He heard a chorus of responses.
The wheels touched down, the copilot rammed the hatch open, and Murdock led the way out of the bird. No one came to meet them. He bolted for the closest building, a two-story frame affair thirty yards away.
Just before Murdock made it to the building, a man dressed in green cammies and fisting a .45 auto ran out and waved them down the side of the structure to the door he had just opened.
“SEALs?” the dark-skinned man asked.
“Yeah, you our contact?”
“Right. Sorry about that little inconvenience. Turned out to be two men with three sticks of dynamite, a K-47, and two magazines. We got both of them.”
“We’ve got a wounded man. Doesn’t look serious.”
Murdock and the captain moved indoors and waited for the SEALs to run inside. The last two in were Lampedusa with his head bandage and Mahanani carrying half his gear.
Lam sank to the floor just inside the door. Mahanani checked with him. “Commander, is there a doctor around here anywhere?”
Murdock looked at the Colombian. “You’re Captain Orejuela?”
“That’s right, Commander. There are doctors in town, but we are supposed to load up the trucks with all the matériel you brought and your men and proceed directly to camp Bravo near Cali.”
“How far is that?”
“About forty-five miles.”
“How long in the trucks?”
“An hour and a half.”
Mahanani had been checking Lampedusa. He came over. “Cap, looks like he might have a mild concussion. Lost quite a bit of blood. He can do the ride if we pump him full of chocolate bars. I’ll make a survey.”
The big room they were in had folding meal cots, blankets, and at the far end what looked like some kind of a closed-up kitchen.
“We stay here for about half an hour,” the Colombian captain said. “By then they should have the ammo and weapons loaded and we can put two or three SEALs in each rig.”
The SEALs had dropped to the floor and waited. Those who had a routine used it. Harry Ronson took out a small harmonica and tried to play. He was terrible. Ed DeWitt and Les Quinley worked at a peg chessboard on a game they had started in the chopper. Half the men took a nap, not sure when they might sleep again. Will Dobler sat on one of the bunks with his eyes closed, thinking about his wife and daughter back in San Diego. Ken Ching wondered what the off-road bikers were doing this weekend. He wouldn’t be with them.
Mahanani came back with five chocolate bars. “Eat up, Lam, do you good.”
“Four ibuprofen pain pills would do a lot better,” Lam said.
“You’re bitching,” Mahanani said. “Now I know you’re not hurt as bad as you wanted us to believe. I’ll take back one of those chocolate bars.”
Murdock eyed the Colombian. “Tell me about the attack. Just two men, you say? How close did they get? Inside the complex? Who were they?”
“They sneaked into the enclosure. Yes, dedicated but now just dead. I shot one of them myself. Both men were under twenty. Probably some offshoot from the regulars. Definitely not from the federal army.”
“Might be more of them out there?”
“Always more of them. That’s why I’m glad you’re along on this munitions run.”
“You expect trouble?”
“No. My guess is they hit us too early. They hoped to get the munitions, but the choppers hadn’t even landed when they struck. Bad timing. No, the colonel and I don’t expect any trouble.”
“We’ll be locked and loaded all the way,” Murdock said. He wiped sweat off his face and realized he was still sweating from the run in there from the chopper. Then he remembered. Cali was less than two hundred miles north of the equator. At anywhere near sea level it would be hot all day.
He took out his Motorola and hooked it up.
“Senior Chief,” Murdock called. Will Dobler came away from where he sat in one swift move and took a dozen fast steps to his commander.
“Let’s get the men ready to travel. We want their Motorolas on, all combat gear ready to go. The men with the Bull Pup should have their issue forty rounds. All else as usual. We should be moving out in fifteen.”
Dobler gave a curt nod and talked to everyone awake, then went around waking up the rest.
Ten minutes later, the Third Platoon was combat ready.
Twenty minutes after that, the convoy of eight six-by trucks with soft tops rolled southwest along the paved highway toward Cali. There were two SEALs in each truck that was loaded with boxes of ammunition, weapons, and war supplies. Murdock and Senior Chief Dobler were in the first truck right behind the lead jeep with the colonel and Captain Orejuela and his driver. Both SEALs in the first truck had their issue H&K MP-5 submachine guns.
Only a few miles from the coast, the road slanted upward into lush, green mountains. The highway was narrow and made many turns and climbed up some grades slowly.
“Dozens of places along here are ideal for an ambush,” Murdock told Senior Chief Dobler.
“If they’re out there, they’ll pick the best spot. My guess is it will be on a sharp rise where the trucks slow down to fifteen or twenty miles an hour to grind up the hill.”
Ten minutes later, Murdock had just sat down from where he’d been watching out the front of the rig through a folded-back flap of the roof canvas, when a rocket-propelled grenade went off. It exploded on the side of the second truck, stalling it.
Murdock was glad the trucks had kept a good interval between them, about forty yards.
He hit the lip mike at once. “Bravo Squad, move to the right side of the road, Alpha Squad on the left. Come up through cover to the second truck.”
Murdock forgot which two SEALs were in the second truck. He could only hope they were still alive. He and Dobler jumped from the back of the first truck and darted into the brush at the left side of the road. They heard some small-arms fire but didn’t know where it came from.
Both men lay flat in the growth of ferns and weeds under the trees. Murdock pointed toward the second truck. They worked ahead slowly at a crouch, their weapons ready. Twenty yards ahead, they saw movement. Too early for his men to get there. Murdock dropped into the growth, and Dobler went down with him.
“Saw it,” Dobler whispered in his mike. “Two of them. Young. No uniforms.”
They moved forward again. “I have the one on the right,” Murdock said. Dobler was to his left.
Ahead of them, the green brush near a small tree moved, then bent down, and a man lifted up and stared at the road ten yards away. Murdock had his MP-5 on single shot and with the silencer on. He moved slightly upward and got off one shot. The attacker took the round in his side, where it bored quickly through light bone and tissue and plunged into his heat, dumping him dead in the lush growth.
Brush moved six feet away from where the man died. A voice called a name that Murdock couldn’t catch. The man screamed, lifted up, and ran straight for Dobler. A three-round silenced burst from the H&K chopper knocked down the Colombian in mid-stride. One round hit his chest, the second his throat, and the third his forehead.
“Two terrs down near the second truck,” Murdock said on the net. “If anybody has spotted any more terrs, sound off.” Silence. Murdock and Dobler lifted up at the same time and ran for the second truck, which still burned, but the flames were not near the fuel tank. They paused at the edge of the brush and checked out the truck again. The whole side had been blown off and the top had burned away. Boxes of small-arms ammunition lay scattered around the floor of the rig and on the ground.
“Bravo, any of you up near the truck they hit?” Murdock asked.
“Oh, yeah, and I need new drawers.”