Battleground (29 page)

A short time later they drove around another corner, and
Murdock saw a flash of sunshine off something ahead. He let off a burst of six rounds, and a moment later they took return fire. Jaybird hit the brakes hard, stopped the rig, and killed the engine. He went to the floor of the cab. Murdock kept firing, driving three dark-green shirted troopers off the side of the road.

They had planned what to do if this happened again. Magic darted away from the back of the truck into the brush. Murdock was right behind him with Ching and Nicholson. They charged up hill through the brush fast as they could run.

Red stayed closer to the side of the roadway, and lip-miked what he saw.

“Three of them in the brush on the other side of the road,” Red said as he ran. “Looks like they’re waiting for something. Another fifty yards ahead.”

The SEALs ran again.

The next time Red came on the Motorola, it was a whisper.

“Yeah, we’re far enough now. There’s a big cedar tree here with two tops. Bastards are right across the road.”

Murdock got there first. They were screened by some brush. Three Kenyan soldiers lay across the road with their machine gun aimed down toward the next small curve the SEALs’ truck would have to round.

Murdock settled in with the MG and waited. Magic came in next, silently saw the situation, and found a field of fire for his H&K PSG1 sniper rifle twenty feet up the road. Ching came in on silent feet, and he and Red stood behind the big cedar tree.

The SEALs traditionally started their firing on the first shot from Murdock. He got off half a burst of six before the other three weapons joined in. The three prone soldiers across the road didn’t have time to swing their guns around. They all died instantly with six or eight rounds in each one.

The SEALs stopped firing and waited. There was no response from any other unit. After three minutes, Murdock motioned to Red, and he and Ching ran across the dirt road.
They picked up the two AK-47’s the men had and four magazines, and ran down the road.

A few minutes later the big truck ground up the hill, and paused while Murdock and Magic climbed on board.

Red Nicholson rode on the front bumper. They came to a turnoff into a narrower track, and Nicholson jumped off and checked it.

“Turned in here, L-T,” he called. Murdock waved them forward. This road was barely wide enough for the 6 × 6 truck. The vehicle swept branches on both sides of the road. The first turn involved twice backing up and going forward.

They worked along a road cut into the bank of a slope that went up fifty feet. They were halfway up. Murdock kept watching the slope, wondering. He saw something come out of some brush, and yelled for everyone to take cover.

The grenade bounced once to the side, then hit the road thirty feet in front of the truck. Red Nicholson had jolted off the bumper and dove behind the front wheel as Jaybird stopped the rig.

Murdock sprayed the brush with rounds from his MP-5. He’d taken the silencer off it. Two M-4Al’s opened up as well, and DeWitt sprinted up the road with three of his men. He was next up on the ambush patrol kill schedule.

Horse got his MG warmed up, and chewed up the brush where the others had been shooting, then hosed down the area on each side.

“Hold it,” Murdock called. DeWitt had vanished around the bend ahead where the road took a switchback heading up the sharp slope.

They heard firing from above. Then the Motorola spoke.

“Fernandez, over there by that tree. Yes.” It was DeWitt. More rattling fire sounded from above, and DeWitt came on the radio again.

“Clear on top. See if that bucket of Kenyan bolts will get up this far.”

It did.

Jaybird stopped on the rise and picked up the four men. They had three more AK-47’s and two more thirty-round magazines of the 7.62 ammo.

Quinley moved over to Doc Ellsworth.

“Caught one,” Quinley said. Doc looked at the arm wound.

“Not too bad. Missed the bone, went on through. Your lucky day.” He put some healing salve on the two wounds, then some sterile compresses, and wrapped it tightly with roller bandages.

“Now flex your fist. Make a hard one. Relax. Do it again. Any burning along your arm?” Quinley shook his head. “Okay,
joto ichiban
. Have two blondes, and see me in the morning.”

Quinley grinned. “Wished to hell I could. The blondes, I mean.”

The road flattened out then as it wound through the highlands. There were more trees, and brush, and some strange plants that Murdock couldn’t identify. They saw no more rear guards, and knew they had reduced the general’s force by at least ten men. He might have ten still with him, or maybe fifteen. The men they’d questioned might not have known for sure.

Murdock looked at the AK-47’s. Always a potent weapon. The thirty-round magazines were attractive right then.

“How we doing on ammo?” he asked. He got reports from half gone to two-thirds gone. Two men were down to two magazines left.

“We’ve got ten AK-47’s here. We’ll use them until they run dry. All the men with the MP-5 pick up a forty seven, and get used to it. We’ll have more long-range work now anyway. One thing we don’t want to do is run out of rounds, so be conservative. Use single-shot if that will do the job.”

They came to another rise in the narrow road. It didn’t look as if it had been traveled for some time. Weeds had begun to show between the tire tracks in the middle of the road. Soon they came to another hill. The road rose along the side of the slope, and Murdock watched upward wondering about another grenade attack.

None came.

They were halfway up the slope when Murdock yelled at
Jaybird. “Floor this fucker, Jaybird. We’ve got some rocks rolling down the hill.”

They all looked up then. What had probably been started as two or three large rocks had gouged out dirt and more rocks, and those had hit more loose rocks, and now the SEALs had a full-sized landslide pounding down toward them.

Jaybird kicked the throttle to the floor, and the old truck wheezed, spurted ahead, then stalled. Jaybird ground the engine. The rocks and dirt came at them in a wall four feet high.

The motor turned over, caught, and Jaybird eased it forward, then gave it more fuel gradually, until they finally tore up the slope.

They almost made it. Murdock watched some of the larger rocks hit and jolt to the left and right instead of coming straight down. That gave the landslide a wider footprint. Jaybird coaxed more speed out of the truck, and Murdock saw that most of it would miss the truck.

Then it was on them. Half-a-dozen rocks the size of basketballs slammed into the side of the rig and the undercarriage. One bounced upward and shattered one of the bows across the top.

The road behind them was covered with six feet of rocks and dirt. The old truck kept moving. When they were out of the danger zone, Jaybird stopped the truck, and they got out and looked at the damage. One of the duals on the back had been slashed and had gone flat.

“One tire’s enough with this light load,” Jaybird said.

Just then several shots from above snarled, and angry lead slapped into the truck. The men scattered into the near ditch and any other cover they could find when they heard the rifle fire. The men all had their weapons with them. Four rose up and sent AK-47 messages up the slope. They used single-shot, and put twenty rounds into the brush they thought might be hiding the enemy. They had no reaction, and no return fire.

They waited five minutes.

“Let’s mount up and get out of here,” Murdock said.

The next turn also involved backing up and going ahead twice. Then they were on another fairly open stretch. They were a quarter of a mile from the last turn when the engine sputtered, coughed, and quit. Jaybird ground the starter, but it wouldn’t catch.

Quinley came up from the side of the rig. “I’d say you’re out of gas, Jaybird. One of those last rounds from the cliff caught the gas tank. We’ve been leaking fuel the last quarter mile.”

“Everybody out,” Murdock called. “We’re foot soldiers from here on. That’s what that L is for in SEALs.”

Doc came up and shook his head at Murdock. “L-T, what in hell do we do about Lincoln? He isn’t much on taking a hike right now.”

1245 hours

Hill country

North of Nairobi, Kenya

Murdock knelt beside Lincoln where he lay in the rear of the 6 × 6 truck.

“Hey, Linc, how’s it going?”

“Not the best, L-T. I heard about the gas tank. So why are you guys hanging around here? Hit the road. Hike a little. I can take care of myself. Just leave me my MP-five and I’ll be fine.”

Doc Ellsworth moved in and checked the bandages. He changed both front and back and eased Lincoln down. “At least the bleeding has stopped, Linc. You stay quiet and don’t bust it open again, y’all hear?”

“Hear, Doc. Now get the troops out of here.”

“Quinley, get up here,” Murdock called.

He crawled into the truck. “Yeah, L-T?”

“You’re staying here as a rear guard with Linc. Figure the two of you can stop anybody coming up this road.”

“But L-T, Linc said—”

A stern look from Murdock cut Quinley off in mid-sentence. “Yeah, L-T. The two of us should be able to hold this spot for the rest of the day. I’ll have my shotgun and one of them Kalashnikovs with the thirty-round magazines.”

Linc started to say something, then shook his head and eased down on the bed of the truck.

Murdock put the rest of the platoon in motion. He had twelve men besides himself to face whatever was ahead. He hoped that would be enough.

They hiked up the road at a good pace, with Red Nicholson out ahead of the rest of them by fifty yards as lead scout. He watched the tracks on the dirt trail, and kept a lookout for any bushwhackers who might have been left to harass the troops.

They rounded two more curves in the road, and then it straightened out across a small meadow. Ahead, almost into the woods again, they saw the weapons carrier. It had stopped in the middle of the road.

Red dove into the ditch, and the rest of the platoon followed him.

“Can’t see any troops around it, LT. Just sitting there,” Red reported.

“No fire coming from it. Work up and check it out. But don’t get yourself killed.”

Red sprinted ahead ten yards and dove into the ditch.

Nothing happened around the rig.

Red did another spurt with the same results. He lifted up and used binoculars. He checked the whole area twice, then stood and ran for the rear of the Army vehicle.

No shots sounded. A moment later, he vanished around the side of the weapons carrier.

“L-T, nobody home,” Red said to his lip mike.

The SEALs moved up quickly and looked at the vehicle, but didn’t touch it or anything around it. They knew too well about booby traps in equipment and gear abandoned on purpose.

“Ran out of gas, my bet,” Red said. He scanned the ground beyond it, and waved the platoon forward. “Now the big guy is hoofing it like the rest of us.” Red soon saw that the Kenyans had kept to the road, where it was easier walking.

“How many men?” Murdock asked Red.

“Hey, I ain’t no Chiricahua Apache who can track a pussycat across a lava field.” He shrugged as they kept walking. “My guess is maybe ten or twelve. No more.”

The platoon hiked for fifteen minutes, but had no way of knowing how far ahead the general and his men were. Most of the SEALs carried two weapons now, including one of the heavy AK-47’s. But they didn’t complain. The side that ran out of ammunition first was bound to lose this battle.

Red fell in step beside Murdock. “L-T, you know, if they split up and left twelve trails the way the Indians used to do, eleven of them would get away and be home free. This way we get a shot at all of them. If we catch them.”

The flat crack of an AK-47 jolted into the mountain silence, and the round slanted past Murdock and dug into the road. The men darted into the ditches on each side or behind trees.

Murdock got off the first shot when he saw movement in the roadside brush two hundred yards ahead. “Use your AKs,” Murdock said on the Motorola. The SEALs slammed ten rounds into the brush, then more on the other side of the road. Would they put just one man as a rear guard?

“Hold it,” Murdock said to the lip mike. “No more fire. I think he’s bugged out.”

They went into the brush, and worked up to where they had seen the shots come from. No one was there. Red showed them where the man had trampled down some grass and weeds and broken off some branches to have a clear field of fire.

Back on the road, Murdock moved them out faster. They needed to catch the men ahead, not just chase them. He wondered if the Kenyans were heading for a specific spot or were just on a frantic run.

Murdock changed his usual formation, and spread the men out at ten-yard intervals to make a less-enticing target. He and Red took the point, and moved out fifty yards.

They came around another turn, and saw the road slanting upward again. The hills were getting higher, the ravines sharper, but still there were more trees and brush than Murdock liked.

Red held up his hand and went down on one knee. “Take cover, L-T,” Red yelled, dove, and rolled to the side of the road.

Murdock sprinted five yards into the brush just as he heard a machine gun pounding out rounds from somewhere ahead. The rounds were aimed on the other side of the road toward Red. He rolled again, then lunged into the brush and behind a sturdy hardwood tree.

Murdock touched his mike. “Hold it, platoon. Take cover. We’ve got an MG up here somewhere. Red and I’ll check it out. We move up on each side, Red. How in hell did you know he was there?”

“Saw something that didn’t compute, L-T. Wasn’t an animal, so had to be the rebs up there somewhere. Then there was the click of something metallic.”

They worked slowly uphill in the brush, taking care not to break a dry branch or scuff dead leaves. The brush and trees were thick enough so they could see only twenty feet ahead. Murdock figured the MG had to be 250 yards up the hill. If the men working the weapon stayed there, the SEALs could even the odds more. Maybe he could encourage the Kenyans to stand pat.