“The damned vehicle could still get through here,” Lam said. “Where the hell is it going?”
Around another small bend in the cave they found three men down and out. All had weapons. It looked like they had been eating a meal. A blown-down mantle gas lantern lay to one side.
“Base camp,” Murdock said. “But where is the car?” They tied up the unconscious North Koreans and continued. They found the car a dozen feet down the cave. Inside were explosives, mines, weapons, and lots of ammunition.
“They came to fight a war,” Murdock said. He checked the arms, and all of them looked shockingly familiar. “This is all U.S.-made weapons and ammo,” he said. “Where did they get it?”
“Not too hard these days with some connections,” Lam said.
“We’ve accounted for six men so far,” Murdock said. “The caller said six or eight. Where are the other two?”
Lam had worked ahead of the car. “Might be a clue up here. We’ve got some dirt and dust on the rocks now. I see two sets of boot prints moving away from us.”
“Let’s go get them,” Murdock said, and the three charged up the cave at a jog, using the lights just enough to stay on track, not worried now about trip wires. The two men ahead were running for their lives.
Around another bend, the tunnel became sharply smaller. It was still high enough to stand in, but now was only six feet wide. The boot prints showed the men were running. Lam stopped and lifted his hand. He licked a finger and held it up.
“Oh, yeah, fresh air coming in from ahead. Have we been going uphill or downhill?”
“I’d say slight uphill,” Victor said. “Got to be an old lava tube or a damn powerful underwater river.”
They ran again. This time, far ahead they could see a faint light. The tunnel took a steep slant upward, and they walked instead of ran. Now there were moist spots on the rocks.
Murdock didn’t know if it was from condensation, or if there had once been a furious river flowing through here. The tunnel kept getting smaller and smaller, and soon they had to bend over to move ahead. But the light was coming closer.
“There’s an opening ahead for damn sure,” Lam said. “From here on we’re going to have to crawl to get to it. Hands and knees should do it.”
Lam led the trio. He moved quickly, and for a moment the light ahead cut off and Victor yelped. Then it came on strong and Lam was gone.
Victor crawled up to the opening and pushed his head out. “Be damned, Skipper. We’re back in the open halfway up the mountain and at the end of a good-sized arroyo.” He pushed out and let Murdock crawl out.
The three stared at the runoff scene. “The water must come down the slope; part of it goes into this hole and down through the tunnel, and the rest of the water goes on down this gully,” Murdock said. “So where are the other two Koreans?”
Lam did a quick scan of the country ahead of them, the mountains. He spent five minutes on it, then came back to one spot a third time.
“There, on the side of the slope maybe a half mile over. See those two figures moving?”
“Oh, yeah,” Murdock said. He lasered the figures and pulled the trigger. Seconds later the SEALs saw the flash, and then the sound came drifting over.
“They still moving?” Murdock asked.
“Not that I can see. But a small tree that was nearby just lost all of its leaves and a lot of branches.” He kept watching. “Not a sign of movement. Either they are good at playing dead, or they got the real roles.”
Murdock used the Motorola. “DeWitt, what’s with you guys?”
The sound came back faint. “Almost out of range. About six miles south of you. Found the car. The men scattered when they heard us coming. My guess is there are just three of them, but could be more. We’re tracking them. One is a KIA, one a POW, and the third one is still running. Jefferson is on him with a Bull Pup, so I’d put a bundle down that Jefferson wins this one.”
“We found the first car. Tell you about it later.” Murdock pushed the mike back up to his floppy hat. “Let’s find the mouth to that cave and see what we can take back for show-and-tell.”
Six miles south, Jefferson struggled through a sea of huge boulders. They were everywhere, and from house size to basketball size. He moved up the side of one, stared ahead over the devil’s marble yard of huge rocks, and tried to find the running Korean. The man didn’t have a weapon; at least Jefferson didn’t think he did. Jefferson jumped off the rock just as he felt splinters of granite fly as a bullet missed him by a foot. He reconsidered.
This time he moved more cautiously. He had an idea where the Korean was, but getting to him was another problem. If Jefferson could pinpoint him well enough, the laser and an airburst should do the trick. The SEAL found a point where he had cover, and fired six rounds of 5.56 at the area forty yards ahead of where he thought the Korean had picked for his defensive position. A moment later the man fired a round from just to the left of where Jefferson had targeted. Jefferson moved to the 20mm, lasered a spot on the rocks to the left of his former target, and fired. Then he fired a second lasered round.
The sharp report of the airbursts came through the clear air with a deadly crack, and Jefferson watched and listened. He heard a low moaning sound that rose in pitch until it was a high keening, and it put Jefferson on his feet running around and over the boulders to the spot where he had fired.
He peered around the last boulder and saw the man lying on his back, one hand over his eyes, the same high-pitched wail coming again and again. There was no weapon in sight.
Jefferson charged the position, and kept the Korean under his gun until he searched him and threw away an ankle hideout revolver. The Korean’s second hand held his chest, where he was vainly trying to hold in his blood. It coursed through his fingers and pooled under him in the rocky ground.
A moment later the Korean tried to sit up. He screamed and fell back to the ground, his head turning slowly to the side so his unseeing dead eyes seemed to stare directly at Jefferson. It took the SEAL a few minutes, but he found the rifle the Korean had used. He put it beside the man, and looked around for three rocks he could lift. He found them and piled them on the nearest large boulder. The three-rock stack would serve as a marker, because he knew he was going to have to lead some officials out here to pick up the body. He took the rifle and made his way back to the out-of-gas car where the rest of Bravo Squad waited.
By the time Jefferson came to the car, the chopper had already landed and they were waiting for him.
“Damn, but you’re getting slower and slower killing these damn Koreans, Jefferson,” Donegan chided.
“Would have been faster but the sonofabitch actually took a shot at me. Slowed me down some.”
“He’s dead?” Fernandez asked.
“Hey, a man don’t give up his rifle when he’s alive and kicking,” Jefferson said.
“Murdock told us to meet him back at the turnoff to the cave,” DeWitt said. “Let’s get loaded up.”
Back by the cave entrance, the two officers conferred.
“What the hell county are we in?” DeWitt asked. “The county coroner is going to be interested in all these dead bodies.”
“The county sheriff too, unless we can shortstop them. With the coast still blacked out and no military around, our best bet is to call Stroh and let him sort it out. Bradford, front and center with the SATCOM.”
“Right there, Skipper.”
It took four tries before they made contact with Don Stroh in his office in Virginia across from Washington, D.C.
“Heard about you boys on an outing,” Stroh said. “What happened?”
“Tracked them down. One may have got away. We have the rest. Five of them are still alive, and six more cashed in. We can’t contact anybody locally to take care of those who perished.”