“Get the men over here,” he shouted. “We have the two sheds at the end of the runway to clear. Move it.”
The men scurried around finding more men, sending them to the sergeant. Soon he had twenty of his thirty men and they formed up in a line of skirmishers and rushed the two sheds fifty yards away. There were only two workmen there getting ready to check the night lighting system. Neither of them had weapons.
The one man in his platoon who spoke Napali had not joined the group yet. Chiang shouted in Chinese at the men to continue their work. Then he used his hands to show the men to go on working. At last they nodded and picked up their tools.
Chiang assembled his men and marched them toward his second objective, a guard building at the south entrance to the airport used mainly for maintenance trucks. He picked up the ten missing members of his platoon. One man had a broken leg. They left him on the edge of the runway with another man as a backup and double-timed toward the guard shack.
At three hundred yards they took their first enemy fire. It was short. They fired their long-range weapons and kept running forward.
At two hundred yards, Chiang directed his troops into a small ditch at the edge of the runway. He put his Ultimax machine gun on a gentle rise and had it open fire on the guard shack. Now he saw it was made of concrete blocks or bricks and had sand bags at two windows, but none at the third.
The 5.56mm rounds from the Ultimax slammed into the window and around a facing door. That slowed firing from inside. Chiang took the opportunity to send one squad around to the rear of the small building while the rest of the platoon fired at the shack with their type 86 rifles. They were good weapons, Chiang knew, firing 7.62mm rounds and could be fully automatic or single shot. All of his men used the 30-round magazine, and each carried six loaded magazines, giving each man 210 rounds without refilling magazines.
His first squad came up behind the building and fired into it, reducing the answering fire. A moment later a pole came out of the building with a white T-shirt attached.
Chiang smiled and ordered a cease-fire. The men ran forward and charged into the small building without firing another shot.
Chiang made sure the position was secure and that he had the four Nepal soldiers captured and bound. Then he called in to his company commander on his radio.
“Sir, Red Platoon of Red Company has secured our two objectives. Where do you need us?”
“Red Platoon, hold your position for five minutes, then charge forward toward the hangar at the south end of the field. Resistance there is heavy.”
“Right, hold five minutes.” He turned off the radio and put it back in the holder on his combat webbing. “Reload all magazines. We go into a tough fight in five minutes.”
The riflemen filled partly empty magazines. The two machine gunners put on new one hundred-round drums. Chiang checked his watch. He looked out the window at the building three hundred yards ahead. It was a hundred feet wide, he couldn’t tell how long. He saw no soldiers, but he could hear firing.
“Two squads to the left and two to the right. Let’s go on a sweep. Five yards apart. Move out.”
Chiang kept in the center of the four squads. Nobody faltered, all stayed on line. As soon as they took fire they all went prone and returned fire. He saw two machine guns firing from bunkers at the front and back corners of the building. When did they have time to build sand-bag bunkers at a civilian airport? Chiang wondered.
With hand signals he moved the farthest right squad into a ditch that ran toward the hangar. He told them to move up and get the machine gun in a cross-fire. He was too far away for his submachine gun, but he fired a dozen rounds anyway.
More hand signals told the two right squads to concentrate on the rear machine gun. Three hundred rounds poured into the position and a moment later it went quiet. The two right-hand squads jolted upright and ran for the target. The other two squads bore down on the front machine gun and cut down its firing.
A short time later, the far right squad laid down a barrage of rifle fire from the corner of the building and wiped out the machine gun at the other corner.
“Charge!” Chiang bellowed and the other two squads blasted forward, secured the corner and the machine gun placement. Then they could look into the hangar. Two large civilian jetliners sat there, but Chiang saw no soldiers. He frowned. He sent a scout into the building and waited. The man ran from one side of the huge building to the other, then came out at the far corner and gave the all-clear sign.
Chiang waved his men forward. They were halfway across the one-hundred-foot-wide building with the thirty-foot-high front folding doors, when three machine guns opened up on his platoon from inside the hangar. He and his men had no cover on the concrete floor and taxiway.
“Take cover,” Chiang shouted. He saw three of his men mowed down right in front of him before they could react to the weapons. Some of his men fired into the building, but they couldn’t see the hidden machine guns.
Five- and seven-round bursts chattered from the three positions. Chiang ran back the way they had come. The wall there was his only cover. He saw three more of his men charging for the wall. Two fell almost in front of him. He hurdled the bodies and dove forward, rolling once to get to the wall. He rolled again with bullets chipping concrete all around him. He rolled again and slithered around the wall into safety. Chiang stared at the carnage on the cold concrete floor in front of him. He had come in with twenty-eight men. Two more were back on the tarmac with the broken leg.
He counted men dead and dying in front of him. Tears seeped from his eyes. He saw two men lunge up and try to run. One dragged his right leg. A burst of five rounds hit him in the chest and leg and he went down and didn’t move. The other man almost made it to the wall and safety with two guns trained on him and two seven-round bursts plunged into his body jolting him into instant communication with his honorable ancestors.
Chiang wiped tears off his cheeks. He had four men with him, only four. The rest of them, twenty-four, lay on the hangar floor dead. He grabbed his radio.
“Captain Company Red, this is Red Platoon.” He waited but there was no response. He tried again: “Captain of Company Red, this is Red Platoon. We have trouble.”
A moment later the speaker came to life. “Yes, Red Platoon. Have you secured the south hangar?”
“No. We tried to capture the south hangar. My platoon was wiped out by hidden machine guns inside the hangar. We cleared it but missed them. I have five men left. The rest are dead. Instructions.”
“Take the hangar, Red Platoon. Surprising heavy resistance at other areas of the airport. Do the best you can. Grenades maybe.”
Chiang looked around the edge of the wall. He was low to the ground and practically invisible from anyone inside. He watched for five minutes. No sound came from the big building. Then he saw movement. One of the civilian airliners had a rear passenger access door open. He saw movement inside the shadows in the plane. That had to be one of the machine guns. He motioned for a rifle, set it on full auto and in one swift movement moved the rifle around the wall and drilled twenty rounds into the open airliner door. He jerked the rifle back as two machine guns fired at the wall, splintering it in a dozen places where he had been moments before.
Now he had more places to watch from. The hail of bullets stopped and he watched again. There were two more guns in there, but where? He figured he had silenced one of them. Again he watched the other areas of the big hangar. They had to have good fields of fire at almost all of the front of the building. That limited the spots they could hide. He narrowed down the possibilities, then watched them on a grid basis.