Per looked at Murdock.
“I’m down to ten. Don’t know where they went.”
“The terrs know,” Per said. “Let’s find the wadi our mates are in and work up it to find them. Look alive now; we could start taking fire at any moment.”
They ran another hundred yards north, and could see the fire from the terrorist students. Murdock wanted to fire again, but that would give away his position and they were in the open. Another fifty yards and they found a good-sized wash that led to the left.
“Could be it,” Per said. They ran along it out of sight for a hundred yards. It petered out to the surface. There was no sign of the other men.
“Light sticks,” Murdock suggested. “Do any of the other squad’s men have light sticks they could break and show just to the rear?”
Sergeant Per sent the radio message, and a moment later they spotted three blue light sticks one more wadi ahead and again to the left. They charged up there, radioing where they were and that they were coming in.
“No friendly fire, mates. This is the squad that’s come to help you.”
They found the six, three Israelis and Senior Chief Sadler, Bill Bradford, and Mahanani.
“Where’s your Bull Pup?” Murdock asked Sadler.
“Hell, I didn’t rate one. Must be two of them in another squad. Glad you made it.”
Murdock and Per talked to Lieutenant Moshie Hadera. He had been in the planning group.
“Commander. We’ve got one wounded man. They evidently sent out a pair of scouts to check out this facility they must have been making a mock attack on. Caught us by surprise and one of my men took a round through his leg before we got under cover. Thanks for the twenties. Really shook them up. They must think we have a tank in here somehow.”
“Glad to help. I need to discourage them some more. I’ve got ten rounds. I can use up three more. That should do it.”
The lieutenant nodded, and Murdock moved up to the top of the wadi bank where he could see the occasional muzzle flash. When he spotted the next one, he lasered it and fired. The round exploded only two hundred yards away. In the flash, Murdock could see the troops in a shallow wadi. He could hear screams of pain when the sound of the round died.
He fired again and then waited. Lieutenant Hadera came up and used his binoculars.
“Yeah, looks like they are moving out. Maybe some damn cadre will form them up into a company and march them away.”
“Let’s hope,” Murdock said.
They waited.
“How about a star shell?” Murdock asked.
The lieutenant nodded and fired one from his rifle. It burst two hundred yards downrange and began to float slowly to the ground. Murdock knew he had twenty seconds. The terrorists had not formed into a company, but were in what looked like squads that were not dispersed the way they should be. He saw a group of three seven- or eight-man squads, and fired a round over them. It exploded with a devastating effect. He sighted in on another group of two squads and fired again.
He got off one more shot as the flare faded. He thought he saw some silver bars on the collar of one of the men just as he fired. It was a direct-impact round and hit five yards in front of the squad, and the shrapnel sprayed them with deadly effect. With the flare, the men in the squad beside him with long guns had been firing as well, cutting down more of the terrorists.
“Let’s go get them,” Sadler said. He looked at the Israeli Mistaravim officer.
He nodded. “We’ll leave my wounded man here and come back and blow up this facility. Spread out in a line of skirmishers ten yards apart. We’ll go at a steady jog. No firing until we run into them. At the site they stayed at, we’ll look for wounded to dispatch. Let’s go.”
At the shallow wadi they found ten packs, a rifle, eight dead bodies, and two wounded who were put out of their misery.
“Ten down, we estimated fifty of them. Forty to go, with a bunch carrying your shrapnel and in no mood to fight. Let’s catch them.”
The attackers ran then with their weapons at port arms. Within a hundred yards they caught two stragglers limping. They were gunned down without a missed step as the eleven men charged forward.
Another hundred yards and Bradford stopped them. “Listen,” he said. They did.
No sound of movement ahead. “I heard bolts clicking on rifles. They have stopped running and are in a wadi waiting for us. Scouts?”
He looked at Lieutenant Hadera. The Israeli pointed to his two men, who slid out of the group and worked ahead silently. The rest of the raiders settled down in a four-foot-deep wadi out of harm’s way and waited.
“Fifty yards and all clear,” the Motorolas chirped.
“A hundred yards, yes, voices ahead. I can see the wadi. It’s a deep one and long, almost straight. We could cut fifty yards to the right and hit the wadi. I’ll be there waiting. Then we take them from the flank. They’ll have no protection.”
“Will do,” Lieutenant Hadera said. He motioned to the rest of the men. “Absolute silence. No talking, coughing. At a walk.”
They moved like shadows in the faint moonlit night. First they went to the right fifty yards, then turned north. They found the wadi and the two Israelis waiting for them.
“The troops are up there about forty yards,” the scout whispered. “A little bend, then we can see them.”
The lieutenant arranged his firepower. He put Murdock in the middle of the twenty-foot-wide wadi, then ranged men on each side of him, some to stand, some prone so they all could fire at once. They crept forward, careful not to make a sound.
A murmur of voices came to them; then they were at the bend and Per gave the order with a whisper into his mike. “Now.”
The men fired at once. Murdock got off two 20mm rounds, then switched to the 5.56 barrel and emptied a magazine. Around him men were firing. A few return rounds came; then the survivors stampeded down the wadi to a bend and out of sight. Murdock put another twenty round at the bend in the wadi, and hoped he had some shrapnel angling up the channel where the men must still be running.
They moved up slowly on the killing field. Two wounded were dispatched with single shots. They counted twenty-four bodies. There were thirty backpacks abandoned. Murdock checked out one. They held only clothing and a meal carton.
Lieutenant Hadera gave the order quietly. “Pick up all weapons and ammo you can find. We’ll put it in the next fire we set. Let’s move back to our target.”
By the time they had scoured the area, they had twenty-six AK-47’s and over three hundred rounds of ammo. They divided up the weapons and marched back to the watering hole.
Lieutenant Hadera had worked out his assignments on blowing the water facility before they left. Now he made the duties known, and the men went to work planting charges. They worked the cover off the well. It was a six-inch drilled well, and they couldn’t get into the pipe. They set charges to mangle the pipe and blow up the diesel engine that powered it. The pumping station took several charges to demolish the pumps and the engines that ran them. They set off the pump charges first. The diesel blew and caught fire, and when the diesel fuel spilled out, it began burning. The men threw the AK-47’s into the fire to ruin them.
The pipeline from the water tower was hit next with charges pasted on the big pipe downstream a hundred yards, then each twenty yards up to the tank. The blasts were set off in sequence. The terrorists would have to lay a whole new pipeline through this stretch toward the main facility.
Mahanani helped set charges on the pair of huge water tanks. He had no idea how much water they would hold, but he had seen smaller tanks on standpipes in good-sized towns in Mid America. They put charges on one side, under the legs on the far side, and then two more charges, setting up both tanks the same way. The men activated the charges on signal by the radio, each set for thirty seconds; then they all ran uphill so they wouldn’t be caught in the flood of water.