Twenty minutes later a chopper came out of the dark sky with a searchlight probing the sandy ground. It moved over the land slowly, searching with its long beam.
“Almost a mile away,” Lam said.
“Yeah, but coming this way,” Murdock said. “They must have had a radio contact with that last bunch we took out in the wadi.”
“So we keep going?” Jaybird said.
“Absolutely,” the Platoon Leader said. “Let’s pick it up a little and tell Ronson to break out that Fifty he got from Bradford. We might need it if that chopper pilot spots us.”
“We gonna play Chiricahua if they get close?” Lam asked.
“Fucking right. Best way to become invisible. In the meantime, we move faster.”
They stretched out their stride, and rolled across the desert-like landscape at nearly six miles to the hour. Then the chopper changed directions, and came directly at them. When it was a quarter of a mile away, Murdock hit his lip mike.
“Indian it, you guys. Down and sandy. Cover up everything but your eyes. Move. Now.”
Salwa caught on quickly, and scooped the sand and rocks over his dark clothes while lying prone with his head down. Murdock added some rocks and sand to the civilian, then covered himself. He had taken a good look at his men. They were dispersed at least ten yards apart.
Most looked like lumps of sand and rock. He saw no telltale sign of uniforms, boots, or weapons.
“Ronson, keep that Fifty loaded and handy. Don’t fire unless the chopper spots us and opens up. Then take him out.”
“Roger that, Commander.”
They waited.
Murdock lifted his head two inches, and took a look. The chopper was doing S turns in a good search pattern, but still heading dead for their position. There was a chance they would be in the gully between the S turns, but there was just as good a chance they would be directly under the moving beam. Whoever was on the light did a good job of covering the spots between the turns where the chopper wasn’t directly overhead.
It came closer. Murdock had kept his lip mike free. Now he spoke softly into it. “This is it. He’s about a hundred yards out. It’s down and dirty for us. Ronson, keep it ready but out of sight. Right?”
“Aye, aye, Commander.”
The chopper was at three hundred feet, Murdock figured. An ideal height. It gave enough spread for the light, and kept the chopper low enough so the observers could pick out things on the ground. He hoped they weren’t good at their jobs.
The bird came closer, swung away from them in the S turn, then came back almost directly overhead. Even at three hundred feet the downdraft blew around some sand. Just enough to make it harder to see what the searchlight picked up.
Then Murdock pushed his face into the sand, and held his breath.
The chopper swung back, and angled directly over the length of the platoon.
Murdock could feel the brilliant light moving toward him; then it came directly over him, and he held his breath again. The beam hovered over him a moment, then moved on. At any time Murdock expected to hear a door gunner’s machine gun chattering away, spraying the SEALs’ backs with deadly slugs, but no sound of shooting came.
The whup, whup, whup of a big chopper filled the air, and Murdock let out his breath as the sound faded a little as it edged away. Then it came louder as the Iraqi chopper did another S turn, then started to fade as it kept moving away from them. When the bird was half a mile away, Murdock called the men out of the sand.
“Fucking ants they got here are as big as fucking rabbits,” Joe Douglas said. It broke the tension, and the men brushed off the sand and got back in their double diamond formations. They moved out to the southwest with Lam on point.
Ed Dewitt jogged up, and fell into step beside Murdock.
“That might have been one of Saddam’s choppers,” Ed said. “If El Raza had a few, we must have shot them down by now. But would El Raza call in Saddam’s birds? I don’t know.”
“Could be. I still like the idea that he’ll put out a blocking force. He could do it with the trucks and half-tracks he has left. How is Gonzalez holding up?”
“He’s weaker. Ronson and Bradford are taking turns carrying him.
Slowing us some, but not much. When we gonna get out of this chicken-shit sandbox?”
“Soon, we hope. Soon.”
“Eat dirt,” Lam said on the Motorola, and the Third Platoon went into the Iraqi topsoil. “Commander, you best look at this,” Lampedusa, on the point fifty yards in front of them, said.
Murdock and Dewitt double-timed up to Lam, and went into the dirt beside him. Ahead they could look down a gentle slope. It had probably been made by runoff water over centuries of cloudbursts. In the middle of it, three hundred yards away, they saw three vehicles in the faint moonlight. There were troops around them, evidently eating a meal.
“Oh-three-hundred chow-down,” Lam said.
The officers had their NVGs up and working.
“One weapons or personnel carrier, two smaller rigs,” Dewitt said.
“I’d say maybe twenty-five men.”
“Good uniforms, good equipment,” Murdock said. “That would make them Iraqi Army. Some of Saddam’s outlying troops. They must be looking for us, or may be just in a blocking position.”
Jaybird had come up and checked through Murdock’s NVGs. “Oh, yeah.
Good gear. Definitely not El Raza baby. I move to take out their transport with the Fifty, then get on our horses and run like homeboy bastards for Saudi.”
Murdock took the NVG and checked again. “We put the twenty-one-Es thirty yards apart for convergence. Then we bring Bradford and the Fifty in here. We put twenty forty-mike-mike on them as well, with half HE and half WP. Should do it. Call up the men, Jaybird.”
Five minutes later, the SEALs were in position. Murdock pointed at Lampedusa, who angled his Colt M-4AI with the grenade launcher on it, and the scout fired the first 40mm grenade. At once the Big Fifty and the machine guns and the other grenade launchers fired.
Bradford’s first .50-caliber round hit the larger weapons/ personnel carrier in the engine and blew it apart, which started a small fire. The men below bellowed in panic, throwing away their meals and dodging for cover. The machine guns riddled them, putting a dozen down and dead before they could find any cover.
“Die, you sonsofbitches,” Horse Ronson bellowed over the nine-round bursts of the 7.62 NATO slugs that slammed out of his H&K chattergun.
He aimed and fired again, chopping down a pair of men charging away from the trucks.
Miguel Fernandez zeroed in on a man trying to get out the door of the burning rig. His H&K PSG1 sniper rifle fired, and the Iraqi slammed against the truck door and sagged down dead in an instant.
Al Adams judged the distance with his 40mm grenade launcher and fired. The first round was long. He adjusted and dropped the next two right in the churning mass of frightened men. The WP showered like white waterfalls, and the Big Fifty knocked out the other two vehicles before anyone had a chance to start the engines. There were only a dozen shots fired from below at the SEALS.
Within forty-five seconds it was over. Two of the rigs below burned brightly in the Iraqi night. Bodies sprawled around the vehicles. Murdock guessed eight to ten had escaped into the desert wondering what hit them and how an 0300 supper had turned into a death knell for so many of them.
Murdock checked the scene of the slaughter below again with the NVGs. He nodded.
“Let’s saddle up and get out of here,” he said. “We definitely can’t use their transport.”
Fayd Salwa kept shaking his head. “I don’t see how you did it. So quick, so deadly. These weapons you have are truly remarkable. All I ever had was a rifle that worked sometimes. Truly amazing.” He smiled.