Black Storm (17 page)

When he straightened, Sarsten was there too. “She go down?” the SAS murmured.

Zeitner didn't answer. He bent again, felt her shoulder, something softer beneath it; removed his hand quickly. Whispered, “You okay, Major?”

“What's going on?”

“She went down.”

Gault knelt, got his ear next to her face. She was breathing, but her skin felt cold. “Major?” he muttered.

She jerked, murmuring something. He sat her up and ran his hands over her shoulders, neck, thighs. No blood, no tangible injury. “You hurt?” he asked her.

“No. I…guess I passed out.” She tried to struggle up, but he put both hands on her shoulders, keeping her head down.

“We got a problem,” Sarsten whispered hoarsely. “They know we're out here.”

“I don't think so.”

“I'm telling you, Sergeant. I can smell these fuckers by now. They know we're here. Not exactly where, but they're out looking for us.”

Gault considered this, considered too that the man confronting him had probably gone sleepless for many days. “Take your security position, Sergeant,” he told him.

“Did you hear me? I was out here three days and got ambushed twice. You better start taking this serious, mate.”

“I heard you. Take your security position,” Gault told him again.

When the SAS faded back into the night, he bent over the doctor again. “You been drinking water? You better drink some more. And give me this.” He got her ruck off and swung it over one shoulder. It unbalanced him, but she needed the relief. He got her on her feet then and got them moving again, though not as fast as before; he passed the word up to Blaisell to drop the pace.

 

BLAZE WAS
just as happy to. Not that he couldn't keep it up, though he was getting tired, but he kept hearing things. He didn't like to keep cranking along when he didn't know what was up ahead. So when Nichols grabbed his arm and muttered to slow it down, he just nodded and throttled it back.

An hour went by. They were moving uphill now, up to the lip or edge of a small ridge. He realized Gault was routing them along the high terrain now, along the ridge lines. Not a good idea tactically, but you made better time. Sure a hell of a lot of nothing out here. If there wasn't oil under this part of the world, he'd say leave these badlands to the ragheads. Nobody else would want them, that was for sure.

He came back from his thoughts at a rattle from the dark, and halted, holding up a fist:
Freeze
. He felt the team come taut behind him at the same time his own pulse speeded up. He turned his head from side to side. His ears strained into blackness as his hands tightened on his weapon. He gently touched the selector with his thumb, checking its position.

There: to the left; a clatter of rock.

Another herd of goats? A camel? A dog?

Or men in olive drab and scuttle helmets, a like excitement pounding against the bars of their hearts?

He waited for a long time, peering and listening. He didn't hear the sound again. Didn't see movement. Whatever it was had either moved away or had sensed them too and was waiting them out.

He checked his watch. They couldn't wait forever. He breathed out through a parched mouth, working his shoulders against the straps of his ruck.

Then he motioned Nichols forward, and they moved again, one after the other, into the darkness all around.

 

BACK NEAR
the end of the column, Maureen still felt dizzy, sick at the pit of her stomach.

She'd thought she was in good shape, but rock climbing was different from hiking for miles with weight like an iron burden laid across her shoulders, a hot iron nail hammered into her thighs. But she'd kept on grimly until at last the night turned solid inside her head, and the next thing she knew Gault was bending over her.

Now a foul taste lit her mouth. Her shoulders felt light, as if she was going to rise up and fly, as in a dream. One of them was carrying her pack. No doubt cursing her. The woman. The weak sister. Couldn't carry her load. Couldn't take the pace.

All she could do was keep going. And that was about all she could do, just keep putting one in front of the other. Hydrated, like the gunny said. She had to stay hydrated.

Her canteen was halfway to her lips when she slammed into the man ahead. Something metal clanged like a jeep hitting a brick wall. She dropped the canteen, caught it just in time, screwed the top back. Licked her lips, wondering how they could be wet yet her mouth still so dry. Lenson grunted something and disappeared. She moved quickly after him, afraid of being left behind, but then they collided again. From ahead came muffled shuffling, whispers, a click she couldn't identify.

“Break,” the word came back. She turned to pass it on to Zeitner, lowered her pistol, and went on up, joining the circle on the ground, pointing her weapon out again into the surrounding night.

THE NIGHT
wore away very slowly, like a wheel grinding black diamond. The terrain was rocky and uneven, and though Gault kept them on the high ground it all tended gradually downhill. This worked with the map, which reassured him, but Blaisell kept stopping. Even when the scout moved, the pace was too slow. They weren't making the distance over time. He'd planned for them to reach the rendezvous well before dawn, and have time to find an ORP and get another hide site dug in. Just in case the contact didn't show, and they had to stand by over daylight. At last he closed Vertierra up, told him he was going forward, and trotted toward the point, ruck slamming against his butt.

Blaze whipped around as he came out of the dark. He muttered, “It's me,” and the weapon shadow lowered.

“Gunny?” A murmur so faint he might have imagined it.

He judged the wind gave them enough aural cover. He signaled back for a break and went to a knee. Blaisell joined him. He put his mouth next to the kid's ear and said, “We got to speed this up, Crusty, or we're gonna be still pulling our puds out here at dawn.”

“I keep hearing things, Gunny.”

“What kind of things? Where?”

“Can't tell. Like I hear voices sometimes. Almost, or like they're real far away.”

Gault stood up. Focusing his goggles as sharp as they'd go, he checked their 360. Nothing. But the kid had sharp ears and eyes; that was why he was the scout. They were exposed out here. He was being careful. But maybe it was smarter just to get across this as fast as they could. He ran it all through his head and ducked back down. “It must be the wind. We got to step out here, Blaze. Pick it up.”

“Got it,” the point man whispered.

He signaled them up and the file moved back into motion. There, the corporal was moving it out now.
Almost too fast. But they had to make some of this time up. He let him go.

And now he was back again in the land of no shadow, submerged again in black so black it quivered in purple and yellow like the afterimages of strobe flashes. Above him the haze cut off the stars. The raw cold air grew a cough in his lungs. He swallowed again and again until it went away.

 

THEY WERE
moving down the side of a wadi, the muddy slanted ground slippery under their boots, when they made contact.

Blaze heard them first, out at point. He didn't see them. He smelled them. Burning tobacco. No shit. It was just registering when he heard someone cough. Someone not in the column. Off to the right, maybe fifty, seventy yards.

He focused the goggles and searched that way.

He heard a faint jingle. He turned his head and clenched his fist in the halt signal; pointed toward the sounds.

Gault heard them too, and saw them: vague warm-green shapes higher along the slope, eighty or a hundred meters distant. He made it as a chance contact. If it was an ambush, they'd be dug in, invisible, the patrol would never see them till it was too late. It was bad enough as it was. The enemy had the high ground. If they had night vision, Soviet or Dutch, the patrol would be clearly visible, infrared-silhouetted against the colder ground.

So far, though, he didn't hear or see anything that indicated they'd been detected. The other patrol was upwind. If they were walking blind, UAT-12 might still be invisible.

“Danger right front. Cover, freeze in place,” he whispered, and heard it go down along the line. He dropped too, merging his silhouette with the rocks. His right hand checked the HK, making sure the mag was seated, the
selector on safe. He'd checked it sixty times that night, but he still checked it again.

It was probably a night patrol covering the antiaircraft site. Stay low, stay quiet, they'd most likely just go by. Should he set up a hasty ambush? No. His mission wasn't to kill Iraqi dogfaces. It was to stay covert. Avoid compromise, and carry out the reconnaissance.

Unbreathing, unmoving, flat on the ground, they waited. He heard another sound; something like the zip of steel against canvas. Just keep quiet, he told the attachments in his mind. Just let them go on by, whoever they were.

The sounds of men walking on loose rock above them. The clack of stone. The jingle of metal. Another cough.

He lifted his face from the ground and saw their shapes. Couldn't tell how many. Maybe fifty yards away, moving right to left in a diagonal across his original direction of movement. They were going past. They hadn't seen them. He relaxed, letting the tension that had built up in his arms and legs dissipate like a grounded circuit.

Then someone exclaimed, a surprised burst of words. He heard them clearly, but he couldn't splice them together into sense. He heard metal rattle, sling swivels, the click of safeties going off.

Someone called out. A challenge. He hugged the ground, silent and motionless. Even now they might decide it had been nothing, and go on.

Behind him a man laughed, and called a response in Arabic. The voice sounded familiar.

A moment later he realized it was Sarsten.

He was still trying to believe it when a succession of flashes jacked the night open, blinding him with fierce light as the NVGs amplified the muzzle flares. Yelling and shrill cries echoed from the dark.

They were ripped. Compromised. Snarling in anger, not at the Iraqis but at Sarsten, he pulled his weapon to his cheek, aimed at the flashes, and pulled the trigger. A moment of shock on both sides, then automatic fire
erupted all over the side of the wadi. The rapid
kak-kak-kak
of AKs fought the muted stuttering of subsonic nine-millimeters. Green tracers flew over their heads, then moved down, arcing and bouncing as they hit rocks, glancing in every direction.

 

DAN BELLIED
himself instinctively into the wet ground as around him the HKs and M16s stuttered and cracked. It took a moment to recall he was supposed to shoot back. He pointed, rather than aimed, and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The selector, damn it…it fired then and he pumped rounds into the dark, aiming where he figured chest level should be. Screams and more firing came from their left flank.

“Australian, Australian,” the gunny was shouting. “Break contact, six o'clock, two hundred!”

The Australian Peel was a fast reaction to close contact. The first man in line, or closest to the enemy, fired out his magazine and peeled out to the right. In succession, the rest fired out their loads and leapfrogged back, one left, the next right, the next left. Done properly you ended up with a daunted enemy and the squad headed in the opposite direction. Done wrong you ended up with people shot and lost in the dark. Dan heard the command but it didn't register right away; he hadn't been drilled to execute without thought when he was tired and scared. He fired the magazine out and dropped the empty, clattering onto the ground. Groped for it, close to panic. No, forget the fucking empty! He needed another loaded one.

A shadow pounded out of the dark, rushing past. He jerked the weapon up and pulled the trigger. Fortunately it was still unloaded. The bolt slammed shut on an empty chamber.

And as if that foolish and unthinking act had unloaded all his fear, he felt a sudden detachment, a sudden flood of calm. He got to his feet, pulling at his mag pouch. A second shadow flew by, boots pounding earth. He wasn't
afraid anymore, but it was hard to think. Hard to remember what he was supposed to be doing. Going with them? Or standing his ground, covering them? “Gault,” he screamed. “Maddox!”

But all he heard was the crack of weapons, the steadily growing roar of a firefight in the dark.

 

BULLETS CRACKED
over him. Gault shouted “Australian,” gave the rally point, and dropped to a knee to pull off his suppressor. No point in it now, and it dropped the muzzle velocity of an already low-energy slug. Blaisell was firing. The light flared halos in his NVGs. He saw the point breaking right, closer to the enemy, but that was all right, that was the drill. He heard the deeper
boonk…boonk
of the 203: Nichols was pumping out grenades, laying forty-millimeter shells like a wall across their front. Flashes and screams, then the last round was in the air and F.C. was up and sprinting all out off to the left.