.
"Second Squad, into the water, go, go, go." Murdock barked. "The rest of us, find some cover and burn out that MG up there."
The enemy weapon fired again. By that time the SEALs had spread out and found what cover there was. They sent fifty rounds of return fire. Murdock saw that the Second Squad was out of sight. He sent a final three-round burst at the MG, then waved. "Let's get wet." First Squad sprinted the twenty feet to the water and slid in quietly. The MG opened up again, this time joined by half-a-dozen rifles as the North Koreans wasted lead shooting where the SEALs had been.
Murdock swam with the current and stayed on top. How far was a quarter of a mile? He saw figures on the far shore and swam across the current. Ed and his squad waved.
Just then Murdock heard the whispers of the 105 rounds going overhead. They landed seconds later somewhere to the rear. The machine gun and rifle fire behind them stopped.
A moment later the sky lit up behind them with brilliant lights, and a roaring wave of sound and wind whipped against their faces. The SEALs looked back, but couldn't see the bridge. Now they could hear a grinding and crashing as something came down hard and hit the ground, sending out a minor shock wave.
"Looks like we blew one bridge," Murdock said. He looked around. "How far downstream are we?"
"Hundred yards at the most," Ed DeWitt said. "Just wanted to get us back together again."
Murdock waved and called softly as his men came by. They all came out of the water. "Somebody count, we got fifteen?"
"Fourteen," Jaybird said. "Who the hell isn't here?"
Before they discovered the identity of the missing SEAL, they heard splashing and Doc Ellsworth came out of the water, one arm pushed into his combat vest.
"He's hit," Murdock said.
They got Doc on solid ground and he shivered. "Damn fucking horseshit fucker got me in the elbow. Fucking elbow. Bleeding like a whore in heat."
Jack Mahanani pushed Ron Holt away, stripped open the medic bag Doc carried, and looked at the elbow in the pale moonlight.
"Keep it tucked in there. I'll wrap it up and stop the bleeding. You need at least one ampoule. They in the usual spot?" Doc Ellsworth nodded. They could see his white upper teeth biting into his lower lip.
"No more wet for this boy," Mahanani said. "Why can't we walk down this side of the river and then turn inland. The South Ks must know we're out here."
"Yeah, but their MLR is gonna look for us a quarter of a mile on down," Ed DeWitt said. "We don't want to get sliced to pieces by some angry ROK battalion."
"Lam, out front a hundred," Murdock said. "We don't know how close to the river the fucking MLR is along here. We'll have to play it by ear and damn quiet. Quiet, but as quickly as we can. Doc isn't in the best of shape. Usual formation. Let's move."
Ed DeWitt made sure that he put Joe Douglas at the end of the marching order and kept Fernandez right behind himself and Al Adams. He hadn't forgotten their animosity.
Lam worked ahead for a hundred yards, then went to the ground. Murdock slid into the grass and weeds beside him.
Lam pointed to where the moonlight glanced off the river.
"An NK patrol, I'd guess," he said. "I saw them shoot a line across the river. Not over thirty yards wide here. They're moving hand-over-hand across the line."
"How many of them?"
"I can see twelve."
"We sure that they are NKs?"
"No. But a South patrol coming back would already have a line across the river. Right?"
"Yeah. Let's pick off the first two and see what happens." Both men screwed on sound suppressors and leveled in. The silenced rounds made more noise than they wanted them to, but they worked. The first two men on the line collapsed, dropped into the swift water, and washed downstream.
A low wail came from the third man in line. He lifted an automatic rifle and pounded off six rounds into the brush on the south side, but thirty yards from Murdock.
"The rest of them," Murdock said. Murdock and Lam moved back along the rope with their rounds, and soon had company from Jaybird. A minute later, the line was empty and the men still alive on the far side of the river ran up the slope and over the ridgeline.
Lam headed out downstream. Murdock and Jaybird got the men behind them moving as well.
Lam settled in behind a good-sized tree and looked inland. He had led the platoon in a hundred yards from the river, and ahead he could sec mounds of fresh dirt he figured were either trenches or gun emplacements.
"Could be the MLR along here," Lam whispered to Murdock, who settled in beside him.
"Yeah. Wonder if any of them speak English?" Murdock sent Lam back to bring up Ching. The Chinese saw the situation.
"Try some Japanese on them," Murdock said. "A lot of the Koreans remember Japanese."
"First we all get some cover. I've heard these bastards are super-trigger-happy."
When the three had pushed behind trees or rocks, Ching gave it a try.
"Hey, you South Koreans. We're Americans out here. United States. Don't shoot." He called it in Japanese. There was no response. He started to repeat it, but a machine gun and about ten rifles opened fire, riddling the small trees and brush where they crouched.
Murdock slithered away from the fire, and went to the rest of the platoon.
"You guys with forty-mikes. We need you to each fire three at max range downstream. Be sure they hit land. Do it now and maybe the distraction will let us slip through the damn South Koreans' MLR here."
The men fired the rounds. Murdock led them back as close to his previous position as he could. Lam crawled back.
"Ching is moving ahead. He says he heard at least half the troops up there bug out downriver for the action down there. Those our forties?"
"True," Murdock said. He whispered to the rest of the men. "We're going to have to go through here like ghosts. Ching and Lam and I will try to quiet anyone left. You hear a morning dove call, you come quickly, quietly." Murdock crawled away toward the MLR.
Ching was ahead. He moved at a crouch toward the new earthworks. He was almost there when he heard two Koreans talking. He slanted to the left, found a spot without fresh dirt, and eased up the slight rise. He rolled over the dirt and came down in a trench three feet deep.
Ching looked both ways. Nobody. He moved toward where he had heard the two men. He spotted them when he was twenty feet away and the trench made a small turn. They looked over the lip of the berm. One of them sat behind a heavy machine gun.
Ching moved ahead without a sound. He was almost there. He picked up a rock off the new dirt and threw it beyond the two Koreans.
Both yelled.
One swung the machine gun that way. Ching rushed the last twenty feet, clubbed the machine gunner with his Colt carbine, and covered the other Korean, who looked around but didn't reach for his weapon.
"Americans," Ching said.
The Korean grinned. "Melican, OK, GI."
Ching used a pencil flash from his combat vest and blinked it three times toward the river. He got three blinks back.
Five minutes later, all the SEALs were over the berm and moving to the rear. An SK lieutenant had showed up after a few minutes and designated one of his men to lead the SEALs to the rear. Doc Ellsworth was really hurting by that time. Others carried his weapon, his medic bag, and his combat vest. Mahanani walked step for step with him, and caught him twice when he fell. Holt had the SATCOM up and working on Air TAC One. The Sea Knight had been on the ground waiting for them two miles away. It found them with the aid of a red flare.
Mahanani gave Doc another shot of morphine, and a half hour later they landed on the Monroe, where two medics and a doctor met them on the flight deck. Murdock went along with Doc. Ed got the SEALs back to their assembly room.
Murdock didn't like the way the Navy doctors were consulting about Ellsworth's elbow. They had put in half-a dozen shots to deaden the area. Ellsworth was conscious, but half out of it from the medications.
At last one of the doctors came out to Murdock,
"Commander, it's bad. The elbow is never going to work right again. It's all busted up to hell in there. Maybe a replacement joint down the road a ways."
"It won't be stiff, will it?"
"No, but he won't be doing any fancy gymnastics with it either. Is he a SEAL?"
"Yes."
"Tough. Not a chance of staying with you. You can tell him tomorrow. Now, we have some reconstruction to do and some pins to put in. Understand he was your medic."
"True. Three years."
"Sorry."
Murdock slammed his fist into the wall and stormed out of sick bay.