The Devil's Footprint (60 page)

He hugged her again and held her.
 
"I love you, Kathleen," he said over and over again.
 
She was already asleep; the drugs had won
out.

Chifune was guarding Shadow Three.
 
He took her hand briefly between his, and she smiled.

"All the way," she said.
 
And there were tears in her eyes.

"Always," said Fitzduane.
 
"Always..."

They looked at each other.
 
There
was no need to speak.
 
They had never
been closer.

"Let's go," said Fitzduane.

The convoy of four Guntracks moved out.
 
Their next destination was the pickup point — and airborne to home.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Tecuno
,
Mexico

Governor Diego Quintana's mercenaries were mainly Mexican but included
soldiers from many nations.

Major Khalifa Sherrif's country of birth was
Libya
.
 
Major Sherif was not without military talent,
but his map-reading skills were minimal.
 
He could get lost crossing the street, which was why currently he was
within striking distance of the Arkono airstrip instead of a hundred kilometers
to the west as his original orders dictated.

Normally he could rely on his adjutant to keep him more or less on
course, but a shotgun blast from one recalcitrant peasant had put paid to that
convenient solution and had also fucked up Major Sherrif's one and only map of
this dreadful area.

He had been fast asleep when the new orders came in, and he did not take
kindly to being roused so abruptly.
 
His
mood took a sharp turn for the worse when he heard that he was to prepare for action
and that he was to hand over command to the Japanese woman called Reiko Oshima.

THAT WOMAN!
 
It was
unbelievable.
 
Women had their place in
his particular world, but so did camels and dust and crawly things he did not
even want to think about, and he only calmed down slightly when his
ever-reliable sergeant brought him hot sweet tea.

A Mi-4 Hound helicopter beat its way through the darkness and landed to
the side of the armored column in a haze of dust.
 
He sipped his tea again as he waited for this
Amazon to emerge and found that he was not sipping grit.

Two minutes later, he found that his command tank and his bloodstained
map had been commandeered and he had been packed into the back of an APC like a
common private.

With Reiko Oshima in the lead tank, the column headed at full speed for
the Funnel, the narrowing valley that led to the airstrip.
 
The hound had already taken off again to
scout the terrain.

The column was able to make excellent time.
 
All vehicles and the helicopter were equipped
with active infrared searchlights that projected a beam that was invisible to
the naked eye but showed up as illumination to anyone wearing the right
goggles.
 
It was an effective enough
technique unless your opponent had infrared detection capability, in which case
it was like driving along with full headlights on.
 
You could see where you were going, but then
everyone could see you — and from a considerable distance away.

Twenty minutes later, when the column was within just a few kilometers of
the Funnel, a radio message came in from the helicopter that a cloud of dust
heading at high speed toward the old airstrip had been sighted.

Reiko Oshima felt a surge of optimism and passed the order to prepare for
action to her new command.
 
The enemy,
whoever they were, had every reason to believe that, in the middle of this vast
empty space, no one would ever think of one long-abandoned airstrip among
dozens built by the oilmen more than a decade ago.

Unfortunately for them, Reiko Oshima had scouted Arkono airstrip as a
possible base for Yaibo only a year back and she knew the strip and the
surrounding terrain intimately.
 
She was
also, she considered, getting to know her enemy.

The Arkono strip was not an obvious choice, but it would do — which made
it a strong possibility.
 
Other units
were fanning out to cover other locations.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The black silhouette of the Funnel showed up in the distance, and
Fitzduane thought of Calvin and how nice it would be to be able to check the
valley and its environs from the air before entering their confines.

For all they knew, the valley now contained hostiles waiting to shoot
them up.
 
It was a near-perfect choke
point.
 
Nearly a kilometer wide on the
way in, it narrowed to less than a hundred meters as it approached the
airstrip.
 
The Funnel was well-named.

He banished wishful thinking and focused entirely on the task at
hand.
 
He had a feeling he was missing
some obvious move or precaution.
 
He checked
his watch and ran through the plan of the final stages of the exfiltration and
the various contingencies and options.
 
There was something there, he was sure of it, but what?

He switched to the Team Rapier radio net and pressed the transmit
button.
 
There was now less than twenty
minutes to go before the pickup time, and they had reached the stage when speed
was more important than running silent.
 
"Rapier Team, this is Shadow One.
 
Deactivate super traps and increase to sixty."

The diamond-shaped fighting group of four Guntracks surged ahead as the
sound-suppression units were deactivated.
 
The increased speed would be hell for the wounded, but the alternatives
would be a great deal worse.

There was a sudden flash from the sky as the Mi-4 Hound turned on its
infrared searchlight and swooped to try to see what this mysterious enemy
consisted of.
 
Reports had suggested
armed jeeps, but no one seemed quite sure, and the armored column desperately
needed more intelligence.

"Bomburst!" said Fitzduane, and instantly the four vehicles
spread in four directions.
 
"Shadow
One
will take it."

Heavy machine-gun fire arched up at the helicopter from three Guntracks
while Shadow One halted and Al Lonsdale aimed a Starburst surface-to-air
missile.

Green tracer and rocket fire from the helicopter plowed into the ground
around the fleeing Guntracks, but the small black vehicles were extremely hard
to hit.
 
They were very fast and changed
direction constantly, and clouds of smoke and dust confused the issue.

The helicopter's infrared searchlight showed up in Lonsdale's
night-vision goggles like an arrow pointing toward a target.

Seconds later the searchlight vanished as machine-gun fire from the
ground blew it apart, but he could still see the big machine through the Starburst's
six-power sights.

Shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles were not foolproof, and the
pilot knew that the Stinger, to give the example he was most familiar with,
could be outmaneuvered under some circumstances and that its range was limited.
 
However, in this case the Mi-4 Hound's pilot
was more scared of the known threat of Reiko Oshima than of the unknown; and he
had been ordered to find out what they were up against or not come
back .
 
And he was
also up against a missile that did not need a heat source to make a hit.
 
The Starburst was optically guided by a
low-power laser beam.

He did his duty.
 
He had just
finished describing one of the strange black tracked vehicles that he had
caught in his infrared searchlight for a brief moment when the missile's
proximity fuse ignited near the fuselage and slammed a shower of tungsten cubes
into the fuel tank and rotor blades.

A fireball blossomed in the sky.

That bloody woman
! the
pilot thought before his
world exploded.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"Re-form,"
said Fitzduane urgently.
 
"Loose Deuce.
 
Move!
 
Move!
 
Move!"

The four
Guntracks of Team Rapier re-formed in two teams of two, with one Guntrack on
the right set back to its partner.
 
It
was a formation that would have been familiar to fighter pilots.
 
The vehicle in front covered threats to the
front.
 
The Guntrack set back covered
threats to the rear.

They had lost
time in terrorist encounter with the helicopter.
 
They had now increased the speed to one
hundred kilometers an hour.
 
Across the
rough shale and rock of the ground, this was a grueling speed even with air
suspension.
 
Weapons accuracy was
affected.
 
It was difficult — almost
impossible — to use some of the advanced vision equipment because of the
vibration.
 
The engine noise had risen to
a crescendo, and regularly the vehicles left the ground and hurtled through the
air as they hit an undulation or a fissure.

For the
wounded, it was agony.
 
Fitzduane knew
this and remembered what it had been like for him and the pain and sense of
helplessness, and he hated what he was doing.

Through his
night-vision goggles, he could see a glow ahead of him but to the left.
 
His brain tired, he thought at first it might
be the dawn and he was surprised because it seemed too early, and then he
realized what he was seeing.

The glow was
moving, and it must be coming from a column of vehicles heading for the
entrance to the Funnel.

They were in
a
 
race
, and the enemy
column, although almost certainly slower, was sufficiently ahead of them for it
to get there first.

He felt sick and
then, for a brief moment, blindly angry, and then there were things to do and
very little time for emotion.

"Shadow
One to Eagle Leader," he said.

"Come in,
Shadow One," said Kilmara.
 
The
sound quality was good.
 
They were close.

Fitzduane
could almost see the two Hercules C130 Combat Talons in their matte-black
camouflage hurtling at contour-following height over the harsh terrain.
 
The pilot and copilot and navigator would be
wearing night-vision goggles and faces would be tired and strained from the long
flight.
 
There would be the steady throb
and whine of turboprops.
 
There would be
the jolts and shocks that came from flying so close to the ground you were
virtually in ground effect.

"Eagle
Flight, what is your firepower status?" said Fitzduane.

"Both
aircraft configured for Guntrack evacuation, so weapons load minimized,"
said Kilmara.

Fitzduane felt
a sinking feeling and then realized that ‘minimized’ was a relative term in
special-forces aviation.
 
These people
felt nervous if they did not have some serious firepower up their sleeve.

"Both
aircraft have two GECAL fifties for ground suppression and other toys for the
air," continued Kilmara, "but they do not have gunship status and are
tasked for evac.
 
I do not want to risk
the evac, but state your thinking."

"We will
only be evacuating three — I repeat THREE — Guntracks," said
Fitzduane.
 
"Shadow
One
will be staying on ground as tail-end Charlie.
 
Accordingly, only one aircraft will need to
land.
 
Suggest second EAGLE adopt a
ground suppression role.
 
We have heavy
company from the east."

Wait one,
Shadow One," said Kilmara.
 
He
switched to the second Combat Talon and talked to the Bear.
 
In less than a minute he was back to
Fitzduane.

"Eagle
Leader will land to evac," Kilmara said, "and Eagle Friend will carry
out ground suppression.
 
He can handle up
to armored personnel carriers, but tanks could be a problem.
 
Eagle Friend awaits your instructions.
 
Please
advise
how
crew of Shadow One plans to evac.
 
I
presume Skyhook."

"Affirmative
on Skyhook," said Fitzduane.
 
"But we will need maneuvering space.
 
There are people down here who do not have
our best interests at heart."

"Understood,
Shadow One," said Eagle Friend.
 
"We await your call."
 
It was the Bear's voice.

Fitzduane
looked at the approaching glow.
 
He could
now see a shitload of tanks and APCs.
 
Worryingly, they were ignoring Team Rapier's convoy of Guntracks and
were still heading hell-for-leather toward the Funnel.
 
Someone too damn smart was in command.