The Devil's Footprint (56 page)

Through the viewfinders of the weapons sights the enemy looked close
enough to touch, and the expressions of individual soldiers could be seen as
high-velocity metal and explosives tore through them and blew them apart.

In the intensity of the action, the sights of such horrors made no impression
on the outnumbered assault force.
 
It was
a matter of brute survival, and such images were repressed as fast as they were
seen.

The killing continued with savage precision.

21

Madoa Air Base,

Tecuno
,
Mexico

Reiko Oshima lay on her back, her knees drawn up and spread apart and her
hands grasping the metal bed-head of the military-issue bed.

Her forehead was beaded with sweat and her loins were sticky with sexual
fluids.
 
General Luis Barragan's
principal attraction, as far as she was concerned, was a combination of his
endurance and imagination, and he had already been working on her for several
hours.
 
A few moments
ago, just as she had been about to come yet again, he had withdrawn from her
and now stood gazing out of the window at the night sky.
 
There was a flash of flame as he lit a
cigarette, and as he turned to look at her she could see that his organ was
still hard and erect.

She wanted to hit him, to inflict pain, but she was helpless, her wrists
bound to the metal frame.
 
He smiled at
her, a flash of white teeth, and then he came nearer, the red tip of the
cigarette glowing in the darkened room.
 
Her eyes fixed on the red tip and she followed it as it approached her
lower body.

She clenched her teeth in anticipation of the sharp pain and the sudden
jolting burst of intense sexual pleasure that would follow, and then Luis would
enter her again and pound in and out of her and finish what he had
started.
 
And then it would commence
again, but always with a subtle variation.
 
Or perhaps he would be the victim next time around.
 
That was a pleasing prospect.

There was a flash in the sky and a thunderous explosion, and the window
shattered and she could hear bursts of machine-gun fire.
 
She pulled in reflex at her bonds, but it was
useless.

"Cut me loose, you fool," she shouted at Barragan as she
switched her gaze from the window to her lover.

He seemed frozen with shock.
 
The
cigarette fell from his hand and he took a couple of uncertain steps toward her
and then collapsed on her body, crimson pouring from his severed jugular, the
shard of glass still protruding.

She lay there screaming in rage and frustration and disgust as Barragan's
life-blood gushed over her and soaked into the bed.
 
Then she noticed that the shard of glass was
near her right wrist and she moved the leather thong against it.

It took several minutes, but gradually she worked herself free.

Outside on the airfield, every single weapons emplacement seemed to be in
action, but to what purpose it was far from clear.
 
Tracer crisscrossed the sky in wild abandon,
and on the ground explosion followed explosion.

She threw on some clothes over her blood-soaked body, grabbed her AK-47,
and ran outside to see if she could make sense of what was going on.
 
They were under attack obviously, but whether
from the air or from the ground she could not tell.

The scene that greeted her was total chaos.
 
She ran toward her helicopter.
 
Around her, an ammunition dump was exploding
and the flames from a fuel bowser licked at the sky, but her helicopter seemed
untouched.
 
Better still, her pilot was
already at the controls.

She jumped in, and seconds later they were airborne.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Above Madoa Air Base,

Tecuno
,
Mexico

Calvin banked the microlight steeply to the left as a stream of green
tracer arced toward him.

There was bedlam below.
 
None of
the fire seemed to be aimed, but so much lead was being thrown up there was a
reasonable chance he would be hit by accident unless he got out fast.
 
He dived to fifty feet and accelerated to
maximum speed.

A mortar pit below started to fire as he flashed over.
 
In their haste they had misjudged the range,
and the heavy teardrop-shaped bombs instead of landing outside the airfield
among the imagined attackers were landing inside it among the defending troops
as they crouched in their trenches and blazed away into the darkness.

The little aircraft lurched as he crossed the perimeter, and he had to
lean to the right to keep his balance.
 
The miniature machine was hit, fuck it, but he did not take the time to
check the damage.
 
Instead he
concentrated on the decidedly hairy business of flying down a long twisting
wadi at ground-hugging height.
 
The dry
riverbed was pointing northwest, so it was in the wrong direction, but it took
him away from the action and another chance encounter with an unfriendly
projectile.

He slowed down, activated the sound suppressor, and climbed.

A quick glance showed him that one of his supporting struts had been
severed.

Unless he made some emergency repairs fairly soon, the wing might go on flying,
but the fuselage that contained him would part company from the airfoil and
head straight for the ground.
 
This was
not a prospect that attracted him.
 
To
maximize his weapons load under the tight weight constraint, he had opted not
to wear a parachute.

He put in an airborne radio call to Fitzduane, but either he was out of
range or things had gone badly wrong for the ground-based members of Team
Rapier.
 
Suddenly he felt very alone, and
as the adrenaline rush wore off, the reaction hit and he felt tendrils of fear.

He decided that he just did not have time to feel afraid.

He activated the FLIR and looked for a reasonably friendly patch of
ground to land on.
 
The bottom of the
wadi was a mass of loose boulders and larger rocks, so he focused on the perimeter.

Three minutes later, he was on the ground.

In the distance he could see that the fireworks display at the airfield
was still continuing and he wondered how much damage he had done.
 
He had certainly gotten their attention, but
the key issue was the extent to which the helicopters and the MiGs had been
damaged.

He started to get out of his tiny cockpit to repair the damaged struts,
and it was only then that he realized that he had been hit.

The whole front of his duvet jacket had been torn away, and under it the
ceramic plate body armor insert that protected his vital organs was
exposed.
 
The heavy round had hit him on
the diagonal and cut through the outer layers of Kevlar as effortlessly as if
they were paper, but had then been deflected by the ceramic plate.

He had damn nearly left the insert plates behind but had rethought after
Fitzduane's caution.

Calvin sat down on a rock and for nearly two minutes shook like a
leaf.
 
The spasm ended when he heaved
violently and threw up.

He felt weak but able to function again, and went back to work.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Outside The Devil's Footprint,

Tecuno
,
Mexico

Fitzduane tried to look at his watch,
then
swore
as Steve threw the Guntrack into reverse and shot backward for thirty meters.

A tank shell impacted in the hill just behind the spot they had just
vacated and showered them with debris.

‘Shoot and scoot,’ was the tactic, but as the battle progressed and the
enemy began to learn the rules, it made sense for there to be more emphasis on
‘scoot.’
 
It was then that the driver's
battle skills really came into play.
 
There was not time for him to merely respond to the vehicle commander's
instruction.
 
He had to read the
battleground and follow his intuition.

Cochrane turned the .50 GECAL on the tank and hosed for a weakness away
from the glacis at the front.
 
Individually, the armor-piercing rounds would not penetrate a tank's
frontal armor, but at sixty rounds a second against the less protected areas,
hit after hit pounded its way through.

His periscopes blinded, and the tank's commander — fighting from his open
cupola to try to see what was going on — was obliterated.
 
Shortly after, there was penetration under
the turret ring by explosive-filled multipurpose .50 rounds and the stored
shells blew up.

It was time, in Fitzduane's opinion, to get the fuck out.
 
Belting across this brutal terrain in a
Guntrack with a repressed Formula One racing driver like Steve Kent at the
wheel was dangerous enough in itself without hostiles shooting at you.

"Shadow One, this is Shadow Four," said the Brick.
 
"
Mission
successful.
 
We are loaded up and ready to come out."

"Roger that," said Fitzduane.
 
"Shadow
Two
— where the fuck are
you?"
 
The plan was that Lonsdale's
unit, Shadow Two, having infiltrated through the wire on the rim, would hold
the blockhouse until the Brick had done his thing in the valley below.
 
Then both would leave together.

There was an access road from the blockhouse on high to the supergun
valley.
 
They would then cross the
perimeter road with the other three Guntracks, who had already made the trip,
providing cover.

The plan had not included an armored column approaching from the south
and a major firefight in progress.
 
Still, life was rarely perfect, and as of now, the column was stalled
and in decidedly bad shape, though it still had fangs.

Shadow Two was barreling down the access road to the valley floor with
Shanley at the wheel when Fitzduane's check call came in.
 
In Al Lonsdale's view they had stayed perhaps
a minute or two too long on rim, but the domination of the battlefield they had
enjoyed from that position linked to all that ammunition had been hard to
resist.

"Shadow Two to Shadow One," said Lonsdale over the open
net.
 
"We're sixty seconds behind
Shadow Four.
 
We'll make the break
together."

"Roger that," said Fitzduane.

"Affirmative," said the Brick from Shadow Four.
 
"We'll break in about forty-five
seconds."

"Make smoke!
 
Make
smoke!" said Fitzduane.

All three Guntracks beyond the perimeter road and already under cover now
fired their smoke dischargers, and within seconds a thick blanket of black
smoke blocked the view of the supergun valley entrance from the column.

The smoke contained particulates that obscured infrared-vision equipment
as well as normal vision, but this was overkill since none of the T55 tanks or
armored personnel carriers was so equipped.
 
However, the survivors of the mechanized column, already shattered by
the intensity of the unexpected assault, panicked when the thick black smoke rolled
over them.

The high-tech particulates made the smoke different from normal and
tended to make the eyes itch, although it was otherwise harmless.
 
There were immediate cries of "NERVE
GAS!
 
CHEMICAL WEAPONS!" and any
semblance of discipline that remained with the unit vanished.
 
To a man, they turned and fled.

It looked as if Shadow Two and Shadow Four would have a clear run across
the perimeter road into the cover beyond, and then a helicopter gunship loomed
out of the darkness in a reconnaissance pass before vanishing again.

"Rat shit!" said
Kent
, and moved their position
fifty meters.

"If all they're going to do is look at us, I won't complain,"
said Fitzduane.

He put out an air threat warning on the net, but as he spoke into the
boom microphone his thoughts were of Calvin.
 
He reached for a Stinger.

The damn thing did not feel right.

The missile was full of holes.
 
Well, better it than him.

But there was still the matter of the fucking helicopter.
 
Green tracer began to wink down at them, and
if memory served it also carried rockets and bombs.

Calvin, my son, where are you?

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Gunfire damage to the SkyEye was a predictable hazard, so the microlight
was equipped with a spares kit.

The damaged struts were splinted together with Kevlar tape, and within
five minutes Calvin was airborne again.
 
The repair would hold, he thought, provided he could avoid violent
maneuvers, but anyway it was the best he could do.