“He couldn’t see us and he doesn’t have good enough radar to spot us on the ground. We’d be so much screen clutter. He’s fishing, but we’ve got to be careful. We’ll keep the trucks a hundred yards apart, and move slowly toward the border. Maybe eight miles from here now.”
The men heard a swooshing sound, and all of them dove out of the rigs and hit the ground.
Another Rocket Propelled Grenade. It slammed into the ground ten yards from the truck, but shrapnel sprayed forward, smashing the windshield, puncturing the gas tank, and chewing up the fuel line on the engine.
“Where did it come from?” Murdock asked his mike.
“From the north,” Ed Dewitt said. “I’ve got three men moving that way. There’s a little gully over there. They could be on the lip of it. Anybody hit by that hot steel? Casualty report.”
“Yeah, L-T. Adams. I picked up a scratch on my leg. Tore my cammies. Not bleeding much.”
“L-T. Douglas. Caught some of that steel on my right arm. Dug in deep. Doc better take a look.”
“I’ll find you, Douglas,” Doc said.
A moment later, they heard gunfire, then more gunfire.
“Nailed two of them, L-T,” Gonzalez said on the Motorola. “They have some kind of a jeep rig and bugged out before we could get anybody else. Don’t think we hurt their transport much.”
At the truck, Joe Douglas had been checking it out. He ground the starter six times. Nothing. With a small flashlight, he looked the engine over. “No way, L-T,” he told Dewitt. “The engine is a mess, fuel line is in ten pieces, a bunch of wiring is chopped up. Take me a week to make it run. Besides, all the gas leaked out. Lucky it didn’t blow up on us.”
“Let’s get to the half-track,” Murdock said on the radio. “We’ll load as many on it as we can; the rest of us will jog along beside it.
We’ll change off every two miles. We’ve got a border to find.”
Ten minutes later, they heard a chopper coming. The men scattered away from the half-track. Murdock manned the fifty-caliber MG. He knew the chopper gunners could see the half-track in the pale moonlight. It wasn’t supposed to be here. That would be enough for a shoot.
He got off six five-round bursts with the big weapon, but wasn’t sure if he scored any hits. Then the bird was coming in on a missile run, and Murdock jumped off the half-track and sprinted away thirty yards before the missile hit the vehicle. The first explosion was enough to destroy it; then a secondary explosion ripped through it, and the half-track became various refrigerator-sized pieces of junk scattered around the desert.
As the chopper came over the rig on its firing run, the SEAL platoon returned fire. Bill Bradford had his Big Fifty out, and got off six rounds as the chopper came over. The last two jolted into the chopper and it began trailing smoke. It tipped left and nearly hit the ground, then righted itself, before it lost power and dropped straight down three hundred feet and burst into flames.
“Take that, Turkey,” Bradford called, and the rest of the SEALs cheered.
Murdock hit his mike. “Listen up. We’re on foot, and still seven or eight miles from the border. Mr. Salwa knows the territory, so he’ll be our guide. We’ll form up in a column of ducks ten yards apart and move out of here at double time. That chopper radioed in our position for damn sure. Let’s motor.”
They kept moving, with Murdock setting the pace at a brisk six miles an hour. He kept a lead scout out a hundred yards and a rear guard as far back as he could see the main body. As far as they knew, no one followed them through the half-moon Iraqi night.
They hiked hard for an hour, then took a break. Lam roamed the area around them, and came back reporting that he saw nothing except two night birds, and heard only a few small scurrying night animals.
Murdock had Holt fire up the SATCOM again, and he reported shooting down the Iraqi chopper. He told them they were aiming southwest for the nearest point of the border with Saudi Arabia. He asked for any orders.
The reply came back quickly. “Kuwait border area alive and active with Iraqi troops and choppers. Do not try to approach. We can send no airlift support. Keep us informed. Good idea on the Saudi border.
Good luck.”
The SEALs sat in the sand and rocks of the Iraqi border area resting. The kidnap victim had stayed close to Murdock. He thanked Murdock again for his rescue.
“Our army simply doesn’t have any commandos like you folks. We don’t have the skills. Now it is my hope that we can get to one of the borders safely. It would not go well for me if either El Raza or Saddam Hussein’s men caught me.”
When Holt had the SATCOM packed up, they moved again. They had heard more jet aircraft, but they were miles away evidently searching a different area. There was a lot of desert out there to cover, Murdock decided.
They had hiked for fifteen minutes on their southwest course when Murdock heard the unmistakable sound of helicopters heading toward them.
“Two choppers, maybe three coming in from the north,” Dewitt said.
“I can see searchlights.”
“Spread out and get into the dirt,” Murdock said. The SEALs scattered twenty yards apart, lay down in the sand and rocks of the desert, and spread handfuls of the sand over their cammies to make them even harder to see. Weapons were hidden under their bodies.
The choppers made a pass two hundred yards to the north of them, then circled back, and came within a hundred yards of their position.
“Nobody move, don’t even breathe,” Murdock said softly into his lip mike.
Murdock watched with surprise as the two choppers settled down to a landing four hundred yards away. The birds landed about fifty yards apart, and were larger than he had first thought.
Each chopper had on landing lights, and he could see twenty combat troops jump down from each one. The troops formed up, and then spread out in a skirmish search pattern and began walking directly toward where the SEALs lay.
4
Ed Dewitt and Jaybird moved up beside Murdock. “Range to the choppers?” Murdock asked.
“Four hundred yards,” Jaybird said. “We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to stand and fight sometime.”
“Let’s hit them with the Fifty, kill the choppers, then we can take on the troops,” Dewitt said.
Murdock watched the enemy troops move forward cautiously. The SEALs had another ten minutes before the Iraqi soldiers overran them.
“Get Bradford working with the fifty,” Murdock said. “With his first shot we use the MGs on the choppers, and the rest of us with long guns get down on the troops. Go.”
Ed left to pass the word to his men. The sixteen SEALs moved up into a line of skirmishers facing the enemy troops. Two minutes after the decision, everyone was in place, and Bradford fired his first round.
It hit the lead chopper in the engine compartment. Its rotor died where it had been idling.
The other SEALs with long guns opened up on the troops advancing on them. Four or five went down before the Iraqis hit the dirt. The two machine guns chattered at the choppers. One burst into flames. The second one had died in place.
Then Joe Douglas and Horse Ronson turned their machine-gun sights on the advancing troops. When the MGs took over, the Iraqi troops were pinned down. They couldn’t advance into the deadly machine-gun and rifle fire, and they couldn’t stand up to retreat.
Miguel Fernandez with his sniper rifle picked off a soldier whenever he found one moving or showing above the desert terrain.
The firefight was too far away for those men with the MP-5’s.