He motioned to Ching, and they went toward the gunmen.
“Must be some of those from the trucks,” Murdock said. “We need to slow them down or stop them. What are you shooting?”
“MP-5. Way out of my range.”
“Might not be for long.” They ran forward for thirty yards and hit the dirt. They waited and listened. They could hear a chorus of dogs barking somewhere to the north. The Israelis had warned them about the dogs. There were packs of them roaming wild all over the West Bank. Also, many homeowners kept them for watchdogs. The Israelis always carried a second handgun to shoot dogs with; otherwise their missions were often blown.
Murdock figured it was three minutes since they had come out this far. He heard an explosion in back of him, and then a sympathetic roar that lit up the night sky into daylight for a hundredth of a second. He looked to the rear and saw the bright flash turn into the reddish glow of a fire.
That brought more shooting from in front of them. Murdock figured the rifle flashes were about two hundred yards away. A dozen of them, maybe more. He fired two quick laser rounds hoping he had the range. One round burst long, the second one came over the flashes, and he fired again, lasering the exploding twenty round.
For a moment there was total silence. Then Murdock could hear talking. Arabic, but he couldn’t be sure of the words. One man began to scream, and a gunshot sounded, stopping the human voice.
“Pistol shot,” Murdock told Ching. They waited. Ching cocked his head listening.
“Moving,” he said. “I’d guess they are going the other way. Bugging out. Now they’re running.”
Behind them near the third bunker, Vinnie Van Dyke taped two quarter-pound sticks of C-4 together and pushed in the timer detonator.
“A minute, Sergeant Per?”
“Sounds good. Take it into the bunker and put it in the middle of anything that looks like it could explode. Not the ammo boxes. Then shag your ass out of there.”
“Aye, aye. I can do that.” Vinnie had used his flash to set the timer on the detonator; now he carried the potent bomb inside the third bunker and used the flash to find something dangerous. He found a dozen five-gallon cans that could be gasoline. Nearby were boxes of hand grenades. He found one box open and laid his bomb on top of the hand bombs. Vinnie pushed in the plunger on the timer and ran out the door. He sprinted for the fourth bunker, and was there with time to spare. He and the three Israelis looked around the edge of the fourth bunker as the bomb went off. It was a pounding roar, with smoke and debris shooting out the door of the bunker like it was a rifle muzzle. The roof didn’t blow off, but sagged in places. Then they heard the fire and how it cooked off one box after another of hand grenades.
“Oh, yeah,” Vinnie shouted. “I love it.”
Two Israelis took bombs into the last bunker. Sergeant Per used his radio. “Commander, any luck with the visitors?”
“They gave up and took off for home,” Murdock said. “No action from up ahead of us for five minutes.”
“We’re three bunkers down, one to go. Hold your spot and we’ll move that way after the final boom-boom. Any casualties?”
“No cuts or scrapes here, Sergeant.”
“Good. See you in about five. After this next blast, give us some flashes with your torch, if you would. Oh, flashlight.”
“That’s a roger.”
Sergeant Per saw the two Israelis run out of the last bunker, and he pointed to Vinnie and they all ran in the direction that Murdock had gone. They were thirty yards away from the last bunker when it blew.
The explosion jolted the four men ahead six feet, and then drove them to the ground. The gushing, roaring blast disintegrated the roof of the bunker and its three feet of dirt cover, showering the mass into the air and driving some of the debris a hundred yards away. It kept roaring and exploding, and then small-arms rounds began cooking off in the fire, and the four attackers leaped up and charged away from the area as fast as they could run.
They overshot Murdock by fifty yards, but he and Ching kept up with them. They were all panting when they dropped to the ground and caught their breath.
“What in hell was in that one?” Sergeant Per asked.
One of the Israelis grinned. “Sarge, should have warned you. We found two open cases of C-4. Must have been fifty pounds to the box. Dumped out the quarter-pounders and set our small contribution on top and lit the fucking fuse. Nice bang, what?”
As the secondary explosions died down and the small arms kept cracking, they could hear half a dozen choruses of dogs howling.
“Hurt their ears,” Per said. “Surprised we haven’t run into any dogs before now. The Arabs like to keep them on their sites as watchdogs. These are wild ones, roam in packs, and can kill a man if he isn’t well enough armed to fight them off.”
He looked around. “Anybody hurt, injured, sprained ankle, anything?”
Nobody responded.
“Good.” He took out his radio. “Seekyou, Seekyou. This is twelve far south. A knockout here. Anyone close want help?”
“Yes, twelve. We’re ten south here, I figure about a mile north of you. We saw and heard your work down there. Good fellows. We ran into about fifty terrs on a night-training problem. Evidently it is a live-round firing test and they have caused us serious problems. Could you put a run due north and say twenty degrees to your left?”
“On our way. We have one twenty. Do you have one of the big ones?”
“No twenty here, would have been a huge help. Actually, they have us pinned down. Our mission was the pumping station, the water tanks, and the wells. Quite a sophisticated setup. Look Russian to me but no names on equipment. We were here and set to get started when a pack of dogs attacked us, and when we fired on them, that brought in the terrs. Don’t know how well trained they are, but we’re now about a hundred yards from the target and in a wadi with good cover, but no chance we can take on fifty of their AKs and come out ahead.”
“We’re moving up. Should be there in about eight minutes. Put a star shell over the hostiles and radio us where you are from them. We’re gone.”
Everyone had heard the radio talk. Sergeant Per led the run to the north and twenty degrees to the left. They covered the first half mile quickly, then came to a series of wadis. They had to dip into the wadis and climb up the other sides. It slowed them.
Per used the radio. “Pinned, give us another three minutes. Damned wadis are killing us.”
“Looks like the terrs are organizing some kind of an attack. I can hear them moving units to each side of us. Any speed will be appreciated.”
“Star shell now on them,” Per said. They had just climbed up on a wadi ledge, and Per motioned to Murdock. “When that star shell goes off, send a round up that way. Could be a half mile. Let them know more trouble is coming for the students.”
Murdock nodded and watched to the north. When the bright flare lit the sky to the north, it wasn’t as far as they’d figured. Murdock lasered on the star shell itself and fired. He didn’t know if that would send back a response on the laser. He waited a second, then two, and saw his round airburst somewhere near the flare. He got off another shot before the flare burned out. They ran up a small rise, and could see the shadows of some small buildings ahead and lights around a large round water tank. To the north of that they spotted some muzzle flashes.
Murdock sent one round that way, and then counted his ammo.
“Hey, twenty, that indeed is a tremendous weapon. One of your rounds burst right over the biggest group. They hadn’t bothered to disperse, and that round must have put twenty men wounded or dead. The men to the sides have been pulled back. They are increasing their small-arms fire, but that can’t hurt us. How is your ammo supply?”