Jaybird was waiting for them in the rocks. “Doc’s right over there,” he said, pointing.
Murdock and Razor shuffled by him. Jaybird waited for Magic. You always counted your people off as you walked into a position. One or two bad guys might attach themselves to the back of your file and try to walk right in with you. SEALs had been known to pull that trick on others, so they were very careful not to fall for it themselves.
Razor positioned everyone in an all-around security perimeter. But he weighted most of his firepower to the northeast, where he expected the Syrians to be coming down the ridge very soon. Ed DeWitt and Doc covered the southern axis of the ridge, just in case some Syrians had been quietly moving up while all the shooting was going on. DeWitt was there because he could only shoot one-handed, Doc to protect the only remaining PRC-117.
Razor briefed everyone on how he wanted the LZ evacuated. SEALs worked it systematically; they didn’t just haul ass for the helicopters. Everyone knew their sectors of fire and order of withdrawal.
“Echo Seven Oscar, this is Hammer-One, over?” said the voice in Doc’s handset.
“This is Seven Oscar, go,” Doc replied.
“Hammer-One is two minutes out, over.”
“Roger,” said Doc. He, like the rest of the SEALS, could hear the Syrians moving down the ridgeline. “The LZ isn’t hot now, but it’s going to be when you come in. So hurry it up if you can, and heads up. Over.”
“Roger,” the pilot replied coolly. There wasn’t much to say after that. “Hammer-One, out.”
Doc spoke into his MX-300 microphone. “Two minutes.”
“Pull your tape,” Razor told them over the net. The SEALs had sewn strips of thermal tape onto the front, back, and sleeves of their Syrian camouflage jackets. The tape would show up in the helicopter door gunners’ night-vision goggles and make it easy for them to pick out friend from foe if the extraction got messy. Until now the thermal strips had been concealed by green ordnance tape. The SEALs ripped it off.
“I’ll initiate fire,” Razor informed them. “I want to hold them as far back as we can. Take it easy and make your rounds count, we ain’t got many left. I don’t want to be down to throwing rocks before the birds come in.”
49
Blake Murdock had spent his whole career expecting to find himself in his present situation. But at this point in all the scenarios he’d fought out in his head, he was supposed to be directing F/A-18’s, helicopter gunships, AC-130’s, or naval gunfire against the enemy while the helicopters rushed in to pick them up.
Now that it was finally for real, he didn’t have any of that. What he had was seven SEALS, only six and a half capable of shooting and all of them sucking wind, AKs with only a magazine or so of ammo left, and maybe a couple of grenades. Murdock knew Doc would be angry at him for not thinking positively, but it didn’t look good. Damn, he’d forgotten about the morphine. Well, too late now.
Without an operational set of NVGs, Murdock planned to hold his fire until he could see something. Maybe his rounds would come in handy while they were boarding the helos. Now he knew how Ed DeWitt felt. Not worth a shit.
Through his goggles Razor could see the Syrians bobbing among the rocks in the distance. It was a difficult call. He had to let them get close enough so they wouldn’t be able to call for mortar fire without getting hit themselves, yet keep them far enough away so they couldn’t easily overrun the LZ. It looked just about right. He settled the laser dot on the Syrian point man and fired.
The rest of the SEALs followed his signal and opened fire also. Slowly, carefully, a single shot only when they had a clear target.
The Syrians had to transition from a movement formation to a skirmish line while under fire. It took them a while. The SEALs could tell. The Syrians only fired their AKMs on automatic. First there were two firing, then six. Then eight. They finally worked up to around ten or twelve, which must have been all the men they could fit across the width of the ridgeline.
With only four SEALs calmly firing single-shot, it was a wonder the Syrians didn’t quickly gain fire superiority. But if the bullets weren’t hitting or coming close enough to make you take cover and stop shooting, it didn’t matter how heavy the fire was. The Syrians were what the SEALs scornfully called sprayers and prayers, hoping to make up for lack of accuracy with sheer number of rounds. It didn’t work.
Every time a Syrian rose to advance, a SEAL cut him down. But the Syrians learned quickly. Several began crawling forward using the cover of the rocks. That would work, but it would take time. The question was whose side time was on.
Jaybird was anchoring the SEALs’ far right. His magazine ran out and he slid his last one into the AKM. Thirty rounds left. The Syrians were getting better. Every time he fired, a couple of them would concentrate their own fire on his muzzle flash. It was getting hairy. He had to keep moving from rock to rock.
A BG-15 fired, and the grenade exploded with a shower of sparks in rocks right in front of him. Jaybird would have pissed his pants if he hadn’t been so dehydrated.
Something had to be done about that grenade launcher. Jaybird couldn’t let the Syrian get the range on him. He only had two M75 frags left. Jaybird pulled the pin on one and palmed it, waiting. The BG-15 flashed again, and Jaybird’s grenade was in the air. The 40mm grenade exploded off to his side. Jaybird saw his grenade go off. He waited, but the BG-15 didn’t fire again. It seemed that the Syrians were getting closer. The shit was getting serious now. Where the fuck was the helicopter?
Magic Brown was experiencing a sniper’s frustration. It wasn’t that an AKM in his hands was like a surgeon operating with a linoleum cutter. It was that he was racking up a score but it wasn’t making any difference. He would take a man down only to have the Syrians quickly replace him in the firing line. Faithfully counting his rounds, he knew that he was a third down on his last magazine.
The Syrians fired a hand-held flare. The parachute popped over the SEALs’ heads, and the harsh yellow glow fell over them. But the swirling mountain wind quickly pushed the parachute back down the ridge toward the Syrians. The SEALs flipped up their goggles and had a few seconds of good shooting until the flare fizzled out. The Syrians didn’t fire any more flares. The SEALs went back to their NVGs.
The flare had given Murdock the opportunity to finally fire some rounds. Now he could only watch the freigh. They weren’t getting many BG-15’s; he’d been most afraid of that. The Syrians had probably used up most of their basic ammo load at the dome. Murdock sensed that the Syrians were slowly building up their fire for an assault. He remembered some Marine officers telling him once that a light infantry defense — a continuous series of ambushes and withdrawals — was the most difficult and infuriating thing to fight against. The Syrians must have taken a lot of casualties in the previous ambushes. If they got the idea that their adversaries were finally pinned down, they wouldn’t let up.
Doc Ellsworth spoke into the PRC-117 handset. “Hammer, this is Seven Oscar. The LZ is now under fire. Enemy fifty meters northeast along ridgeline, over.”
“Roger,” the Blackhawk pilot replied calmly. “Mark the zone.”
Doc pressed the rubber button on the bottom of his strobe light. He heard the electric zing … zing sound when the blinking began. The strobe had an infrared cap on the lens and a plastic sleeve that directed the light straight out. Doc heard the beating of rotor blades. He aimed the strobe at the sound.