The trouble with jet aircraft strafing a ground target at five hundred miles an hour is that the rounds land from forty to sixty feet apart, depending on the angle of the aircraft. It makes for a lousy hit ratio on as small a target as the dispersed SEALs were.
After the first pass, Murdock hit the mike. “Casualty report, anybody hit?”
The air was silent a moment. Then Doc Ellsworth came on.
“Looks like Gonzales got hit by some shrapnel on his right leg.
Not too bad. But doesn’t help his general condition. I’ve got it under control. We’ll still have to carry him to the border.”
There were no more casualty reports.
“We hit the sonofabitch?” Ron Holt asked.
“Don’t think we had any hits, Holt. Anybody else pick up lead?”
Silence. “Okay, Doc. Stay with Gonzalez from here on in. Let’s try to get invisible with sand before the birds fly back.” The men spread out farther in the dirt and covered themselves with splotches of sand and rocks, weapons hidden under their bodies.
The jets came again, in the same formation. This time the machine gunners and Bradford with the Fifty had a better idea how to aim. The three men popped up when they saw the planes coming. Bradford picked up the strafers as early as he could, and fired for a nearly head-on shot.
He had time for just one shot, and triggered it off imagining that he could see the flight of the big .50-caliber round of explosive, armor-piercing destruction.
Joe Douglas had his H&K machine gun angled upward to meet the jets as well. Once they got overhead, it was too late. He fired a twelve-round burst as one of the Migs was a hundred yards away. The twelve slugs and the plane met at tremendous speed, and Douglas prayed that he had made some hits.
When the long gun men were sure they hadn’t fooled the pilots, every long gun fired, as the jets screamed overhead at less than fifty feet, then pulled up sharply and started their three-mile-wide circle to come back on target. The second Mig went around normally; then a thin trail of smoke came out of the craft. The smoke increased as the big plane wobbled slightly, then slewed to the left, and began to lose altitude.
The SEALs stood and cheered as the Mig dropped lower and lower until it tried a wheels up landing in the desert at more than 150 miles an hour. It hit, bounced, flipped over twice, and burst into flames.
The SEALs quieted and looked at Murdock.
“Okay, we got a lucky hit. The other Mig turned north, and must have hit his afterburner. We better hit ours too. Form up, and let’s move out.”
Doc Ellsworth fell into step beside Murdock. “Gonzalez is in damn serious condition. I don’t know what that slug hit inside him, but it ain’t good. He could use a doctor about now. We’re carrying him and trading off every quarter mile. Four different guys. We can make five miles an hour.”
Murdock nodded, and Doc went back to Gonzales. Murdock waved Salwa up. “What happens when we get to the border? Are there guards all along it? Wire, trenches, or just a single strand of wire identifying the border?”
“Usually nothing to mark the border. A survey post every six or eight miles. The jets would attract attention from the Saudis. My guess is there will be some kind of mobile force along the border here wondering what’s going on.”
“What part of the Saudi border is this?”
“The Irwado sector,” Salwa said. “That I’m sure of.”
Murdock used his Mike and told Ron Holt to come Up. They called a halt, and Holt set up the antenna and aimed it. Then Murdock typed out a message.
“Advise Saudis in the Irwado sector that friendlies are about to cross their border area inbound from Iraq. Make sure they know we are seventeen friendlies coming in.”
He got a quick response, and hoped that the message would be passed down from hand to hand until it got to the commander of whatever force maintained this sector of the Saudi Arabia border.
They marched.
There was no sign of any more Iraqi troops or planes.
A mile farther on, they came to a small rise, and Murdock called a halt and went up with Lam and Salwa to check it over. Ahead they saw what looked like a small military vehicle. Murdock figured it was a quarter of a mile ahead. He let Salwa look through his binoculars, and the Kuwaiti agreed.
“Yes, a utility rig the Saudis use along the border. Usually only three or four men and an officer.”
Just as he stopped talking, they heard the chatter of a machine gun and rounds sang over their heads. The men pulled back under cover of the rise.
“Who has a green flare?” Murdock said into the Motorola.
“Yo,” Colt Franklin said.
“Fire one high toward the border,” Murdock said.
The green flare sailed high, burst, and floated down on its small parachute. At once another burst of machine-gun fire came over the top of the rise.
Murdock checked the landscape. A small ravine led to the left toward the border. It was ten feet deep. He kept his men under cover of the rise, and moved them into the gully. It had some bends and twists, and should get them within fifty yards of the Saudi patrol.
When the gully began to play out, Murdock lifted up to the top, and checked the Saudi troops. It looked more like they were thirty-five yards away. Salwa was at his elbow.
“Can you yell at them from here and make them understand who we are?”
Salwa bobbed his head. “Yes, I can try. We all speak Arabic. If this doesn’t work, I suggest a white flag.”
Salwa moved up another twenty feet, found a place he could stand, and edged his head over the top of the wadi.
He shouted something in Arabic. Waited, then said what Murdock figured was the same thing again. They waited. In a period of silence, Murdock heard shouting from the other side. Salwa shouted something back to them, then said it a second time. After that he slowly lifted over the top of the gully and put both hands in the air.
He shouted again, and motioned below him.
Again a short silence, then chatter, and yelling from the other side.
Slowly, Salwa put his hands down, and turned to look at Murdock.
“Yes, it’s all arranged. They know who we are but are still suspicious.
Hold your weapons pointing at the ground, and come up one at a time.
I’ll go first. Then another one. Only one man in sight at any one time. I told them you’re Americans, and they are impressed. They saw the jet crash. When I get to them, I’ll explain about our wounded man.
Have the big man carry him out last when you tell him to on your radio.”
Salwa moved out of sight, then walked toward the Saudis. When he was gone, Murdock lifted over the edge, then told the men to come one at a time and slowly, with their weapons down.
Ten minutes later the Americans were across the border into Saudi Arabia. The officer there had radioed for more transport. They had made it. Murdock made a mental note to have a serious talk with Don Stroh about the quality of the CIA’s extraction operations. This one was a flat-out failure.
6
Third Platoon of Seal Team Seven had been home almost twenty-four hours. Murdock’s five casualties had been treated in an Air Force hospital near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. All except Gonzalez had been cleared for transfer to the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego.
Gonzalez was flown to Germany to one of the best military hospitals. He would get specialized treatment. The doctors had no idea how long he would be hospitalized or when he would be cleared to go to Balboa. They had dug the slug out of his upper chest, but were still evaluating the internal damage the steel-jacketed slug had done.
Ron Holt’s slug through his left arm had not been a problem. The doctors said he could return to full duty in three weeks. The same prognosis had been given to Ken Ching, who had a bullet through his right leg.