Seal Team Seven #20: Attack Mode (24 page)

“It must be the main entrance or the truck entrance,” Murdock said. “With tunnels this extensive, the Japs would have had to haul hundreds of truckloads of material
out here for construction and supplies. What’s your suggestion?”

“A half pound of C-5 at both corners and one in the center, with five-minute timers, and we get the hell back fifty yards,” Lam said. Murdock nodded. Lam took out four blocks of the C-5. Murdock pulled two from his vest and they crawled forward. When they both had the C-5 planted where they thought the door had to be, Lam waved and they pushed in the timers preset for five minutes. Then they crawled back and took Willy and jogged back fifty yards.

“A minute left,” Murdock said. He warned the men on the net there would be a big bang or two. “It’s us, the good guys,” Lam said. They had positioned themselves so they could see the suspected large door. Murdock counted down the last few seconds.

“And five elephants, four elephants, three elephants…” Before he finished to one, two cracking, roaring blasts shook the atoll. As soon as the wave of sound and surge of hot air slammed past them, the three men came to their feet and ran for the site. Where the wall of brush had been there now was a gaping hole eight feet wide and nearly that high. The sand and coral in front of the door had been blasted away like it had been swept clean, revealing a concrete pad that led to a loading dock six feet wide. Beyond that they could see a cave that had been carved downward into the coral. It had been concrete lined and now held a layer of dust, sand, and coral from the blast. Smoke and dust still eddied slowly out of the tunnel.

“This one we investigate,” Murdock said. He used the mike. “I need Alpha Squad and all the attached Marines up here to the blast site on the double. We’re going exploring.”

Three minutes later the rest of Alpha and the Marines ran up and stared at the cave entrance. Sergeant Vuylsteke motioned Murdock to the side. “I lost Parsons. Looks like one of the slugs caught his lung, the other one his heart. He was gone in minutes.”

“Sorry. We’ll take him back with us. You up to this next mission?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did they move those big crates of plut down that incline?” Lam asked.

“Maybe they had a forklift inside,” Murdock said. He counted heads, then motioned to Lam to lead the way. “Let’s take a look and see what we have down there.” Before Lam could take a step onto the concrete loading dock, a submachine gun chattered from inside the cave and a dozen angry sounding bullets slashed through the air around the men.

“Oh, damn, I’m hit,” one of the SEALs growled.

The SEALs and Marines jolted to the sides of the tunnel mouth. Murdock and Jaybird each sent a 20mm round into the cave and heard both explode.

“Who’s hit?” Jaybird shouted.

“Over here,” Ching called. “Bastard got me in the leg. Never been hit in the fucking leg before.”

Jaybird sprinted across the cave opening and skidded down beside Ching.

“You’re a magnet for hot lead, Ching. Right leg, up high. In and out?”

“Hell, you’re the damn expert.” Ching groaned. “Yeah, I think so. Hurts like a goddamn red hot poker in my thigh.”

“Known to happen. Let’s move over here a little more out of the line of fire and I’ll get you patched up.”

Murdock checked on Ching, then bellied down looking into the cave. “We have to go in,” he told Sergeant Vuylsteke, who he had called up. “You’ve got six men left and I’ve got four.”

“That twenty really makes a bang.”

“Yeah, but we probably shouldn’t have shot. Hope we didn’t rupture one of those plut jugs. Then we’ll all be in really deep shit.”

“So how do we go in?” the Marine asked.

“Slow and careful. Lam, you hold it here; I’m going to go down and take a look. We have the EAR with us?”

“Negative, Cap. Didn’t figure we’d need it.”

“Okay, I’m over the side. When I give the word on the
Motorola, come down in pairs. Can’t commit everybody at once. Got it, Lam?”

“Right, Skipper.”

Murdock nodded and crawled over the lip of the vegetation onto the concrete platform and then slid down the loading ramp and into the cave. There was no gunfire. He held the Bull Pup in front of him and came up to a crawl. He could see nothing at first. The light from the entrance faded and he came up to a crouch and moved forward. So far no trip wires, no Arabs, no plut. The tunnel was at least eight feet high and that wide. Ahead he could see light and soon caught sight of a bare bulb hanging from the top of the tunnel. He figured he’d come about forty yards. “Send in four men, Lam. You come and give the con to Sergeant Vuylsteke.”

Murdock moved forward. He was walking now, taking slow steps, watching everything he could see and evaluating it. Even so he tripped on something and looked down. A body. He used his penlight on the face. An Arab. He had jagged wounds over his face, neck, and chest. The twenty had nailed him. Probably the same man who fired out the entrance. He still clutched an automatic rifle.

Twenty feet ahead, Murdock stopped. The tunnel split, with both the branches equal size. They took off at a forty-five-degree angle. Murdock waited for Lam. He came shortly with Van Dyke and Bradford.

“Six guys down each tunnel,” Lam said. “My suggestion, Skipper.”

“Yeah, I agree. We can’t use the twenties—a near miss or a direct hit would blow up those lead plut bottles. They came in that fake door out there, so they have to be down here somewhere.”

“Slow and go.”

They called the other men up. They had left Ching outside with his shot-up leg.

“We use the Motorolas as long as we can,” Murdock said. “Depends on how good the reception will be down in these tunnels. Lam, you’ve got the con on the other
tunnel. Take the sergeant with you and split up the men. Let’s move it.”

Twenty yards down the right-hand tunnel, Murdock found three drifts branching off. They checked out each one. All were too small to hold the plutonium, but men could be hidden there. Two men checked each tunnel. One of them came to a dead end where there were old boxes of ammo and some rusted-out rifles. The other two opened to the surface behind screens of brush, with setups for machine-gun positions. Both were unoccupied.

They gathered back at the main tunnel and moved on. Now they found new tunnels working up to the surface every twenty feet. One went right, the next left, as they alternated. Each one had to be checked. In one of them Murdock found a Japanese diary. It was battered and dusty but in remarkably good shape. He stuffed it in his combat vest and continued the trek.

Ahead the tunnel curved. It was still big enough for the plut crate to get through. Murdock edged around the curve and checked out the way ahead. There were still light bulbs every forty feet, giving off an eerie glow and long shadows. He peered through the murky light and spotted sandbags ahead and what he figured had to be a machine-gun position. He couldn’t see any men. Jaybird edged up beside Murdock.

“For real?” he asked.

“Looks like it. Send in a dozen rounds from your 5.56, and if anyone returns fire, I’ll use the twenty. They wouldn’t have the plut out there in the tunnel.”

Jaybird sprayed the sandbags with twelve rounds. An immediate return fire lashed out, with three ten-round bursts from the machine gun. None of the rounds hit the SEALs or Marines who had dropped to the floor, and most were around the corner.

Murdock triggered a twenty round, and through the scope he saw the sandbags disintegrate, the MG smash backward, and the gunner flop to the left laced with steel shards of shrapnel. The sound of the 20mm round exploding in the closed tunnel was like hearing it in a small
room. Murdock and Jaybird and the men behind them were stunned at the magnitude of the sound and shook their heads realizing that they couldn’t hear a thing.

“I’ll go check it out,” Jaybird said and pointed ahead. Even before Murdock nodded, the wiry machinist mate scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward the machine-gun nest. He had his Bull Pup up on 5.56 and set for three-round bursts. At first the smoke and dust from the twenty clouded the area, but it blew away down the tunnel the other way. Jaybird saw motion to the left side, behind the sandbags, he pivoted the Pup that direction, and slammed six rounds into a man who had lifted a rifle. Again the sound of the exploding rounds was magnified a dozen times in the tunnel, and Jaybird’s hearing went out again. He jumped over the sandbags still stacked and kicked the rifle away from the dead Arab. The machine gunner was ten feet down the tunnel and greeting Allah in his heaven.

“Two down and out,” Jaybird said into his mike, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Move up,” he said a moment later, and heard a faint response on the earpiece. The reception was good at that distance; his ears just weren’t working right yet. He looked around in the faint light. The bulb over the machine gun had been blown out by the twenty. Jaybird used his flashlight and found two wooden doors leading off the tunnel almost behind the MG. He went toward them, but decided to wait. He could see nothing down the tunnel but felt air moving in that direction. There was another opening down that way. He figured they were still moving north, away from the village. Pretty soon they would run into billions of gallons of Pacific Ocean saltwater.

Murdock jogged up and found Jaybird. Their ears were clearing.

“So?” Murdock asked.

“Doors,” Jaybird said, pointing at them with his flashlight beam. Both were too small for the heavy crates to get through. They looked like they had been put on recently. New hinges showed that the doors opened outward.

The rest of the squad ran up, and Murdock pointed to Vinnie Van Dyke and a Marine. “Put a fragger through that next door down there. Be careful.”

Jaybird and Murdock went along the side of the cave to the closest door. They crouched on the doorknob side. Jaybird pulled out a fragger and Murdock nodded. He looked at Jaybird, made a turning motion with his hand, and then pointed at himself. Jaybird grinned.

Murdock reached out and grabbed the doorknob. As he turned it, six rounds of hot lead ripped through the thin door and thudded against the far wall. Murdock jerked the door open a foot, Jaybird let the grenade cook for two seconds after the arming spoon flipped off, then he threw the bomb through the open door and Murdock slammed it closed. Two point four seconds later the grenade went off and the door bulged outward a moment, then blasted off its hinges into the main tunnel, smoke and dust billowing out behind it. Both Murdock and Jaybird charged into the room as the shrapnel stopped flying. They used their flashlights and searched the room in seconds.

“Clear right,” Murdock said. “One adult male with black beard and hair who is now history.”

“Clear left,” Jaybird said. “No bodies, but what’s left of one computer with screen and keyboard.” They saw the remains of a desk, a filing cabinet, and two desk lamps.

“We’ll be back and search this place for any paper that might show us who these guys are and where they were going.”

A blast shocked the area close by and Murdock looked out of the first room and saw the second door blowing off its hinges down the tunnel. Vinnie and the Marine charged into the room.

“Clear in the second room,” Van Dyke said on the Motorola. “Looks like sleeping quarters for four. Nobody home.”

They met in the tunnel.

“The roof is sloping down,” Van Dyke said. “They
won’t be able to get that big crate through here much farther.”

“Van Dyke, take the point,” Murdock said. “Move it slow and let us know of any side tunnels.”

“Roger that,” Van Dyke said. He had his Bull Pup set on 5.56 and his flashlight aimed straight ahead but held at arm’s length. The next light bulb was thirty feet down the tube.

A few minutes later, Van Dyke came on. “I have two tunnels, one each side, like the other ones we’ve seen, but these look different.” Murdock ran up to the point and checked out the pair.

“Larger,” he said. “Like maybe they had artillery up above.” He went up one and Van Dyke took the other one. Murdock saw that the tunnel sloped up quickly, and was still double the width of the other drifts they had explored. Moments later he came to the surface. It was a well-camouflaged concrete pad and had a rusted-out five-inch Japanese coast artillery gun still bolted into the concrete. He reversed his route and found that Van Dyke had discovered the same thing on his side.

They had started moving forward again when they heard a single shot, and thirty yards down the tunnel the next light bulb went out as a bullet hit it.

“Down,” Murdock shouted, and the men dropped to the ground. He and Van Dyke, in front of the others, pumped a dozen rounds each down the tunnel. They heard nothing but the ricocheting slugs as they bounced off the coral walls.

“Jaybird, how far have we come in the tunnels?”

“Maybe two hundred yards, Skipper. We’re still a hell of a long way from the end of the atoll.”

“What I was afraid of. Where are they taking that plut?”

“Protecting it until they can ship it out,” Jaybird said.

“So we find it. Let’s move. Flashlights, everyone. Jaybird and I’ll clear the path with a dozen rounds forward each, then we move at double time. Now, Jaybird.”

The Bull Pups chattered off the twelve rounds each, and the SEALs and Marines charged forward.

“What if they took the plut down the other main tunnel?” Jaybird asked.

“Then Lam and the other guys will find it,” Murdock said. He slowed and then stopped. “Wet ahead,” he said. “Looks like the tunnel has a leak, or we’re down to sea level and it’s high tide.”

“Can’t be more than a foot or two deep,” Jaybird said. “Otherwise the Japs couldn’t have used it.”

“Water ahead,” Murdock said on the net. “We’ll go at a walk. Shouldn’t get deep.”

Lights showed ahead, the single bulbs dangling from the top of the cave barely eight feet up now. The sides of the tunnel pinched in.

“Bet the Japs dug this coral out by hand and carried it out on little trucks,” Van Dyke said. “One hell of a lot of work.”

The water came up to their knees, then lowered as they walked ahead. They had just hit dry land on the other side when Murdock called a halt. “I can hear noise ahead. Anybody copy?”