“Fucking thirty-ought-six,” Jaybird said. “I’ve hunted with enough of them.”
“Where from?” Murdock asked. They all stared ahead of their position just outside the patch of native woods.
“My bet is those eucalyptus over there to the right,” Lam said.
“All mine,” Murdock said. He lifted the Bull Pup and sent half a dozen rounds into the trees halfway up.
There was no response.
“Remember, we have two admirals with the bug-outs. We don’t want to endanger them. Spread out, ten yards, line of skirmishers. We’re running for those trees. Just a little over a jog. Keep your weapons at the ready.”
“My guess they’re gone by now,” DeWitt said as they picked up the line and began to jog forward. Murdock moved the line faster.
“Yeah, gone, but they know we’re here. We’ll have to be careful. Hard telling what this sailor might do on unfamiliar land in combat.”
Murdock watched the trees as they came closer. The fast jog ate up the landscape. They encountered no fire from the trees. He didn’t expect any. It had been a rear-guard action to slow them down.
The eucalyptus were more than a hundred feet tall and beautifully grotesque with their growth pattern of limbs. The scent of the menthol nuts on the ground came through sharply as they worked through the smaller trees to the far edge of the woods.
Ahead they saw a farmhouse, complete with a barn, detached garage, and what could only be an outhouse. The buildings looked sixty or seventy years old and were badly in need of repairs. Even through the dim light they could see that any paint that had been used had long ago peeled and fell away.
Murdock stared at the place.
“Abandoned,” Lam suggested.
“Probably, but a good defensive setup. I wonder how many weapons they have. The deer rifle could have come from the mansion. They might have some handguns, but I’d guess not much else. How far to the buildings?”
“Quarter of a mile, maybe another hundred,” Lam said. The buildings huddled in the moonlight. Even if they had weapons inside, the darkness would cover the SEALs’ attack.
“Let’s move up,” Murdock said to the lip mike. “No firing unless I do. They probably are short on weapons. Move out.”
The line of SEALs advanced at a walk. Murdock had been listening for any sound coming from the buildings ahead. There were none. If they were there, they had good discipline. The two admirals were a long way from any field exercises, but they would know enough to keep quiet and follow orders. One of the invaders must speak English.
They were halfway to the buildings when a pain-filled scream echoed across the flatness of the coastal plain.
The SEALs all hit the deck.
“What’n hell?” Ching whispered.
“Sounds like a bobcat in heat,” Mahanani said on the net.
“No bobcats in Hawaii,” Holt said.
“Sounded more like a cougar, about seven feet long and mean as hell,” Ching added.
“What about a wild pig?” Canzoneri asked. “They do have feral pigs over here all over the place.”
“Hey, I grew up on a farm,” Bradford said. “No pig ever sounded that way.”
“Moving out,” Murdock said, closing the discussion.
The closer they came to the buildings, the more watchful they became. When they were twenty yards from the back of the barn, Murdock tapped his mike twice and the SEALs stopped and went to ground.
“Jaybird, on me,” Murdock said. Jaybird moved out of line and worked ahead toward the barn with the commander. They parted in back and each went around one side.
Murdock checked the open door in the barn. It was high enough for a horse to walk in pulling a load. He sniffed. No animal odor. His NVGs came up and he scanned the place. A small stack of hay in one corner. A stall for a horse with a few recent droppings. Oil drips on the floor that might be from farm machinery or an older car. A pair of owls rocketed out of the place, their wings not the silent type. Could be the pueo owl the Hawaiians held to be a family-protecting spirit in their mythology.
“Nada,” the earpiece whispered. Murdock met Jaybird in front of the barn. They looked at the run-down house thirty yards away. For just a second a white light blossomed through a window in the house, then snapped off.
“Hit it,” Murdock barked, and the two men dove for the dirt and rolled away from each other.
The roar of the submachine gun caught them both by surprise as it raked the area where they had stood with a dozen rounds on full auto. They rolled farther apart. Murdock looked for some cover. The MG man worked his rounds toward Murdock’s side. He spotted the old wooden watering trough, and dove for it just as hot lead kicked up dirt where he had been seconds before.
Murdock touched the lip mike. “Bradford. Get up here. Use the barn as cover for the house. Bring the EAR. When you get to the barn, come around the left side and put a jolt through the house window. Hope to hell you can find a window. I’m guessing it will blow the window out in front of it. Go, double time. It’s getting hot up here.”
“Backup?” DeWitt asked.
“Yeah, but keep cover from that sub gun in the house. Only response so far, but the bastard has NVGs for damn sure. Might be a one-man rear guard, but where the hell did they get a sub gun?”
“We’re moving, Cap. Know the two aces might still be in the building. No deadly fire there. Will, spread out to both sides.”
Murdock looked over where Jaybird had vanished. He couldn’t make out the man in the dim light. “Jaybird, you five by five?”
There was no immediate answer. “Jaybird. Hey, buddy. Don’t play possum on me. You see anything from that angle?”
Again there was no answer.
“Mahanani. Get to the right-hand side of the barn and wait. Might have some work for you.”
“I heard. Leave him there, Cap. That NVG could get a lot of us killed out here tonight. We’ll get Jaybird.”
Less than two minutes later, Murdock heard the whoosh of the EAR weapon and the tingling in his ears. He clamped his hands over his ears just before glass shattered and a concussion and explosive force thundered through the small farmhouse like a freight train meeting a tornado head-on.
“Let’s hit the house. Jack, check on Jaybird.” Murdock came up from the water trough running. He held the Bull Pup in front of him and used the NVGs to find the door ten feet down from a blown-out window. He was closest and the first one there. The door had been blown entirely off its hinges and lay shattered ten feet from the house. Murdock stepped into the room with the NVGs and scanned it quickly.
A submachine gun lay on a counter pointed out the window that now held no glass. A man sprawled against the far wall, his head at a strange angle.
“Clear first room,” Murdock said. He slanted toward an open door out of what he figured was the kitchen. The next room held only two old worn-out sofas and a chair. “Clear room two,” he told the mike, and sprinted across it to another door. This one had two beds that had been neatly made up, a current calendar, and a copy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin newspaper. Pizza boxes and remains of fried chicken takeouts littered one side of the room.
“Clear room three.”
DeWitt charged into the room and kept going to the next door. He darted through the opening, his own NVGs working. Murdock sagged against the wall.
“Clear last two rooms,” DeWitt said.
“Mahanani, was Jaybird hit?”
The earplug came on at once. “Yeah. Not good. Took a scalp graze that knocked him out. But there’s a second wound in the lower belly. It’s got to have hit some intestines. Peritonitis is a big problem here, Cap.”
“Franklin, where the hell is that van?”
“Cap, we’re down the road about two miles. We heard the sub gun and are moving that way. Jaybird is hit?”