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"Save the fifties for now," Murdock said on the net. "We'll use the subguns when they get close enough. If any make it through that welcome, we'll use grenades. It's downhill so we'll get a roll."

They waited.

"Coming," Lam said. He had the best ears in the platoon. "Little to the left."

Murdock picked them up on his NVGs. They were still 150 yards down the hill. Some small brush and trees confused the matter, but the NKs had shifted to the left. Murdock clanked a .50-caliber round on the long gun, and grinned as the chasers shifted their angle and came head on. When they were a hundred yards away, Murdock gave the order to fire.

The four submachine guns chattered on three-round bursts. They were the only defensive weapons they had. They took return fire, but the NKs were firing only at the muzzle flashes. They had no targets and did no damage.

"Wish to hell we had a few Claymores," Jaybird said as he lay on the ground watching below. At the first volley from the top of the hill, the NKs went to the ground and fired back, but didn't move on up the hill. Jaybird said there were about thirty men below. Murdock could hear shouting from below, and watched as an officer went along prodding the men, screeching at them. Murdock couldn't resist. He chambered one .50-caliber round in the big McMillan and found the officer near the NK troops. The man turned full front to the top of the hill, and Murdock fired. The round slammed into the infantry lieutenant and blasted him ten feet down the hill. Where he used to have a chest now was a huge hole and smashed ribs and shards of his spine. The NK troops sagged back to the ground.

It took them ten minutes to launch an attack forward. Murdock figured the top noncom in the company was prodding them. They stormed upward another fifty yards; then the withering automatic fire from the H&K MP-5's stopped them again. Jaybird threw a grenade. It hit about forty yards down the hill, bounced, and went off near enough to the troops to bring some wails of pain.

"Hold the grenades," Murdock said. "Let them get closer."

"Don't think they'll come any closer," DeWitt said. "They're crawling away."

"Let's do the same thing, the opposite direction," Murdock said, and the platoon came to its feet, strung out five yards apart, and followed Lam, who led them down the hill, across a small stream, and toward the coast.

They came to the guard shack, paused to clear it, and went on past that and the bodies of the two NKs they had dispatched earlier.

They were a quarter of a mile from the road they had passed coming in when Lam gave them a down signal on the Motorola.

"Skip, better come take a look," Lam said into the radio.

Murdock moved up quickly to where Lam lay in the grass behind a small bush. Slightly downhill and ahead of them, Murdock saw the road full of trucks. He counted eight all big enough to carry twenty armed troopers.

"Where the hell did they come from?" Murdock asked.

"We do an end run, or maybe a double reverse?" Lam asked.

"We're not going through a hundred and fifty men, that's for fucking sure," Murdock said. He stared at the trucks. "We get on the other side, then we blow the trucks with the fifties. Yeah, let's take a hard left here."

They worked around the trucks in single file and ten yards apart. The North Koreans had no security out. It seemed the men were simply on the way somewhere, and had stopped to relieve themselves or for chow. The time pushed to 0545. Murdock tried to remember how far to the beach from the road. Not far. A mile, a mile and a half?

No more. He watched the troops below. They weren't moving. The truck engines had been turned off. They handed out food. That would take an hour.

The SEALs' silent line melted into the brush two hundred yards to the side of the trucks.

Murdock found what he wanted on the far side of them. He could smell the salt air now. Good, not far.

They set up in the edge of a clearing five hundred yards from the trucks. He assigned the rigs to eight men, and told them to use up their two rounds.

"A fuel tank would be good, but the engine will be acceptable." They could see the rigs clearly in the morning light. Everyone fired except Murdock. He was keeping his one last round for insurance.

The rounds screamed into the hapless trucks. Four armor piercing messengers found engines and blew the vehicles into worthless junk. One round hit a fuel tank and it exploded, showering burning gasoline on two of the other trucks, which soon exploded as well. Twenty seconds after the fifties began firing, the SEALs were done, lined up, and moved out double time for the surf.

They hit the sand five minutes later, strapped their weapons on their backs, buttoned up their Motorolas in watertight flaps, and hit the water.

They were just beyond the breaker line when Murdock heard the growl of a motor. The rest of them caught the sound too.

"Probably a coastal patrol craft," Murdock shouted so most of the SEALs could hear him. "Stay together. We'll duck-dive if we have to. I don't see any boat yet."

They kept swimming on the surface away from the coast. They had an appointment out a half mile. Murdock heard the patrol craft again. This time it was accented with twelve round bursts from a machine gun.

The sound faded, then came back stronger. "Coming our way," Murdock said, and the word passed from SEAL to SEAL. They could all hear it then, and some could see a wake as the craft plowed through the Yellow Sea straight at them. It wasn't going to turn away this time. Murdock waited until it was less than fifty yards away. Then he shouted to dive, and the thirteen SEALs turned turtle and dove downward.

Murdock took six strong strokes down and leveled off, watching above him. The water was clear and he could make out the surface. Then it was laced with hundreds of bubbles as the North Korean coastal patrol craft slashed through the water overhead.

Murdock surfaced slowly, took a huge breath, and checked the route of the boat. It kept moving in a straight line. He had no idea what kind of a search pattern the skipper on board was using.

The rest of the SEALs surfaced, and Murdock called for a sound-off to get a head count.

Everyone was there. He called Holt over.

"I'll boost you up and you unzip your Motorola and give a call to the RIB. Make two calls, then listen."

Holt waited for the boost all the way out of th e water down to his waist, then unzipped the watertight and took out the Motorola.

"SEAL Three calling RIB. Ready to motor."

He waited ten seconds and made the call again. This time a reply came back faintly.

"Yeah, SEAL Three. We've been playing hide-and-seek with an NK patrol boat. Saw your bonfire. Heading back your way. Transmit every minute. Your volume will help lead me to you. Figure we're almost at the range of the boxes."

They made four calls; then Murdock let Holt back into the water. He took out a green light stick and broke the inside, letting the chemicals flow together and produce a steady green glow. Three minutes later, the RIBs came alongside and picked up the SEALs.

"You crazy, using a light stick this close to North Korean coast?" the coxswain asked.

Murdock snorted, "Hell, I figured you could outrun those guys. Let's go home. We'll fight about it on the destroyer."

17

The Yellow Sea
Off North Korea

The coxswain of the first RIB yelled at Murdock over the whine of the engine that jolted them through the water at nearly forty knots.

"Nice going with that glow stick, Commander. We've got an NK patrol craft on our tail."

"One of the big ones?"

"Probably a hundred and forty feet," the coxswain shouted. "Hope it doesn't have missiles on it or we're in fucking big trouble."

"How fast can we go?"