North Korean Blowup (20 page)

Lieutenant (j.g.) Bancroft’s ear piece sounded.

“LT we’ve got company coming. About two miles down the road and heading our way are two North Korean six bys. Not sure what they have in them, but there could be twenty soldiers in each one.

Maybe they didn’t get a radio check in from here when they were supposed to.”

“Get you ass back here pronto,” Bancroft said. We’re going to need all the manpower we have. You men with twenties. Get loaded up with rounds, five or six plus your full magazine. Dengler and McNally, take your twenties up on that hill we used and stop both trucks on that side of the hill before they get here. Blow them up. Then we’ll see what to do. I want each man here to have an AK-47. Get them and the magazines. Then we can do some long range damage. Let’s move, people. We’ve got a small war to fight here.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 Dengler and McNally sprinted up the slope with their Bull Pups and got to the top in time to see the two Korean army trucks rumbling along the dirt road toward them.

“About eight hundred yards,” Dengler said. “We can get them.”

Both men lay down in the grass and lasered their sights on the moving trucks. They were coming almost straight at them. They both fired.

Both rounds went long as the trucks drove toward the shooters.

“Lead them about thirty yards in front,” McNally said. “No lasers.” They both fired. One round hit the windshield of the first truck. It exploded and sent the truck off the dirt track into the shallow ditch where it rolled on its side.

The second round missed the next truck in line.

Both men aimed at the second truck and fired. One round hit right in front of the rig, shattering it with a spray of shrapnel. The second round went through the canvas top of the six by and exploded, jolting the truck off the road.

Men poured out of both trucks.

“Laser now,” Dengler said. They fired again. This time with stationary targets, the lasered rounds exploded twenty feet over the Korean soldiers who had scattered to find cover.

“Maybe twenty men in each truck,” Dengler said to his mike. “Both rigs stopped. We’re using laser rounds on the troops.”

“Good,” Bancroft said. “The rest of us are coming up there to help you. We’ve got to keep them away from the mine.”

The two SEALs on the hill rained down twenty millimeter rounds on the forty soldiers below. A dozen of them were down and not moving.

An officer tried to rally the troops, but they had scattered to avoid the air bursts. Dengler targeted the officer sending a round directly over him, but when it exploded, the officer remained erect and evidently unhurt. He rallied a dozen men and they ran flat out toward a line of trees near the road for some cover.

Most of them made it into the trees. Dengler put two rounds into the trees, and then concentrated on better targets.

Minutes later ten more SEALs and Ho arrived with Lieutenant (j.g.) Bancroft. Some had sniper rifles and AK-47’ as well as more Bull Pups. They began picking off the troopers below who failed to find cover.

Dengler looked at the line of trees where the ten or twelve Korean troops had vanished. The line led right up to their hill and ended not thirty yards away.

“Let’s find some cover to fire from,” Bancroft said. “We’ve got a squad of gooks coming up our tree line. They could give us some trouble. Three of you hit the edge of the trees on this end and wait for them.”

Bancroft pointed to Jefferson and Gorman. “Go with Dengler.”

      He and the two charged up to the trees, found good firing positions and waited for the enemy to show himself in the light growth of trees and brush that led gently downhill.

The other SEALs poured rifle and sniper fire and air bursts from the Pups down on the Koreans below. They didn’t seem to have any leaders left. Some turned and ran back toward the small town. Others hunkered down behind any cover they could find only to be shredded by air bursts that negated the cover.

A machine gun stuttered out a deadly threat from below and hot lead whistled over the SEALs heads. They all scurried back a few feet to get just below the crest of the hill. Bancroft edged up and peered over the ridgeline. He saw the next burst from the MG. He used his Bull Pup and with a contact round fired at the danger. The first round was long. His second hit just in front of the gun and knocked it and the gunner out of business.

At the tree line, Dengler whispered to Gorman and Jefferson. “They’ll have a scout out front. Let him come. Wait until we can see the main body before we open fire.”

A minute later Dengler spotted the scout working his way forward. He came silently, moving from one pine tree to the next. He was thirty yards from the SEALs when he stopped and waved his patrol forward.

The men came up spread out, and the scout talked to the officer. They pointed to one side and Dengler got the idea they would swing around and try and come up behind the SEALs on the ridge.

“Fire,” Dengler said into his shoulder mike and the three SEALs opened fire with one Bull Pup and two AK-47. The 47’s brayed on full auto, spraying the ten troopers with killing hot lead. Dengler got off three contact rounds from his twenty, and watched the soldiers going down. Only two of them got away. One limped his way behind a big pine tree and from there hurried on straight down hill using the tree as his concealment and cover. The second man darted from his protective tree to another and then another and three shots at him all missed as he raced into the thicker growth and they lost sight of him.

“Jefferson, stay here and watch for any more of them trying to get away or more coming up this way.”

“Roger that.”

Dengler and Gorman trotted back to the ridgeline and found firing positions.

“Almost mopped up below,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Bancroft said. “If you see anybody down there moving, nail him.” He frowned. “I’m leaving Foster and Rattigan here. The rest of us will go back to the mine and see if Beth is done yet. Jefferson, you too,” he said in his mike. “Let’s move.”

Back at the mine, Bancroft checked the tunnel. He shouted down it but had no response.

“Not done,” Ho said. Bancroft nodded.

He put the men in a semi circle facing the road in a protective front. There was nothing to do then but settle down and wait. Bancroft knew that he was good at waiting. The military enforced the quality on men and the SEAL training absolutely tattooed it into their brains. Many times he had to lay in wait for up to four hours without moving anything but his eyes. He had been surprised how well Beth had adapted to the SEAL routine. She was physically in great shape which helped, and her attitude had matched that of her partners in this mission. Killing that Korean soldier had shaken her, but she had bounced back remarkably well.

It made him think of the first time he had killed. It was on a mission and it happened so fast that he had acted automatically when the Arab came out of nowhere with his knife poised for a killing thrust in the dark. He had been sharpening his hideout knife, a six inch long stiletto type blade. He had only a fraction of a second’s notice that the enemy was attacking. He threw up his arm to deflect the knife, and then he slashed with the stiletto across the Arab’s exposed throat. Blood spurted from both carotid arteries on him as the man fell on him. It took agonizing seconds before Bancroft could push the dying Arab off him and roll him out of his defensive position.

He would never forget the gagging smell of hot blood pulsating on him with each beat of the Arab man’s heart. Then the blood came slower and slower as the heart weakened until it stopped. Bancroft lay there panting, wishing that he could vomit, but they were on a strictly silent mode and retching was out of the question. His stomach turned over again and again but he kept it all down. His breath came back in silent gulps and gasps until it evened out. He stared at the dead Arab inches away from him. There was nothing he could do until morning, or until they were relieved.

How had the Arab found him out there in the desert? Had any of the other fifteen men in the ambush patrol been spotted and attacked by other Arabs? He wanted to use the radio, but even that had been prohibited for the silent period. He wiped the enemy blood off his face and his hands, but the smell was still there. A coppery, vile, deadly odor he had never known before, and one he would never forget.

It had been three more hours before the order came down to pull back, still as silently as mother ghosts on a picnic. At base camp two hours later he reported the contact. Three more SEALs had been attacked that night, two of them wounded. All four of the attackers had died in the fights. He washed off his hands and face and wore the bloody cammies the rest of the new day as a badge of honor.

Bancroft’s radio roused him from the memory.

“LT, I haven’t seen a single body moving down there. Not quite right that all of them are dead. Want me to go down and make sure?”

“No, Rattigan. When we wrap it here we’ll be going down that way in the six by, we’ll stop and make sure then. Just watch for any movement in any direction.

“Roger that.”

Below in the coal mine, Hunter took a turn holding the light so Beth could see her work.

She eased back from the bomb and wiped perspiration from her forehead. “This is not the easiest nuke I’ve ever wrestled with. Looks like they were making up the program as they went along. Changes here and there that are driving me crazy.”

“You aren’t on any clock, no time limit on this game,” Hunter said.

“True, and one foul on me and we all wind up vaporized. Aren’t you men glad you came along?”
               Beth chuckled and went back to work.

A half hour later she eased back. “Who has the C-5?” Hunter gave her two quarter pounders he had and she placed them inside the bomb and pushed in timer/detonators in each one.

“More?”

“Chang gave her two more quarter pounders and she positioned them inside, then pushed in the timer/detonators. She looked up at Hunter.

“Ready when you are C.B.”

“I know that one. The star in Sunset Boulevard talking to C.B. Demille, the director. Right. Set the timers for thirty minutes. That should give us ample time to hike up these twenty six flights. No, make that forty five minutes just to be sure. We have to stop and set some more charges about half way up.”

“To seal in the rest of the mine?”

“Right.”

She set the timers, they put down the light and hiked up the first slope and then the next. This time Hunter counted. When they had gone up ten of the slopes, he stopped them and they set three quarter pounders along the wall at the curve, and pushed in one timer for thirty five minutes. The blast below should go off before this one that way.

They hurried on up the hill and breathed a sigh of relief when they came out the top and moved out where the rest of the platoon waited.

“How long to the Fourth of July,” Bancroft asked.

Hunter looked at his count down watch. He had set it at forty five minutes when the timers were started below.

“Twenty minutes, we made better time than I figured. All been quiet up here?”

“Not exactly,” Bancroft said. He told Hunter about the two six by’s that headed up the road and how they discouraged them.

“You guys did good. Now, we all set with our wheels?”

“All set, Cap,” Tanner said. “We changed rigs. Engine sounds better, better tires, and we have a spare.”

“Let’s get loaded up, so when the big bang comes we can bug out of here.”

“No misfire?” Tran asked.

“If there is, Mr. Tran, you go down and put in new detonators,” Beth said.

The SEALs laughed.

They got the AK-47’s and ammo and the rest of their gear on the new six by truck and Hunter looked at his count down watch.

“Two minutes. We might get a little quiver of the ground from the second shot, but the first one is too far down to feel.”

Hunter held up his hand. When the watch clicked off he dropped his hand.

“Bang,” Tran said.

“That should have been the bomb being neutralized. Now nine more minutes for the charge to block up the tunnel.

That blast went off after only five minutes and they felt the ground shake.

“Let’s roll,” Hunter said. “Ho take the wheel. Let’s go down and make sure on the rest of those spooks down below.”

 They picked up Rattigan and Foster from the ridgeline and moved on down the road. One of the six bys was still burning when they stopped near it. Hunter spoke. “Gorman, go out and make sure on the NK’s.”

“Roger that,” Gorman said, picking up his MP-5 and vaulting down from the high bed truck. They heard one shot, and then Gorman was back in the truck.

“All down for sure, Cap,” Gorman said.

“Rolling,” Hunter said. He looked at Ho. “We talked about this next section. You say there should be some roads that aren’t exactly highways between here and the coast?”  

“Yes, bad roads. Get us there. Nangnim next town. Forty miles, map say.”

“We’ve got gas but no food.”

“No stop here Kanggye. Army there still.”

“I agree. We go until we find a spot you and Tran can buy us some food. For now it’s hell bent for leather.”

Ho frowned. “Hell bent…”

“He just means we go fast, Ho,” Beth said. “Or at least as fast as we can go on the not too good roads you promised us.”
               The six by rolled into Kangge and quickly out on a road that angled almost due west.

“Forty miles,” Hunter said. “That could take some time.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After the first five miles they knew they were on a different class North Korean Road. This one probably marked with a faint black line on the map. Pot holes abounded in what black top there was left, and soon that gave out to a curving, narrow dirt road that snaked up into mountains much higher than any they had seen before.

The road turned north east and Hunter saw by his starkly no detail map, that the road would go that way for a time, then swing back down south east to get them to the town of Nangnim. According to the dot on the map it could be a good sized town. At least it would have somewhere they could buy food.