“Closing in on us,” Smith said grimly. “While their pals cover them.”
“Quite likely,” Peter agreed. He smiled suddenly. “Let's teach them that's not such a good idea, shall we?”
Jon nodded.
“Right,” Peter said calmly. “Here we go.”
Ignoring the bullets still tearing up the brush around them, both men reared up and began firing — again sweeping three-round bursts back and forth across the field in front of them. Smith had a quick impression of startled yells and barely glimpsed shapes diving behind clumps of tall weeds and brambles. More weapons opened up with a stuttering, clattering roar as the gunmen they had driven prone began shooting back.
Smith and Peter dropped back into the shallow drainage ditch and crawled rapidly away along its meandering trace. It fell away to the east, following the slight slope of the long-abandoned field. After moving about fifty yards, they risked poking their heads up for another quick look. One of their pursuers was still firing short bursts in their general direction in an effort to pin them down. The other three gunmen were in motion again, but they were also heading east — rapidly deploying into a dispersed firing line across the width of the forty-acre field.
“Damn it,” Peter said under his breath. “What the hell are they up to now?”
Smith's eyes narrowed. Their enemies no longer seemed interested in closing with them. Instead, the bad guys were setting up a cordon that would effectively cut them off from the road and from the vehicles they had left hidden in among the trees still several hundred yards away. “We're being herded!” he realized suddenly.
The Englishman stared at him for a second or two. Then his jaw tightened and he nodded abruptly. “You're right, Jon. I should have seen it sooner. They're acting as beaters — setting up to flush us out for the rest of the shooting party.” He shook his head in disgust. “We're being treated like a covey of bloody grouse or quails.”
Almost against his will, Smith grinned back at him, fighting down the urge to laugh out loud. His old friend sounded genuinely insulted at being manipulated so contemptuously by their enemies.
Peter turned his head, speculatively eyeing the rougher, even more overgrown stretch of old farmland to the north. “They'll have a nasty little ambush set out somewhere up that way,” he said, stripping out the used magazine on his submachine gun and inserting a new thirty-round clip. “Getting past that will be tricky.”
“Sure,” Smith said. “But we do have at least one advantage.”
Peter raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Oh? Care to enlighten me?”
“Yep.” Smith patted his own MP5. “The last time I checked, grouse and quails don't shoot back.”
This time it was Peter's turn to suppress a snort of rueful laughter. “True enough,” he agreed quietly. “Very well, Jon, let's go and see if we can turn the hunters into the hunted.”
They left the drainage ditch and crawled off to the north. Their path through the thick undergrowth was a circuitous one. They were following the rambling narrow trails made by small animals that made their dens and warrens in the overgrown fields. Both men stayed very low, hugging the ground and using their feet, knees, and elbows to wriggle forward as fast as they could without making too much noise or shaking the tangled tufts of brush and grass above them. The knowledge that an enemy force lurked unseen somewhere ahead in the darkness again made stealth nearly as vital as speed.
Smith could feel droplets of sweat rolling down through the dirt streaking his forehead. He shook them away impatiently, not wanting them to drip into his eyes under the mask holding his night-vision goggles. Plant stalks and curling vines loomed up suddenly in his green-tinted vision and then vanished off to the sides as he squirmed past. Deep in the heart of these jumbled thickets, his field of view was down to just a few feet. The air was warm and thick with the smell of dank, mossy earth and fresh animal droppings.
From time to time bullets hissed over their heads or shredded the bushes and thickets off on either flank. All four of the mercenaries deployed in a line behind them were shooting now — firing occasional bursts into the field to force their unseen quarry toward the ambush set to kill them.
Smith's breathing was becoming labored under the strain and physical exertion imposed by crawling so far and so rapidly. He concentrated on following Peter as closely as he could — watching carefully to see where the older man put his elbows and feet to avoid disturbing the vegetation through which they were moving.
Suddenly Peter froze. For long seconds he stayed absolutely motionless, watching and listening. Then, slowly and carefully, he held out one gloved hand and waved Jon forward to his side.
Smith peered cautiously through a screen of tall grass, studying the terrain in front of them. They were very near the northern edge of the field. The weathered and rotting remnants of an old rail fence stretched to the east and west. Just beyond the broken-down fence, the ground fell away gently into a little hollow before rising again in a low embankment that ran off to the northeast. A few patches of scrub brush and small birch trees dotted the forward slopes of this rise, but the countryside was generally more open here — offering less cover and concealment.
Peter jabbed a finger toward this elevation. Then he made the hand signal for “enemy.”
Smith nodded. That embankment was a likely spot for the ambush they were being herded toward. Anyone stationed just behind its crest would have decent fields of observation and fire along most of this side of the rundown farm. He frowned. The odds against them were stacking up fast.
Peter saw the look on his face and shrugged. “Can't be helped,” he murmured. He pulled the spent magazine for his MP5 out of the ammo pouch on his combat vest. He waited while Jon followed suit.
“Very well,” Peter said very quietly. “Here's the plan.” He held up the empty magazine. “As a distraction, we toss these as far to the right as we can. Then we make a dash over the crest, turn right, and assault along the reverse slope — killing hostiles we meet.”
Smith stared back at him. “That's it?”
“There's no time for anything fancy, Jon,” the Englishman told him patiently. “We must hit them hard and fast. Speed and audacity are the only cards we have to play. If either of us goes down, the other must press on without him. Agreed?”
Smith nodded. He did not like any of this, but the other man was right. In this situation, any delay — for any reason, even helping an injured friend — would be fatal. They were so heavily outnumbered that their only chance of escape was to fight their way through anyone in front of them and then keep on moving.
Holding the empty magazine in his left hand and gripping the 1VIP5 in his right, he rose slowly to one knee, getting ready to rush across the tumbledown fence and the open ground beyond it. Beside him, Peter did the same.
Another burst of random gunfire broke out behind them. It faded, leaving only silence.
“Here we go,” Peter hissed. “Get ready. Set. Now?”
Both men hurled the empty clips as hard as they could, flinging them high into the air and off to the right. The curved metal magazines landed with a rustle and a clatter — suddenly loud in the night.
Instantly Smith jumped up and ran forward. He dived straight over the split-rail fence, hit the ground rolling, and bounced back up on his feet with Peter just a few yards away.
Smith heard startled shouts from behind them and off to the right, but the enemy had spotted them too late. Still running flat out, he and Peter charged up the gentle slope and over the top of the low rise.
Smith spun immediately to the right, submachine gun gripped in both hands, searching for targets in the weird green half-light supplied by his night-vision gear. There! He saw a shape moving beneath the low-hanging branches of a birch tree less than ten yards away. It was a man, who had been lying prone peering over the crest, turning frantically toward them — trying to bring his own weapon, an Uzi, to bear.
Reacting faster, Jon swung his own MP5 on-ta
rget and squeezed the trigger, sending three 9mm rounds into the enemy gunman at point-blank range. All three slammed home with tremendous force. The impact hurled the man backward. He slid to the ground and lay splayed against the chalk-white trunk of the birch tree.
They glided on, following the embankment as it angled northeast and separating as they moved so that no single enemy burst could hit them both. The slope on this side was a mix of birch trees, scrub pines, and clumps of brush, all broken up by tiny patches of open ground. Confused by the sudden burst of shooting, the four mercenaries deployed as “beaters” to drive them into the ambush were firing wildly now — flaying the wrong side of the rise. Bullets ricocheting off trees tumbled high overhead, buzzing angrily like bees.
Smith moved cautiously into a small clearing and caught a sudden flicker of movement out of the corner of his right eye. He spun around and saw the blackened barrel of an M16 assault rifle poking out from behind a vine-covered tree stump. It was traversing in his direction! He threw himself down just as the hidden gunman fired. One 5.56mm round grazed his left shoulder, tearing a bloody gash through cloth and skin. Two more rifle bullets tore long furrows through the earth close by.
Jon rolled away, desperately trying to shake the enemy rifleman's aim. More rounds followed him, again slashing at the ground only inches away from his head. Still rolling, he looked for cover — any kind of cover-within reach. There was nothing. He was trapped out in the open.
And then Peter appeared behind him and opened fire, methodically hammering the tree stump with controlled bursts. Pieces of bark and shredded vine flew away through the air. The hidden rifleman screamed once, a piercing shriek, and then fell silent.
“Are you all right, Jon?” Peter called softly.
Smith checked himself over. The graze on his shoulder was bleeding and it would hurt like hell soon enough. But miraculously that was the only wound he had taken.
“I'm okay,” he reported, still breathing hard as he recovered from the shock of nearly being gunned down so easily. Moving out into that clearing had been a big mistake, he realized — the kind of screwup raw recruits made in training. He shook his head once, angry with himself for the error.
“Then go make sure that bastard's really down and dead. I'll cover you,” Peter said urgently. “But do it quickly.”
“On my way.” Smith scrambled back to his feet and moved out of the little space of open ground, circling through the undergrowth to come at the tree stump from behind and out of the Englishman's field of fire. He pushed cautiously through a tangle of tall brush and saw a body on the ground, facedown. The M16 lay several feet away.
Was the gunman really dead or badly wounded or only lying doggo? he wondered. For a moment, Jon thought about firing a quick burst into the body to finish the job. His finger tightened on the trigger. Then he eased off, with a frown. In the heat of battle, he could gun down an enemy without hesitating, but he would not shoot someone who might be lying helpless and in terrible pain. Not and stay true to the oaths he had sworn and, perhaps more important, to his own sense of right and wrong.
Smith stepped closer, sighting along the barrel of the MP5. He could see blood on the ground, trickling out from under the man's body. The fallen rifleman was short and wiry, with a dusting of cropped reddish hair on the back of his small round head. Jon drew nearer still, preparing to bend down and feel for a pulse.
More gunshots rang out from somewhere not far ahead. They were answered immediately by a short burst from Peter's weapon.
Distracted, Smith turned his head to try to see where the fire was coming from. He crouched lower, seeking cover.
That was when the “dead” man lunged at him, hurling himself forward with lightning speed. He slammed headlong into Jon's stomach and knocked him down. The submachine gun went flying off into the bushes.
Smith writhed away and saw a knife driving toward him. He rolled to the side and came back up, just in time to block another thrust with the outer edge of his left arm. The blade sliced through his sleeve and slashed the skin beneath. It grated off the bone, sending a wave of pain flaming through his mind. He forced the agony aside and struck back with the edge of his right hand, hacking down hard on the red-haired man's wrist.
The knife fell out of the man's suddenly paralyzed fingers.
Smith kept moving, reversing his strike — slamming his right elbow straight back into the shorter rifleman's nose. He felt a sickening crunch as the impact shattered pieces of cartilage, driving them upward and into his enemy's brain. The red-haired man dropped without a sound and lav motionless, dead for real this time.
Jon sat back, breathing deeply. He could feel blood dripping from the deep gash on his left arm. I had better bind that up now, he thought dully.
No point in leaving a blood trail for the bad guys to follow. He shook out a field dressing from one of the pockets on his vest and quickly wound the gauze and cotton around the injured arm.
There was a soft whistle from the woods. He looked up as Peter loomed out of the darkness.
“Sorry about that,” Peter said. “Another one popped his head up and took a shot at me.”
“Did you nail him?”
“Oh, yes,” Peter said with satisfaction. “Well and truly.” He dropped to one knee and rolled the red-haired man Smith had killed over onto his back. Peter's pale blue eyes widened slightly at the sight of the man's face, and he sucked in his breath.
“You recognize that guy?” Jon asked, watching his reaction.
Peter nodded. He looked up with a grim, worried expression on his weathered face. “Fellow's name was McRae,” he said softly. “When I knew him he was a trooper in the SAS. Had a reputation as a troublemaker — very good in any fight, a very nasty bastard out of one. Several years back he crossed the line once too often and got himself booted out of the regiment. Last I heard, he was working as a mercenary in Africa and Asia — with the occasional bit of freelance work for various intelligence services.”
He got up and went over to retrieve Smith's submachine gun.
“Including MI6?” Jon asked quietly, taking the weapon from him and climbing stiffly to his feet.
Peter nodded reluctantly. “On occasion.”
“Do you think some of your people in London could be involved in this covert war Pierson and Burke are running?” Smith said.
Peter shrugged. “At the moment, I don't really know what to think, Jon.” He looked up as the rippling chatter of automatic weapons fire crashed out again from the other side of the low embankment. "But for now, our friends over there are getting restless. And they'll be coming in this direction in force very soon. I think we'd best break contact while we can. We need to find a place where we can safelv arrange new transport."
Smith nodded. That made good sense. By now, their enemies were sure to have found the cars they had brought with them from Andrews Air Force Base. Trying to retrieve the two vehicles would only mean walking back into the trap they had just escaped.
He felt the dressing on his left arm, checking to make sure it had not yet soaked all the way through. It was still dry on the outside. He turned back to the Englishman. “Okay, lead on, Peter. I'll keep an eye on the rear.”
The two men turned and trotted north, fading deeper into the darkened countryside — keeping to the shelter of the trees and tall brush whenever possible. Behind them, the harsh, echoing rattle of gunfire slowly died away.
Chapter Thirty-One
The first burst of automatic weapons fire outside the farmhouse brought Kit Pierson to her feet in a rush. Drawing her service pistol, a 9mm Smith & Wesson, the FBI agent moved rapidly to the window, peering out through the narrow slit between the drapes. She could not see anything, but the sound of gunfire continued, echoing loudly across the low, rolling hills of the Virginia countryside. Heart pounding, she crouched lower. Whatever was going on had all the hallmarks of a pitched battle being fought close by.
“Trouble, Kit?” she heard Hal Burke say with a na
sty edge in his voice.
Pierson glanced over her shoulder at him. Her eyes widened. The square-jawed CIA officer had drawn his own weapon, a Beretta. And he held it aimed right at her.
“What kind of game are you playing, Hal?” she demanded, holding perfectly still — all too aware that, drunk or not, he could not miss at this range. Her mouth felt dry. She could see beads of sweat forming on Burke's forehead. The muscles around his right eye twitched slightly.
“This is no game,” he snapped back. “As I'm sure you know.” He motioned with the muzzle of the Beretta. “Now I want you to put your weapon down on the floor — but carefully… very carefully. And then I want you to sit back down in your chair. With your hands where I can see them.”
“Take it easy, Hal,” Pierson said softly, trying hard to conceal her fear and her sudden conviction that Burke had lost his grip on reality. “I don't know what you think I've done, but I promise you that—”
Her words were drowned by another burst of shooting from outside the house.
“Do what I say, damn it!” the CIA officer growled. His finger tightened dangerously on the trigger. “Move!”
Feeling ice-cold, Pierson slowly knelt and put her Smith & Wesson down on the floor, butt first.
“Now, kick it toward me — but do it gently!” Burke ordered.
She complied, sliding the pistol toward him across the stained hardwood floor.
“Sit!”
Angry now, both at the other man and with herself for being so afraid of him, Pierson obeyed, slowly lowering herself into the lumpy, frayed armchair. She held her hands up, palms outward, so that he could see that she was not an immediate threat. “I'd still like to know what I'm supposed to have done, Hal — and what all that shooting is about.”
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