“With these rifles. Captain, do you want to send two men up there and check,” Murdock said.
“I will go,” the captain said. He rose and sprinted forward.
There were no shots fired by the Japanese. Radiwitch ran the hundred yards in fifteen seconds. Another five seconds and he called out loudly in Russian and his men advanced slowly. Murdock and Holt went with them.
The four Japanese rear-guard defenders lay unconscious beside their weapons. Murdock and Holt bound them with plastic cuffs, and Murdock pointed ahead. The Russians talked excitedly for a minute until Captain Radiwitch silenced them.
The Russian commando sent out two point men; then the rest of the Russians and SEALs moved out following them.
They were still on the right trail.
A mile higher on the slopes, they found another rear-guard position. Murdock and Holt had drifted back with the other SEALs and told them about the action.
“That’s why we should be the fuck up front,” Lampedusa said.
Murdock agreed with him, but he didn’t want to antagonize the Russians.
They might be needed later on.
The new rear guard was in a patch of foot-thick pine trees with an open field of small rocks and gravel in front of it. The area looked as though an old landslide had wiped out vegetation there sometime within the past year or two. There was no cover going the last five hundred yards to the position where the Japanese kept up a steady but spaced fire.
Murdock and his squads were still out of the range of the guns ahead. He waited. He felt more than heard a squad of the commandos move through the woods to the right of the open space. Captain Radiwitch was trying to outflank the defenders and get around them. The sound of two grenades exploding in rapid succession came a minute into the Russians’ move. Trip wires and hand grenades, Murdock guessed. He and Holt worked to the front of the safe zone.
Captain Radiwitch came back carrying a dead commando over his shoulders. He dropped him to the ground and sat down hard. A medic ran up and treated the captain’s shrapnel wounds in his leg and both arms.
“Lucky, he said. “One dead, two wounded bad.” He turned and said something to a sergeant, who gave another order. At once a squad of seven men took rifle grenades from their pack and rested the butts of their AKMs, the newest model of the AK-47 standby, on the ground. Each had grenade-launching attachments. The commandos fired at will, each man putting six grenades into the general area of the machine gun and the rear guard ahead.
The machine gun stopped firing. Only an occasional round came from the Japanese rebels above. After another five minutes, Captain Radiwitch led a squad of six commandos through the woods again. They kept to the fringes, sometimes in sight of the spot where the rear guard had been.
Murdock could see them assault the position with full automatic fire. If anyone had been alive before they made the assault, it was certain none were alive now.
The walkie-talkie rumbled, and the Russian commandos got to their feet and moved up the hill. Murdock and his SEALs went along.
At the rear-guard position, Murdock checked the bodies. There were only three men there, with two machine guns and six rifles. All were dead. No chance to question a Japanese prisoner again.
Captain Radiwitch found Murdock.
“Lead out with your men, if you wish,” Radiwitch said. “Your weapons may be more effective in this situation.”
Murdock said they would take the point. He realized that he hadn’t seen the colonel. Evidently he was a commander who directed his men from the safety of the hovercraft.
The trail now wound higher in the hills. The timber was mostly pine now, and thick in places. Other areas were bare rock where nothing could grow. Lampedusa led the SEALs with the Russian scout they brought from the prison. He and Lampedusa communicated with signs. They wound up a valley, over a small hill, and the Russian pointed ahead. They could just make out a peak with a jagged, rugged-looking cliff just down from the summit.
Lam scowled. In the dark, the place looked to be another two thousand feet above them. He figured there was only one more ridge between them and the last slant of the mountain. Would they be in an open field of fire all the way up that last slope?
Lam pointed at the place and tapped the Russian on the shoulder.
“General, Japo?” He pointed at the cliff. The Russian nodded and chattered in Russian, which didn’t help at all.
“If you say so, buddy. We got ourselves some heavy climbing to do.”
Lam had seen evidence of passage recently. He’d found a canteen back a ways. On a bramble, he saw where a uniform had ripped and left a swatch of dark cloth. Now the work was harder. They were not at a timberline, but the rocky terrain prevented any but the hardiest of small shrubs from growing there. That meant there was practically no cover or concealment.
They worked up to the ridgeline and down the other side. Lam had been right. Now it was one long climb up a slant of rock to what must be the general’s hideout above. Lam estimated it was a half mile up the slope. If they were caught out there in daylight, the Japanese could pick them off like targets in a carnival shooting gallery.
Lam looked at his watch. Just after 2200. They had a lot of dark yet. He waited for the troops to catch up. Time they had a conference on just how they were going to get up all this rock without attracting attention.
A few minutes later, Murdock and the platoon came up to where Lam waited. “Need to talk, Skipper.”
Murdock looked at the landscape ahead, and up to the top of the slope. “Up there?”
“That’s what our local guide thinks. I’ve found enough shit to know they came this way.”
Murdock checked his watch. It was 2215. “We should be able to move across this open space in the dark. They might know we’re down here, but they won’t shoot and give away their positions. Ching.”
The lanky SEAL dropped down beside Murdock.
“Tell the captain and his men that we must have absolute silence as we move up from here on. No talking, coughing, no sounds.”
Ching nodded, and headed for the Russian troops just behind them.
“Route?” Murdock asked.
Jaybird had been looking at the shadows in the moonlight. “Looks like there’s a ravine over there a few hundred yards we could use like a staircase.”
“For a ways,” Lam said. “Looks like there’s a rockfall at the far side near the top. That might be how the rebels go up the last few yards to the cliff top.”
“Is it a cliff or a cave up there?” Murdock asked.
“Supposed to be a shelf-like place with a cave behind it,” Lam said.
“So from a low angle, our EAR shots would bounce off the rocks and slant out into space hurting nobody,” Murdock said.
“Let’s hope it looks different by the time we get up there,” Ed Dewitt said from the other side.
“So let’s do it,” Murdock said. “Silent movement, keep our interval. Lam, lead out.”
They worked across the slope to the ravine, and walked up that for two hundred yards; then it ended. It was hard going. The slant of the hill increased, and at times they had to reach down to the ground to help themselves to take the next step. Murdock could hear the sound of the Russian commandos behind them. That was not good. If the general had any sentries out at all, they had to be able to hear the seventy-five men moving toward them.
An hour later they were still a long way from the top of the mountain. Murdock called a halt. Dewitt and Jaybird came up for a talk. Now their voices were whispers.
“How far to the top?” Dewitt asked.
The estimates were from six hundred yards to twelve hundred.
“Where is the closest cover for our eighty-five bodies?” Jaybird asked. They all stared into the softly moonlit night.