DeWitt tried to swallow. He couldn’t. He nodded at Ostercamp. He tried to swallow again. This time he made it.
He tried his voice. “Good. Good.” It was scratchy, but they understood him. “Let’s sweep this floor. Side to side. We still have at least seven bogies in here somewhere. We still have six men?”
“That’s a Roger,” Lam said. “When I saw you coming back I counted. All accounted for.”
“Let’s do it, people.”
They worked from exhibit to exhibit, all from the earliest days of the Hawaiian people when there were dozens of gods and sacred spots and the kings and queens ruled. Twenty minutes later they came to the far wall and worked behind the exhibits, but found no more Chinese.
DeWitt used the radio. “Dobler, you doing any good up there?”
“Found two who gave up. Still looking for five more. There’s the third floor.”
“Moving up there,” DeWitt said. They went up the stairs, put up in l899 with the main building.
“Found one more hiding on the second,” Dobler said on the net. “Should leave four we know about.”
At the top of the stairs, Lam caught DeWitt’s shoulder. “JG, you stay here. Let us do the sweep. You took quite a jolt back there.”
DeWitt shook his head, but when he did it, he saw two of Lam, two of everything. He sat down with his back against the wall, and waved the men forward.
Lam pointed the other men down aisles. These exhibits showed the diverse cultures that make up the current Hawaii. The SEALs went past a thatched early Hawaiian house and a finely worked red and yellow cape made of feathers. The Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos were all represented.
Lam came around a corner of a display and found a Chinese lying on the floor with his rifle pointed at him. The rifle fired. The bullet missed. Lam’s weapon jolted down and snapped off three shots, drilling the Chinese from chin to chest. He died in an instant. Lam heard firing two aisles over. He charged that way.
Train stood over two soldiers, both gasping out their last breaths. Train’s Colt M-4A1 still covered the two. When they died, he kicked them both and then dropped to his knees, his hand on his left shoulder coming away bloody.
“Three more down and out,” Lam said on the net. “We have one wounded. Train caught one in the shoulder. I don’t know how bad.”
“Clear floor two,” Dobler said on the net.
“Clear floor three,” Lam said. He hurried back to talk to DeWitt. He grinned when he saw the JG. He was standing up, walking around in a small circle. He grabbed Lam.
“How bad is Train?”
“Not sure. Quite a bit of blood. We’ll let Doc look at him.”
“I’m back to normal, Lam. Thanks for the work up here. Let’s get the troops on the ground and compare notes.”
On the ground floor, they continued on out the back door of Hawaiian Hall and flaked out on the grass. After a five-minute talk they decided that none of the invaders could have left the building. When the first EAR round went off, Dobler and his squad had had the rear entrance blocked. The Chinese must have all gone upstairs and been caught or killed.
“Hang tough here,” DeWitt said. “Lam and I will go out front and see if we can find somebody to talk to. They’re going to need a coroner and some ambulances and a police unit to do a clean sweep of the whole inside of the museum campus. We’ll be back.”
They found two police cars with radios and six museum officials at the front entrance eager to come inside. DeWitt explained to them what they’d done.
“There is some incidental damage, but nothing major. It could have been a lot worse. Two doors had their locks shot off and one or two exhibits got nicked by flying bullets.”
The museum director gripped DeWitt’s hands. “We thank you and all the ancient Hawaiian gods for your good work here. We’re sorry to hear there are casualties, but it was not our war in the first place.”
One of the cops waved his small notebook. “I’ll need some statements from you about any deaths.”
DeWitt smiled. “This is a military operation, Officer. It’s out of your jurisdiction. You can talk with Admiral Bennington out at Pearl if you want any statements. Now, I have a wounded man I need to get to the hospital.”
DeWitt and Lam turned, their submachine guns slung over their shoulders, and walked away from the gaping civilians at the front entrance.
The bus had stayed where DeWitt told the driver to hold. The SEALs loaded on and soon were on their way back to Pearl.
Train’s wound just below the shoulder through the fleshy part of the arm, miss the bone. It would heal in a month or so.
When they arrived at Pearl Harbor, DeWitt let the men off at their quarters, then took Train with him to the hospital. The corpsman looked Train over, treated his shoulder, and released him. Then the two went and visited Murdock. His shoulder was giving him fits and he had given the nurses a bad time. The doctor said he could be transferred to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego in a day or two.
Both Ronson and Jaybird Sterling were recovering and out of danger. Both could be transferred to Balboa after a final check.
Back in their quarters at Pearl, DeWitt reported to the men on the medical cases. Then he took a call from CINCPAC.
“Yes, sir, we cleared up the problem. Suffered one casualty but his wound is not serious.” He listened for a minute.
“We figured there were about thirty-five of them. We killed or captured thirty-three, and figured we had them all. The thirty-five was an estimate.”
He listened again.
“Yes, sir. We’re functioning at a forty-percent casualty rate, sir, and request that we be returned to our home base at Coronado within the next week.”
DeWitt smiled. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It’s been a pleasure. We’ll coordinate with Commander Johnson. Thank you again, Admiral Bennington.”
DeWitt put his feet up on the training table and grinned. So, they were to be cleared for return within a week. The war was over for all but a few mop-ups. The Chinese Navy had suffered tremendous losses, and it might be ten years before it recovered.
All that and there still would be time to do some shopping in Honolulu for Milly. He grinned and went to tell the men the good news. All of them were at special chow or sleeping. Yeah, he could tell them in the morning. Ed DeWitt grinned all the way to his quarters. It was going to be a great week ahead.
29
At the SEAL Team Seven headquarters and SEAL BUD/S training command, just south of Hotel Del Coronado on the Pacific Ocean, Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt sat in the commander’s chair at Third Platoon’s HQ and reviewed the past week. They had been pulled out of Hawaii and the co-op training with the British and Aussies and sent home to recuperate. He still had three men in the hospital and two more recovering from gunshot wounds.
Jaybird was at Balboa Hospital with the other two. He was still in the worst shape. They had done a second operation to repair damage to his large intestine. He had been responding well, but had a relapse and been critical for a day or two. Now he was doing better, and the doctors said he should be fit to return to duty, but not for at least three months.
Harry Ronson was doing better. He would be discharged in another week. His chest shot had missed his lung. Took out an artery that had been patched up. He would be on Navy light duty for a month, then available for return to active duty with his SEAL unit.
Commander Murdock waited at Balboa for the day he could be released. The doctors there had checked the surgery and pronounced it sound. The MRI showed that the tendon repair had been correct and would heal in time.
“They got me on this damn pulley thing that I know is tearing my arm apart,” Murdock brayed. “They say I have to use this for one minute every hour I’m awake. Ripping me into small pieces. I have to try to get my hand as high over my head as I can. Told them I can get it all the way up. Had to prove it to them. They said, good, now keep getting it up there sixteen times a day for a minute each rotation. That’s about forty damn times up and down.