“Jesus, sir. How the hell are we going to get outta here?” asked Lt. MacPherson.
“By using our brains, staying quiet, holding our nerve, hiding when we have to and hitting back hard when we get a chance.”
“What worries me most is the daylight coming,” said Dallas. “It’s headed for zero-five-hundred, and I’m guessing it’s gonna be light by six-thirty — we got ninety minutes max to make the open water.”
“And it ain’t gonna be all that great when we do, unless we can get some help. I’m counting on my buddy Danny for that.”
And now they could hear the three helos making a long circle out over the Haing Gyi Shoal, and their clatter died out to the east, which signified they were coming right back in roughly six minutes from now. Commander Hunter rallied his team. They got Buster to his feet and walking, and two of the rookies dragged the body of Catfish Jones out into the water, faceup, and began to pull him through the shallows toward the inflatables, now only 50 yards away.
It was slower than anyone wanted, but the skies seemed clear and the fresh water running down toward the ocean was cleaning the wounds of the dead SEAL who had destroyed the Chinese frigate.
They reached the boats safely, placed the body in one and stretched Buster out comfortably in the other. The two Navy boat drivers, Seamen Ward and Franks, helped load the rest of the men inboard. Rattlesnake was in with Buster, plus Rick Hunter and the two rookies who had served with them outside the power plant. Lieutenant MacPherson was in the other boat.
Two more rookies went into the second craft, where Mike Hook was already sorting out the gear and organizing the M-60. Everyone was still in the cover of the over-hanging grass, but the weight had put the boats on the bottom. Commander Hunter and Lt. Allensworth went back in the water, and the skies were clear. It was still dark and the team leader decided they should at least be floating ready for the moment when they would make a run for it, straight down the widening river and across the shoal.
“The grass is just as good to hide in down there another fifty yards as it is up here,” he said. “And there’re probably five feet of water. Bobby and me’ll drag us down there. I’ll pull, he’ll shove. I don’t like boats aground in a foot of water.”
Rick Hunter seized the painter of the lead boat and heaved. Astern Bobby Allensworth pushed with all his strength, and the boat moved. Rick heaved some more, and the boat slid off the mud with water under its keel.
“One at a time. We’ll take ’em separately,” he said. “Use the paddles to stay as far into the grass as you can.” And Commander Hunter began to haul the boat along, with Bobby at his side, preventing it from drifting out into the bright stream.
They’d gone 25 yards when the helos came back, and the sound of the steam roaring out of the power plant deadened the sound of the engines. Bobby Allensworth saw them before he heard them, and he yelled at Rick to shove the boat inshore and then hit the water.
The SEAL commander turned, saw the helos about a half mile off, racing into the inlet where they had opened fire before. The pilot banked right, losing height as he came in over the trees. The navigator thought he spotted something in the water, and he ordered the gunner to open up along the bank again.
Once more the bullets from the big Russian-made machine gun ripped into the left bank, and he kept firing all the way down its length. The two SEALs dived face-down into the water, and the the first helicopter overflew them. But the second one didn’t. Rick Hunter and Bobby surfaced without knowing it was there and the second machine-gunner, wearing night goggles, spotted them, and rained fire down on them.
The chopper was so low it could hardly miss, and with heartbreaking courage the SEAL from the Los Angeles ghetto flung himself onto his Commander’s back and took eleven bullets that jolted his entire body, obliterating his spine, neck and head. He died instantly, still clinging to Rick’s back. Still the devoted bodyguard.
Rick Hunter forced himself up out of the mud, safe but wet. “Shit, Bobby,” he said. “You trying to drown us both?”
And then he saw Bobby Allensworth, lying in the water, faceup, blood streaming down his face where two bullets had almost gone right through. And Rick just had time to lift him up and into the boat, before he broke away, momentarily burying his head in the blank rubber side of the hull. No one had ever seen Rick Hunter that close to breaking before.
Lieutenant MacPherson saw what had happened and now he too went over the side, manhandling the craft into the deeper water. “Those fucking little creeps,” he said. “But at least we know where we stand. We gotta float and we gotta fight. Get those fucking M-60s ready right now, and start the engine.”
They drove along to Commander Hunter, while Chief Mike Hook laid out the ammunition belts for the M-60s. And none too soon. All three Chinese helicopters were making a long turn, plainly to return to the inlet.
“Sir, I’m sorry,” said Dallas. “Really sorry. But I got the machine gun ready in our boat. You all set here? Get under the grass again. We’ll let ’em have it as they come in, sustained fire on the leader, right? Everything we got, to down one of ’em. Discourage the others, right?”
“Right, Dallas. Let’s go.”
But the Chinese pilots were not certain they had done any damage at all so far. And they fanned out, with just the leader flying back down the bloodstained little water way. He came in low, and as he did so the SEALs opened fire with everything they had from the little boats behind the grasses. Dallas blew 30 rounds straight into the rear door of the chopper killing the gunner and, somehow, the navigator.
Mike Hook blasted away at the engines, set topside left and right below the rotors. And Commander Hunter, firing with a venom he had never experienced before, emptied an entire belt of 100 rounds into the cockpit area of the rocket-firing Helix-B. It might have been the engine, it might have been the bullets smashing through the side windows, it might have been anything. But whatever it was, the helicopter was suddenly belching flames, and it spun right over and slammed into the water at 130 miles an hour.
“Fuck me,” said one of the rookies.
At which point they could all see the lights of the two remaining Helix choppers wheeling around to the north, running up the narrow island where the downstream channel parts, before slowly turning east, back toward the blazing Naval base.
Both pilots were confused. They had just seen 33 percent of their attack force destroyed. The ships upon which they normally served were gone. There was no fuel. No electricity. Hundreds were dead. The entire base was engulfed in fire. At the epicenter of the inferno was a roaring white phenomenon, directly from Hell. They had no one, formally, to whom they must report, and they had just seen, firsthand, the firepower of their adversaries. No two Chinese warriors had ever had so little stomach for the fight. And they headed once more for that rough ground opposite the power station, to land once more and inform the remaining group of officers what had befallen them.
The SEALs, of course, did not know all this. But Commander Hunter again rallied his battered team.
“Guys, we have to break out of here sometime…it might as well be now…. How many ammunition belts do we have?”
Seaman Ward, a tough-looking Irishman from Cleveland, said, “We brought six. You guys had one left, which you used, sir. So we got four unused, and half of two others.”
“Okay, divide ’em up. We’ll take one gun in the lead boat, which I’ll handle. Lieutenant MacPherson and Chief Mike Hook will operate the other two. Get the paddles and shove out. Soon as the water’s deep enough, drop the engines and go. Someone fire up the radio, and I’ll get the signal into the satellite.”
The two boats paddled out through the shallows and into the wide channel. It was definitely getting light now, not sufficiently to see Shawn Pearson’s map clearly, but the tiny point of the flashlight showed three feet of water. They dropped their engines at 0520, and under deserted skies, still lit up to the east by the burning Naval base, they accelerated the engines mildly, making eight knots, course two-six-zero, straight for the uncertain waters of the Haing Gyi Shoal.