Without being told, three of the shooters went to HE, and a minute later two rounds hit close enough to the stored gasoline to rupture one of the barrels. It blew and exploded the rest of the barrels of fuel into one gigantic bonfire.
"Move it," Murdock said in his mike, and the SEALs double-timed to the left, hooking up with the Army men and running south toward the MLR.
They heard the artillery rounds going over. Just a minor whisper before they hit near the furiously burning gasoline.
Lam held up his hand when they had moved what Murdock figured was a half mile to the south.
"Homeboys right ahead," Lam said. "Must be their MLR. Looks like about a dozen of them along a fifty-foot front."
"See anybody leave, like going back to that camp?"
"No one left while I've been watching."
"Bradford and Fernandez, front and center with your tools," Murdock said in the Motorola. "Move up, now."
Murdock found firing positions for the two by the time they got to where he waited. They were eighty yards from the mounds of dirt ahead of them. The trench behind the mound was open to this side.
"We need as many of them down before we move through here and as quietly as possible," Murdock told them.
They nodded. "Open fire at your pleasure," Murdock said.
Bradford eased down behind his H&K PSG1 suppressed sniper rifle, and sighted in on the last man he could see to the left. Fernandez, with an identical rifle, sighted in on the last man he could see on the right. They both fired at about the same time.
They each moved to the next man in line. Six of the NKs were down in the trench before the others noticed. One gave a high screeching yell, and the six went flat in the trench.
Jaybird pushed in beside Murdock. "They done what they can. How about some old-fashioned fraggers?"
Murdock nodded. He and Jaybird began crawling forward. Now and then one of the NKs lifted up from the trench, but then dropped down. Murdock and Jaybird found some cover halfway there. They paused. Murdock told the others to hold fire, and he and Jaybird wormed another fifteen yards, then took out three grenades each and looked at each other in the darkness.
Murdock nodded. They pulled the pins and each threw a bomb. Before the first fraggers hit, the two throwers had the pins pulled on their second grenades and lofted them at the trench.
The first ones hit short; the second ones hit the berm and rolled back into the trench, where it detonated.
After throwing the third fraggers, the two lay still for a moment until the small hand bombs exploded. Then they came to their feet and charged the trench. They made it with no return fire. Murdock ran one way down the trench, Jaybird the other.
Murdock spotted two NKs twenty feet down the trench trying to get to their feet. He slammed two three-round bursts into them and they went down and dead. He moved another thirty feet, and saw no more live defenders. He heard Jaybird's muted weapon fire down the other way.
"Clear right," Murdock said.
"Clear left," Jaybird reported.
"Platoon, move up to the trench and over the berm," Murdock said in the mike. "This is a flat-out run for this opening. It won't be here long."
Murdock heard running feet to his left. He brought his subgun around and cut down three rushing NK infantrymen as they rounded a slight bend in the trench. He heard Jaybird firing as well.
The fastest of the SEALs sprinted to the trench, went up the berm and over it, then hunkered down just on the other side to wait for the rest of the platoon.
The general was the last one to the berm. Major Streib gave him a hand up the berm, then let him drop over the side. The general grunted and swore as he hit the ground.
DeWitt had been counting. "We got all of our people," DeWitt said on the radio. Jaybird and Murdock rolled over the berm and ran up to the rest of the men.
"Easy now, we don't want to get shot up by friendlies over there. We go silently until our Korean buddy can make contact. Holt, try for a talk with Lewiston again. He might have some clout down here."
They moved forward slightly, alert. The no-man's-land between the lines was wider here, maybe four hundred yards, Murdock figured. That was good. They began taking some rounds from behind them now. Evidently some of the NK soldiers had filtered in and around the bodies in the trench and figured it out. But the NKs had no targets in the dark Korean night.
Murdock took the point with Lam. Four eyes were better than two, they decided. These South Koreans could get trigger-happy sometimes. Then ahead, they could see the concertina wire and a hastily thrust of dirt that must be the MLR. When Murdock looked around, the Korean interpreter crouched behind him.
"This it?" Murdock asked.
The Korean looked and nodded.
"Can you talk to them from here?"
He shook his head and began crawling forward. He was a dozen feet away and to the left when a machine gun fired from the South Korean side. The little Korean man buckled, then rolled over and lay still.
"Damn," Murdock said. "There goes our ride home." He touched the lip mike. "Ching, get your bones up front, fast."
He came a few moments later. "The MLR," Murdock whispered. "They just killed our Korean. Can you try some Japanese on them?"
"Shit, what if they don't know Jap talk?"
"Worth a try. Find some cover first."
Ching crouched behind a boulder and looked over it. He shrilled out a string of Japanese and ducked. There was a stunned silence behind the SK lines. Then a thin voice came back. Ching grinned in the darkness, and shouted again in Japanese. He told them they were the American patrol that went out the night before.
They answered him. He looked at Murdock.
"They want a fucking password." "Tell them package. Package. We don't know a password. Try it, package."
Ching shouted the word there times. His only answer was a six-round burst of machine-gun fire. He returned fire with a ten-round burst from his Colt M-4.
Holt eased into the shallow where Murdock and Major Streib lay. "Got the lieutenant. He says we're in the wrong sector."
Streib took the handset. "Lewiston, what the fuck is the matter with you? We're opposite where the big fire is, where your artillery rounds came in. Your Southern Fried Friends are shooting at us. Get over here and stop them. We've still got the package, but we could lose half of them if the North Koreans keep shooting."
"To the west more. Okay, I'll get on the horn. My Korean isn't all that good, but we'll try."
"Don't just try, Lewiston, do it. Just trying is going to bag you a dead general and some dead bird colonels."
The machine gun fired again. Somebody behind them swore.
"All weapons. A thirty-second firing. Go at that South Korean MLR. Let's do it now."
The fourteen weapons of the platoon snarled, rattled, and thundered on automatic fire, shredding some of the trees over the MLR ahead of them.
"Cease," Murdock said to the Motorola. "Ching, say it again."
The big man from San Diego bellowed out the Japanese words again. He threw in that they had twice the firepower the men on the line had, and they would kill everyone there if they needed to.
An American voice came back at them in the silence that followed Ching's words. "You might be who you say, you might not. So tell me, who is Beavis's buddy?"
"Butthead, you butthead," Ching shouted in English. "You believe us now?"
"Hey, I'm coming over the berm with no weapon," the American said. "Just to show you that I believe you." "'You got a name, friend'?"
"Yeah, Master Sergeant Wilcox, and you guys and your fancy weapons almost turned my wife into a fucking widow. I'm coming out. Hold your damned fire."
A moment later they saw a flashlight beam moving over the berm and down the bank; then the light reversed and lighted a redheaded American's face.
"Let's move it, ladies," Murdock said into the mike, and the SEALs and their package of Army officers hurried forward, over the berm, and back into friendly territory.