Murdock tried to watch ahead. The platoon had moved up to within thirty yards of the roadblock. They couldn’t hear anything. Murdock watched, but saw no flare of a match that might be used to light a smoke. They waited. Twice Murdock thought he heard the short grunt of a silenced shot, but he wasn’t sure.
Lam led the two men, showing them how to move without making noise. They penetrated ten yards into the thickets away from the trail, then moved forward paralleling it for thirty yards. Then Lam headed them back to the trail. They stopped just behind the fallen tree. The top of it extended far into the jungle, where it had created a sweeping path as it came down. Lam eased through the brush until he could see along the heavy trunk lying on the ground. Nothing.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. When he opened them he sectionalized the area, looking at one small section at a time, before moving on. He had left the other two men ten yards behind him. In the third section he found a cammy-clad soldier holding a weapon and leaning against the tree. He could be sleeping. Lam kept looking. He found the second man three feet behind the log lying on the edge of the trail. Also could be sleeping. At last Lam found the third man, sitting upright against the two-foot-thick tree trunk, rifle in his hands, peering over the top of the log.
Lam clicked his Motorola twice, and the two men behind him worked up silently. He pointed out the alert soldier, and Rafii nodded. He worked closer until he was ten feet away, then lifted up and his right hand came down sharply. Lam couldn’t see the knife flying through the air, but he heard the groan from the man it hit. He fell forward and moaned as he rolled over. He tried to shout, but the sound came out as a gurgle. The noise was enough to awaken both the other men. They waved their rifles. Lam shot one of them with his silenced MP-5, and Gardner nailed the other one with a three-shot burst. Then all was quiet.
Lam motioned for the others to stay put, and he worked ahead without a sound to check on the three and see if there were any more defenders. He paused at the edge of the trail. He couldn’t see or hear anyone down the trail. The three bodies in front of him hadn’t moved since the attack. He surged out and checked all three. Lam touched his Motorola.
“We’ve got a clear field here, Skipper. Three down and out. But the damn tree is a problem.”
The rest of the platoon came up, and Sandari grinned. “No big worry,” he said. “Trees fall down over trails all the time. We unhitch the cart and ten men lift it over the log and put it down. Then I talk to the horse and lead him around the end of the log through the trees. Happens all the time.”
Fifteen minutes later the Vice President was back in the cart, and they moved up the trail, which was becoming increasingly rough and narrow.
They stopped after a half hour of marching. The trail was too narrow now for the horse cart.
“Mr. Vice President, have you ever ridden a horse?”
“You’re kidding. This plow horse can be ridden?”
“We’re going to find out. That knee of yours isn’t going to hold up for eight or ten more miles. Sandari is getting on the horse’s back now to see how he performs. My guess he’s as gentle as a puppy.”
He was, Murdock was glad to see. They boosted the Vice President onto the horse, where one of the cart pillows served as a make-do saddle. Then they moved again. Sandari told Murdock it was not more than eight miles to the village. He would be surprised if the federal troops were out this far.
“I’ll believe that when we hit the Loyalist outposts,” Lam said.
Ten minutes later, Lam put the platoon down. “Skipper, up here, quickly. I don’t know what the hell is going on. Sounds like a bunch is having late chow or early chow. I smell cooking fires and meat and all sorts of food up here. Noise like it’s the Fourth of July.”
Murdock, Jaybird, and Gardner hurried up the trail to where Lam lay in the brush at the edge of the path. They all heard the noise.
“How far off our route?” Gardner asked.
“Must be a clearing up there. Maybe fifty yards ahead and off the trail by not more than a dozen yards. No way we can get past them and not be seen.”
“Then let’s hold a celebration in their honor,” Murdock said. “We move up as close as we can to get open fields of fire and we test out those new 20mm rounds to see how well they work.”
25
Lam came back from his scouting mission. “Oh, yeah, Skipper. They are just starting to chow down. I counted twenty of them and what looks like a field kitchen. I couldn’t tell if any of them were officers. We’ve got some good fields of fire. It’s near a small stream that goes toward the river. They’re on this side of it in a small field somebody has carved out of the jungle. Those farmers must spend half their time beating back the growth of vines and small trees.”
“Can we get all of our Bull Pups on line?” Gardner asked.
“Plenty of space.”
Murdock left Mahanani with the horse and the Vice President, and took the rest of the men forward. Lam edged into the heavy growth beside the trail and worked across to the other side of the opening that spread out to the left. They would have forty feet of space in the edge of the jungle to set up. It took five minutes to get the fifteen men placed. Then Murdock used his Motorola.
“If you have airburst rounds left, use them. First shots from the twenties, then everyone open up. Twenties go to 5.56 after the first round. No reason to be quiet on this one. Check it out. Twenties we fire in ten seconds.” He waited, then counted down from four. At one the Bull Pups roared and at once the rounds exploded. Two were airbursts, and the others hit the field kitchen and the line of soldiers. More than half went down with the first rounds. Then the rest of the weapons fired, picking off the survivors and those trying to escape. In twenty seconds it was all over. Two men crawled toward the jungle. They were quickly nailed with two rounds each. All else was quiet.
“Gardner and Rafii, go in and make sure everyone is down,” Murdock said.
The two men sprinted for the death scene. Murdock heard one round fired, then all was quiet.
“Their weapons are the newer AK-74’s,” Gardner said. “We better scoop up all of them we can find. I need four more men in here.”
Murdock pointed to four men near him, and they ran into the carnage and retrieved weapons and ammo. Each man brought back four of the big rifles. They spread them out among the men. Then Murdock brought up the horse and they headed up the trail. Lam and Sandari were out ahead a quarter of a mile. Murdock expected no more federals. Those out on patrol must have reported back for a late midnight supper. Or their last supper, however you looked at it.
Mahanani pulled up beside Murdock and fell in step with him. “The Veep is looking better. He was so tired before he could hardly spit. Now he’s going to make it okay.”
“Good. We’ve got maybe two hours left. We should hit some of the Loyalists’ outposts before long.”
Jaybird used the Motorola. “Hey, Skipper, we haven’t heard or seen anything of Mojombo and his men. Where in hell are they?”
“My guess they swung deeper into the jungle, farther away from the river to get away from any federal troops. He’ll probably beat us back to the village.”
It was dawn before Murdock and his platoon hiked into Tinglat. Mojombo welcomed them.
“You found them. Great. We came up empty at the station, but we took it down and wasted a lot of their soldiers. They had a bomb they had rigged as a booby trap just outside the station. We watched them setting it up after we got there. It was no problem. We caught the same message you did from the pilot. We found him, and left half of our men there to give him some security for the rest of the night. With daylight there are supposed to be F-18’s flying air cover for him, and three choppers bringing in repair parts and mechanics and twenty-five Marines for a perimeter defense. The pilot had been in touch with the carrier on his radio. He estimated an hour of work before he’d be ready to fly out. He’s going back to the carrier, and they’ll leave one of the Skyhawks for us to use here. Does Washington, D.C., know about the men being rescued?”