Combat Page 6

  If he had an infrared scope or any kind of ambient light collector, he could have seen me lying on the open ground.

  I crouched there waiting for something to happen. If they came streaming out of the main gate, they could trap me on the point of this ridge, hunt me down at their leisure.

  As I waited I discovered that the M-16 was already in my hands. I had removed it from my shoulder automatically, without thinking.

  Several minutes passed as I waited, listening to the hypnotic drone of the generator, waiting for something to happen. Anything.

  Finally a head became visible on top of the wall. The sentry again, still strolling aimlessly. He leaned against the wall for a while, then disappeared.

  Now I hurried along, completed my circumnavigation of the fort.

  I saw only the two men, one on the gate and the man who had been walking the walls. Although I had seen the man on the wall twice, I was convinced it was the same person. And I was certain there was only one entrance to the fort, the main gate.

  I had to go through that gate so I was going to have to take out the guard. I was going to have to do it soon, then hope I could get in and out before his absence from his post was noticed or someone came to relieve him. Taking chances like that wasn’t the best way to live to spend that three million dollars, that’s for sure, but we didn’t have the time or resources to minimize the risk. I was going to have to have some luck here or we had no chance to pull off this thing.

  This whole goddamn expedition was half-baked, I reflected, and certainly no credit to me. Man, why didn’t I think of poisoning their water supply when we were brainstorming in Germany?

  In my favor was the fact that these people didn’t seem very worried about their safety or anything else. A generator snoring away, only two guards? An open gate?

  I worked my way to the wall, then turned and crept toward the guard. The generator hid the sounds I made as I crept along. He was facing the road.

  I got about ten feet from him and froze. He was facing away from me at a slight angle, but if I tried to get closer, he was going to pick me up in his peripheral vision. I sensed it, so I froze.

  He changed his position on the stool, played with the rifle on his knees, looked at the myriad of stars that hung just over our heads. Finally he stood and stretched. For an instant he turned away from me. I covered the distance in two bounds, wrapped my arm around his mouth, and jammed my knife into his back up to the hilt.

  The knife went between his ribs right into his heart. Two convulsive tremors, then he was dead.

  I carried him and his rifle off into the darkness. He weighed maybe one-eighty, as near as I could tell.

  One of the outcroppings that formed the edge of the top of the ridge would keep him hidden from anyone but a determined searcher. After I stashed the body, I hurried back to the gate. I took off my night-vision goggles, waited for my eyes to adjust. I took off my rifle, leaned it against the wall out of sight.

  As I waited I saw the man on the ramparts walking his rounds. He was in no hurry, obviously bored. I got a radio-controlled bomb from the rucksack, checked the frequency, and turned on the receiver.

  The Land Rover was in the courtyard. When the man on the wall was out of sight, I slipped over to it and lay down. I pulled out the snap wire and snapped it around one of the suspension arms. The antenna of the bomb I let dangle.

  This little job took less than thirty seconds. Then I scurried across the courtyard into the shelter of the staircase.

  The conferees were probably in the living area; I sure as hell hoped they were. My edge was that the people here were not on alert. And why should they be? This fort was buried in the most desolate spot on the planet, hundreds of miles from anyplace.

  Still, my life was on the line, so I moved as cautiously as I could, trying very hard to make no noise at all, pausing to listen carefully before I rounded any corner. My progress was glacial. It took me almost five minutes to climb the stairs and inch down the corridor to the radio room.

  The hum of the generator was muted the farther away from it I moved, but it was the faint background noise that covered any minor noise I was making. And any minor noise anyone else was making. That reality had me sweating.

  The door to the radio room was ajar, the room dark.

  Knocking out the generator figured to be the easiest way to disable the radio, unless they had a battery to use as backup. I was betting they did.

  After listening for almost a minute outside the door, I eased it open gently, my fighting knife in my hand.

  The only light came through the interior window from the floods in the courtyard. The room was empty of people!

  I went in fast, laid my knife on the table, got a bomb out of the rucksack. This one was rigged with a chemical fuse, so I broke the chemicals, shook the thing to start the reaction, then put the package—explosive, detonator, fuse and all—directly behind the radio. As I turned I was struck in the face by a runaway Freightliner.

  Only partially conscious, I found myself falling. A rough hand gripped me fiercely, then another truck slammed into my face. If I hadn’t turned my head to protect myself, that blow would have put me completely out.

  As it was, I couldn’t stay upright. My legs turned to jelly and I went to the floor, which was cold and hard.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” my assailant said in highly accented English, then kicked me in the side. His boot almost broke my left arm, which was fortunate, because if he had managed to get a clean shot at my ribs he would have caved in a lung.

  I wasn’t feeling very lucky just then. My arm felt like it was in four pieces and my side was on fire. I fought for air.

  I couldn’t take much more of this. If I didn’t do something pretty damned quick he was going to kick me to death.

  Curling into a fetal position, I used my right hand to draw my hideout knife from my left boot. I had barely got it out when he kicked me in the kidney.

  At first I thought the guy had rammed a knife into my back—the pain was that intense. I was fast running out of time.

  I rolled over toward him, just in time to meet his foot coming in again. I slashed with the knife, which had a razor-sharp two-sided blade about three inches long. I felt it bite into something.

  He stepped back then, bent down to feel his calf. I got my feet under me and rose into a crouch.

  “A knife, is it? You think you can save yourself with that?”

  While he was talking he lashed out again with a leg. It was a kick designed to distract me, tempt me to go for his leg again with the knife.

  I didn’t, so when he spun around and sent another of those ironfisted artillery shots toward my head, I was ready. I went under the incoming punch and slashed his stomach with the knife.

  I cut him bad.

  Now he grunted in pain, sagged toward the radio table.

  I gathered myself, got out of his way, got into a crouch so I could defend myself.

  He was holding his stomach with both hands. In the dim light I could see blood. I had really gotten him.

  “Shouldn’t have played with you,” he said, and reached for the pistol in the holster on his belt.

  Too late. I was too close. With one mighty swing of my arm I slashed his throat. Blood spewed out, a look of surprise registered on his face, then he collapsed.

  Blood continued to pump from his neck.

  I had to wipe the sweat from my eyes.

  Jesus! My hands were shaking, trembling.

  Never again, God! I promise. Never again!

  I stowed the little knife back in my boot, retrieved the rucksack and my fighting knife from the table.

  Outside in the corridor I carefully pulled the door to the radio room shut, made sure it latched.

  Down the stairs, across the courtyard, through the gate. Safe in the darkness outside, I retrieved my M-16 and puked up my MREs.

  Yeah, I’m a real tough guy. Shit!

  Then I trotted for the trail to the oasis. It was
n’t much of a trot. My side, back, and arm were on fire, and my face was still numb. The best I could manage was a hell-bent staggering gait.

  As I ran the numbness in my side and back wore off. I wheezed like an old horse and savored the pain, which was proof positive I was still alive.

  Julie Giraud was standing beside the Humvee chewing her fingernails. I took my time looking over the area, made sure she was really alone, then walked the last hundred feet.

  “Hey,” I said.

  My voice made her jump. She glanced at my face, then stared. “What happened?”

  I eased myself into the driver’s seat.

  “A guy was waiting for me.”

  “What?”

  “He spoke to me in English.”

  “Well …”

  “Didn’t even try a phrase in Arabic. Just spoke to me in English.”

  “You’re bleeding under your right eye, I think. With all that grease it’s hard to tell.”

  “Pay attention to what I’m telling you. He spoke to me in English. He knew I understood it. Doesn’t that worry you?”

  “What about the radio?”

  “He knew I was coming. Someone told him. He was waiting for me.”

  “You’re just guessing.”

  “He almost killed me.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “If they knew we were coming, we’re dead.”

  Before I could draw another breath, she had a pistol pointed at me. She placed the muzzle against the side of my head.

  “I’ll tell you one more time, Charlie Dean, one more time. These people are baby-killers, murderers of women and kids and old people. They have been tried in a court of law and found guilty. We are going to kill them so they can never kill again.”

  Crazy! She was crazy as hell!

  Her voice was low, every word distinctly pronounced: “I don’t care what they know or who told them what. We are going to kill these men. You will help me do it or I will kill you. Have I made it plain enough? Do you understand?”

  “Did the court sentence these people to die?” I asked.

  “I sentenced them! Me! Julie Giraud. And I am going to carry it out. Death. For every one of them.”

  Seven

  The satellite photos showed a wash just off the east end of the runway. We worked our way along it, then crawled to a spot that allowed us to look the length of it.

  The runway was narrow, no more than fifty feet wide. The planes were parked on a mat about halfway down. The wind was out of the west, as it usually was at night. To take off, the planes would have to taxi individually to the east end of the runway, this end, turn around, then take off to the west.

  “If they don’t discover that the guards are missing, search the place, find the bombs and disable them, we’ve got a chance,” I said. “Just a chance.”

  “You’re a pessimist.”

  “You got that right.”

  “How many guards do you think are around the planes?”

  “I don’t know. All of the pilots could be there; there could easily be a dozen people down there.”

  “So we just sneak over, see what’s what?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “For three million dollars I thought I was getting someone who knew how to pull this off.”

  “And I thought the person hiring me was sane. We both made a bad deal. You want to fly the Osprey back to Germany and tell them you’re sorry you borrowed it?”

  “They didn’t kill your parents.”

  “I guarantee you, before this is over you’re going to be elbow-deep in blood, lady. And your parents will still be dead.”

  “You said that before.”

  “It’s still true.”

  I was tempted to give the bitch a rifle and send her down the runway to do her damnedest, but I didn’t.

  I took the goddamn M-16, adjusted the night-vision goggles, and went myself. My left side hurt like hell, from my shoulder to my hip. I flexed my arm repeatedly, trying to work the pain out.

  The planes were readily visible with the goggles. I kept to the waist-high brush on the side of the runway toward the planes, which were parked in a row. It wasn’t until I got about halfway there that I could count them. Six planes.

  The idea was to get the terrorists into the planes, then destroy the planes in the air. The last thing we wanted was the terrorists and the guards out here in this desert running around looking for us. With dozens of them and only two of us, there was only one way for that tale to end.

  No, we needed to get them into the planes. I didn’t have enough radio-controlled detonators to put on all the planes, so I thought if I could disable some of the planes and put bombs on the rest, we would have a chance. But first we had to eliminate the guards.

  If the flight crews were bivouacked near the planes, this was going to get really dicey.

  I took my time, went slowly from bush to bush, looking at everything. When I used infrared, I could see a heat source to the south of the planes that had to be an open fire. No people, though.

  I was crouched near the main wheel of the plane on the end of the mat when I saw my first guard. He was relieving himself against the nearest airplane’s nosewheel.

  When he finished he zipped up and resumed his stroll along the mat.

  I went behind the plane and made my way toward the fire.

  They had built the thing in a fifty-five-gallon drum. Two people stood with their backs to the fire, warming up. I could have used a stretch by that fire myself: The temperature was below sixty degrees by that time and going lower.

  No tents. No one in sleeping bags that I could see.

  Three of them.

  I settled down to wait. Before we made a move, I had to be certain of the number of people that were here and where they were. If I missed one I wouldn’t live to spend a dollar of Julie Giraud’s blood money.

  Lying there in the darkness, I tried to figure it all out. Didn’t get anywhere. Why that guy addressed me in English I had no idea. He was certainly no Englishman; nor was he a native of any English-speaking country.

  Julie Giraud wanted these sons of the desert dead and in hell—of that I was absolutely convinced. She wasn’t a good enough actress to fake it. The money she had paid me was real enough, the V-22 Osprey was real, the guns were real, the bombs were real, we were so deep in the desert we could never drive or hike out. Never.

  She was my ticket out. If she went down, I was going to have to try to fly the Osprey myself. If the plane was damaged, we were going to die here.

  Simple as that.

  Right then I wished to hell I was back in Van Nuys in the filling station watching Candy make change. I was too damned old for this shit and I knew it.

  I had been lying in the dirt for about an hour when the guy walking the line came to the fire and one of the loafers there went into the darkness to replace him. The two at the fire then crawled into sleeping bags.

  I waited another half hour, using the goggles to keep track of the sentry.

  The sentry was first. I was crouched in the bushes when he came over less than six feet from me, dropped his trousers and squatted.

  I left him there with his pants around his ankles and went over to the sleeping bags. Both the sleeping men died without making a sound.

  Killing them wasn’t heroic or glorious or anything like that. I felt dirty, coated with the kind of slime that would never wash off. The fact that they would have killed me just as quickly if they had had the chance didn’t make it any easier. They killed for political reasons, I killed for money: We were the same kind of animal.

  I walked back down the runway to where Julie Giraud waited.

  I got into the Humvee without saying anything and started the motor.

  “How many were there?” she asked.

  “Three,” I said.

  We placed radio-controlled bombs in three of the airplanes. We taped a bomb securely in the nosewheel well of each of them, then dangled the antenn
as outside, so they would hang out the door even if the wheel were retracted.

  When we were finished with that we stood for a moment in the darkness discussing things. The fort was over a mile away and I prayed the generator was still running, making fine background music. Julie crawled under the first plane and looked it over. First she fired shots into the nose tires, which began hissing. Then she fired a bullet into the bottom of each wing tank. Fuel ran out and soaked into the dirt.

  There was little danger in this, as Julie well knew. The tanks would not explode unless something very hot went into a mixture of fuel vapor and oxygen: She was putting a bullet into liquid. The biggest danger was that the low-powered pistol bullets would fail to penetrate the metal skin of the wing and the fuel tank. In fact, she fired six shots into the tanks of the second plane before she was satisfied with the amount of fuel running out on the ground.

  When she had flattened the nose tires of all of the unbooby-trapped planes and punched bullet holes in the tanks, she walked over to the Humvee, reeking of jet fuel.

  “Let’s go,” she said grimly.

  As we drove away I glanced at her. She was smiling.

  For the first time, I began to seriously worry that she would intentionally leave me in the desert.

  I comforted myself with the fact that she didn’t really care about the money she was going to owe me. She could justify the deaths of these men, but if she killed me, she was no better than they.

  I hoped she saw it that way too.

  She let me out of the Humvee on the road about a quarter of a mile below the fort. From where I stood the road rose steadily and curved through three switchbacks until it reached the main gate.

  With my Model 70 in hand, I left the road and began climbing the hill straight toward the main gate. The night was about over. Even as I climbed I thought I could see the sky beginning to lighten up in the east.

  The generator was off. No light or sound came from the massive old fort, which was now a dark presence that blotted out the stars above me.

  Were they in bed?

  The gate was still open, with no one in sight on top of the wall or in the courtyard. That was a minor miracle or an invitation to a fool—me. If they had discovered King Kong’s body they were going to be waiting.