Murdock estimated they had come ten miles from the strike, and pulled the boats into shore. The men towed them onto the sand and spread out in a perimeter defense around the location. Victor parked the car on the shoulder and came in with the others.
It had been twenty minutes since the Israelis had given them an ETA of thirty-five minutes. Murdock hunched over where he sat, staring south. There was nothing but black on black. One unending bit of sand and black water after another. Not a light or a car or a building.
Lam lay in the sand on the north side of the defense watching and listening for any pursuit by the Arabs. Any trouble would come from that direction, but so far nothing.
Five minutes before the promised ETA, Lam sat up and frowned. Had he heard something from the south? He listened again, concentrated, closed his eyes, and poured all of his strength into his hearing. Yes, faint, but there it came again. The slow grinding of a truck, getting stronger, coming his way.
“Cap, we may have a problem,” he said on the Motorola.
Murdock stirred, shook his head, and answered.
“Something moving this way on the road from the south,” Lam said. “A truck if I hear it right. Moving slowly, maybe trying to sneak up on us.”
“Who would know we are here?”
“That radio transmission you made with the chopper was in the clear, wasn’t it? You gave him our location.”
“Yes. But who else but the Israelis would have a radio that could pick up the signal?”
“Got me, Commander. I just do the listening. Want me to roam south a half mile and see what I can find?”
“Go, be careful.”
Lam came off the sand and ran south along the shore. He carried his MP-5, and wished he had something longer. He ran hard for two hundred steps, then slowed for fifty more. Then he stopped, let his racing heart settle down, and listened.
Yes, the same grinding motor, as if it were crawling along in low gear, making more noise than if it were rolling at ten miles an hour in second.
“Definitely a truck, Skipper. Coming our way. I’m about a quarter up. I’ll do another quarter and see what I can hear.”
He ran again. Had to be a truck creeping up on a known location. How known? Oh, damn.
“Skipper, did the three Israelis we freed have a long-range radio like yours when they were captured? If they did it could be bad news and we’re pinpointed.”
Murdock swore softly. “Ebenezer, did you get that last Motorola?”
“Yes, I just checked with the men. They said they had a radio exactly like ours, but they disabled it before they were captured.”
“Disabled, not destroyed.”
“Correct.”
“Disabled can be repaired. Some friends from the town to the south could be coming to meet us and the chopper. Talk to the High Bird in Hebrew, maybe the A-rab won’t understand. Tell him there could be a problem at the LZ.”
Murdock listened to the exchange. He didn’t understand a word of it.
“Commander, Bird One says he’s five minutes off the Dead Sea. He wants a white flare now.”
“Cap, I’ve got a stake truck with men in the back,” Lam said on the radio. “The road swings wide here; he’s out of range of my MP-5. I can’t stop him. He’s rolling at about forty miles an hour. Be at your position in two minutes.”
“Fernandez, a flare to our south, white, now. Jaybird, get south a hundred and watch and listen for that truck. Use any twenties you have left. Stop the sonofabitch.”
“Roger, Cap. I’ve only got two twenty rounds.”
“Snipers, go with Jaybird. We can’t let that truck get near the chopper.”
The flare popped and floated down. Murdock could hear the bird coming in from due east; then he heard a new sound, a truck engine racing as it drove forward. Jaybird heard the truck and saw a dim outline on the road. He lasered it and fired. The twenty sailed over the charging truck and exploded in the air thirty feet behind it. The truck kept coming. The SEAL sniper rifles began firing.
The dark blob of the truck came closer, and Jaybird fired his last twenty. Just as he triggered it, the truck made a screeching turn to the left away from them, and the round burst slightly in back of the truck, but some of the shrapnel hit the rig.
Landing lights flared from the chopper as it came in closer. The truck skidded off the road into a field away from the gunfire. Lam swore when he saw the rocket whooshes coming from the truck.
“RPGs away,” Lam shouted into his Motorola mike.
“Abort, chopper, abort,” Murdock called into his long-range radio mike. But he was too late. The chopper had found the flare and was powering down on the big rotors as it began to settle in for a landing from a hundred feet.
Three more whooshing sounds came from the truck. Then three more as the RPGs slanted into the air tracking the chopper. The big bird was still fifty feet off the ground, and coming down slowly in a controlled descent, when one of the RPGs hit the fuselage just in back of the side door. The explosion ripped the side of the ship open. Shrapnel from the round blasted through to the cabin, and riddled the pilot where he concentrated on his landing.
The CH-46 turned sideways; then the rotors stopped as the engine blew apart, and the CH-46 crashed straight down and burst into a huge fireball as the fuel exploded.
“Get the truck,” Murdock barked into the Motorola. “Don’t damage it. We need it for transport over the Judean hills. Ed, get your squad out there. Rifles, can you see any personnel? Nail them, but don’t kill the truck.”
Bravo Squad ran toward where they’d last seen the truck. Lam was out there somewhere as well. “We have four people out here besides us,” Ed said into his Motorola. “No friendly-fire casualties. Watch the truck.”
They ran two hundred yards across the highway and east. Well ahead of them, Lam had seen the RPGs fire, and surged toward the truck to get in range for his MP-5. Now he was less than a hundred yards behind it as it crawled forward. He stopped and sent two three-round bursts into the stake body, then ran again. He heard the sniper rifles cracking ahead and to his right. How did Fernandez get way up there? He heard glass break, and saw the taillights on the rig signal a stop. The driver. Somebody got the driver.
Lam stopped and watched the rear of the truck. He saw one man drop down and crouch beside the back duals. Lam put three rounds into him and waited. Another man went down the other side of the truck, and Lam nailed him with the second three rounds of 9mm Parabellums. He watched, but saw no other movement.
“DeWitt. Two down from the rear of the truck. I think somebody nailed the driver. The rig is dead on the ground. I’m ahead of you somewhere, so don’t target me.”
“That’s a roger, Lam. Move up and clear the truck.”
Lam sprinted the last thirty yards. He found one body in the back of the stake body, then eased around the right-hand side. If the driver was down, there could be someone in the passenger’s side. Just as he reached for the door, it pushed open and a man in a khaki uniform stepped out. He carried a submachine gun in both hands. Lam triggered six rounds into the man’s back from six feet away, and he slammed into the door, dropped the weapon, and slid to the ground dying as he fell.
Lam lifted over the side of the truck and looked into the cab. One body lay draped over the steering wheel. The windshield had shattered and exploded inward.
“Clear on the truck,” Lam said. “Five men down. Any survivors on the chopper?”
Murdock had just walked away from the fire that still raged where the CH-46 had crashed. There was no chance of survivors. Small-arms rounds continued to explode as they cooked off from the heat of the blaze.
“Lam, does the truck still run?”
“Give me two.”
Lam pulled the dead driver out of the cab. The keys were still in the engine. He hoped none of the rounds had hurt the motor or the fuel supply. He used his pencil flash, moved the transmission lever out of gear, and found the starter. The engine ground over four times, then sputtered, then came to life and ran smoothly.
“One truck up and running,” Lam said. “Moving it back to the road.”
The SEALs gathered around the truck as it rolled over the sand and onto the blacktop. In back they found three unfired RPGs, lots of blood, and two MREs. In the cab, Murdock found an Israeli long-range radio exactly like the one he and Eb carried. He grunted and went to see the Israeli.
“Ebenezer, are there any roads to the east across the Judean hills?” Murdock asked as he looked back at the still-blazing wreckage of the chopper and the funeral pyre for its three men.
“No roads up this high. We’re back in Israeli-controlled land, and we can drop south on this road for fifteen more miles to the town of Newe Zohar. Then we can drive east.”
“First we should see if we can talk with anyone back at Rama. Do they monitor this frequency back there?”
“They should know that they have a chopper out,” Ebenezer said. He made the call, but had no response. “When the chopper is overdue on its run back to the base, they may start getting curious and monitor this frequency,” Eb explained. “We’ll try again in two hours.”
“We’re back in Israeli territory, right?” Murdock asked. Eb nodded. “So we should have no trouble driving to where we can call in a new chopper.”
“Depending on the fuel situation,” Eb said. “This is a gasoline-powered truck. Petrol isn’t always easy to find down here, and where it is available, it can cost dearly. Do any of you have any cash we can spend on gas?”
“Weren’t issued any money,” Murdock said. He looked at Lam behind the wheel. “How much gas in the tank?”
“Looks about half full.”
“Siphon all the gas out of the sedan. We can all fit on the stake. Let’s get ready to roll. Use the tubes we have over our backs to hold the weapons for the siphon. Go.”
It was twenty minutes before they started moving. Bradford was lucid and seemed to be hurting less. He sat against the cab of the truck in back and sang a little song he hadn’t thought of in ten years.
Three rode in the cab and seventeen in back. It was a full load. Lam drove, and they rolled down the highway at forty miles an hour. They pulled into the small village of Newe Zohar just as it was getting daylight. Ebenezer had an idea. He had Lam drive around until they found the police station. One Israeli cop on duty quickly called his superior, who came in ten minutes later.
Lieutenant Ebenezer showed the man some documents, and the chief of police kept nodding. Ten minutes later their truck’s tank was filled with gasoline from the police pump and they had two ten-gallon cans full in the back.
“Now maybe we can get somewhere,” Ebenezer said. He tried the radio again, but had no luck getting a response.
Eb rode in the cab with Murdock and Lam. “Our only worry now are Arab marauders. They roam over the underpopulated hills and sometimes hit small towns. They are well armed and take what they want. Usually they drive old military jeeps, decked out with ten-gallon cans of gasoline. We watch for them and when they see our guns, they will race away as fast as they can.”
Before they left town, Eb had Lam stop in front of a small store. He came out with four large sacks filled with pastries, fruit, and sandwiches. He passed them out to the men and then they began their eastward journey. “I always carry money with me just in case of an emergency like this,” he told them.
Lam looked at the map the Israeli showed him as Eb said, “First we go south on this same highway for ten miles; then we make a right turn into the only road. I’m not sure if there are any more settlements or villages out here or not. I’ve never been in this part of Israel. It’s all controlled by us, so no worry there. From the map it looks like about forty miles as the crow flies, or maybe fifty-five or so on the road. We’re heading for the good-sized town of Be’er Sheva.” As Lam drove, Lieutenant Ebenezer tried to call on the long-range radio. He made the call ten times, but heard no response.