Murdock awoke at 0530 and checked around. He was tired and sore from sleeping on the wooden planks. He stretched and looked at the wheelhouse. Dobler held the wheel and waved at Murdock.
“Welcome to the world, skipper. No action since that patrol boat got greedy.”
“Good.” Murdock rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Be light in a half hour, Chief. Any suggestions?”
“Keep to the middle of the water and pray that we’ve been making more than fifteen and that we’re closer than forty miles to the damn Bay of Bengal.”
“What are the odds?”
“Damn slight. Depends what the Chicoms have had time to set up as a defensive unit down here in the mud flats. You ever seen such a wide river? Islands all over the place. Just passed a big island on the right that looked like Minnesota.”
“No buildings?”
“Oh, hell no. Looked like it was half marsh and the rest ready to be flooded with the first rain upstream.”
As the light came up, they could see more details along the shoreline. It had pinched in now along another big island and the more firm looking land to the left.
“Trouble,” Dobler said. “Small boat coming upstream. Range two thousand yards.”
Stray bars of light splintered into the darkness from the east. The whole river took on a different tone as the light drove in devouring the darkness.
Ten minutes later they could see the boat plainly. It worked upstream at seven or eight knots.
“Patrol boat for sure,” Murdock said. “I’ll take the wheel. You get everyone awake and out of sight and locked and loaded for bear. We’re going to have a fight with this guy.”
Murdock watched the other boat closely as it approached. They were closing at about twenty-five knots. Soon he could see a machine gun mounted on the front. Was it Chinese or still a Bangladesh craft? He saw no flag. Then he spotted a flag on the stern. What was the Chinese flag? Then he had it. A gold star in the upper left hand corner on a pure red field. Yes. He had no idea what the Bangladesh flag looked like. He stared at the fluttering flag. Then he could see it, a red field and star.
They were still five hundred yards off each other.
“Twenties, fire at will,” Murdock said. He sighted in on the ship without using the laser and fired. Two more rounds came almost at the same time. Two of the rounds hit the Chicom ship and exploded. The first took out the man just crawling behind the machine gun on the fore deck. The second hit the wheelhouse but most of the damage was on the outside.
In close order six more rounds hit the Chinese craft before the crew had a chance to return fire. The man at the helm vanished, the thirty-foot craft plowed straight ahead for ten seconds, then the engine died. With no one at the wheel, the little craft nudged against the current for the last time, then swung to port and began to drift slowly downstream with the current.
Two rifles fired from the small ship, but neither hit the SEALs’ boat. The Chinese patrol boat drifted toward the far shore, and Dobler steered his craft to the opposite side of the half-mile wide river.
By then it was brightly light. The sun was up soon and a warm, humid day approached. Dobler coaxed another knot of speed from the ka-thumping diesel engine and they moved back to the center of the roiling, muddy water.
Ten minutes later Lam called from the center of the boat.
“Chopper coming from due north.”
“Too early for the forty-six,” Dobler said.
“Doesn’t sound like a forty-six,” DeWitt said. “Keep those twenties with full magazines.” Three of the men switched to full mags and waited.
“Still coming downstream,” Lam said. “Engine sound is wrong, so it’s not one of ours.”
“We let him make a flyover. Everyone flake out like you’re sleeping. We might fool him into thinking we’re some of his own.”
“Not likely,” Jaybird said.
Canzoneri spotted it first. “A speck over the far bank at about eleven o’clock looking that way.”
“Yeah, working the bank,” Murdock said. “Might be part of that attack we came past last night. He’s not one of our choppers, for damn sure.”
“He might not even see us,” Lam said.
“No chance, he’s looking for something, somebody,” Jaybird said. “I think he just found us.”
The chopper had picked up speed and turned directly toward them. “Let him have one flyover free,” Murdock said.
By then the bird was only a hundred yards away. Murdock stood with Dobler at the wheel. The chopper came closer. It was a large one for troop transport. two rotors. They could see a machine gun mounted on the door with a man behind it. The helicopter came closer, then did a slow circle around the SEALs in the center of a thirty-yard circle. It moved away, then came back with the door gunner on the right side positioned to fire at them.
“Weapons free, let’s knock him down,” Murdock said. He lifted the twenty and fired twice from the hip, then came up and sighted in on the bird. The door gunner got off one burst, then an exploding 20mm round churned his face into pulp and knocked him out the far door. He was only a minor splash before the chopper took a dozen hits, turned slightly, then the rotors stopped and began free wheeling just before the fuel tanks exploded in one giant fireball and the chopper dropped like a bucket full of concrete and slammed into the water. The craft resisted the water for a moment, then the remains eased under the muddy flood and were gone.
“Home, James,” Jaybird chirped and everyone laughed reliving the tension.
“Sonsobitches, brothers, did you see that asshole explode?” Howie Anderson yelled. “Went up like a possum gutted out by a load of buckshot.”
DeWitt chuckled. “Couldn’t have said it more colorfully myself.”
Where is this damn forty-six we’re supposed to meet?” Train Khai asked. “Shouldn’t he be showing up sometime soon? How long does it take a forty-six to go forty miles?”
“How long?” Lam asked. “At a hundred and fifty-five miles an hour they move about two point five miles a minute, or about sixteen minutes for forty miles.”
“Where the fuck is he?” Fernandez asked. “Hell, it’s been light for over twenty minutes.”
Lam stood and looked around. “Somebody coming. He stared at the sky again, turned all the way around then looked back north. “Yeah, coming fast and it ain’t no chopper. Got to be a jet fighter heading south.”
“We won’t nail a MiG with our twenties,” Murdock said. “And he has twenties of his own.”
“Unless he’s hunting us on purpose, he won’t know we’re hostiles,” DeWitt said. “Not at his speed. We just play it cool and don’t show any guns or objections. Fact is, we could wave at him if he’s anywhere under a thousand feet.”
They waited and watched. Two minutes later the jet streaked over at eight to ten thousand feet.
“Damn, he couldn’t even see us down here,” Jefferson said.
“Good, now where’s my chopper,” Jaybird said.
They worked past another huge island on the left and smaller one on the right. At last the surface of the water seemed to be changing.
“A little salt water creeping in,” DeWitt said. “We should be able to smell salt air before long.”
“That MiG is coming back,” Lam said. “Lower this time, lots lower.”
It came from the south right up the channel and when they saw it they were almost too late. It slashed past them at a hundred feet off the water, slapping them with the jet blast of sound as soon as it jolted pas them at seven hundred miles an hour.
“That time he saw us,” Murdock said. “Now, the question is, will he make a gentle turn and come back and blast us into toothpicks with his twenties?”