Cobra Strike (16 page)

“Well, I blew up at that, hung up, and dialed the Institute. I screamed at them that we weren't taking any helpless egghead
with us, regardless of how many dialects and folk dances he knew. They told me that they would work with him nonstop, beginning
in ten minutes from talking with me, and all they asked in return was for me to give him a chance at training. If he flunked
that, he's out. So I said okay.”

“I see the problem,” Andre said. “We know that all the other team members are proficient with weapons. All they will need
is some physical toughening up and discipline. But this one will need testing with weapons. There is no way around it. But
I agree with the Institute members—I think his knowledge of the region's languages and customs make him worth including if
he can pull his own weight at all.”

Mike smiled, knowing that Andre prized his own linguistic abilities and regarded them as important to the success of
some past missions. The Frenchman knew none of the Afghan languages, nor did Mike or any of the others.

“We'll see how he turns out,” Mike said, resigned to the worst.

A mere in the field was often only as good as his hardware. It was not that difficult for any soldier of fortune to infiltrate
someplace with civilian status. Only when he made contact with his hardware was he burning his bridges. This was nearly true,
because some missions were already dead before the meres left home base as a result of leaked information about the mission.
However, so long as they did not collect their weapons, they could only be charged with conspiracy, which was a lot more vague
than being accused of possession of military-grade weapons. The point of purchase of the weapons was often the weak spot.
When somebody bought a quantity of serious hardware, it was obvious what he had in mind, and often it was not hard to guess
where. Some of the more unscrupulous arms dealers regarded selling such information to interested parties as a bonus to their
deal; first they'd sell the guns to one party, next they'd sell the information to the other party. Sometimes the information
brought in even more profit than the guns.

Quality was another problem. A mere leader could order from a shiny catalogue with four-color pictures in one location and
accept delivery of rusty weapons with parts missing in another. When that happened in the field, it was usually too late to
replace the weapons, and the mercs would be goddamn lucky if they survived to complain.

Point of delivery was even more risky than point of purchase. Kind old ladies don't go into the business of delivering arms.
If the mercs had not already been sold out to the local authorities, they were liable at this point to be murdered by their
suppliers—killed with their own guns and bullets. The popular notion of mercs arriving in rubber rafts by moonlight, with
blackened faces and weapons draped across both shoulders, did not correspond much to reality. Parachute jumps and frogmen
stealthily creeping onto a beach were nice notiohs, but the preparations necessary for
any of these maneuvers would be bound to attract far more attention than the low-key arrival by commercial aircraft at different
times of a number of unremarkable men who picked up their hardware from a reliable source close to the scene of the action.

Mike Campbell normally took all of these problems to Mobile, Alabama. Colquitt Armaments was composed of a small office building
and a big warehouse in an industrial estate on the edge of the city. Lawns, azalea bushes, and live oaks took the harsh edges
off the factory environment. Inside the glass doors, a startlingly pretty girl sat at the reception desk. Mike hadn't seen
her before, which was no surprise to him since Cuthbert Colquitt's receptionist-secretaries never seemed to last more than
a couple of months.

“Mike Campbell is the name. Mr. Colquitt is expecting me.”

She pushed her chair back from the desk to give him a view of her legs and shook a wave of her long black hair from in front
of her dark eyes. “Cuthbert said he didn't want to be disturbed.”

“Please tell him I'm here.”

“Cuthbert don't feel so good this morning. You sure you don't want to come back some other time?”

“Tell him Mike Campbell is here.”

Instead of using the intercom, she stood in her high heels and sashayed back into the office, wiggling her cute butt in a
tight black skirt. She was gone awhile. When she came back, she raised her eyebrows and said in an arch voice, “Mr. Campbell,
Mr. Colquitt will see you now.”

Mike heard her snigger as he went in.

As well she could. Cuthbert Colquitt looked a sight. At the best of times his jowls and double chin, the rolls of fat on his
neck, and his great bulk hardly presented a picture of health. This morning his little bloodshot eyes had almost disappeared
above his bloated, reddened cheeks, his hands trembled, and his stomach audibly rumbled across the room.

“Been burning the midnight oil, Cuthbert?” Mike asked pleasantly, and shook his hand.

“I been drinking the midnight oil, least that's how it feels.” Cuthbert made no move to rise from his chair and
greet him, which was not typical of this usually courteous man. “You could perform a big service for us both if you'll take
out that bottle of Jack Daniel's and pour us two generous measures over the ice you'll find in that spittoon over there.

“That dingbat gal keeps insisting I need a blow job more than I need a drink, but my pecker don't seem to agree. He ain't
jumping to attention for anyone till I get a drop of good liquor in me. Way I feel right now, I'd be surprised if either of
us ever move again. Been on a three-day jag, boy. I met some friends unexpected like, and everything just fell in place and
I kept going. I've no idea what happened to them. They just fell by the wayside or went home. I kept going.” He slurped greedily
on the Jack Daniel's and held out the glass to Mike again, his shaky hand rattling the ice cubes. Mike poured him another
three-finger measure. Cuthbert swallowed half that. “Oh, yes, I believe I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
What brings a cunning Yankee like you down among us Confederate chickens?”

“I'm thinking of a vacation in Afghanistan, Cuthbert.”

“You really know how to pick them, boy. I see likely fellas head out to places only half as dangerous as you like to pick,
and sure they go, but they don't come back. You keep coming back all the time with never a scratch nor a gray hair, while
even stay-at-homes like myself, who don't feel comfortable more than twenty miles outside Mobile, die like flies on the highways
and in other people's beds. It's like those folk who tell you flying is safer than driving to the airport. You're out there
beating on the heads of savage, wild men and you don't break a fingernail, while I'm liable to slip in the shower and crack
my skull. It don't seem fair, but the Good Lord give the and the Good Lord disposeth. When my time comes, I hope to go gracefully…”

“I know there's going to be a big discount on prices for my having to nurse you through this crisis.”

Cuthbert cackled and reached out himself for the bottle of Jack Daniel's. “Don't you go pulling your fast ones on us easygoing
Southern people. You know you're not going to the cheapest part of the world so far as hardware is concerned. A Kalashnikov
assault rifle you could buy for
two-fifty in some places will cost you twelve to sixteen hundred on the Afghan border. I can get them for you for less than
a thousand, of course, but that's still four times the price elsewhere.”

“Money's not a problem, Cuthbert. I need non-American weapons. Iron Curtain countries if possible. Antihelicopter, antitank,
something that packs punch on the one-man missile line. The Kalashnikov sounds good as a rifle. I'll leave the pistols, grenades,
and so forth to you. Give me the best available. For seven men plus two in reserve.”

“Then not everything will be of Iron Curtain manufacture,” Cuthbert pointed out. “Peshawar is a good marketplace. It's in
Pakistan, not far from the border. As I said, it's expensive, but I'll get you what you need.”

“I also need a contact inside Pakistan, someone who can evaluate our contacts for me and talk with me about crossing the border.
I'm using someone called Aga Akbar for the crossing. He brought in three Americans not long ago. Have him checked out for
me. You know someone?”

“A good man. I've known him for years. He spent a few days with me last year. We went coon hunting every night.”

Mike had already been through that a few times, and he knew that Cuthbert's invitation to go with him and his dogs was his
supreme tribute to any man.

Mike smiled. “I'm trying to imagine what a Pakistani thought of tramping the Alabama backwoods with you and your hounds in
the dark of night.”

“This man's a Pathan warrior. He shot them damn raccoons out of the trees before I could properly get a light on them. If
it had been up to me, I'd have made him a U.S. citizen on the spot.”

“Okay, okay, Cuthbert, that's enough.”

Mike waited at the small airstrip outside Santa Ynez. He saw a single-engine plane approach and lower its landing gear. He
recognized it from the high-wing design as a Cessna 210. The plane made an awful landing, its left wheel touching before the
right, and the pilot managed to steady the craft only by almost aborting the landing by lifting both
wheels off the ground and touching down again. The Cessna stopped with only about twenty feet of runway to spare. Campbell
drove out to meet the plane, hoping this landing was not a sign of things to come. He watched while the pilot seemed to be
having difficulty extracting himself from the cockpit. Finally a six-foot-four, extremely thin, bony man jumped out and walked
toward him, hand extended.

“Jedediah Crippenby,” he said, introducing himself.

Mike nodded and shook his hand. “That was some landing.”

“Not bad for my first time at the controls of a plane,” Crippenby said in a pleased voice.

“Your copilot let you land first time at the controls?” Mike asked incredulously.

The second man, looking a bit shaken, joined them. “Not the wisest thing I've ever allowed. But Jed here has made such progress
in the last few days, I thought we might deliver a skilled pilot as well as everything else to you. That was a little premature,
I'm afraid.”

“Wait!” Crippenby said enthusiastically, and rushed back to the plane. He drew out an Armalite rifle, snapped a magazine in
place, and wildly looked around him. Mike took the pack of Kent Golden Lights from the copilot's hand and threw it out on
the grass. Crippenby hit it with his second shot on semiautomatic fire and then blew away the fragments with an automatic
burst of four shots.

“Okay,” Mike called, and gestured to him to put the rifle back in the plane. Campbell looked around. They were at the end
of the runway, and probably no one noticed them or even heard the shots. When Crippenby rejoined them, Mike said, “Last I
heard of you, all you could do was swim. Besides rifle shooting and flying planes, what else have you learned in the past
few days?”

“I've fired a thousand rounds each from a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and a Colt 45 semiautomatic, five thousand rounds from
an Uzi submachine gun, two rifle grenades from an M16, and thrown more dummy hand grenades than I could count. I watched movies
on antihelicopter and antitank warfare, but I didn't get a chance to fire any rockets. Still, I didn't do so bad for someone
who never
even got to shoot a BB gun as a kid. The instructors said I have a natural aptitude for target shooting, but then, that's
the story of my life. I seem to have a natural aptitude for everything.”

He said this like someone admitting a flaw in his personality, and perhaps Crippenby regarded his unusual abilities as such.
Mike liked his lack of coyness and forthright assessment of himself.

“You'll do all right with us, Jed,” Mike said, “so long as you always remember one thing. We need you as a member of a team,
not as a solo star. That's what I'm going to be watching for. One thing I don't understand is why you want to quit your nice
air-conditioned library and climb around on the hills with us.”

“Concepts and ideas are one thing, climbing hills is another. I've had too many concepts and not climbed any real hills.”

“I think both of you guys are off the wall,” the copilot said. “If you need me, you have the emergency phone number, and I'll
touch down here in exactly two hours from receiving your call. Do either of you happen to have any cigarettes?”

Campbell and Crippenby shook their heads. The copilot picked out a bent cigarette from the torn-up pack of Kents on the grass.

Andre Verdoux, Joe Nolan, Bob Murphy, Lance Hardwick, and Harvey Waller stood on the Camino Cielo, the road that ran along
the top of the coastal ridge of the San Rafael Mountains. On one side of the narrow road they could see the houses of Santa
Barbara sprawled far beneath them, the Pacific coastline, and, out on the calm blue water, the offshore platforms for drilling
oil, the hulking, flat-topped silhouettes that made Nolan think they were aircraft carriers. On the other side of the road
the ridge dropped steeply down to a wide valley, at the bottom of which was a ribbon of lake and a huge dam. The rugged folds
of the San Rafael Mountains formed the other wall of this valley, and beyond them, in the wilderness, the last of the California
condors still soared somewhere on their huge wingspans.

“I got to admit,” Nolan said, “we don't have anything like this in Ohio.”

“In New Jersey neither,” Waller confessed.

Hardwick wasn't impressed by the natural splendor. “I still can't see why I had to take a plane from L.A. to New York, only
to have to turn right around and have to come back again. I could have driven here in three hours from my place in West Hollywood.
Instead I have to drag my ass back and forth across the continent—

“You joined Mike Campbell's mission at my apartment in Manhattan,” Verdoux snapped. “You're getting paid a hundred thousand
dollars to do what Mike orders. If he wants to fly you from coast to coast nonstop for the next njonth, you shut up and do
it. You've been warned before about mouthing off and second-guessing, Hardwick. The reason you do it is you know nothing,
and since you know nothing, you're an expert on everything.”