“No,” Murdock said. “We hit a curve and get out of sight, then we abandon the bloody truck. It’s an albatross around our neck. That jet must have reported we were on this truck. So we dump it. We hit the shank’s mares and fade into the countryside. We can’t be more than ten miles to the wet.”
They ditched the truck and found a stream heading toward the coast. It had a friendly growth of brush and trees they could use for cover as they passed the roadblock half a mile over and kept right on going. When they were two miles beyond the roadblock, Murdock called a halt.
“Holt, let’s do it.”
Holt took out the SATCOM and aimed the antenna.
“Home Base, this is Rover. Home Base, this is Rover.”
They waited, but there was no answer. The fourth time he made the call, the answer came.
“Rover. We read you.”
“Figure we’re about three miles from the wet. On a compass bearing due west of Plato.”
“What’s your ETA on the wet, Rover?”
“Not sure. Depends on our luck and the skills of the Colombian National Army. Will give you a definite ETA on our next call. Shall we expect a Knight or a rubber raft?”
“The Knight is our choice. Keep us informed.”
“Let’s rumble,” Murdock said.
They hiked with renewed interest then. Lam was a quarter of a mile in front as they skirted farms, waded the creek twice, and stayed under cover as much as they could.
“Two choppers ahead, Cap,” Lam said. “They’re doing a pattern search. No way they can miss us if we keep moving.”
“Come back, Lam. We’ll go to ground in these trees and hope they pass over without spotting us. Odds are in our favor.”
“Hold, Skipper. Now I see. There are two of them, and they are big jobs, with about twenty men each. They’re leapfrogging over each other. Let the men out to search a half mile, then pick them up and jump them over the next group. They’re working right up this valley. Could be a dozen units like this working all the routes up to that burned-out plane.”
“Hold, Lam. I’m on my way.”
Murdock ran the two hundred yards up to where Lam lay in brush on a small rise so he could see downstream. One big chopper had just lifted off and raced toward them a half mile, dropping off its load a quarter of a mile from where Murdock lay.
He stared at the soldiers spreading out in a search formation and starting up the valley.
“Oh, yes,” Murdock said. “Now that does present us with a small problem.”
26
The helicopter rested on the ground for a few minutes while the troops moved slowly toward the SEALs. Murdock and Lam now had their Bull Pups.
“Twenties on that first chopper,” Murdock said. “You laser it, I’ll try for a contact hit.”
They both aimed and fired. Murdock watched as the airburst riddled the chopper with shrapnel. The rotor blades slowed, then stopped.
His round came in almost at the same time, hit the cockpit, penetrated, and exploded inside. A moment later, the chopper boiled into a fireball.
“Use the laser on the troops,” Murdock said. He worked the Motorola. “Get the Bull Pup shooters up here. We’ve got company.”
Murdock and Lam fired four rounds each, lasering the troops on the ground. They had stalled in place. When the proximity fuses exploded the 20mm rounds ten feet over their heads, the troops must have wished that they had scattered. They tried to then, but round after round followed them.
Jaybird nudged next to Murdock and got off a shot.
“Where’s the other chopper?” Jaybird asked.
Then they saw it, climbing into the sky a mile off.
“Let’s try it,” Murdock said. Both he and Jaybird used the laser sight and automatic arming device built into the weapon, and when they had the laser on target, they fired.
The chopper came slowly toward them, perhaps to see what had happened to the other bird. The laser sighting was off only a little as the chopper moved. The first round exploded twenty feet behind the aircraft. The second one went off directly over it and smoke billowed from the helo as it settled gently to the ground. Two more rounds with the laser sighting brought gushes of smoke from the helicopter, and soon it burned furiously.
Murdock looked at the troops ahead of them a quarter mile. They were in a total rout.
“Cease fire,” Murdock said on the net. “We may need the ammo later.”
Lam motioned ahead. “Which way, Cap? We go down through the bodies? There may be more choppers on the other side of these small hills.”
“True, and these guys must have radioed their problems before they got creamed. Straight ahead, straight west is our best bet. More farms and maybe a village we can slip through. Let’s move.”
A half mile along the small valley, they came to the bodies. They skirted them and the still-smoldering choppers.
Mahanani worked his way up to Murdock a short time later.
“Canzoneri is having some trouble with his leg, the one that got sliced up. Can we take ten while I rebandage it?”
“Let’s hold it in place for five,” Murdock said on the lip mike. “Lam, get a quick recon and see what’s ahead of us. We should be within three or four miles of the beach.”
Mahanani worked on Canzoneri. Some of the stitches had come out. Mahanani put on some bandages to cinch together the parted flesh, then tied the wound tightly. An ampoule of morphine helped.
Lam came back quickly. “Directly ahead not more than a mile there’s some kind of an army camp. Don’t know how big it is, but it sprawls out a ways. We better go south for about three miles. Then maybe we can make a run for the wet.”
“Any activity that looked like they were coming after us?” Murdock asked.
“Not that I saw, Cap. Fair-sized camp.”
“We better choggie. Let’s go up and moving. Let’s hope we can find some cover.”
They had hiked for ten minutes when the net came on.
“I’ve got a chopper high and left,” DeWitt said. “We better go to ground and not move. He should miss us.”
“Do it,” Murdock ordered, and the SEALs lay absolutely still.
Lam came on the radio. “Cap, do I need to find a hide hole for us for the rest of the day? A damn lot of army around here.”
“Not yet. Let’s see if we can break through into the water. My gut feeling right now is that the Colombian army is confused and doesn’t really know where to find us.”
Jaybird spoke up on the Motorola. “Hey, what happened to our friendly pilot guide? Where the hell did he go?”
“Did he get paid in advance?” Ching asked. “If he did, he took the money and ran. At least he won’t cause us any problems.”
They moved out again. After what Lam figured was three miles, he probed west again and saw that they were a mile beyond the last of the military buildings and the wire fence with concertina barbed wire on the top.
Lam settled in on top of a small hill and used his binoculars to check out the western route. He groaned.
“Cap, you need to see this. I don’t know if the damn army is on maneuvers or just on a camp out. I’d say there are at least two thousand men in pup tents and company fronts and mess halls and kitchens out here in front of us.”
Murdock worked up to his scout and scanned the area with his binoculars.
“Be damned. Look over there. Jeeps flying white flags. Men with white helmets on. Those are judges. The whole operation is maneuvers, and they’re getting ready for a contest of blue against red or some such.”
“Nice thing about maneuvers, Cap. None of them will have any live ammunition.”
“But they could call in live ammo help in a rush if we tried to take them on. We go around them.”