“Slow down, and ease into it. I’ll keep these guys busy.”
“How deep is it?” asked Carson, as the front wheels slipped into the current.
“Three, four feet…I hope.”
“How deep can this buggy go?”
“We’re going to find out! Maybe five feet, max.”
The bottom was rocky, and slippery beneath the wheels. As the water depth increased, their traction decreased. Icy water leaked in through the side doors and other unseen gaps. Halfway across, the ASV seemed to bob or float, turned partially sideways as the wheels spun to no effect, then found bottom and gripped again. Finally the depth began to lessen, the angle of the vehicle turned upward, and they approached the opposite shore as more slugs caromed off their armor plates and grenades exploded around them.
The bank on the opposite shore was steep, at least forty-five degrees, and Carson struggled to find an open path through deadfall trees and saplings. He floored the accelerator and took the slope at an angle, the turbo diesel roaring, the ASV’s four big tractor tires clawing and churning at the earth like a monster truck. With his vehicle angled steeply upward, Carson could see nothing but blank green sky and tree branches through the narrow slot of his armored glass front window. “Come on, baby, come on!” he shouted. After seconds that stretched on forever, the vehicle topped the crest and rolled to level again, allowing him to see the terrain to his front. Relief flooded through him even as more heavy shots rang off their ASV’s armored hull. Then a massive explosion seemed to detonate inside the vehicle, shaking it and stunning the three American crew.
“What was that?” Doug screamed.
Boone called back, “I think a grenade hit the engine compartment. Phil, how’s she running?” The turbo diesel had a new sound, ragged and rough.
“I’m losing RPMs, and the engine temp is going up fast.”
“Phil, there’s a dirt road straight in front, running parallel to the creek. Hang a left and slow down, we just need a few more minutes. I have two ASVs behind us in the water now, but they can only see our turret. We’re hull-down to them since we cleared the bank.”
“Then shoot them!” Carson yelled back. “Are you out of ammo?”
“Almost, but I have another idea—we’re going to visit the Nigerians. Our guns can’t stop an ASV from the front anyway. Okay, the Nigerian outpost is just ahead, it’s those buildings. Doug, put the strobe back on.” The stream marked the border between the counties assigned to the Kazak Battalion and the Nigerian Peacekeeping Force. The Nigerians had taken over two large farms, one fronting each side of the paved county road that crossed the stream into Kazak territory. The old steel cantilevered-truss bridge had survived the earthquakes. Now the ASV was approaching the Nigerian position from behind, at a walking speed. Boone swung the turret back around to the front.
Through the narrow bulletproof front windshield, Carson could see that the dirt road led alongside and then between several farm outbuildings and a large tractor shed. He glanced down: RPMs were surging up and down even with the same pressure on the accelerator pedal, oil pressure was dropping and the engine temperature was reading over 220 degrees. But they were still driving forward.
Boone said, “Their security is facing the bridge, and we’re already behind it in their rear. Okay, here we go, we’ve got company—the Nigerians are coming out to play.” From behind a small building, an SUV backed up directly in front of the ASV’s path and stopped. Soldiers spilled out of a barn, hopping around in bare feet on the cold ground while pulling up trousers and throwing on coats. Even in the green light, it was possible to tell that they were Africans, from the Nigerian contingent of “peacekeepers.”
“Hit the truck, Phil, slam it, let’s go!” Boone depressed the .50 caliber’s barrel and fired it in short bursts of three or four shots, continually traversing, taking on any targets of opportunity: vehicles, buildings, men running in the open. Carson drove straight ahead, smashed the big SUV out of the way, knocking down soldiers who in their disorientation and confusion stood in the ASV’s path. Most appeared not even to see the armored machine before they were hit and run over.
More soldiers appeared from several farmhouses and outbuildings, some taking cover and firing their rifles, which had no effect at all on the ASV. Other Nigerian thin-skinned vehicles began to move about in the confusion. It was obvious that the troops were unsure about who was friendly and who was not. Armored vehicles were synonymous with allied international peacekeepers, and the Nigerians could not seem to wrap their minds around a peacekeeping vehicle intentionally opening fire on them.
Tracers flew past the ASV from behind, and more heavy rounds impacted its hull. Boone yelled, “The Cossacks are on our ass again!” as he swung the turret and rattled off a long burst of .50 caliber toward the ASV’s rear, and then fired the last of the 40mm grenades from the M-19. This was answered with 40mm grenades from their pursuers, which exploded among the half-dressed Nigerian troops, who were now running madly in all directions at once between barns and sheds.
“Phil, when you reach the next pavement, hang a right and give her everything you’ve got.” As soon as Carson felt the smoother asphalt beneath their wheels, he turned and Boone unexpectedly launched the ASV’s turret-mounted smoke grenades. When they hit the ground, their phosphorous igniters exploded in sheets of brilliant flame. In seconds, the high-capacity military smokes were blooming and merging into a vast, impenetrable manmade fog. The firing behind them continued as they rolled northward on the two-lane road, leaving the green cloud and accelerating to thirty miles an hour. Now the .50 caliber and 40mm grenade explosions were joined by at least a dozen rifles and light machine guns, crackling and roaring behind them. The ASV’s motor emitted a new high-pitched grinding squeal, and a new burning smell invaded the inerior.
“Doug, kill the signal strobe. Phil, we’re taking the next paved road to the right.”
Carson said, “That’ll take us right back toward the fight—”
“Don’t worry; I know these roads. Just take it, this one here.” The sounds of firing continued unabated behind them; explosions, cracks, booms and the whiz of ricocheting rounds.
They approached a two-story residence on their right side. Enough moonlight filtered through the low cloud cover and reflected off the remaining snow crust for them to make out the shape of a small mansion, uphill between bare trees. A dark civilian pickup truck rolled backward down its long driveway, a squad of soldiers in the back. “N.P.F” was painted in foot-high white block letters on the tailgate and side of the shiny truck. Over the intercom from the turret, Boone said, “Stop them, Phil—that’s our next ride.”
Carson left the road, angled up the lawn to the driveway, and tipped the back corner of the pickup in a heavy-duty Pitt maneuver, smashing into its rear bumper and spinning the truck around. The occupants appeared totally shocked by the unexpected appearance of the monster ASV, and before the pickup came to a stop, they leaped from the truck bed. At the same time, both cab doors flew open. All six or seven of the Nigerian troops fled back up the lawn toward the house, leaving their shoulder weapons scattered behind them. Before they had made it thirty yards, Boone cut most of them to pieces with a raking burst from the .50 caliber, and all of them hit the ground.
“All right,” he shouted over the intercom, “this is our new car; we’re getting out here. Phil, make sure those guys are down for the count. They’re too low for me to get with the fifty, and I’m out of 40 mike-mike.” The ASV was parked sideways to the slope of the hill, its left wheels in a ditch, and the machine gun’s barrel could not be depressed far enough to reach the prone soldiers.
Carson reached up and threw open his hatch, pulled off his crew helmet with its night vision lens, then grabbed his carbine and stood on the driver’s seat. In a moment, his eyes adjusted to the ambient light. Several of the Nigerian soldiers were screaming and moaning, rolling on the snowy lawn leading up to the mansion. Dark men against the white snow. He shouldered t
he rifle and found the Aimpoint’s red dot with his right eye, flicked the safety back with his thumb, and put two quick rounds into each torso, moving or not. One man sprang to his feet and began to run away uphill, but slipped in the snow, his arms windmilling. Carson aimed the floating red dot between his shoulder blades and hit him twice more, before he could regain his balance and take off again. Nice shooting, Phil, he thought, as the man twisted down in a heap.
The blood veil had fallen over Carson’s eyes, and he wasn’t about to risk being shot from behind by some foreign interloper playing possum. I’ll bet you never dreamed you’d die in the cold snow popped into his mind and he suppressed a laugh. Still watching for other Nigerians or Kazaks to appear, he climbed all the way up through the hatch, standing watch while Boone grabbed their packs and exited through the ASV’s side door.
It took them less than a minute to change vehicles, including time for Boone to leave a four-pound C-4 demolition charge with a three-minute time fuse. The demo charge was already prepared; the white dough was packed into a large plastic mayonnaise jar. The inside bottom of the jar had been built up into a hollow cone, forming an improvised shaped charge. Boone only had to push a non-electric blasting cap through a hole in the lid and into the explosive. The silver cap was already crimped onto the end of a short piece of waterproof military time fuse. His last act, after grabbing the M-79 grenade launcher and a bandolier of 40mm grenades from the ASV, was to pull the ring of the magic marker-sized igniter at the end of the foot-long fuse. It lit with a pop, acrid smoke pouring from the fuse inside the igniter. Boone jumped into the driver’s seat of the black pickup truck, Carson rode shotgun, Doug climbed in the back, and they were off.
To their south, the firefight continued unabated between the Nigerian troops and the Kazaks in their ASVs. Doug rode in the back with their rucksacks and the M-79 grenade launcher taken from the stolen ASV. Junior man and the youngest of the three, he remained out in the cold as they drove north. The ancient Vietnam-era weapon was dead-bang simple to operate, like a break-open shotgun with a two-inch bore. As instructed, he was launching random high-elevation shots from the old “blooper.” The grenades exploded a half mile behind them, providing another diversion to cover their escape.
Boone was driving smoothly along a dirt farm road; Carson sat in the passenger seat holding the dead traitor’s portable GPS unit. Boone wore night vision, but Carson did not. Carson looked over at him in wonder. Night goggles covering the Viking’s face above his wild beard gave him fearsome, unworldly look, an unlikely combination of futuristic space alien and primitive barbarian.
“Boone, did you plan that whole scene back there, or did you just pull it out of your ass?”
“That? Oh, that all just came together. I didn’t think about it at all. That was pure improvisation. I was just running on automatic, from the moment we saw that Cossack troop truck until right now.”
“Well, that was pretty damn clever, dragging those Kazak armored cars through the Nigerian base. The old Viking would have been damned proud of you. That was a masterpiece. Firing off the smokes at the end, that was just a beautiful touch. Night and fog. I couldn’t have done better. Of course, it helps that you know this country like you do. But how did you know the ASV would make it that far? That sucker’s engine was dying fast.”
“I didn’t; I just hoped it would. We got lucky. Damn lucky. Like finding this truck. Yeah, Phil, we’ve got the luck tonight, we’re on a hot streak. That was pretty damn cool back there. Hell, that was way cool. That was right up there. That makes my all-time-best list, for sure.” Both former Special Forces operators were stoked, jazzed, running on adrenaline as powerful as an espresso-and-methamphetamine speedball cocktail. They were not out of danger yet, but they had survived the wild melee firefight in the crippled ASV.
This was the old combat high that Phil Carson had learned to both love and hate, decades earlier in the Asian jungles and highlands. He enjoyed its rush even as he feared the crash back down to depression that usually followed it hours, days or even years later.
This part of him, this war lust, this combat madness, was what, in the end, separated him from normal men. Denying and suppressing this defect in his personality had kept him on a solitary track since Vietnam. And now, here he was, once again floating along as high as a kite on blood and cordite and ringing ears.
Visions from the last ten minutes replayed in his mind, in flaring green and flashing white. While Boone was blasting away with the turret guns, he had deliberately used the fifteen-ton ASV as a killing weapon. Using the cover of darkness and confusion, he had aimed for the most tightly clustered groups of soldiers, driven over and smashed their bodies to pulp, and he had enjoyed it. Disoriented and night-blinded by the exploding grenades, and by the .50 caliber’s deafening concussion and muzzle flashes, most of his victims had never even seen the machine rushing at them before they were run down. Their bug-eyed and utterly shocked faces loomed in front of his narrow window for just an instant, and then disappeared beneath the ASV’s wheels. Later, when Boone told him to “make sure” of the wounded Nigerian soldiers, he had not hesitated even for a moment. This was why Boone had asked him, and not Doug, to deal with them. Boone understood him all too well.
Phil Carson understood from decades of painful self-analysis that his psychology was deeply flawed. In fact, it was completely defective. It had been this way since he had returned from Vietnam, but he could not blame his country or the Army. It was him, it was always in him. Vietnam had just allowed the beast that lived inside to acquire a taste for blood. In the end, this was why he had never inflicted himself upon a woman for any serious long-lasting relationship, much less considered the disastrous possibility of infecting children with his latent belligerence.
After the war, this self-imposed drift toward solitude had led him to the refuge of the sea. An acquaintance from the Army had offered him a crew position on a profit-seeking voyage to South America and back, and he had become hooked on ocean sailing. The ocean had been his eternally patient, always listening therapist, until he thought that he had left the ghosts of Vietnam behind in his wake. Then for many years after, he had kept his penchant for violence carefully sealed in a dark bottle on a shelf in his mind, but since Mississippi it was uncorked and coursing through his veins once again. Where this new killing streak was going to end he didn’t know, but he felt that it must end badly, and soon.
Then there was one much louder explosion behind them, in the midst of the continuing reports and echoes of rifles, machine guns and grenades. Boone grinned widely between his thick beard and his NVGs and said, “That was my C-4, back in the ASV.”
“Why didn’t you leave it booby-trapped?” Carson asked. “You might have nailed some more of the bastards.”
“Couldn’t risk it—they wouldn’t fall for that trick twice in a row, and I wanted to destroy the evidence.”
“How much demo have you got left?” asked Carson.
“That was it. The rest is still back in the cave, rigged to blow.” Boone rapped on the glass window behind them, opened his power side window and shouted, “Hey, Doug, you can quit with the grenades now.” The sounds of the continuing battle between the Kazak armored vehicles and the Nigerian soldiers at their outpost diminished in volume, but not in intensity, as they drove away from the insane mayhem that they had triggered.
****
There was just enough moonlight for Zack and Jenny to make their way across the fields without tripping or stepping into holes. Snow and ice formed an uneven skin over frozen dirt clumps and hay stubble. They were exposed far out in the open, in an area of fields and pastures, with little cover to exploit. It was faster going than when they were in the cover of woods, but more frightening. The glow of fires to the west and north gave the clouds an orange hue.
“How much further?” asked Jenny, out of breath.
“We can’t go back now,” Zack said. “It’d take us an hour to get back to the woods, and then what? I don
’t think there’s any way to get south where we won’t have some fields to cross.”
“Are you sure this is the way that Boone meant for us to go? Let’s check the map again.”
“Not out here. We can’t stop out here, we have to keep moving.” Zack checked his compass, picked a point in the distance, and kept walking. He had strapped his bow to the side of his pack to keep his hands free. Out here, hundreds of yards from any cover, the bow was of little use.
“Look!” said Jenny. “That fire’s a lot closer.”
Zack stopped and turned. Flames were clearly visible above the low hill that formed their western horizon. “We need to find someplace to hide, fast.”
“Is there something in those trees?” Jenny asked. It was just light enough to walk without tripping, but not light enough to distinguish shapes in the distance.
“It looks like it might be a house, but even just some trees is better than being caught out here. Let’s go—we’ll take a break there and check the map.”
“Look, another fire! How far is it to the trees?” In the darkness, distances were impossible to estimate.
“Not too far. Can you run?”
“No, this is the fastest I can go.” Jenny was out of breath and nearing exhaustion. The ground was uneven and broken from old plowing. Some clods were frozen solid, but slippery mud lurked beneath remnants of snow in between them. A sprain was a very real risk; both of them had already come close to badly twisting their ankles several times already. They heard nearby gunshots and froze. They had been hearing sporadic firing all night, but it had been distant, just low pops. This shooting was obviously much closer, less than a mile away.
Zack said, “It’s not aimed at us. It’s still too far away to hit us, and you’d hear bullets snapping if they were shooting this way. But we really have to move now.”
Foreign Enemies and Traitors Page 53