Payback (14 page)

“She assured my contact that it was a hundred times that big and loud. The whole area was covered with sparking wires and snapping and smoking for a half hour before it calmed down.

“Now, the question is, was there just one explosion like this one? Was it done deliberately or was it an accident? Could one large power substation blow out the entire electrical grid to seven-and-a-half states? I don't know.

“A small update for you. Yes, most telephones are working. However, if you have a cell phone, it probably won't. The cell phone repeater antennas need electricity to function. If you have a cordless phone that plugs into a socket and transmits your voice from handset to base, it probably won't work. Ordinary phones use a very small amount of electrical power and are not connected to the electrical lines. So, you can call, but most circuits are so jammed that you can't get through. Just sit tight, hang on, welcome your day of vacation, and hope they put the grids back on line soon. By the same logic, most long-distance calls won't go through since they are often sent through microwave relay stations. Those stations here in the affected area are also down and out, so no long-distance calls.”

Murdock and DeWitt listened to the radio. Murdock shrugged. “Hey, I have an after-action report to do. I can write it on my battery-powered laptop, but won't be able to print it. So I'll print it out later.”

Murdock had just sat down in his small office at Platoon Three when his phone rang. It startled him. He grabbed it. “Murdock here sir,” he said.

“Good, you're back.” It was Commander Masciareli, Murdock's immediate superior. “I have my SATCOM on and just received a mission-well-done from the CNO. He also said nobody knows much about the power blackout. He suggested that your platoon be on standby. He had just come from a meeting with several federal agencies and they were concerned with the power blackout. By now they concede that it is sabotage, probably by the same North Korean elements who attacked San Francisco and shot down the jet passenger liner.”

“Yes, sir. I'd say that's a good assumption,” Murdock said.

“He said one of the large power stations blasted is in the desert north of Palm Springs near Yucca Valley. Two witnesses saw the huge power substation there blow up; then two cars full of men drove off into the desert south toward the Little San Bernardino Mountains. So far nobody has tried to chase them down. He wants your men to get airlifted up there and use your choppers to locate them and capture them if possible. The report said six to eight men in two vehicles.”

“Sir, we just got back.”

“At ease, mister. I know where you've been. You'll have two hours of prep time, then lift off North Island at 1000 in two Forty-Sixes. Take all the ammo and weapons you can carry. The choppers will be your horses. Each will have a door gunner. That's a go, Commander. You better get cracking.”

 

 

Murdock stepped into the assembly room where the SEALs were stowing gear in lockers, cleaning and oiling weapons, and filling their combat vests with the usual gear.

“Listen up,” Murdock said with more force than usual. “We're on the button again. The CNO wants us to check out some men who blew up a power substation up by Palm Springs. We take off in two hours, so let's pack up and get ready to move.”

“This is gunna ruin my love life,” Jaybird yelped.

“Hey, that redhead you dated last week said your love life had been ruined years ago,” Howard gibed. They all laughed, and it helped relieve some of the tension.

“These guys North Ks?” Lam asked.

“Nobody knows,” Murdock said. “We'll go up and track them from the chopper, find, and engage. The boss wants a prisoner. We'll have two birds with one squad in each.”

“Weapons mix?” Senior Chief Sadler asked.

“DeWitt, your call,” Murdock said.

“Take all seven Bull Pups, one EAR, one MG per squad, one sniper rifle per squad, and the rest MP-5's. Let's get working, people.”

Murdock repacked his combat vest along with the rest of them, and cleaned his Bull Pup. Then he slipped a standard-band battery-operated radio into one of the pockets. They might learn something from a radio station if he could find one. He made certain that the SATCOM had a fresh battery and that it was glued to Bradford when they stepped on the chopper.

 

The two CH-46's flew on a straight line from North Island Air Station to Indio, jumped over the Little San Bernardino mountain range, and began a low-level search for tire tracks working north.

“We're in the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park,” Murdock told the men in his bird. “Don't know what we'll find.”

The choppers were down to a hundred feet, roving along the edge of the mountains in a search pattern that moved slowly to the north. They passed Key's View, and swung west with the curve of the mountain ridges, and were almost to the Black Rock canyon area before they found the twin tracks of two wheeled rigs entering the desert terrain.

“Got them,” DeWitt called on the Motorola. “Let's swing around and follow them south. Don't see where the hell they could hide in this wide-open desert kind of country.”

“Maybe back in one of the canyons leading into the mountains,” Murdock said. “Keep a sharp look.”

Lam went to one of the open side doors and sat there watching the terrain a hundred feet below. Sand, cactus, stunted desert growth. Not the Sahara, but not much plant life here either, with only three inches or less of rainfall a year. Here and there a gully showed where runoff came after a hard, quick rainfall. Along these watercourses, now long dry, there were smatterings of brush. Nothing large enough to hide a car.

They kept looking.

“There,” Franklin called. “I've got one rig turning off into that small watercourse moving into the hills.”

“We'll take the turnoff,” Murdock shouted. “DeWitt, stay with the other one.” The commander went forward to tell the pilot to follow the turned tracks. Ahead they could see no sight of a car or anywhere it might hide. The arroyo became deeper, now ten feet below the level of the desert floor and twenty feet wide. It made a slow turn to the left, and ended suddenly a hundred yards ahead where a sheer rock wall a hundred feet high blocked the gully.

“What the hell?” Murdock asked no one. He had stayed in the small cabin.

The pilot looked at him. “Want me to lift up and see what's above the rock wall?”

“No use, the car can't go up there. Put us down back here about fifty yards from the wall and we'll do some exploring.

“DeWitt,” Murdock said on the Motorola.

“Copy that,” DeWitt responded.

“We've found a dead end on the tracks against a stone wall. We're landing and taking a look. This one car has to be here somewhere. You stay with the other tracks.”

“Got, it Commander. Will do. We're still moving generally south, but have seen no car.”

Murdock touched the pilot's shoulder. “As soon as we get off, you lift away and wait for us out of range. Could be some weapons down there and an RPG or two. We'll use a red flare when we want to be picked up.”

The chopper slowed and lowered gently to the ground. Murdock stepped into the big cargo area.

“We don't know what might be out there, so we take it slow and easy. I want a line of skirmishers and we'll work up this side of the gully. I saw the car tracks back there about a hundred yards, so it has to be here somewhere.”

Murdock took the end of the line next to the gully, and looked at it carefully. Patches of soft sand showed the tire tracks. Where the hell could that vehicle be? They walked slowly forward, weapons with rounds in the chambers and safeties off.

Forty yards from the end of the gully, Murdock halted the men. Something wasn't quite right about the bottom of the rock wall. If this gully had been gouged out after hard rains when the water had no place to soak in and came down this way, the water would have had to come from high in the mountains and spill over the sheer wall. A waterfall that high would carve out a serious hole in the sand in front of the wall. It could be ten or twelve feet below the level of the arroyo. There was no such hole here.

“Hit the dirt, men, and get behind any cover you can find. I'm going to shoot the wall at the end of the gully with a twenty and see what reaction we get.”

Alpha Squad dove to the ground, some men rolling into small depressions, or moving behind a handy rock. Murdock
went prone, aimed at the center of the wall where the water should be coming from, and fired. The contact fuse detonated on impact, and when the smoke cleared, showed a two-foot-wide hole punched through a non-rock wall.

“Twenties, two rounds each at that wall. It has to be a cave in there. Fire when ready.”

The first three rounds shattered what turned out to be a wood wall built into the side of the granite slab. The next rounds slammed deep into the tunnel and exploded. When the fourteen rounds finished their killing ways in the cave, Murdock and the men sprinted for the side of the wall next to the opening. Smoke and dust filtered out of the cave.

“DeWitt. We've found a cave and it looks like one of the cars ran right into it. Do you have anything on the other rig?”

“Not yet, but we're getting closer. We can see a dust trail ahead from the tires. Keep us informed.”

From what Murdock could see, the blasted opening was about eight feet high and ten feet wide. “Lam, take a look. Don't go inside.”

Lam edged around the side of the cave and past a blown-apart stud wall, and peered inside from ground level.

“Can't see much, Cap. Looks like one dead body about three feet back. He has a weapon. Still smoky in there.”

“No sign of the car?”

“Not a trace. It could have been driven back in there. The place is plenty big enough.”

“You sense any air currents coming out of the opening?”

“Yeah, now I do. Yes. Something is blowing the smoke out of the place. So it must have an air inlet somewhere.”

“Maybe a chimney or another entrance,” Murdock said. “Let's give it five minutes to clear out and then we'll work our way inside. Who brought flashlights?” The two-cell lights were standard on missions, but many times the men didn't carry them. Murdock received ayes from five of his seven men. “Good, we'll need them. Patrol order when we go in. Remember to hold the lights at arm's length from your body. Lam, edge into the place ten feet and hold, let me know what you can see.”

“Copy that, Skipper.”

Lam squirmed around the jagged piece of the wall and
into the cave. At once he felt a temperature change from hot to less than hot, but not yet cool. He used the ambient light to stare into the cave, but could see little. The dead man's head was turned away from him, so he couldn't tell if he was Korean. He gave up and turned on the Maglite, holding it in his left outstretched hand. He scanned the floor just ahead of him checking for trip wires or pressure plates for mines. Nothing. He sectioned the rock floor and eased forward. When he was ten feet inside the opening, he had found nothing but rock walls, rock ceiling, and rock floor. It didn't even look like it could be the channel of an underground river.

“Nada, Skipper. Just the one body and a whole potful of rock. No car, no tracks, no trip wires. Clear and benign.”

“Roger, Lam, we're moving in. Take it easy and go out another twenty feet, but slowly and clearing the terrain as you go. Keep up a running commentary to us as you move.”

“Copy that, Skipper. Yeah, now I see where one of our twenties must have hit. Shattered some rock and dropped it on an otherwise clean rock floor. Might have been water that washed this rock clean of dust and dirt, I don't know. Can't figure it. Where the hell can it go? Can't tell if it's a man-made tunnel carved out of the rock, or if it was some kind of a volcanic tube. Don't see how it could have been cut by this small volume of water coming through. This is solid damn granite.”

Lam kept moving. When he was twenty feet inside the cave he spotted a booby trap. “I've got a trip wire, Skipper. Not sure what the hell to do with it. Oh, yeah, followed the wire up the wall to a claymore. Looks like one of our own. Can Canzoneri get up here and disarm this thing?”

“No sweat, Chicken Lam,” Canzoneri said. “Hell, that's the easiest kind to deactivate. Be there in about three if you guarantee there are no trip wires between you and me.”

“Guarantee. Bet your life on it. Move.”

Canzoneri arrived a minute later and moved his flashlight beam along the wire and up to the claymore. The blue mine was about four inches high, eight inches wide, and two inches thick. It had been taped to the rock wall and aimed toward the cave mouth. Inside, it was little more than a slab
of C4 explosive behind up to two hundred steel pellets that formed a killing field sixty yards in front of it. Canzoneri was the platoon explosives maven. He checked the mine itself, then adjusted a lever on the back and eased the claymore off the wall. He pointed it away from the entrance and then snipped off the trigger wire. It didn't explode.

“Not sure if any of these have a delay mechanism on them, but would be a great idea for the future. Then you get it disarmed, which is really a second way to arm it, and in ten or twenty seconds it goes off.” He paused. “Okay, the twenty seconds are up. I'd say we're home free.” He put the claymore down on the side of the cave with the face of it on the rock.

“I'm moving forward,” Lam said. He continued to scope every foot of the cave floor as he walked. For fifteen feet he found nothing unusual. Then another body. This one was definitely Korean. He'd taken a dozen pieces of shrapnel in his chest. He still cradled a submachine gun. Lam reported it and continued. Ahead twenty more feet, the cave became smaller, but still large enough to drive a car through. It took a turn to the left. Lam went to the left side of the cave wall and edged up to where he could see around it. He shone his light down the cave, and took a burst of three rounds from a submachine gun. They missed his light and his arm. He jerked both back.

“Heard it,” Murdock said on the radio. “Sub gun. Hold there.”

Two minutes later Murdock was beside Lam. “We could use some more twenties, but the brass wants one alive. Who has the EAR? Get your ass up front now.”

Frank Victor came up behind them. “Ho, Cap. The EAR is here.”

Murdock moved back. “Ease the barrel around the wall and send one shot down there. Then after ten seconds give them one more. When you're ready.”

The first whooshing sound came from the weapon, and Murdock realized there was something of a rear blast of air as well, but not as concentrated as the front one. He counted down the ten seconds with elephant-one, elephant-two. Then Victor fired the second round.

“We three,” Murdock said. “We move down quickly, watching for trip wires. They're like rattlesnakes, always travel in pairs.”

They worked ahead faster than before. Twenty yards down they found a shooter. He had a sub gun and was prone facing toward them. He was breathing and unconscious. They bound his hands and feet and moved on. Another twenty yards ahead and the size of the cave shrank again, but it was still seven feet high and eight feet wide.

“The damned vehicle could still get through here,” Lam said. “Where the hell is it going?”

Around another small bend in the cave they found three men down and out. All had weapons. It looked like they had been eating a meal. A blown-down mantle gas lantern lay to one side.

“Base camp,” Murdock said. “But where is the car?” They tied up the unconscious North Koreans and continued. They found the car a dozen feet down the cave. Inside were explosives, mines, weapons, and lots of ammunition.

“They came to fight a war,” Murdock said. He checked the arms, and all of them looked shockingly familiar. “This is all U.S.-made weapons and ammo,” he said. “Where did they get it?”

“Not too hard these days with some connections,” Lam said.

“We've accounted for six men so far,” Murdock said. “The caller said six or eight. Where are the other two?”

Lam had worked ahead of the car. “Might be a clue up here. We've got some dirt and dust on the rocks now. I see two sets of boot prints moving away from us.”

“Let's go get them,” Murdock said, and the three charged up the cave at a jog, using the lights just enough to stay on track, not worried now about trip wires. The two men ahead were running for their lives.

Around another bend, the tunnel became sharply smaller. It was still high enough to stand in, but now was only six feet wide. The boot prints showed the men were running. Lam stopped and lifted his hand. He licked a finger and held it up.