Cody's Army (7 page)

The eastern sky yielded to the purple of oncoming night, the western horizon’s warm red becoming the bleak gray of dusk.

Caine lowered the Ml, having viewed the oncoming Jeeps through the scope.

“Fifteen men,” he informed Hawkeye coolly. “They’ll be in range soon.”

Hawkins shifted to scan in another direction, into the failing light of an ending day, at the spot where the first Jeep had
disappeared behind the butte.

“It’s them other boys got me worried. Maybe we oughta wake up sleeping beauty,” he nodded toward Ruiz. “He might make a better
bartering chip awake than asleep.”

“My guess is he’ll just go back to telling us how we’re going to get killed,” Caine muttered, “just before we get killed.
But yeah, give him a few slaps. It’s about the only chance we’ve got short of standing these blighters off until we run out
of ammunition.”

He turned his attention to the nearing vehicles, waiting for them to come into range.

Hawkeye started over toward Ruiz. Movement caught his peripheral vision among some creosote, higher up behind them. He whirled,
the Magnum pulling around with him, just as four weapons opened fire from various points along that higher ground.

He snarled,
“Son of a fucking bitch!”
and then started pulling off rounds from the .44, realizing as he did so that the unseen riflemen from the Jeep were purposely
firing high, over their heads, so as not to hit their boss.

Caine rolled onto his back, his Ml opened up on full auto, spraying the leafy shrubbery with a steady rain of lead that momentarily
silenced the other gunfire.

Hawkeye reached down and grabbed the unconscious Ruiz as he had before, pulling the disheveled guy around to the other side
of the rocks, where Caine had moved to give cover fire.

This side of the cluster of rocks left them exposed to those reinforcements bumping in about a quarter-klick away.

Caine ceased firing to reload, the echoes of the gunfire echoing away to nothing.

“Senors,
you are surrounded. Throw down your guns. All we want is El Gato! I, Felipe Gallegos, assure you you will not be harmed—”

Hawkeye aimed across the rock at the source of the sound and fired.

He was rewarded with a death grunt, and one dead Felipe Gallegos toppled into view and somersaulted down the hill until a
big rock stopped him.

While the other riflemen up there resumed an automatic fusillade down upon Hawkins’ and Caine’s position, the air filled with
the crackle of their weapons, the whistling of projectiles coming too close and ricocheting, and now the engine sounds of
the Jeeps from their rear.

The Texan looked sideways at the Englishman, there where they knelt beneath the cluster of boulders. “Uh, y’know, tea bag,
maybe you’re right; maybe it is time we gave up this bounty hunting.”

Caine aimed the big Ml around on the approaching Jeeps.

“Maybe it’s bloody well time to die,” he grunted, raising the scope to his eye.

He pulled the rubberized eyepiece away as a sudden new sound boomed into the montage of war in the desert; the unmistakable
choppa-choppa-choppa
of a helicopter rotoring in low and fast from the north—at the moment blocked from sight by the butte.

Then the chopper thrust into view; a big single-engine jet-turbine Bell Ulti-D “Huey” boasting, Caine’s trained eye spotted
at a glance, 40mm cannons and 5.56mm machine guns mounted externally on turrets, the cannons stabbing geysering explosions
that loudly chomped up the earth behind the high-ground ridge as the warbird flew by low overhead.

Two bodies flew out, hurled under the impact of the flesh-eating detonations.

The third Mexican drug hood charged blindly out into the clearing to escape and walked into a round from Hawkeye’s .44 that
messily lifted off a quarter of his skull and whatever brains went with it.

The Huey continued out, banking gracefully above the three Jeeps that were slowing down in confusion.

Hawkins wheeled around to watch the sight and so did Caine.

“Now who the hell could that be?”

“I don’t know,” muttered the Brit, raising the sighting scope back to his eye, “but I damn well intend to give him some help.”

Cody worked the Huey’s controls, easing the chopper around into a strafing run at the Jeeps on the ground as the drivers tried
to separate—but not fast enough.

The gunship zoomed by overhead, its miniguns yammering now, the lines of pounding bullets pulverizing the desert floor, tracking
across two of the filled-to-capacity Jeeps, brutally pulping most of the men in one vehicle, the parallel line of slugs crossing
the other vehicle’s gas tank, blowing it to smithereens in an orange-red blast that lit up the ascending shroud of night settling
across the desert.

At that instant, Richard Caine sent off a grenade from his and Hawkeye’s position over by the rocks, and the remaining Jeep
full of Mexican hoods caught another on-the-money hit that banged that moving vehicle off the ground—flying shrapnel devastating
the passengers into bloody ruins, flung into the air, not moving after they landed across the ground.

Cody pulled up the Huey, easing the warbird into a landing approach toward a level patch of ground near where Hawkins and
Caine now stood erect.

He felt a grin and a good feeling coursed through him as he set the chopper down, creating a mini dust storm caused by the
backwash of the rotors. He had wondered what kind of shape Hawkeye and Richard would be in when he found them; wondered if
they would still have that sharp combat edge he remembered from ten years ago in Vietnam when they had fought together.

Ten years could be a long time. A lot could have changed.

But these two men, he now knew, had not changed.

Perhaps men like Caine and Hawkins never changed, because they had found perfection of mind, body, and spirit in what they
did, in being tested by a harsh world, and they would not give that up to anything but infirmity or death.

He touched the Huey down on terra firma and cut the engine to idle, wondering what Caine and Hawkins would think of an offer
from the last man on Earth they could have expected to see.

The Huey soared through the night at three-thousand feet above an ocean of black nothing, bearing northwesterly toward El
Paso from where Jesus Ruiz, El Gato, had jumped bail after the DEA had managed to bust him.

Ruiz had regained consciousness. He was trussed up for delivery against the rear bulkhead and appeared to have lost all stomach
for trying to reason these gringos out of taking him back to the law. One look at what was left of his gang after he came
to on the ground just before lift-off had convinced the drug boss that the curtain had come down on this act. He sat back
there, apprehensively watching the three up front as if fearful that they might decide on a whim to stroll back and pitch
him out.

Cody had just finished calling in their flight plan and ETA to El Paso, relaying the message from Hawkins and Caine to be
passed on to the authorities that they were bringing in a bail-jumping fugitive, Class A.

He had obtained the Huey through-Pete Lund’s connections after Lund’s inquiries had tracked down the approximate whereabouts
and intentions of the Caine and Hawkins partnership.

He had briefed the two on what he wanted of them before the take-off from that desert kill ground in Mexico, after a warm
round of bear hugs and high-fives. He had seen close up that his first impression of the two—that they had not changed a whit
since their old combat days together—was correct, but he still was not sure what their response would be to his offer.

Hawkins and Caine had been discussing the proposition between themselves, as he had suggested, and in the pilot’s seat he
had not been able to hear them due to the all-enveloping rumble of the chopper’s engine.

At last the two came back to him, shouting to be heard.

“Well, we kicked it around, Sarge,” Hawkeye yelled at his ear.

“And?”

The Texan grinned.

“Well, I woulda said no a couple hours ago, but the way me and the limey here look at it, I reckon we owe ya one. You want
to put the old team together and Uncle Sugar’s paying good; hell yeah, we’ll sign up for the fun.”

Caine leaned forward, adding, “I would have said no a couple of hours ago too, because I’d forgotten what it’s like to be
in a fight with you, Cody. We were too good a unit to never work again.”

“Question,” shouted Hawkeye. “You told us about Pete. What about Rufe?”

Caine nodded.

“Where is he? He’s not—”

“No, but right now he probably wishes he was,” Cody told them.

And he told them about Rufe Murphy’s predicament, and what they would have to do about it.

FIVE

A
thens, from its crown on the Acropolis hill, spreads across an arid plain in a network of old buildings and circuitous streets
that give way to wide modern boulevards and squares.

Omonis Square, with its
bouzouki
music in the air and sidewalks lined with
tavernas
where the men sit sipping thick black coffee and conversing animatedly, is the home of Athens’ three major department stores,
but has about it a rabble-filled, hustle-bustle atmosphere closer to that of the nearby marketplace of the old town—where
the country people come to buy, sell and socialize—than to the swankier tourist environs of Kolonaki Square or the Athens
Hilton.

Christus Imports was on Caningos Street, a narrow, relatively quiet thoroughfare two blocks east of the square; an area of
some small businesses but primarily residential, which is why Anton Christus had chosen it.

Christus felt a cool chill of premonition touch the base of his spine despite the intense dry heat of midafternoon as he resealed
the blond wooden box intended for Farouk Hassan’s people: the Uzis, ammunition enough to stand off an army, hand grenades,
pistols, and daggers. He looked around the empty loading dock inside the garage.

No on had come in while he had been making the final check of the shipment.

He slammed shut the back doors of the van. He had waited until his workers were gone on their daily afternoon break before
making sure everything was as it should be. Most of them knew nothing of his reputation as Athens’ leading black-market arms
dealer.

Now all that remained was the wait on word from the PLGF.

He glimpsed his dark reflection for a moment in the smoked glass of the van’s back doors. His Gallic features, inherited from
his mother and as out of place as ever atop the stocky Greek body, wore a pinched, high-strung expression that he tried to
erase by consciously telling himself to relax. He always got this way when dealing with the Palestine Liberation Guerrilla
Force.

He heard the phone back in his office ring once, and a moment later Apodaka, his driver and the only man in his employ who
knew about and assisted with his “second business,” stuck his head out the office doorway at the far end of the dock.

“For you, Anton.”

He hurried to take the call.

“Hello?”

“We are ready,” said a voice that he recognized at once as belonging to Ali Hassan, Farouk’s younger brother and one of the
PLGF, Ali’s voice somehow deeper in resonance than Farouk’s. “So are we,” he replied curtly. “Where? When?”

“Right now. We will be parked facing west just east of the corner where Pireos connects with Ermou.”

“But that is too near the Acropolis,” Christus protested. “There will be tourists, crowds all around us.”

“And hundreds going about their daily chores,” Ali Hassan countered tersely. “We will be lost in the crowd. No one will pay
attention to laborers transferring a box from one van to another.”

“I don’t like it.”

“These are Farouk’s orders,” Ali replied with utter finality. “We leave for there now. We will meet you there in exactly one
half-hour.”

The receiver clicked and Anton’s ear was filled with the irritating purr of the dial tone.

He slammed the receiver onto its base angrily.

“Filthy swine—” he started to say, then he remembered Apodaka’s presence and turned to find the driver staring back at him
expectantly from the doorway. “Well, don’t just stand there, get the truck started,” he barked peevishly. “We’re on our way
to earn more blood money.”

“There they are,” said Rallis the moment he saw the van emerge from the garage of Christus Imports. “After them.”

Detective Giorgios gunned the unmarked police car to life and waited.

The van, with Apodaka driving and Christus in the passenger seat, turned left into the baking sunlight of Caningo Street,
heading away from the police car.

Giorgios slipped the car into gear and pulled into the moderate flow of economy cars and bicycles clogging the street.

One of the two detectives in the backseat leaned forward.

“Think this is it?” he asked Rallis.

“If it’s not,” Giorgios answered for his superior, “it is the first move they’ve made all day.”

Chief Inspector Constantine Rallis, of the Special Affairs branch of the Athens police department, felt the stirring air through
the open windows dry the patina of sweat coating his face.