The flight in from the carrier took thirty-six minutes, so it wasn't fully dark. They landed two miles below the MLR, the main line of resistance, where the fighting took place. They were still in friendly territory. They waited for fifteen minutes.
When the black Korean night settled over the peninsula, they lifted off and swept over the small town of Kangsori, then flew two miles to the left, where they found the designated target site by the small grove of trees with two antennas in them and a small wooden farmhouse. Murdock, riding in the small cabin, nodded at the pilot. "Put it down here before we have company."
The door gunners had their .50-caliber machine guns charged with rounds and waiting. No enemy troops appeared. The SEALs hadn't seen any signs of military once they'd passed the MLR. Strange.
As soon as the chopper touched down, the fifteen SEALs boiled out of it, half on each side, and stormed up to the farmhouse. Access to the underground was through the building, which had been gutted, with some security put in.
Ching, Quinley, and Bradford had the bulk of the TNAZ. Murdock waved them forward. By arrangement, Ed DeWitt put the rest of the platoon in a perimeter defense around the building. The front door of the small house stood open. Murdock went in first right after he threw a flashbang grenade inside. Once through the door, Murdock could see no soldiers through his NVGs. He called in the rest of the sapper squad, and they rushed to the second room, where they found the trapdoor under a small bed. They used flashlights going down the wooden steps. Ten feet underground, they found a concrete-box room. It had dozens of electronic boxes and computers and relays, all tied into cables going out through pipes in the overhead.
"Let's do ten charges with four timer/detonators set for thirty seconds," Murdock said.
"Sympathetic explosions will trigger the rest of the juice. Go, go, go."
The three men planted the high-explosives where they would do the most damage. There was a chance the ceiling wouldn't fall in if it were laced with rebar. They'd have to take the chance.
It took them a minute to locate the right spots, place the bombs, and insert the detonators. When they were done, each man held up a hand. When the third hand went up, Murdock nodded, they punched the timers to the on position, and all four men hurried up the steps and out the door.
"Move it," Murdock said to his lip mike on the Motorola. "Get out of there, Ed. At least fifty yards. Go."
By the time Murdock and his three men were out the farmhouse door, the other SEALs had vanished. Murdock took the left-hand side, and had led the way out forty yards when the explosion jolted the ground. It felt more like a small earthquake than an explosion. Smoke billowed from the farmhouse door, and part of the roof collapsed.
Murdock had hit the dirt when the blast came with its small r umble, and before he could get to his feet he heard small-arms fire from the right, where Ed DeWitt must be with the rest of the platoon.
Murdock's ear piece activated. "We've got company," DeWitt said. "Not sure how many, but they know we're here. Coming from the north, must be fifteen or twenty. So far only small arms fire, no MGs."
"Hunker down, buddy, find some cover," Murdock said. "We'll swing around to the left and see if we can track the visitors."
Murdock and the three men ran bent over to the left, entered the grove of trees, and kept going to the other side of the thirty-yard-wide thicket.
Murdock hit the dirt and the other three followed. Directly ahead not more than fifty yards, they saw the winking of muzzle flashes. The rounds were not coming at Murdock. He reviewed his weapons. Ching had a colt with grenade launcher, Quinley had the caseless-rounds H&K G-ll, and Bradford had his sniper rifle. His own subgun was outranged.
"Ching, drop in four HE forties on them. As soon as they hit we'll open up. Faster the better."
Ching loaded and fired, and had two rounds in the air before the first one hit. He was slightly short, moved it up, and fired twice more. With the first explosion of the 40mm grenade, firing from the North Koreans slackened off, then built back up. The second two rounds came down right in the middle of them, and the firing nearly stopped.
"Good shooting, buddy, we didn't have the opening here." It was DeWitt. Murdock fired his H&K MKP-5 submachine gun. He'd taken the suppressor off and now had the range. Two minutes of rapid fire from the four men silenced the attacking soldiers.
"Where to?" DeWitt asked.
"South," Murdock said in his Motorola. "Let's link up. We're to the south, you come to us. Just past the trees on your side."
Before Murdock stopped talking he heard it. Then he knew for sure what it was. "Belay that, JG. We've got a fucking tank breathing right down our naked necks over here."
The tank loomed out of the night directly ahead of them and rumbled forward. It was a big sucker.
"What the hell we do about him?" Bradford asked. "Take him out," Ching said.
"Sure, wiseass, how?"
Murdock wondered the same thing. Then he remembered the TNAZ. "How much of that explosive you guys got left?" Murdock asked.
They had about three pounds.
"Quarter of a pound should boost the tracks off the rollers," Murdock said. "All we have to do is get close enough to him. Each of you take a quarter pound and give me one too. Put in detonator/timers and set the timers for thirty seconds. Whoever gets a chance at a tread, jam in the soup and push the timer, then get the hell out of there."
"This could turn out to be a fun trip," Ching said.
They split, two on each side of the big tank that kept coming straight at them from about forty yards. Murdock wondered if the driver had nightscopes. He bet the man didn't.
Murdock crawled twenty feet to the left of where the tank should come, and waited. He used the mike to tell DeWitt what they were doing. The 2IC was to go south when he got the chance. They would link up later.
The tank rumbled ahead. Without warning, the .50 caliber machine gun on the front of the tank blasted, sending a stream of big slugs out front but nowhere near the SEALs. It kicked off seven rounds, then another seven-round burst.
Murdock grinned. He was shooting at shadows, and drawing attention to himself. Dumbass.
The tank clattered ahead at a walking pace. Murdock crawled forward so he'd have a chance at the tracks, but still room to get away if the brute pulled a locked-track ninety degree turn on him.
The tank was ten feet away when Murdock lifted up, held the quarter pound of explosive in his right hand, and ran for the churning tracks. His foot hit some brush and he stumbled, but kept his feet. The tracks kept grinding around. Where to put the bomb? He decided on the up side of the track, just before it started its downward trip to grip the ground.
He waited, walking along beside the beast. Now. He pushed in the timer, dropped the TNAZ on the inside of the rollers, and sprinted away. Behind him, he saw Ching running in the same direction.
"Sixteen tanks, seventeen tanks, eighteen tanks," Murdock counted trying to work off the seconds. At twenty-eight tanks, the sky lit up with a small sun and a roaring sound cascaded toward him, jolting him forward a step before a storm of hot air slapped him forward another step.
Ten seconds later the second bomb went off — on the other side of the tank, Murdock figured. The blast effect on Murdock was not so great, but he dove to the dirt anyway. Behind him twenty yards away, he saw the tank through the soft moonlight. It had stopped. The track on Murdock's side was completely off the rollers, and the rig had slewed around in half a turn as the other tread had kept grinding before it blew up.
"We just nailed ourselves a tank," Murdock said on the mike. "Where the hell is everyone?"
"Commander, we're about two hundred yards south of the grove of trees," Jaybird said. "That tank blast was north of us."
"You have eleven bodies?"
"Roger that."
"We're moving that way soon, so hold your fire."
The four SEALs lay where they had dropped when the tank blew. All waited for the turret to pop and a head to show.
"How the fuck long we gonna wait?" Quinley asked in a whisper into his lip mike.
"Long as it takes," Murdock whispered back. "He's still got that fifty up there that can chew us up."
Murdock squirmed in the dirt and weeds. He had his subgun up on three-round-burst setting, and a fragger in the other hand. Another minute. He'd give the tank commander another sixty damn seconds.
Before the time was up, Murdock heard the grating as the tank turret rattled, then lifted up. A moment later an Asian head lifted out. Three weapons slammed rounds into it and the man slid back into the tank, dead in a thrice.
Quinley was closest to the top. He jumped up the tank's tracks and dropped a cooked grenade down the hatch. The almost instantaneous explosion rattled the tank, but set off no rounds inside.
"Move out," Murdock said to the mike, and the four SEALs joined up south of the tank and headed for where they figured DeWitt would be with the rest of the platoon.
They found them five minutes later flaked out in a small patch of brush.
"Time to call in the chopper?" DeWitt asked.
"We have any more company around here? A chopper is gonna kick all kinds of bad guys out of the brush."
Lampedusa, their chief scout and the best set of ears in the platoon, lifted his fist and they all quieted.
"Company, trucks, five, maybe eight on that road over there about two hundred yards. I saw it before on a little recon."
"Maybe they'll just drive by," Murdock said. "Heading north or south?"
"Coming our way, Cap."
"We were close there. Now we have to wait and see what these newcomers are going to want."
"Us probably," Jaybird said.
They moved into a line of skirmishers fifty yards from the road. Each SEAL had an open field of fire to the road. It was more a track through the countryside than a highway. One truck wide, dirt surface, but showing a lot of use, Lam had told the officers.
Two minutes later the first beams of the headlights showed to the north, and swept down the roadway at a hazardous thirty miles an hour.
Murdock called up Holt, who had the SATCOM tuned to TAC One. Murdock took the handset.
"Cobra, this is SEALs North. Do you copy?"
"Roger that, SEALs. This is Cobra Alpha."
"We have some company up here we might need some help on. Convoy of six or eight trucks that look to have troops in them. Figure they came up to give us a good old-fashioned welcome."
"We're five minutes away. Your position?"
"About three hundred yards south of our target. Grove of trees, just behind us. We'll put a red flare on the trucks if they are still there. You coming?"
"On the way. Count the minutes."
Murdock watched the trucks roll into sight. The first two stopped directly across from them, the others to the north. At once twenty to twenty-five men jumped out of each truck and formed up next to the vehicles.
"Let's get out of Dodge," Murdock whispered into his mike. The men crawled back twenty yards until they vanished into the darkness, then stood and jogged away from the road before turning south.
"If they sweep across from the road along that stretch, it'll cover the communications center," Murdock said to Jaybird right beside him. "Then they'll know somebody is here and come looking for us at top speed."
"They can't track us at night," Jaybird said.
"No, but they can get lucky, leapfrog ahead of us. Where the hell is that Cobra?"
A minute later they heard the whup-whup of the chopper blades as an aircraft came from the south. Murdock looked behind them and to the north and could still see the truck headlights burning. One set went off, then another, but that left another six or eight. There was no chance to get a flare on the trucks.
The Cobra made a run on the length of the column, 20mm rounds pounded into the vehicles. Murdock heard one explode as the fuel tank went. Some ground fire lanced up at the chopper, but it didn't seem to be affected.
On the next run from the other way, the Cobra rained on the column with 70mm rockets from the four LAU-68/A pods on its stubby wings. The rockets exploded in deadly fashion along the line of trucks, setting two more on fire and demolishing a third. None of the vehicles would ever run again.
Murdock and his men took advantage of the attack and jogged again to the south. They crossed a side dirt road, went around a group of three houses and outbuildings, and kept moving south. Lam came up to Murdock and fell in beside him. "May have some trouble, Cap. I can hear some guys tailing us. Not sure how many, but they must be from those trucks. They could be damn mad now because they have to walk wherever else they're going."
"Drop back and see if you can find out how many. Don't take any chances, but be good to know."
Lam veered off and set up in a patch of brush. He'd wait for the followers and then get back with the main body.
Lam wormed down into the brush and weeds until not even his mother could find him. He checked his stopwatch. It was three minutes before he could see anyone coming. They had a scout out front twenty yards. Not far enough. Behind them came two groups of men, all with weapons and all jogging. Lam scrunched lower and counted. Twenty men in each group. Forty men on their tail, which was not good.
When the last NK trooper went past, Lam faded away to the left side farther from the tail-end Charlie on the NKs and ran. He kept two hundred yards to the side of the North Koreans as he rapidly caught and passed them.
Lam guessed he was about three hundred yards ahead of the trackers. He used his Motorola.
"Third Platoon. Where the hell are you?"
"In your hip pocket, little buddy," Jaybird said. "You're not as quiet as you used to be, I heard you coming. Small hill ahead and to your right. We're going up it. You can't be more than fifty yards behind. How many of them rice-snappers are there?"
"Forty, and they look like regulars. I'm moving."
He caught up with the platoon a few minutes later, and told Murdock about the men behind them.
The hill had a few low bushes on it, no real timber. Murdock passed the word on his lip mike.
"We'll meet our friends at the top of the hill. Just over the slope find firing positions. Who has Claymores?"
Guns Franklin and Al Adams did.
"Set them up in sequence with trip wires about forty yards down the slope. You know the routine. Aim them to spray downhill and then catch up. Adams put one here. Franklin ten yards higher. Go." Five minutes later, Murdock had his platoon spread out on the reverse slope of the small hill with every man in a good firing position. Adams and Franklin had returned and had the Claymore mines set. All suppressors were taken off to increase the weapons' range.
The Claymore is a chunk of explosive, fronted with two hundred small steel balls. When the trip wire sets off the charge, the explosive blasts the balls out in the direction the mine has been aimed in. They can cut down a dozen to fifteen foot soldiers in single blast.
Lampedusa touched Murdock's shoulder. "They're coming."
Murdock grinned. He couldn't hear them. Lam had ears like an elephant. A minute later Murdock did hear them. He knew they had a lead scout out. Maybe he'd miss the trip wire and they would get a better body count.
Seconds later one of the Claymores exploded with a shattering roar, followed by screams of pain and fury. Nothing happened for almost five minutes. Then Murdock could hear the NKs moving up slope again. The second Claymore burst into the night sky with a roar, and Murdock lifted his subgun and chattered off two three-round bursts.
That was the signal for the rest of the platoon to fire downslope where the sounds had come from. After two minutes of concentrated fire, Murdock gave a ceasefire.
"Let's move," Murdock said. "Not many of them are going to try to follow us, if any are left standing."
They were half a mile down the other side of the hill and looking for a good LZ when Lam came back and shook his head.
"Cap, we've got something ahead. Not sure what it is. Lights up half the fucking sky. Must be some kind of a supply depot or a replacement depot or some damned thing. No secret it's there."
"So, no LZ around here. What about to the left?"
"Some kind of a main highway over there. Lots of truck traffic. You hear that plane few minutes ago? Probably an F-18 just blasted to hell a half-dozen trucks." "So we move to the right. Find us a black hole where we can call down that bird."
Lam nodded and vanished to the right. "We'll take a break here," Murdock said in his mike. "Ed, put out two security, north and south. We're looking for a good LZ."
Lam came back in ten minutes. "Something you should see up here, Commander." He led Murdock and Ed DeWitt over a quick two hundred yards. They came on a small farmhouse with lights in the windows. A woman's screams billowed out of the place. An NK jeep sat in front of the house and one soldier lolled in the driver's seat, evidently sleeping.
"Let's take a look in that window. Ed, keep the driver covered. If he wakes up, take him out."
Lam and Murdock slipped up on the window and lifted up to look inside. It was a one-room house with a bed against the far wall. There a woman lay spread-eagled on her back and tied to the bed. A North Korean officer had just taken off his shirt. Another one was getting into his pants.
"Through the window?" Lam asked.
Murdock nodded. "I'm right, you left." Both weapons had sound suppressors back on them. They each took a side of the window. Murdock let Lam sight in. "Now," he whispered. Both men fired. Murdock's three-round burst took the man trying to get into his pants full in the chest and blasted him against the wall, where he died instantly.
Lam's Colt M-4A1 slashed out five rounds on fully automatic. Three of the slugs hit the NK officer in the neck and the head, putting him in instant touch with his ancestors.
For a moment all was quiet. Murdock pressed against the broken window, but could see no more men inside. He checked Ed DeWitt, who had moved up beside the jeep driver and now wiped the blood off his knife on the dead Korean's shirt.
"Inside," Murdock said. He and Lam hurried through the front door and saw that the room was clear. Murdock cut the bindings on the woman's hands and feet and pushed a tattered quilt over her naked body.
She hadn't opened her eyes yet. Her sobbing tapered off. Murdock waited a moment. She sat up and motioned to a smaller room to the back he hadn't seen. He went to the door with his subgun ready. Inside the room lay two Korean men, both well over sixty, Murdock guessed. Both had slit throats. He closed the door.
Back in the main room, the woman dressed. She put on flip-flops and pointed outside. There she bowed low.
"Arigato," she said in Japanese.
"Doi tasta maste," Murdock said, trying to remember how to pronounce the Japanese for "you're welcome." He knew he had clobbered the phrase. The woman smiled briefly. She understood. She was about twenty-five, Murdock figured. She bowed again, then hurried off through the night moving to the south.
They met DeWitt at the jeep. He held a fragger in his hand and motioned to the rig.
"Why not?" Murdock said.
Murdock and Lam ran to the right, and Ed DeWitt pulled the safety pin on the grenade, laid it on the fuel tank, and let the arming handle pop. Then he ran like hell away from the jeep. He had four seconds to get clear of the blast.
He made it. The grenade exploded, vaporizing the gasoline in the tank, which led to an instantaneous roaring explosion that melted down the jeep and set some dry grass on fire.
The three SEALs ran for the rest of their platoon.
A half hour later, Lam came back from the right flank.
"Got an LZ, Cap," he said. "No troops around and a nice flat spot with no trees. Should be a piece of cake."
"Let's do it."
They came to the place ten minutes later. Murdock used the land version of the MUGR to give an exact position to within ten feet with the use of global satellite triangulation. Holt fired up the SATCOM and made contact with the Sea Knight on the first try.
"Yes, SEALs, this is Sea Knight Two. Where?"
Murdock gave him the coordinates.
"Any ground fire expected?"
"Negative, looks clean now, Sea Knight. How long?"
"Eight minutes, unless we get into trouble. A red flare on the LZ? We're lifting off now." "You got the flare. Blink your landing lights twice, so we'll know it's you."
"Not many NK choppers out there. Will do."
The SEALs automatically formed a perimeter defense around the cleared spot, all prone and facing outward. Murdock pushed the light on his wristwatch. It was only 2030. They had been on land less than two and a half hours. A damned warm-up. Unless something else went wrong.
Nothing went wrong.
They landed on the Monroe a little after 2130. Don Stroh knew they were coming in, and nailed Murdock as soon as he stepped out of the chopper.
"Good work, sailor. Now the boss has a really important one that we need to talk about. Oh, you have any casualties?"
"Nice of you to ask. No wounded. Now what's this about a really important mission?"