Cobra Strike (30 page)

The team moved out of Noor Qader’s territory as quickly as they could because word of the savagery of the Russian search methods
had spread, and Mike did not want to have those who helped them punished like this. Once the team
had moved out, the Russians would follow. But they were back in the mountains now; there any movement in a horizontal direction
could involve strenuous and time-consuming climbs and descents. Still he was satisfied to have put more than ten miles between
themselves and the place of the tank ambush in only a few hours, and to the west rather than the south, where the Russians
would expect them to be headed. Campbell was less pleased about having to stop in one place to wait for the truck to transport
them, but there was no way around this at such short notice.

Who exactly these opium smugglers were, and what their relationship was with Noor Qader’s men, remained vague.

Noor Qader had broken up his temporary camp after the attack on the tanks, and the team had left with a body of almost fifty
rebels. Sixteen were still riding with them as they neared the place where the team was to wait. The lead riders spotted a
Russian infantry patrol and prepared to attack. Campbell did not want this, since it could easily draw attention to the team’s
present whereabouts, but he had no control over Noor’s men and they were clearly going to attack the Russian unit whether
or not they got help from the Americans.

The Russians were spooked. Some of them had made visual contact with the mounted rebels, but they had no way of knowing how
many were in the area and whether the ones seen had fled or were waiting in ambush for them. When the unit called in air support,
none was available because all aircraft were engaged in looking for the Americans toward Herat. So the patrol of eight soldiers
moved out in a regularly spaced line with a case of the jitters as they wound their way through steep-walled gulches and skirted
massive outcrops that could have concealed a whole enemy battalion.

Noor’s men followed at a distance, until they knew the route the Soviets would take. They gave two men to the mercs as guides,
and the fourteen others set out in a wide half circle to bypass the Russian patrol. The ten mercs and the Institute men, along
with their two guides, set out in a similar half circle in the other direction. Where these two forces met ahead of the patrol
would be the point of
ambush. This turned out to be a broad low pass through which flowed a narrow stream. The hills rose only gradually on both
sides, and at no point would the movement of soldiers moving through it be constricted by a narrowing. It looked safe enough,
which, of course, was why the Afghan rebels had chosen it. What could not be seen from down in the pass were the trails high
on its sides that would permit the horsemen to move out fast from concealment once the Soviet patrol was in the valley below.
They could then pick off the soldiers on foot who could not move as fast as they could.

The mercs concealed themselves high on one side of the pass entrance, knowing that Noor’s fourteen men were already hidden
somewhere on the, opposite side. In about half an hour the Russian patrol appeared and looked as if it were going to pass
as planned between them.

The Russians stopped short. With an infantryman’s sixth sense they detected that something was wrong. They took cover among
some small rocks and carefully surveyed everything around them. Nothing stirred.

Mike Campbell felt sort of sorry for them. He knew that feeling well: knowing that to keep moving ahead meant certain disaster
and not having any other choice but to keep going. A foot patrol like this one, without air, artillery or mortar support,
was just so much condemned meat. Mike himself had survived situations like this, only just barely. No doubt the Russians would
find it ironic that the same force they had lost their air support in search of was the one now menacing them. But the Russians
didn’t know that. Yet.

The uniformed men warily formed their line of patrol again and advanced into the pass. As they probed deeper into the pass
and nothing happened, they started to move in a more relaxed fashion. This was when the horsemen appeared high on the far
side of the valley. The mercs led out their horses and climbed onto their backs, and they, too, cantered forward along a narrow
track high on the valley side.

The Russians sought cover. However, anything that protected them from one side of the valley exposed their backs to the
other. They fired on the horsemen catching up with them on both sides. Bob Murphy felt his horse stagger. Its front legs doubled
up beneath it, and the heavy Australian was thrown into the stony dirt. Joe Nolan’s horse narrowly missed the fallen man’s
head with its hooves. Murphy climbed painfully to his feet and was about to yell at his horse, lying on its side, threshing
its legs, making unsuccessful attempts to scramble upright, when he noticed a hole in its chest and blood washing down over
its hide. Bob drew his pistol and put the animal out of its misery with a bullet in the forehead. The horse’s head immediately
fell to the ground. Bob collected his things and hobbled after the others, who had not waited for him.

Bursts of automatic fire from two directions toppled the Soviet foot soldiers like skittles. Three climbed to their feet again,
their hands held high above their heads.

Andre Verdoux made an unwilling Baker double-up behind Turner on his horse and sent Lance Hardwick back with the free horse
for Murphy. Verdoux had deliberately made the Australian wait to be picked up but knew that no horse could have borne his
weight as a second rider.

When the mercs reached the Russians, Noor’s men were finished off the wounded with their long knives and stripping the bodies.

“We are keeping these ones alive long enough for you to spit in their faces and tell them who you are,” one rebel told Jed
Crippenby, who translated it for Mike.

Campbell said, “Aren’t they going to take them prisoners?”

“We have hardly food enough for ourselves,” the rebel replied angrily. “Do you want us to feed our oppressors too? You take
them with you since you care so much how Russians are treated in Afghanistan. We do not want them, here!”

“We can’t take them with us because of our journey,” Mike explained. “They are your prisoners, not ours.”

“Then they will die,” the rebel announced, pleased that they had come to an understanding.

“If you guys can’t make up your minds,” Harvey Waller offered, “I’ll shoot them for you. No problem.”

“Stay out of this, Harvey,” Mike snapped. “We got to
be moving on for our meet-up with the truck.” He turned to the soldiers and said in his poor Russian, “If you have anything
you want sent back to your families, you better let me have it.”

The Russian soldiers, overcome with emotion at the sound of their language, pressed photos and papers on Mike, begged him
to intercede for them with the rebels. All three were nineteen-year-olds, conscripts who had never even heard of Afghanistan
before coming here. They claimed they had never killed anyone while here, and all they wanted to do was go home, forget this
nightmare, and live peacefully.

Verdoux and Crippenby also spoke to them in Russian, and even Baker and Winston joined in. The Russians knew from the outset
that their position was hopeless. It was their own army that was causing all the death and destruction and which had not provided
them with air support or responded to their emergency calls.

The rebels looked on at all this fraternizing between the Americans and Russians with stony faces and unyielding stares. Harvey
Waller stood apart also, glowering at the scene. As he left, Mike made sure to lead Harvey with him.

“They’re just young guys who got pushed out to bear all the burdens while the clever ones stay home,” Mike said. “They’re
not here because they’re communists, Harvey, they’re here because they’re draft age. Go easy on them.”

“You’re getting soft, Campbell,” Waller snarled.

Mike shook his head and sighed, resigned that it was hopeless to discuss this further. He turned around sharply when he heard
a pistol shot and saw one of the three Russians sink to his knees, his face in a tight grimace of pain. The rebel then shot
the second Russian prisoner in the belly, and they all watched in silence while he clutched his gut and staggered a few steps
before falling. Mike exchanged a glance with the third man and turned away before the shot rang out, the shot that would leave
him to die slowly, too, in this rocky Afghan valley.

To the west. Toward Iran, not Herat. So that’s where the Americans were going. No wonder she hadn’t been able to
verify any sightings of them for so long. But now she was getting results! A little kerosene here, a little there, and she
was hearing how ten Americans—now it was ten!—had ridden west through these parts with a force of Noor Qader’s men. Then the
infantry patrol’s distress signals came over the air and the fool command refused them help because they were too busy combing
empty hills far to the south. The Americans were about to strike again. It had to be them! She had almost been tempted to
alert General Kudimov by radio and would have done so had she not been aware that the old fox would somehow have done dirty,
gone there himself and sent her somewhere else. No, any credit she would get from comrade Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov would
only be what he couldn’t deny her. But she was ahead of him now, beyond his control for the time being.

She had two choppers, recently refueled, two crews, the lieutenant, and eight men. The gunship had taken on more rockets,
and both choppers had big ammo supplies for their door gunners. All she had to do was take some or all of ten Americans on
horseback in rugged terrain. She would do it and take the credit for it back in Moscow. Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov could
go to hell.

The colonel told the senior pilot to head for the map coordinates given in the patrol’s final emergency signal that they had
monitored over their radio but to continue to maintain radio silence himself. She wanted to give Kudimov no clue as to where
she might be. Hovering high over the valley, they saw the eight bodies below and no visible signs of continued rebel presence.
The colonel was tempted to fly on without touching down, but for the sake of morale she ordered the two craft down. The men
might have grown sullen if she had not tried to help their comrades. She walked around the eight bodies, half naked, their
uniforms, boots, and weapons taken, lying twisted on the stones, eviscerated, slashed, their private parts stuffed in their
mouths.

She had seen all this before and she would see it again. She was not nearly as upset by this carnage as her men, including
the lieutenant, who could stand there grinning as a
child burned to death in kerosene. Here he was on the verge of tears, calling the Afghans inhuman bandits and animals.

“The Americans did this!” she shouted, knowing this was not true but wanting to derive some benefit from the men’s anger at
the slaughter. “Are we going to let them escape over the border into Iran? I’m not!”

She ran back to the gunship, the men hurried back to their places filled with rage at the Americans, and the two choppers
lifted off in a newly dedicated search for the monstrous capitalist brigands.

After a while the colonel recognized where they were. A heavily timbered area stretched ahead of them. “I know this place,
Anatoly,” she told the senior pilot. “Don’t overfly it or you’ll draw fire. Everyone will take pot shots at you, even with
9mm pistols, from the cover of the trees. Swing around to the left and follow the line of trees without coming too close.
It would be better for us if the Americans don’t know we’re in the vicinity. There’s a village somewhere along here in the
next few kilometers—I will know the place when I see it. The opium smugglers on their way to Iran use it. We have tried to
eradicate them in the past because they use their profits from the drugs to buy guns in Iran. Noor Qader sent them here. They
must have only just arrived, or perhaps they haven’t reached here yet.”

The lieutenant looked unhappily at the forest. “We will have to engage them on the ground.”

“That’s right, Lieutenant,” the colonel said. “You and I will take those eight men in after them. This gunship will stand
by to provide us with air support, and the slick will stand ready to evacuate.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel,” the lieutenant said obediently, if not very enthusiastically.

She sneered at him, saying nothing, but letting her face show that she could see he was not nearly so anxious to hunt down
armed Americans in these woods as he was women and children in open fields.

It would be three hours, maybe four or even five hours before the truck came for them. Drug smugglers did not stick to strict
time schedules. They would come when the
time was right. Campbell pointed out that the longer things were delayed, the greater the chance of Russian intervention.
There was nothing anyone could do, he was informed. The truck would come when it was ready—almost as if the truck were the
one who was making the decision. Mike sent to a nearby village for warm food. When they had finished the mutton, yogurt, and
rice dishes, he ordered the men to rest. When Lance Hardwick told him he wanted to look around, Mike told him all right but
not to go far. Lance walked in the woods in the direction of the village where two of Noor’s men had bought food. Any bit
of urban action at all sounded good to Lance after all this time in the mountains. He knew that all he could expect was a
tumbledown place built of mud where fierce, bearded men loaded down with daggers and guns would stare at him suspiciously.
He reckoned he had hardly seen a dozen women since he had come to Afghanistan, and they had been so shrouded up in cloth that
they looked like kids dressed up as Halloween ghosts. His expectations were low.

Two of Noor Qader’s men had bought large quantities of hot food in the village. The informant pointed out to the Russians
the direction in which the men had ridden away, less than two hours ago. The colonel felt her heart skip a beat. At last she
felt she was close to her quarry. She would take them alive. At least some of them. Kill the others. Even if some escaped,
so long as she had at least one alive to put on trial, her name would be remembered in military records and she would lack
for nothing the rest of her life. Moscow knew how to reward its faithful, loyal ones.