The Devil's Footprint (62 page)

"The
hostiles chased us into the Funnel," said Cochrane, "but I had a go
with the .50 Barrett after we got hit.
 
It
seems ridiculous that a rifle can take out an armored vehicle like a BMP-1, but
there is the proof.
 
An average of three
rounds each at nearly a kilometer, and up they went.
 
Thin armor, vulnerable fuel tanks, and
armor-piercing incendiary make a lethal combination.
 
Anyway, they pulled back and now seem to be
regrouping.
 
I guess they figure time is
on their side.
 
They put up some flares a
few minutes ago, so they know our track is out.
 
And where are we going on foot?
 
There is nothing in every direction."

Fitzduane
decided to ignore that last rather disconcerting remark and focus on the
shooting.
 
"Just so you know,
Lee," he said.
 
"Running a
private war — just because Al and I were unconscious — is greedy."

Cochrane
laughed out loud.

"Back to
business," said Fitzduane.
 
"Any contact with Eagle Friend?"

"Affirmative,"
said Cochrane.

He tapped the
personal radio every member of the team carried for emergencies.
 
It was low power and strictly line of sight,
but it combined voice capability with a locator beam.
 
"He's doing a run in any minute.
 
He's contour flying to avoid SAMs, so voice
contact is intermittent."

The Combat
Talon was using the surrounding mountain range to shield it from SAMs —
surface-to-air missiles — as it approached.
 
The Talon had some useful offensive firepower, but its main defense lay
in being extraordinarily hard to detect.
 
Its electronic warfare black boxes made it effectively invisible to most
radar.
 
Nonetheless, line-of-sight
triple-A — antiaircraft artillery — and SAMs could be a serious threat when it
could be seen with the naked eye, so Talon pilots worked hard to remain
invisible.
 
In this context, a few
mountains between them and hostiles were highly approved of.

Fitzduane
unclipped an Ultimax from its mount and fitted a fresh hundred-round
magazine.
 
A pump-action grenade launcher
went over his shoulder and more ammunition went into a rucksack.
 
Then he joined Cochrane in carrying Al
Lonsdale into a natural rock emplacement in the foothills.

It was a
far-from-perfect location because there was no overhead cover, but there was
nothing better immediately around and their plans depended on their moving up
rather than out in the next few minutes.
 
That meant they needed access to the sky.

Parachute
flares exploded in the sky and the valley was lit up with white light.
 
Backed up by field glasses, it was an
old-fashioned solution for dealing with the visibility problem but effective
nonetheless.

The wrecked
Guntrack could be clearly seen.
 
Fitzduane doubted that the Tecuno mercenaries could see them crouched
down behind the rocks in camouflage with blackened faces, but common sense
dictated their rough location.

There was a
moaning sound and a salvo of mortar shells bracketed the wrecked vehicle, and
blast after blast hurled metal splinters into the surrounding rocks.
 
Half a dozen heavy machine guns joined in.

The parachute
flares died out but the barrage continued, and Fitzduane knew it would only be
a matter of time.
 
They seemed to be up
against some serious opposition, and the way the assault was being conducted
suggested that the hostiles had recovered from their confusion.

He prayed that
someone up high would come to their assistance very soon, or they would be up
there themselves checkout out their new wings.

It was a
prospect Fitzduane was willing to postpone.
 
He decided he would try the direct approach.

"Eagle
Friend," he said quietly and deliberately into his radio, "we have
heavy incoming here, so hear me well.
 
This is no time for subtlety.
 
Knock off your coffee break and be kind enough to seriously fuck the bad
guys.
 
Do you copy?"

"Loud and
clear, Hugo," said the Bear, and there was a roar of engines as the Combat
Talon popped up and tracked the valley, its two six-barrel .50-caliber GECALs
blazing.

Eight thousand
rounds a minute — armor-piercing, high explosive, and tracer — into the broad
end of the valley occupied by the mercenary task force.

Devastation.
 
Slaughter.
 
A scale of
destruction it was hard to comprehend.

Explosion
after explosion rent the air as armored vehicles blew up.
 
The incoming mortar and APC rounds ceased.

Fitzduane and
Cochrane peered between two rocks at the holocaust.

"Unbelievable,"
said Fitzduane in an awed voice.

A parachute
opened above them, and seconds later a bulky package hit the ground.

Fitzduane
grinned at Cochrane.
 
"It's been
easy up to now," he said.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Major Khalifa
Sherrif might have been a truly terrible map reader, but militarily he was
moderately competent.

Under fire, he
normally had a reasonable idea of what to do if it was only how to keep his own
valuable body out of harm's way.
 
Nonetheless, fighting Indian peasants in Tecuno armed with only
shotguns, the odd AK-47 assault rifle, and RPG-7 rocket launchers had not
prepared him for this kind of combat.

Rifles that could
take out armored personnel carriers at well over a kilometer and aircraft guns
that could put a round in every square meter of land in a valley-wide swath
were new to him — and quite terrifying.

He thought
about the situation.
 
Another column had
showed up from the south and he had deployed them around the airstrip.
 
Part of the enemy force had already left — he
had seen the Combat Talon taking off in the distance — but at least the
remainder were now surrounded somewhere in the narrow end of the funnel and the
airstrip had been rendered unusable.

The enemy,
whoever they were, but certainly commandos of some kind, were trapped.
 
They had no way out.
 
And by morning the forces around them would
be overwhelming.
 
Infantry and armor was
converging on the Funnel from every direction.

It was going
to work out.
 
The post of military aide
to Governor Quintana that he had been after would be his.
 
The minor detail that his armored column had
been shot to pieces by the enemy would be glossed over, and anyway there was a
useful technique called creative accounting.
 
No one was really going to come out here to the battlefield to take a
look.

He switched to
consideration of immediate tactics.
 
Sending in armor was for the birds.
 
The burning wrecks of T55s and armored fighting vehicles dotting the
valley floor below were blunt proof of that.

No, the best
tactic overall was to wait the enemy out and let the sun do its work
tomorrow.
 
There was no water in the
Funnel, so it would only be a matter of time.

He considered
this option.
 
It certainly made the most
sense militarily.
 
Still, the politics of
the situation also had to be factored in.
 
Surrounding — without doing anything more — did not have a heroic ring,
and soldiers were supposed to fight.

He had one
platoon of hard cases he used for chasing Indians in the hills.
 
A small group used to this kind of terrain
might just do the trick where armor had failed.

He sent them
in and watched them as they disappeared into the darkness.
 
In his report, he would lead them, of
course.
 
Fortunately, in real life he had
more sense and whistled up his sergeant for a cup of tea.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The Bear
watched the loadmaster get his end of the Fulton Rescue System ready and tried
to get his mind around what was about to happen.

It had been
explained to him in some detail during the long flight in, but frankly it was
hard to grasp.

It was not
that it was complicated.
 
It was more
that it was quite loopy.
 
It also was
unnatural, decidedly only for the insane, and certainly the most terrifying way
of boarding an aircraft that he had ever heard of.
 
Bar none.
 
In his considered opinion, it belonged only in cartoons.
 
He could imagine Bugs Bunny having a high old
time with it and Woody Woodpecker chortling with glee.
 
But it was decidedly not for humans.

He thought
about the procedure again and shuddered.
 
It made throwing yourself out of an aircraft door with a backpack full
of nylon tied together with string
appear
positively
safe.

But if they
were to get Fitzduane and his people out of terminal trouble, it was the only
way.

The intercom
crackled.
 
"We're going in,"
said the pilot.

The GECAL
crews readied their weapons.

And then the
firing started.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Fitzduane and
Cochrane put on the still-unconscious Lonsdale's suit and then scrambled into
their own.

A webbing
harness was built into each suit, and that in turn was attached to a line.
 
The line looked disturbingly fragile.
 
It looked scarcely strong enough to support
one person, let alone three.

The bulkiest
element of the package was a cylinder of helium.
 
Fitzduane connected the helium as indicated
and turned on the valve, and with surprising speed an airship-shaped balloon
began to appear.
 
It was bigger than he
had expected and he wondered why,
then
realized it had
the weight of five hundred feet of line to support.

He released
the balloon and it ascended speedily, the line unraveling as it climbed until
the umbilical was taut, trembling only slightly as the wind blew at the
miniature airship up above.

"Eagle
Friend," he said into his radio.
 
"We're ready as we'll ever be — but I feel scared shitless.
 
It'll never work."

"It had
better," said Cochrane, who was surveying the approach through
binoculars.
 
"The hostiles are
learning.
 
There is a platoon-sized group
working its way up, and they'll be in range in a couple of minutes."

He raised the
Barrett.
 
He was not as good as Al
Lonsdale, but he was close.
 
Conventional
rifle range and the Barrett's range were two different orders of magnitude.

He aimed and
fired rapidly.

The advancing
unit's point man, platoon sergeant, and radio operator lay dead on the ground
when he had finished, and the rest of the platoon had scurried for cover.
 
Several were wounded by rock splinters gouged
out by the massive multipurpose rounds.

There was a roar
of aircraft engines and gunfire as Eagle Friend flew down the valley yet again
and hosed the surviving mercenary troops.

Major Khalifa
Sherrif was waiting with a SAM operator for exactly this development and held
his position.
 
Only his head was not under
cover, and that seemed a reasonable risk.
 
He wanted to see the kill.
 
The
aircraft was flying at just under 500 feet, he estimated, and was keeping
surprisingly steady.
 
The trooper would
get a lock.
 
They were going to get the
aircraft.

The missile leaped
from the launcher and soared toward the Combat Talon.

Bright orange
fireballs drew glowing streaks in the sky as the Talon fired its antimissile
flares.

The
heat-seeking SAM, faced with an excess of choice, twisted and turned and plowed
into the far side of the valley.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Fitzduane and
Cochrane — Lonsdale, still unconscious, held up between them — looked at each
other as the huge aircraft approached.

Two eight-foot
arms attached to its nose were now extended in an open
V
to snare the thin line attached to the
balloon.
 
The balloon could be detected
in the darkness by night-vision goggles, but there was also a strobe light
flashing away at the top, shielded from the ground but in the line of sight of
the pilot.

The aircraft
was going to snare the thin line at something like 125 knots — 156 miles an
hour — and Fitzduane did not want to think about what was going to happen
next.
 
Whatever he had been told in
training, he imagined a horrendous jerk and horrible pain and his body being
cut in half by the shock.
 
And anyway, he
did not like heights.