They made it, and Murdock tried to remember if there had been any return fire from the top. He couldn’t remember hearing any.
“Hand grenades,” the Russian officer said. His men threw six grenades into the mountaintop fortress. All went off with a thunderous roar. Just after they exploded, the Russians charged up the last twenty yards to the shelf of land. They went in with assault fire, the AKMs and the AK-47’s blasting on automatic. Then the firing stopped.
Captain Radiwitch stood on the top of the ledge and waved.
“Nobody here,” he called.
Two minutes later, Murdock and his men were in the temporary fortress. All they found were three dead Japanese and several weapons that had been ruined by exploding grenades.
Lam explored the cave, then the sides of the mountain. He came back a minute later.
“Small cave to one side of the large one. It has a back door, and a good trail down the mountain on the back side. We’ve been snookered.”
Murdock and the SEALs rushed out the opening and looked downhill.
Five hundred yards down the mountain, they saw two forms slide behind some cover in a gully. Murdock checked the route they had to follow.
There was a large rock slide well down the mountain the Japanese would have to cross.
“Machine guns and Bradford. Set up here and zero in on that rock field. You’re going to have some targets down there soon. Bradford, what’s the range?”
“Eight hundred yards.”
Joe Douglas shook his head as he spread the bipod on his H&K 21E chattergun. “Got to be closer to a thousand.”
“Work it out. The three of you cover that slide area. The minute you see any men on it, start firing. It won’t be us. The rest of you SEALs on me. We’re going hunting.”
Captain Radiwitch listened. He had no machine gunners in his team.
When the SEALs left moving quickly down the trail, he put his men in line behind them.
It was almost ten minutes later when the three gunners spotted figures in their NVGs as they worked into the slide area. The gunners charged their weapons and opened fire. Bradford was short, even firing downhill. Douglas and Horse Ronson blasted the rock slide with five-round bursts. They saw at least two of the Japanese who did not continue the trip. The rest hurried, and some slid down the slope, creating a new, small landslide.
After three minutes of sporadic firing, the gunners checked with the NVGs again. There were no more Japanese moving across the slide.
“Let’s pack up and haul ass,” Bradford said. He had slammed fifteen of the big .50-caliber rounds into the area. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit any targets, but he must have scared hell out of them.
The three big men trotted down the trail, making as good time as they could.
When Murdock and the SEALs came to the rock slide, the guns firing above had silenced. They found three bodies there, and evidence that the rest of the general’s army had kept to the very edge of the slide in some small growth to mask their movements. The SEALs followed.
The moon seemed brighter now. Murdock noticed that it was three-quarters full, and thanked the heavens for their help. The SEALs hurried forward, then stopped to listen. Each time they could hear the Japanese rushing through the brush and more trees below.
The SEALs took a quick break in an open area. Murdock called the captain up. “What’s the maximum range on your rifle grenades?”
“Four hundred meters.”
Murdock grinned in the darkness. “What would you think of sending six rounds out at max range where we think the Japanese general is?”
Captain Radiwitch smiled. “Yes, I like.” He turned and spoke to his men, who quickly readied their rifles and fired six rifle grenades forward where their captain pointed.
They waited for the six distinct cracking explosions of the grenades. They heard no shouts of surprise or wails of pain.
“Worth a try,” Murdock said, and got the men moving again.
An hour later, the sixteen men were in heavy pine timber working down another small hill. Lam said they were still on the right trail.
“They leave a highway of signs,” Lam said. “Some of the troops must be discarding equipment to make their load lighter. I’ve found a pistol, a shirt, and three loaded magazines. They are still ahead of us and we’re gaining on them.”
Murdock looked at his watch. The soft light glow showed him that it was 0505. An hour, maybe two, to daylight. He talked to Lampedusa on the point as they walked through the brush.
“Any logic to his route?”
Lam shrugged. “Not that I can see. Downhill is his trademark right now. I’d guess we’re heading toward the coast. We’re on a small stream that must come out at the beach sooner or later.”
“Any way to cut him off at the pass?”
“Not so you could notice, Skipper.”
“Afraid of that.”
Ten minutes later, the small stream had grown to a roaring river.
Lam figured that the Japanese couldn’t cross over now if they wanted to.
The brush thinned out in the pine woods, but there was still plenty of protection. Lam didn’t consider an ambush by the Japanese. They were running, not looking for a fight.
“Figure there are no more than eight of them, Skip,” Lam said. “My guess is we’re about a half mile behind.”
“Double time?” Murdock asked.
“Yeah, no brush, ground is stable. Let’s do it.”
Murdock told the Russian captain the plan. He shrugged.
“SEALs do it, Russians do it.”
Murdock set up a ground-eating trot that he figured was seven miles an hour. That would be about an eight-minute mile. They should be able to sustain that for an hour.
Lam stayed out in front by thirty yards, and Holt made a connecting file to him. They jogged down the bank of the river, across small feeder streams and up a slight rise, then down to the bank again.
A half hour later, Lam stopped and held the rest. They all listened. Ahead they could hear talk.
“Japanese words, but I can’t understand them,” Ching said. They moved ahead again slower, but on full combat alert. Lam spotted them first. The Japanese had taken a break. None was on sentry duty watching the rear. Two were drinking at the stream.
They were forty yards ahead.
“Don’t kill them,” Murdock said into his mike. He caught the Russian captain. “We capture them. We don’t kill them.” The captain nodded and whispered to his men. Murdock sent Lam and three SEALs into the brush to get even with the Japanese. Lam clicked his mike when he was set. Murdock had moved up the other four SEALs and set up a field of fire.
“Shoot over their heads, three rounds each. Then, Ching, sing out and talk the general into surrendering.”
Murdock began the firing with a three-round burst from his MP-5.
For a moment the woods rang with the gunfire. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
Ching bellowed at the Japanese, who had frozen in place. None of them even reached for a weapon.
“General Nishikawa, you are surrounded. You must surrender or your men will be slaughtered like pigs and you will have to watch them die.”
The general stood and turned toward the voice.
“We surrender. My men will lay face-down. No more need to die.
They have been loyal and true. You must urge world opinion to consider the plight of twenty thousand Japanese who can’t worship at their ancestors’ graves. You may approach now.”
The general moved away from his men and sat down on the ground with his back to the others. Murdock and the SEALs moved forward cautiously.
They kept their weapons ready, but none of the Japanese made a move to protest. They were cuffed by the wrists as the SEALs came to them.
Murdock walked over to where the general sat. He took Ching with him.