Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) (28 page)

They drove on, finally clear of the people and the overflow of the camp, into the hilly gorge.

“What was that about?”

“We should have given you a Georgian weapon.”

Rat thought about it. “You’re probably right.” He slid his weapon under the seat, out of sight.

They went from one hill to another, some covered with dense foliage, others stark and bare, covered only with sad grass. They saw no one but were sure they were being watched. The rutted road made it impossible to travel any faster than twenty kilometers per hour. Rat felt vulnerable. They passed through the next enclave without incident and with Mark James’s quiet equipment sniffing for gamma and beta rays, then the enclave after that. By mid-afternoon they had gone as deep into the gorge as they were going to go. They had found the camps they had wanted to visit. They hadn’t seen anyone who looked Sudanese, nor had they seen any of signs of the Europeans who supposedly had come to join the Chechen-Islamic struggle.

The captain turned to speak to Rat. “This is as far as we go. What do you want to do?”

“Is there any other way out?”

“There is another road that runs along the western side of the gorge. It is worse, and touches none of the populations. But who knows?”

“Let’s take that road. We’ll keep our instrumentation on all the way. Maybe we’ll pick something up.”

“It will be dark before we leave if we do that.”

“We’ve got to find these radioactive cores.”

The captain shrugged and instructed the driver to take the western road. They kept the instruments on throughout the bone-jarring ride, but found no sign of any of the missing nuclear cores. By the time they turned back onto the road on which they had entered the gorge, it was pitch dark. The moon was not yet visible over the hills.

The truck groaned and protested as it climbed the steep hill. The dull yellow headlights bounced around the road and off the countless trees. The diesel engine was tired and strained under the load. The driver was even more tired, and his efforts to avoid the ruts and holes were less successful.

Rat stared into the darkness wondering where the nuclear cores had gone. He was sure it was Duar’s men who had taken them. It was part of their obsessive, unending quest to make either a thermonuclear bomb, or short of that, a dirty nuclear bomb that would spread deadly nuclear radiation without the necessity of a nuclear explosion.

He saw something flash in the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a rocket-propelled grenade flying directly at them. “Incoming!” he yelled. The captain turned where Rat was pointing and saw the RPG-7 coming from the downhill side of the road. Rat yelled, “Ambush! Get out!”

The captain continued to stare a split second too long. Rat reached across him, opened his door, and pushed him out on the uphill side of the truck just as the grenade slammed into the truck behind them. Rat followed the captain, hit the ground, and rolled clear. The captain shouted to his men as they tried to scramble out of the truck before the next grenade hit.

Rat ran to the truck behind them. He approached the burning wreck from the uphill side as Banger ran to him and pulled the caps off the nightscope on his sniper rifle. “Shit, sir, that was close.”

“You see anybody?”

Banger shook his head.

Rat returned his attention to the burning truck. The heat was too intense for him to approach any closer than ten feet. He looked for McSwain, then saw what remained of him burning inside the cab. The armor-piercing grenade had penetrated the driver’s door, lodged itself in the cab, and blown up, instantly killing the driver, McSwain, and the other Georgian.

“Damn it!” Rat exclaimed. He and the Georgian captain ran to the back of the burning truck and helped the two survivors out. They looked like ghosts or zombies, with heavy gray smoke rolling up from their uniforms. They were unresponsive to their captain; they had been deafened by the explosion.

James stood beside Rat in stunned silence. Suddenly he turned. “I’ve got to get the instruments!” He ran back toward the front truck.

“No!” Rat yelled, nearly following him, but then turned back toward the burning truck. Rat helped the survivors away from the flames. Everyone huddled in a group down the road from the two trucks, leaning in toward the hill. “No way to tell how many are here, but you can be sure they think they have enough to take us. If we stay here we’ll be killed. We have to go right at them. We’ve already wasted too much time.”

The captain’s eyes were huge. He looked confused.

Rat said to him, “You ever been in combat?”

Captain Kolbaia shook his head.

“Take your men and go right at the source of the RPG. Spread out. Five meters apart. Stay low and fast. Don’t stop until you’re on top of them or you’re clear of them. After you start, I’ll take my men into the woods to the left and get behind them. We have night vision. I doubt they do, but don’t count on them not having it. Be careful.”

The silence was interrupted by automatic gunfire that tore into the trucks behind them. Rat looked up the hill and saw Mark James running toward them with his briefcase detection device. James made it to them unharmed. Rat noticed none of the gunfire aimed at James had come from uphill. “Dumbasses,” Rat said. “Don’t even know how to set up an ambush.” To the captain, “You ready?”

The captain nodded. His mouth hung open slightly. The bullets were now slamming into the dirt where the road had been cut out of the hill. “I should be in charge of our plan. I am a Georgian Army officer and we are in Georgia.”

“You’re right. No doubt about it. But I’ve seen a little of this before. So this time let’s do it my way. Next time we’ll do it your way. Okay?”

He nodded. “We will go now.”

“When you get to the edge of the trees, turn right about ten degrees and head right for the shooting. They’ll be shooting in the dark—it will be hard to find you once we get inside the trees. The first twenty meters will be the most dangerous. They should be advancing now if they have any idea of what they’re doing. They won’t be expecting you to go right at them. You should be ready to shoot anyone in front of you, just don’t go left. We’ll be around your left flank and up behind them. As soon as you hear us fire you hit the deck and stop. It will sound very different. They’re shooting AK-47s. Ours will sound very different, but you have to listen! You ready? You got that?”

The captain nodded as he shouted instructions to his men, who made sure their clips were in their rifles and a round was in the chamber. Everyone was ready.

Rat moved away from the captain with the other Americans following, the SEALs and Green Berets who hadn’t been killed. Rat wondered why they hadn’t fired on the truck in front. Standard ambush procedure—fire from both sides, and disable the front vehicle to block the road. They were almost surely advancing up the woods to attack them at close range with automatic weapons. Rat hurried down the road in a crouch until he was a hundred meters down the hill. He stopped, put on his night-vision goggles, and waited for the other Americans to do likewise.

He had worked and trained with Green Berets before. They watched him expectantly. He looked up and down the road, then into the woods. He and Groomer were the only American officers alive. He nodded, and gave them hand signals—he would go across the road first, they were to follow in uneven succession and spread out in the woods in a line abreast, all to the left of him.

Rat dashed across the road and stopped low when he penetrated the tree line. He held his MP5N on his shoulder, ready to fire at anything that moved. He could see everything in green and white. He could see the Georgians spreading out nicely in the woods to his right, making their way slowly in the darkness. He could also see the tracer bullets from their attackers racing toward the truck and now generally toward the Georgians. Rat went deeper into the woods another hundred meters and turned right. He walked just under a trot, careful not to blunder into a trap. The other Americans followed him, watching him, and watching farther out to their left to make sure they wouldn’t get flanked themselves. They were five meters apart, instantly forming into a squad, bringing all their Special Forces training to bear. They pointed their submachine guns directly ahead of them with their fingers on the trigger, careful not to shoot before it was time, before they were right on top of their enemy.

Rat led the way, watching the shooting that was now ahead of them. He threaded his way through the trees, stopping every fifty meters to do a complete three-hundred-sixty-degree survey. Rat knew this wasn’t how to run a counterambush operation. It was far too dangerous. His fire would be brought against the attackers from behind; his allies, the Georgians, were just on the other side. Any misses could end up hitting the Georgians. But this had developed too quickly. He didn’t have time for the perfect strategy. He just knew they were going to have to take care of this themselves.

Rat kept up his pace. His breathing was even and easy. His senses were on edge. He was sure the attackers didn’t yet know they were coming. The terrain grew steeper. They had chosen their ambush location well, but had not thought it through. They had left themselves vulnerable.

Rat stopped. He saw three men ahead hiding behind trees and firing on the Georgians beyond. He raised his hand, crouched down, and the other Americans stopped. They made their line perfectly straight and waited for Rat. They could all see what he saw. Rat looked for more men. He waited several seconds, then saw four more men clustered slightly to his left. They were moving slowly, toward the Georgians, not firing at all. None had night-vision devices.

Rat glanced to his left and gave the signal to advance. He began a slow trot with his weapon at his shoulder. He waited until he was twenty yards from the attackers and still undetected. He placed the gunsight on the back of the closest man and pulled the trigger for a three-round burst. His gun belched. The man lurched forward and a dark green stain spread over his back. The other two had heard the sound from behind them and turned to meet the threat. The other four to the left had heard the new sound, but didn’t know where it was coming from. Confusion descended on the attackers.

The Georgians heard the Americans’ weapons and stopped firing. They lay down on the ground. Rat and the other Americans kept firing in short bursts, hitting with three and five rounds at a time. The second shooter fell backward and slammed into a tree. He slumped to the ground and hit the third man who tried to push him away. He was hit immediately by Groomer’s burst in the face and jerked back grotesquely to the ground.

The Americans ran past the three dead attackers after the four who were still advancing toward the Georgians, now thirty meters ahead of them. They were lying on the ground, very vulnerable. The attackers assumed they had all been injured, and were hurrying to finish the job.

The Green Berets who were holding down the left side of the line saw what was happening and fired quickly after the four to turn them back toward them and away from the Georgians.

The four heard the bullets ripping through the leaves close by them. One of them fell screaming, holding his back. The other three turned to face their new threat, kneeling in the woods. One of the Green Berets stopped and fired at the attacker farthest to the left. Robby caught the other two from the right side and they fell twenty yards in front of the Americans, who all stopped firing at the same time. They walked steadily forward, looking like aliens in their Georgian camouflage uniforms and night-vision goggles. The man who had been shot in the back reached for his weapon and was immediately executed by one shot from Banger.

Rat scanned the woods quickly for any other men, any other threat, then moved quickly to where the dead men lay. “Captain!” he called, alerting the Georgians.

The Georgians stood and walked toward him. Rat continued to call out, “You okay?”

“I’ve lost two men. What of your men?”

Rat quickly surveyed those with him. They were all okay. The Americans had already set up a perimeter around the area. “We’re okay.” He removed his night-vision goggles and knelt down next to one of the attackers. He pulled a small mag-light out of his pocket and shone it on the face of one of the dead men.

The Georgian captain looked through the man’s pockets. No identification, no wallet, no money, no insignia on the cobbled-together uniform, nothing. “This was a suicide mission.”

“They look like Chechens to you?” Rat asked. “Or Georgians?”

The captain looked at the face. He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know who they are, but they are not Chechen or Georgian.”

“Robby, get their pictures.”

Robby nodded and pulled a small flat digital camera out of his pocket. He moved the flash up to the top, crouched in front of each dead attacker and took a face shot. He then backed off and took a body shot of each one. When he was done he quickly cycled through the digital images on the back of his camera, saw that he had gotten them all, and pushed it back into his pocket. “All set.”

Rat turned to Captain Kolbaia. “We need you to get on your radio and get them to meet us with a helicopter. We’ve got to walk—we’ll stay on the downhill side of the road and in the woods until we crest the hill and head down out of the gorge.”

“Our only radio is still in truck.”

Rat considered. “What kind was it?”

“FM.”

“Robby, your magic little radio do FM?”

“Sure,” Robby nodded. “But the range isn’t great.”

“Can you reach them when we get to the top of the hill?”

“Probably.”

Rat looked uphill through the woods toward the flickering wreckage still burning on the road. “How far to a clearing?” he asked the captain.

“About five kilometers.”

“Let’s go.”

They started walking through the woods carefully, with Kolbaia leading the way. Rat quickly checked their position on his PDA with a GPS fix.

Rat looked over at James, who was walking beside him. James was visibly shaken. “Never seen anything like that before?” Rat asked.

“Not even close,” James said, swallowing hard to stop the nausea that was welling up.