Under Siege by Keith Douglass

“I’m Murdock. Pick your side, Jamison. You go one way, Lam, and I’ll go the other way.”
    “Hell, I’m to the right,” Jamison said. They backtracked for twenty yards, then Jamison went right and the other two to the left off the trail and into the brush. Lam watched the foliage closely as they moved. He saw Jamison go off the road to the right and checked his own path again.
    Ten seconds later a grenade blasted the quiet New Namibia countryside on Jamison’s side of the road. Murdock and Lam backtracked to the road and looked where Jamison had gone.
    “Captain Engle,” Murdock called on the Motorola. “Get up here. We have a problem.”

8

    By the time Captain Engle ran to the front of the patrol, Lam had spotted and removed two trip wires and the grenades rigged to them. Jamison lay where he had fallen when the deadly shrapnel ripped through him.
    “He died instantly,” Murdock said. “The grenade wasn’t three feet from him when it went off.”
    Engle scowled. “You cleared the area?”
    “Safe enough now, sir,” Lam said. “I found two more trip wires and grenades.”
    “Why to the right and not the left?” Engle asked.
    “Over ninety percent of people are right-handed. When a choice comes up right or left, most right-handers automatically will go to the right. These terrorists just played the odds.”
    Lam vanished to the left of the trail and Captain Engle called up two of his men to take Jamison back to the transport.
    “We’ve got to keep moving,” Murdock said. “Lam is scouting out the bypass on the left. He’ll be checking everything from now on.”
    The rest of the men came up and filed past the body and then went to the left around the punji trap. Ten minutes later all the men were around and moving up the tracks the personnel carrier had made along an old trail.
    “If there’s a house up here, this can’t be the main roadin,” Ed DeWitt said. “There must be another entrance for cars and trucks to get in and out.”
    They moved almost a mile up the trail before Lam stopped them again. “Trip wires all over the place, Cap,” Lam said over the Motorola. “I can see one Claymore aimed right down the trail at me. I’m getting behind a tree and setting it off. None of the two hundred steel balls inside the mine should get back to you. There may be more. This mine might set off some of the others by breaking the wires. Here goes.”
    Murdock heard the Claymore go off with its distinctive roar. Then all was silent. “Lam, you okay up there?” Murdock asked on the Motorola.
    “Yeah, I’m fine. Two more Claymore’s went off. They set them up in a crossfire. Would have taken down the whole patrol. Let’s spend a half-hour and go around this spot. There could be some more bombs here I haven’t found.”
    “That’s a roger, Lam. We’re on our way. Hold there for us.”
    A half-hour later, after a cautious advance, Lam reported that he could see buildings ahead.
    “Yeah, big spread. Large house, two wings, out buildings, two cars in a paved parking lot below the house. I don’t see any people.”
    “Any smoke, destruction, broken out windows?” Ed De-Witt asked on the radio.
    “Negative. Nothing. Looks dead or vacant.”
    “Take a closer look, but be careful,” Murdock said. “You want a backup scout?”
    “Negative. Give me ten.”
    Murdock sat the patrol down in place ten yards apart and waited for Lam to make his recon. He reported back in seven.
    “Okay. I made contact. There are people there. They told me the raiders have moved on, taking the lady with them.”
    “Roger that,” Murdock said. “We’re moving in. See if you can find whoever owns the place.”
    “Wilco,” Lam said. “Bet it’s been a while since you heard that term. It was used by the Air Force mostly in WW II. Means simply Will Comply. That’s what I’m doing.”
    Murdock brought his men up cautiously, even though Lam said the place was clear. He found a man in his sixties waiting