Murdock stroked silently through the chop of the Yellow Sea. His weapon was tied across his back with a length of black rubber tubing. He was thirty-two years old, stood six-two, and weighed 210 pounds. He had been in the SEALs for six years, the last two commanding the Third Platoon.
His buddy on the swim was Radioman First Class Ron Holt, a twenty-two-year-old in his third year as a SEAL.
Murdock took a long look at the shoreline. Less than a hundred yards away, it looked peaceful. He could spot no guards, or any roving patrols. This was a vital area and should be protected better than this. Their loss, his gain.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Ed DeWitt led his Bravo Squad into the surf, where the black figures lay in the wet sand with waves and foam washing over them. DeWitt watched the beach both ways, then signaled two men to sprint out of the water through the dry sand to the sparse growth twenty yards inland.
Both made it without drawing any notice. Once in the brush, Miguel Fernandez, Gunner's Mate First Class, fro ze in place. Directly ahead of him a Korean soldier walked along a path heading for the beach. Fernandez waited until he was less than three feet away, then lunged out, slammed into the slight Korean, and rammed him to the ground. Fernandez grabbed the frightened man's mouth so he couldn't scream.
Guns Franklin, Yeoman Second Class, sprinted over from twenty feet away to hold down the struggling Korean while they gagged him and tied his hands behind him with plastic cinch cuffs like those used by cops.
By the time the man was tied, Bravo Squad had crossed the beach undetected. DeWitt gave Fernandez a thumbs-up sign, and they spread out in a defensive line facing inward.
Less than a minute later, Alpha Squad with Commander Murdock joined them. The two officers whispered for a moment, then Murdock took his squad and moved up the faint trail heading inland.
Alpha Squad was in its normal formation, with the scout, Joe "Ricochet" Lampedusa, out in front of the group thirty yards. Murdock followed with his radioman, Holt, next in line. Then came Bill Bradford, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, with his H&K PSG1 7.62 NATO sniper rifle.
Ken Ching, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, was next in line, with Harry Ronson, Electrician's Mate Second Class, following him. James "Doc" Ellsworth, the platoon medic and a Hospital Corpsman First Class, was next to last, with David "Jaybird" Sterling holding down the tail-end Charlie spot.
Lampedusa dropped to the ground. Murdock followed suit, as did the rest of Alpha Squad. Murdock lifted up to a crouch and ran up to his scout.
Lampedusa pointed ahead. "Mounted patrol, Skipper. Truck and four men. Road is about fifty yards to the left."
"Parked," Murdock whispered. "We've got to keep to our time sked."
"Wish we had an EAR," Lampedusa said.
Murdock wished for a pair of them. They were Enhanced Acoustic Rifles, a non-lethal weapon that could put a target down and unconscious for four hours without harming him.
"Diversion," Murdock said. "You have any WP?"
Lampedusa grinned, and brought up his Colt M-4A1 with the grenade launcher under the barrel. He dug a 40mm white-phosphorus grenade out of his combat vest and loaded it. He angled the round to the left, away from their route.
The sound of the grenade firing brought one of the Korean soldiers on the truck up from where he had been napping. He stared in their direction, then reacted quickly when the grenade exploded two hundred yards down the road in a brilliant starburst of hotly burning and smoking phosphorus. The Korean soldiers on the truck yelled, started the rig, and spun the wheels as they raced the truck toward the fire.
Murdock waved the SEALs forward on double time. All fifteen men cleared the road where the truck had been, and plunged into the brush and trees as they moved inland.
Lampedusa worked fifty yards ahead now in the lighter woodland. They had seen no Korean soldiers for the past ten minutes. Lam dropped into the weeds and grass, and the rest of the platoon went down like dominoes behind him. Murdock and Jaybird Sterling slid to the ground beside Lam.
"Fucking lousy way to run a war," Jaybird said.
"Not a war, not yet," Murdock said. "You get the big bucks so you follow orders. What have we here, Lam?"
"Our objective. They have three guards, walking around the place like it's a gold mine."
"It may be," Murdock said. "How close can we get to it without being seen?"
"Twenty yards on this side. Let me do a run around it and see if there's a closer spot."
Lam melted into the woods without stirring a leaf or branch.
Murdock signaled the others behind him to wait, and he and Jaybird watched to the front.
"We got any more of these shit details?" Jaybird asked.
"Two, from what I hear."
"When the hell are they sending us home?" Jaybird asked with a touch of a whine. "We creamed that little Jap general in the Kurils, now we're stuck on the fucking carrier for a month. Nothing is happening over here. Why don't they send us home so I can get in some snowboarding up at Big Bear?"
"You'd break your damn neck. Jaybird. Face it, you love all this shit. Don Stroh says we got to hang tough. If nothing pops in another month, the CIA agent boss man says he'll get our asses back to Coronado."
"Him and his promises. Does that CIA jerk ever treat us right? He's hung us out to dry too many times."
"True, like in Iraq," Murdock agreed.
"Hey, WESTPAC has two SEAL platoons jerking off in Hawaii. Why can't one of them replace us here?"
They both grinned in the dark. Jaybird beat the commander to it. "Because none of them motherfuckers can replace us, nobody in the whole shit-assed Navy can come anywhere near to replacing us."
The SEALs laughed softly. Their platoon had been handpicked by the CIA to be "on call" for the intelligence agency to do its dirty work around the globe. Whenever the CIA wanted some covert action, they called on Murdock and his Third Platoon out of SEAL Team Seven at Coronado, California. His platoon had even been taken out of the command of NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE. That was the mother hen of the SEALs on the West Coast. That made the commander of the unit furious. But the Chief of Naval Operations himself had approved the move, so it was done.
Lam appeared as silently as he had left. Murdock swore the kid was half Apache.
"Other side," Lam said. "A place where the woods and brush grow to within ten feet of the buildings and the guards move around there every three minutes. I timed them."
"Go," Murdock said. He gave a moving-out arm swing, and the SEALs caught it back down the line and were on the march silently.
Five minutes later, Murdock settled in just in back of the brush that came close to the target building. Now they could see that the structure had no windows, was two stones high and made of wood.
A Korean guard with rifle slung over his shoulder muzzle down walked his post around the building. As he came opposite the brush, Kenneth Ching whispered something in Korean. The man stopped and turned, evidently curious.
Harry Ronson charged out of the brush and hit the soldier with a solid body tackle right on the numbers, and they both went down. Ching moved in and clamped his hand over the Korean's mouth. The two SEALs hauled the terrified Korean into the brush, gagged him, and tied his hands behind him with plastic cuffs.
The same pattern held for the other two exterior guards. When all three were stashed a safe distance from the building. Ken Ching and Murdock positioned themselves on either side of the door. Ching jerked the door open and Murdock threw a flashbang grenade into the room. Ching grabbed a surprised Korean soldier who had started out the door and pushed him inside and slammed the door shut.