The door clanged shut and the chopper leaped off the ground just as four more rocket rounds slammed into the complex. Two of the small rockets hit the front of the embassy and one beside it. The fourth hit where the chopper had been before it lifted skyward.
Murdock had seen and heard what happened. He approved. It was the only way. “Out the back of the place and into those trees,” Murdock shouted into his mike. “We’ll take stock, check for wounds and then try and figure out what the fuck we’re going to do.”
11
The fifteen SEALs charged directly through the deserted embassy, out a gate in the rear wall and into a two-acre grove of hardwood trees two hundred yards behind the building.
“Any wounds?” Murdock asked the men who clustered around him in the brush.
“Small chunk of shrapnel in my leg, but it don’t bother me none,” Howie Anderson said.
Mahanani went over to the big gunner’s mate and checked it, pulled up his pants leg and treated it.
“The metal went through, a slice,” Mahanani said. “Bandaged it up and Howie is fit for service.”
“Good, let’s haul ass out of here. We’re a little north and west of the bulk of the city. A couple of miles will get us away from any Chinese reaction to the embassy. We’ll head generally west, that’s where India is. Let’s move it, double-time.”
Lam was out front a hundred yards as the SEALs did their ground eating trot that would consume a mile in eight minutes. The area was built up but they found a field here and there and a road that seemed to lead nowhere bounded by a few poorly made houses. They saw no one in the area, and there were no Chinese troops that they encountered.
Fifteen minutes from the embassy, Murdock called a halt. “Now, planning session. We have two general choices. We can hike from here back to India to the west, which must be about a hundred miles.”
“We could steal a truck,” Jaybird said. “Done it before.”
“Yeah but I don’t see a hell of a lot of roads heading that direction,” Jefferson said.
“Hijack a plane?” Ostercamp asked.
“Chicoms will have the airports stitched up tight,” Franklin said.
“Ganges,” DeWitt said. “I saw it on the map. It’s somewhere just to the west of the capital.”
“You mean float down the sacred river to the bay?” Will Dobler asked.
“Or find a boat with a motor,” DeWitt said. “The Chicoms are going to be worried about taking control of the country. They won’t spend a platoon hunting us.”
“How far?” Bradford asked.
“If it’s a hundred miles to India on the west, it has to be a hundred and twenty to the Bay of Bengal,” DeWitt answered. “The mouth of the Ganges is more than a hundred miles wide down there, it shatters into dozens of channels that wander all over the map.”
Murdock looked at Jaybird, then Dobler and Mahanani. They all said, “wet.”
“If we go wet, and float, at five knots, it would take us twenty-four hours to get to the mouth of the river,” Murdock said. “We better try to find some motorized transportation.” He looked around in the darkness. “Anderson, you still have that SATCOM?”
“I do, sir.”
“Let’s see who we can raise. They gave us that ship frequency offshore. The cruiser. Try it.”
Anderson set up the antenna, aimed it in the direction of the satellite and had a beep on the radio showing it was aimed correctly.
“Wet One, this is Mother Hen. Do you copy?”
There was no response. He tried twice more. Murdock shook his head. “We have the wrong frequency or they don’t have their ears on. We’ll try later.”
“So let’s get moving to the west,” Dobler said. “Lam out a hundred. Those Chicoms had cammies on that looked a lot like ours. From a distance we’ll even look like Chinks. Might come in handy with the natives.”
They hiked again this time in a single file with Alpha Squad first and Bravo behind. Ed DeWitt brought up the end of the line as rear guard. They soon found the area more and more built up until they were in a residential section of a small town. Now they had to work down streets, past occasional street lights. Now and then they saw a car or small truck. They saw no Chinese troops for two hours.
“We must have come ten miles,” Murdock said as they took a break in one of the few open fields they had seen lately. Murdock checked his watch. It was 2330.
“Six, maybe seven hours to daylight,” Murdock said. “We need to have a boat and be sailing downstream before the sun comes up. Let’s move it faster.”
A half-hour later they came to another section of houses and streets. They had passed over three bridges, but they seemed to be swampy areas and not the river. They went around a building and Lam talked to them on the Motorola.
“We’ve got some Chicoms dead ahead. Looks like a patrol. Seven or eight. They’re coming directly for us down this street.”
“Get out of the way and we’ll have a surprise for them,” Murdock said. He motioned for his men to move to the side of the street, into doorways and in the openings between buildings.
“We let them come up to fifty feet of us, then we open fire. We have silenced weapons?”
Six men replied. “Silenced only if that will do it,” Murdock said. “Hold your fire until I give you a go on the Motorola.”
All was quiet in the strange little street. Then they heard some chatter and laughter. Not good patrol behavior. Murdock tightened his grip on his Bull Pup hoping he wouldn’t have to use it.
They saw a lead Chinese soldier come into the street shortly. He looked around and waved the rest forward. When all were in sight and less than twenty yards away, Murdock gave the order to fire.
The six weapons stammered out deadly rounds. None of the eight men in the patrol had time to fire his weapon. All went down to the muffled sound of the SEAL guns.
“Make sure, Franklin.”
The SEAL came away from a building and ran forward checking each of the Chinese. The Motorolas spoke.
“All down and out, Skipper,” Franklin said.
“We move forward.”
A half-hour later they came to a series of small streams and then the banks of the Ganges, the holy river of India. The bank had been terraced and concrete platforms built at the water’s edge so pilgrims could come and wash themselves in the sacred water.
“Upstream,” Murdock said. “Maybe fewer platforms and a dock or two with a boat.”
It was a quarter of a mile farther before they found any boats. Most were flat bottomed and too small to carry even six SEALs. A hundred yards on upstream they found a sturdier dock that angled into the river. Tied up there was a thirty-foot boat that looked large enough to hide the fifteen SEALs. Lam looked it over and came back with a grin.
“Looks like a winner. She has a diesel engine, room for fifteen, and if I read the gauges right, lots of fuel. There’s no guard onboard or anyone else, and I didn’t see anyone on the pier.”
“Let’s go steal a boat,” Murdock said.
They moved up and watched the boat and the pier for ten minutes. Nothing happened. Lam and two men slipped on board and checked the craft again. Two minutes later, Lam waved from the gangplank and the SEALs hurried onboard.
“Can you start the engine?” DeWitt asked Lam.
“Hey, does a dog have fleas? You betcha. You ready, Skipper?”
Murdock waved and Lam vanished into a small wheelhouse. A moment later the engine coughed, stuttered, then came the rhythmic beat of a diesel engine.
“Cast off,” Murdock said, the bowline came off the dock, and they moved out into the Ganges. In the dark, the river looked a mile wide. Lam headed for the middle of the channel and turned downstream. He saw no other boats on the river.