“Sounds good. Daylight or dark?”
“The electrician said they used to have two men on night duty, and neither one was armed. Might be different now. Especially after our raids, the federals might have eight or ten men there defending the place.”
“Then let’s go after dark and slip up on them. Hike in the last mile. All we have to do is follow the power lines.”
“About seventy miles down there. If we leave at dusk we should be in good shape. Your SEALs all in fighting shape?”
“All except Stroh, who I ordered to stay here.”
“Best for him. I’ll see you this afternoon to set up our time schedule.”
That afternoon, the SEALs were told about the mission. The senior chief and the JG gave them details about the raid and when it would lift off.
“I like it,” Rafii said. “No hiking.”
“Maybe,” Jaybird said. “Remember our last round trip on a helicopter? We walked home.”
All of the walking wounded made it to the flight. Gardner had the bullet wound in his right arm, but it was healing. Rafii’s wounded leg was not bothering him. Sadler’s left arm wasn’t as bad as they’d thought at first.
The fifteen SEALs and two Africans in the Seahawk lifted off the soccer field promptly at 1930, and made a wide swing around Sierra City. They found the power lines and followed them for twenty miles before the pilot saw the hilltop substation ahead. He pulled out a mile from it before he hunted an LZ. He found one beside a moderate-sized stream where flooding had choked out the jungle and left a small clearing that had been farmed.
“Stay right here unless we tell you to come get us,” Murdock told Lieutenant Halstrom. He had one of their Motorolas, and it was tuned and checked. He waved at them and went into the edge of the encroaching jungle to be a defensive force of one.
Lam led the hike to the mountain. It was higher than it had looked from the chopper. They were near the top when Lam called a halt.
“Somebody up there, Cap. Not sure how many, but some. Must be an outpost. Should I take a closer look?”
“That’s why you get the big pay, Sailor. Scope it out.”
Five minutes later, the SEALs heard Lam on the Motorolas.
“Skipper, I’ve got a two-man lookout position. No bunker or protection. Both are sitting on a log beside a sort of trail up from a stream. Must use it for getting water. Both men are soldiers and armed with long guns. Want me to take both down with my MP-5?”
“How far to the substation?”
“About a hundred yards, up an easy slope. I don’t see anyone around the high-fenced area.”
“I’m coming up to take a look.”
When Murdock squirmed up beside Lam in the thick growth, he saw a problem. They could see the big transformers and electrical grids and power cables, but anyone in the small control building on this side of all the electrical equipment could also see the two guards. If they went down, someone inside would know it.
“This gives us a big problem,” Murdock whispered to Lam. The two soldiers sat on the log thirty feet out front. “How are we going to take out these two and hit the control shack up there at the same time and not damage any delicate instruments and controls?”
27
Lam looked at the scene again, then grinned. “Hey, Cap, you joshing me or what? This is a piece of cake. We take out the people inside the control shack first. Put one EAR blast into that substation window, and a second or two later we take out the two guards with silenced MP-5s.”
“You’re right,” Murdock said. “Remember the Bishop Museum in Hawaii? The EAR shots didn’t hurt any of the artifacts in there, so we should be okay here.” He hit the Motorola. “Get the EAR up here pronto,” he said. “Lam, just after the EAR shot, you take out the sentry on the right, I’ll take the man on the left.”
Kenneth Ching came charging up with the EAR, and settled in for a shot after Murdock pointed out the target.
“Right through the window, Ching. Make it a good one.” On the Motorola he told the platoon to move up where he was and stay out of sight. “We’re going to use the EAR through the window, then take out the two sentries. When they are down, we charge up the last hundred to the control room and see what we have to work with.”
Murdock looked at Ching in the darkness. “Whenever you’re ready, Ken.”
A second later Ching triggered off the highly charged burst of enhanced air that slammed through the distance and shattered the pane-glass window as it burst inside the small shack. For a moment Murdock wondered if the sides of the structure would explode outward. They didn’t. He heard Lam fire, and he refined his sight on the second guard and pulled the trigger on single-shot. Murdock’s chest hit was a little off center. He fired again where the guard had fallen, and the soldier didn’t move anymore.
“Let’s go,” Murdock said into his mike, and the seventeen men lifted up and charged silently up the slope. There was a high fence around the substation itself, but the ten-foot-by-ten-foot shack stood outside the fence.
Murdock tested the door. Unlocked. He jerked it open and stared inside around the doorjamb. In the lighted room he saw two men lying on the floor. Murdock motioned the Loyalist soldier forward, and he looked around the shack.
“Nothing here to hurt the substation,” the Loyalist soldier said. “We have to get inside the fence.”
“No wire cutters for a fence this heavy,” Jaybird said.
“Blow it,” Murdock ordered.
Canzoneri, their resident explosives expert, ran forward and looked at the fence gate.
“Easiest way to get in is to blow the hinges off,” he said. As he talked, he pasted two one-inch squares of TNAZ plastic explosive on the hinges and inserted twin timer/detonators. “Get back thirty,” he said. Then he set the timers for twenty seconds, pushed them both to activate the timers, and sprinted to the side and behind the control shack.
The sharp crack of the explosives sounded like twin rolls of thunder in the carpet of green jungle that covered the hills.
“Everyone down and dirty,” Murdock barked in the radio. “There has to be a small force up here and they will be on the run. Keep your eyes on.”
“I’ve got noise coming up the back of the hill,” Tracy Donegan said. “Sounds like company.”
“Spread out, find cover,” Gardner said on the Motorola.
Donegan saw them first. “I’ve got a dozen coming up a trail, bunched. We have weapons free?”
“Wait until we can see them all,” Murdock said. “Fire on my MP-5 rounds.”
Donegan was closest to them. He counted eleven as they came up the trail and then spread out as they entered the cleared space around the far side of the electrical substation.
“Now,” Murdock said, and chattered off six rounds from his MP-5. At once the rest of the men fired. The rattle of the MP-5s was covered with the heavier rounds coming from the sniper rifles and the machine gun. Then the 5.56 rounds shrilled into the fight, and the eleven federal soldiers caught in the open with no cover went down.
Two surged up and darted for some trees at the edge of the clearing. One took a round in the leg, but both made it into the brush and tangle of the jungle growth. JG Gardner was closest to them.
“Donegan on me, let’s go get those last two.” The SEALs’ fire cut off as all the enemy were down. Donegan and Gardner sprinted twenty yards to the edge of the forest, where Gardner held up his hand and they both stopped. He pointed to his ear and then into the growth and both listened.
They heard sounds of movement even through the lush tropical growth. Gardner took the lead, running where possible, ducking under and around trees, skirting patches of thick growth, and every fifty feet stopping to listen.
“Getting closer,” Gardner whispered on the last stop. They had worked down the back side of the mountain, and now a small ridge showed to the left that bordered a tiny ravine no more than fifty feet across. The two SEALs paused to look. Gardner lifted his Bull Pup and fired a 20mm round into the valley. The round went off with a snarling roar, and Gardner waved them forward.