“One lucky hit,” Murdock said on the mike. “What do we do with the other one?”
“I’m hit,” a SEAL shrilled in his lip mike.
“Who?” Murdock asked.
“Canzoneri. Caught a splatter of one of their rounds off a rock. Not too bad. I won’t be running any marathons for a while.”
“Mahanani, can you get to Canzoneri?”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
The armored personnel came closer. “She’s at six hundred yards,” Ed DeWitt said. “Bull Pups, work the treads. If she turns left or right, get on the side of the treads. If not, hit them head on.”
The twenties spoke again and again, but the APC plowed ahead over the hard ground and flat rock.
“Who has the EAR?” Murdock asked.
“On my back,” Ostercamp said.
“Charge it and get ready to try for any kind of a port that thing has. Fire when you’re ready. Aim at the nose of it where there could be concealed ports. We might get a lucky bounce.”
“Cap, we’ve got ten grunts out of that first APC. They’re moving up,” Jaybird said.
“Seven hundred yards. Bradford and I will go at them with our Pups, rest of your stay on the baby tank.”
Murdock sighted in, lasered and fired. Bradford fired about the same time. Murdock sighted in again as the rounds hit. Four of the Chinese went down. He fired again and so did Bradford. This time three more men slammed into the ground and didn’t move. The last three men ran behind the dead personnel carrier.
Murdock heard the familiar whoosh of the EAR. They had used it effectively at four hundred yards. He wasn’t sure if it would reach out five hundred. The EAR blast sent up a gout of dirt and dust well in front of the tank. Short.
“Wait on the EAR until the APC gets to four hundred yards, then fire five times.”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
Murdock had been sighting in on the APC. It suddenly hit some glazed rock and one tread slipped slewing it almost sideways. Four Pups barked and rounds slammed into the tread rollers and exploded. One had been an AP round, which bored through some linkage and then exploded. The APC came back on line for the SEALs but the left track wasn’t working right. It kept turning the carrier off course to the left.
At four hundred yards range, Ostercamp fired the next EAR round, waited ten seconds for the charge to build and when the red light flicked on, he fired again. Both rounds hit the APC. At first there was no obvious effect. Then gradually the rig began to slow. Ostercamp punched another EAR round at it, and then a fourth. This time the armored personnel carrier came to a stop. Only two men came out the back. They began to run to the rear, but stumbled and waved their arms to get their balance, then fell into the rocks and dirt of the high country of China, and started a six-hour nap.
Murdock waited. No more men came out of the stalled rig. He looked at his Bull Pup. He had only six rounds left. “Ammo count on the Pups,” he said.
When the men checked in, they averaged five rounds per man.
“Hold fire on the twenties unless we absolutely need them,” Murdock said. “Use the five fifty-six instead.”
“Lam, what do you see up there?”
Lam had taken out his eight-by-thirty fieldglasses and stared down the valley. “Not good, Skipper. I wondered why those two men ran to the rear. There are at least three camouflaged tents back there a mile and half. Big enough to hold twenty men each. They could still have forty men ready to fight. Must be some kind of a check point. Not sure but there could be a chopper on the ground almost behind one of the tents. They know we’re here. Men running all over the place. I see no vehicles.”
There was some dead air on the Motorolas.
“Medic, how is Canzoneri?”
“Gouge out of his right leg. Took out a chunk of flesh and bled like a stuck hog. I’ve got it bundled up, but he’s gonna need a crutch to walk and we’ll distribute his equipment and weapon. Not ready for duty.”
“Noted, Mahanani.”
“I’ll be a shit-faced mama whore,” Lam exploded. “They just formed up in squads and now are marching this way in diamond formations. A whole fucking bunch more than just forty. I’d say over a hundred. Commander Murdock, what the hell are we supposed to do now?”
26
“What do we do?” Murdock echoed. “First we pull back over the ridge and set up on the reverse slope. When they get in range of the twenties, we hit them with ten of our remaining twenty-five rounds. We take assigned sectors to do the most damage. If that doesn’t stop them, we run like hell into the valley behind us. There’s enough real dirt down there so we vanish.”
“Vanish like in hide holes?” Jefferson asked.
“Exactly. Now, let’s get over that ridge line.”
The waiting was the hardest. They had moved back to the ridge and went over it, then set up with weapons primed and ready, thrusting over the ridge, and aimed eleven hundred yards down the slope. The Chinese would be still in the valley when they came in range. Murdock hoped that they didn’t split up into flanking units.
“Fifteen hundred yards,” Lam said. “Remember, shooting downhill you’ll get a distortion. Will that make any difference on the lasered sights?”
“We’ll find out,” DeWitt said.
The troops below seemed to be moving slowly. They acted like they were on an ambush patrol checking every bush and gully. Another five minutes before Lam sounded off.
“I make it eleven hundred yards, Commander. A hundred yards inside our Bull Pup range.”
Murdock assigned all five guns to the target with each one a different sector. “I’ll fire one round for range and we’ll check it,” Murdock said. He lasered in on the point of the men in his sector and fired. They saw the flash a second before the sound of the twenty exploding slammed past them like a thundering herd of buffalo.
“Yeah, on target,” Lam said putting down his fieldglasses.
“Two rounds each on your sectors,” Murdock said and sighted in again. All but one of the ten rounds were on target. The Chinese hit the ground after Murdock’s first shot. They made a better target that way for an air burst. Two men ran to the rear. One whole diamond formation was neutralized with dead and wounded.
Two other formations regrouped, and with what must have been strong leadership, began walking forward.
“Let’s move it,” Murdock said. “Down to the dry river-bed. Twenty yards apart. Should be enough loose sand down there to make the holes easy. Go, go, go.”
They jogged down the slope.
“Twenty minutes,” DeWitt said on the net. “Should take the Chicoms twenty to get up that slope the way they’re moving. So we need some fast action of the digging.”
The SEALs came to the streambed and spaced out along it facing the ridge they had just left. Then they dug with their hands and their K-bar knives, moving enough sand to lay down in the hole and then pull the sand over them as total camouflage. Only their faces would show and the muzzles of their weapons pointing at the ridge line.
All the men worked hard. Canzoneri had given his weapon and combat vest to buddies and Mahanani helped him make the trip down to the dry streambed.
“Hurts like hell, Maha. Maybe one of those capsules when you get time.”
Both were digging in the sand with their combat knives. Mahanani gave Canzoneri a shot of morphine, then made sure he was covered and ready before he finished his own hole.
“Short time,” Murdock called. The last man slid into his hole and pulled the last bit of sand over his arms and chest.