by Gar Wilson
McCarter paused in his close-quarter massacre, casually raised his trajectory, floated rounds at the Johnny-come-latelies, at a Unimog that was growling furiously to achieve high ground. A cluster of forty mills dropped on the PC, and it suddenly humped high as its tanks exploded. The gunner was airborne, chopped into thirty different pieces. Head, arms, legs, streamers of human intestines drifted into the flaming desert skillet.
Abruptly, the effects of the Mark 19 stunning, everything went on hold. The main elements of Blackwell's force fell back — after seeing forty-six men wiped out — to plan a less decimating counterstrategy.
Yakov and Manning continued with the chores at hand. McCarter fired extra rounds. As Encizo and Salibogo came charging up, they were disengaging, darting for cover behind a long rocky ridge. Another diehard Cobra began spinning Russian lead in their direction.
Keio put the FAV into tricky dipsy-doodle, spun the vehicle out of range. McCarter, stretching for every inch of the Mark 19's sixteen-hundred-meter range, turned the hardmen into doggy-bits. Then he gave the MMG a rest.
'Tall back," Yakov bellowed. "Regroup according to plan."
Phoenix Force gained its preassigned rock pile, collapsed in gasping, sweaty sprawl. Shortly the FAV slid up behind them in noiseless tilt. They took turns rummaging its storage areas for fresh magazines. "My bloody ass," McCarter chortled as he dug out the humungous, fifty-pound, fifty-round MK-19 magazine, set it at his feet for easy reload, "if this gun ain't some piece of work. I'm a one-man army."
Gradually breaths evened out, battle tremors subsided. Glancing up, they were bemused to see that the sun was just coming up over the mountains. It seemed they had been fighting for hours.
The Black Cobra forces, thrown into critical disarray by the surprise attack, did not launch an attack for more than an hour.
Katz kept careful watch through Bausch and Lomb 10x50 binoculars and was able to predict the terrorist strategy almost before they put it in motion. And as he saw enemy action to the north and south of their position, as he saw Unimogs — with their Goryonovs — being moved into range, he said, "A pincer movement. That figures. The classic counter to that is a chop through before they close ranks."
Phoenix's field marshal relocated his troops, set up a new firebase in a stone stockade to the north, closer to the trail. From this highpoint they could observe the snaking road heading to the northeast where it wound for miles beneath them; under no circumstances was Blackwell to be allowed a back-door fade.
Their own Goryonov MMG was carried to the top of a forty-foot-high bluff, mounted in an impregnable nest and turned over to Manning. He would keep the enemy foot-sloggers honest, plus cover the FAV, as Keio and McCarter ripped the Cobra mousetrap to shreds wherever they could.
Finally, at 0730 hours, the pincer on verge of snapping shut, Katz gave Manning a brusque high sign. The Goryonov began punching out rounds, harvesting any human flesh found within its five-thousand-foot range.
At the same time Keio Ohara sent the FAV jack-rabbiting across the uneven terrain, heading for the southernmost extension of the closing circle. McCarter, hanging on to the Mark 19 for dear life, opened up with deadly, sweeping bursts that gave the Cobras in that sector definite second thoughts. Any round touching close meant instant death.
As Keio put the baby buggy to forty miles per hour and swung back along the front in zigzagging, bouncing flight, McCarter rotated the MMG, slapped rounds at the Unimogs, defiant challenge to the pesky Goryonov rounds snapping and whining in the air just five feet behind the FAV. One Unimog took cluster rounds and was turned into a booming fireball, its gunners reduced to bloody hash.
The other Cobras fell back. Still there was random AK-47 fire, which Keio negated with swift, swerving maneuvers.
But abruptly, as he rammed the FAV closer to the terrorist line, made a wide sweep to double back, the lanky Japanese grunted, keeled over, lost control of the steering wheel. McCarter fell back, grabbed it, wrenched the vehicle back into control from a nearly prone position.
As quickly a groggy, wincing Keio was fighting his way up, recapturing the wheel. "I got it. I'm okay."
"Where'd they get you?" McCarter said, back behind the MK-19, spraying grenade cartridges again.
"In the chest. It didn't penetrate the Kevlar, but it sure's hell gave me a punch. Couldn't get my breath for a second. Man, that hurts."
"Chipped a bone, do you think?"
"Could be." Keio gasped sharply. "There that's better."
Now they saw Yakov, Salibogo and Rafael hotfooting it across the terrain to their right, following the designated course. Again Keio whizzed the FAV into the corridor ahead of them, let McCarter bang pindown rounds into the prime attack zone. The Phoenix grunt party rose up from behind a rocky defilade, charged forward, dropped, charged forward in ragged sequence. A Kalashnikov opened up in tinny cacophony to the right, chipping stone at Yakov's feet. McCarter swung the Mark 19, hammered out four rounds.
No more opposition.
And as the trio went in for mop-up, Keio swung the FAV anew, took McCarter east, where the Brit once more raked the remaining Goryonovs and protected Phoenix's ass.
Up in his craggy aerie Manning did likewise, alternating between rearguard and front-line action.
Yakov, Rafael and Salibogo were going in. Definitive cleanup.
Ohara's lips curved in a snarl. He swerved the FAV and headed north. He and McCarter began chopping off another piece of the Cobra's tail.
In the pocket of Blackwell's hardmen Yakov and company found business on the slow side. Those terrorists who had not been wiped out immediately had cleared out and fled north to join the main contingent.
Out of the frying pan into the fire.
A Black Cobra hardnose, his face dripping with blood, staggered forward, determined to take some of the enemy with him. Encizo and Salibogo whirled just as he aimed for Katzenelenbogen. They pumped a dozen rounds into him, flung him high. When he came down his face was gone.
To the right, from a stony foxhole, another Cobra darted up, eyes glazed with hatred. Yakov stitched a four-round line across his chest, sent him to hell.
Again they moved right.
But here there was nothing left for them to do.
Suddenly as it had begun, there was an end to the battlefield clamor; an eerie silence swept across the stony plateau. In the distance they saw the Black Cobras in full retreat, heading deeper into the hills.
Overhead, Manning continued to pick stragglers off at will.
They were in process of turning, heading back for their own safe-house, when Yakov saw a blur of motion. There, amid a tangle of black uniforms, sidling from a minimound of gashed, pulverized black meat...
"Get him," Yakov commanded, as the terrorist began running farther into the desert.
Salibogo brought up his AK-47. "No," Yakov roared. "Take him alive."
Salibogo's round screamed over the terrorist's head. Salibogo and Rafael broke into a mad dash and caught the fleeing Cobra a hundred feet farther on. From his vantage point Yakov could see the goon babbling in terror, pleading for his life. Rafael brought the terrorist back to Katz.
"Big troubles, Katz," the Cuban said as he gave the soldier a last vicious shove, dropped him at Katz's feet. "This ain't no African. He's Cuban. One of Fidel's boys." He kicked the groveling man, who wore a single silver bar on his right shoulder. "Tell him, cabrόn.''
The blubbering officer stared pleadingly up at the Israeli, launched into a babble of Spanish, little of which Yakov understood.
"What is it?" he snapped irritatedly. "What's he saying?"
Encizo all but snarled the words. "What he's saying is that we got the shit-end again. Blackwell's not here. He hasn't been since last night. He took two hundred of his best men. He's on his way to Aswan at this very minute."
Katzenelenbogen's face fell. "What?"
"Manning was right. It was a decoy. These guys are ELF. Eritrean hardcases. Bought and sold like the whores they a
re."
He loosed a volley of Spanish curses. "A delaying action is what it was. And we bought it. Blackwell's suckered us, but good."
Yakov's face was a study in enraged despair and frustration. For a long time he said nothing, the hooks of his prosthetic arm clicking furiously as they always did in stressful moments. His face was drawn when he finally looked up.
"That means he's got at least eighteen hours on us," he muttered, his voice ragged, barely audible in the wail of the desert wind.
16
McCarter, Katzenelenbogen, Manning and Salibogo were left to hold the high ground while Ohara and Encizo slogged back two miles to recover the Land Rover and the Unimog.
When the heavy-duty vehicles roared up, it was a matter of ten minutes before the FAV was reattached, the Goryonov hauled down, thrown into the Unimog. Twenty more rounds of 40mm grenade cartridges were lofted into the hills as a final hit against Blackwell's rearguard.
Phoenix was rumbling along the downside of Jebel Oda by 0900 hours.
On to Aswan.
The sullen crew jolted down the mountain. They all realized the long fuse — leading all the way to the High Dam itself — was already sputtering. For all they knew they were already too late; time was against them. Perhaps, no matter what they might do now, the Aswan was already doomed.
As they rocked down the spine-mangling excuse for a road, Yakov kept Keio on the radio. Stony Man must have an update, learn the mission's new, precarious status. Stony Man must provide intelligence on arrival time for the desperately needed air cover.
Where, in the remaining three hundred miles, would Blackwell establish his launch site? And how in hell — if it could be hidden anywhere from here to the High Dam — could Phoenix Force find it?
Keio handed Katz the microphone. There was considerably more vitriol in Yakov's report, in his demand for action, than he ordinarily might have used.
"Stony Three," the return transmission came ten minutes later. "Proceed with action to best of ability. Agent's arrival is imminent. Additional instructions to come."
And out.
The day droned on. Heat built up. Dust roiled and blew, clogged nostrils and throats, coated their faces in chalky stiffness. Still Yakov pushed McCarter harder, caused Encizo at the Unimog's wheel to shake his head in disbelief. Ten miles the first hour. Fifteen the second. Ten again. Then a stretch of plateau, transition between jebel and desert, where they made twenty.
At 0200 hours they came onto a long, barren expanse of desert plain. Keying on debris discarded by Blackwell's crew, they pushed on, the miniconvoy hitting an incredible pace of thirty-five.
* * *
If Yakov Katzenelenbogen was steaming, his anger was nothing compared to Jeremiah Blackwell's at that same moment. He had been waiting in a concealed wadi ten miles outside Halaib for three hours. Where was his missile? What was keeping them? Though presumably invested with more than enough lead time on his American pursuers, he was still edgy.
Then, when the missile finally came into view — still in its forty-foot-long crate, flat on its disguised missile carrier — and Blackwell was informed by the Russian rocket technicians that the bastardized weapon had to be launched within a twenty-five-mile radius of the Aswan...
His rage knew no bounds.
Had it come to this? Five million dollars, how many troops already slaughtered, his holy crusade? All going down the tube because some bumbling Ivan had chinlzed at the last minute? Ajax Nike missiles. They had become nearly obsolete the day after they were introduced into the U.S. SAM arsenal in 1954.
And though the tech team assured him that the Ajax Nike was one hundred percent operative, that there was no way it could fail to destroy the Aswan, Blackwell felt it was a goddamned joke. A toy.
Two hundred miles of bad-assed terrain still stood between him and the High Dam. One hundred seventy miles if the twenty-five range was discounted.
In due course Blackwell's fury subsided. He was determined to succeed. Somebody gives you lemons, you make lemonade. It had been a lifelong motto. There was no reason the philosophy would not work now.
He had a jump on that CIA outfit, whoever they were. He knew where he was headed; they didn't.
The odds were still heavily weighted in his favor.
He gave his officers a tired grin, feigned more confidence than he felt. "Get them mothers mounted up," he commanded. "We got some miles to cover. Move 'em out."
Ten minutes later the abbreviated convoy (only twelve vehicles now, fewer than two hundred troops) began sluggish toiling into the Nubian desert.
They headed in a north-northwest direction.
They headed for the Aswan High Dam.
* * *
The trail was easy enough for Phoenix to follow — until they reached Halaib. At Halaib they found enough litter to convince them that the scent was definitely hot. They had closed the gap; Blackwell was only ten or twelve hours ahead of them now.
But as they progressed deeper into the desert they found that the Black Cobras had taken to cleaning up their act. Now there was little or no throwaway, and they were forced to rely on tire tracks, deep gouges left by dig-outs. Even these were not to be counted on, however; the eternal winds sweeping down from the coastal highlands effectively obliterated most of them.
The missile itself left the most telling clue. Even with the wind's dustover, there still remained faint depressions — dug by the heavy carrier wheels — the next best thing to a road sign.
Again Bolan's men turned into the walking dead. The only sleep they got was while they were rolling.
As they crossed the Egyptian border they were forced to abandon the Unimog because fuel was running short. It became expedient to consolidate supplies, keep the LR rolling. The decision was not made without considerable complaining by Salibogo. To leave that horde of beautiful Kalashnikov rifles and all that ammo, he said, was sacrilege.
As concession to the old man, they wasted valuable time rolling the PC deeper into the desert, ducking it behind a low butte. Salibogo vowed that he would relocate the site some day and rescue the weapons.
Latest word from Stony Man assured them that Jack Grimaldi was finally on the turf. He was supposed to be cruising overhead, at a superhigh altitude, invisible to Blackwell's forces, at that very moment. Grimaldi was to be using heat detection devices, radar and recon optics. Contact frequencies were duly rattled off and noted by Keio Ohara.
But the desert heat, the nonstop buck and jolt of the overland ride had taken its toll; thus far the Japanese radio wizard had been unable to bring in Grimaldi.
If this was not crisis enough, Keio now found that he could not receive satellite relays from Stony Man, either. How, he fumed, could he know if Stony Man was even receiving his transmissions? The whip aerial was double-checked, the dish antenna as well, but nothing was wrong. Cursing the fact that they could not stop, and he had to attempt to rebuild while they rolled, he was fit to be tied.
Phoenix Force had been on the move for thirty-three hours, mostly nonstop, the only down time allowed being for pit stops and vital vehicle maintenance. There were no meal breaks; they subsisted on energy bars washed down with brackish water from their canteens.
Thus, at 1800 hours of that second day, as they came over the top of a rugged rise, and Yakov called an unexpected halt, all took it as an excuse for minor celebration.
Their celebration was short-lived; Katz whipped the binoculars to his face and scanned the landscape perhaps a mile and a half ahead.
"Is it Blackwell?" Encizo said, watching his boss. "You mean we've caught up with him already?"
"Can't tell," Yakov muttered. "But there's something out there. A lot of hanging dust, something that looks like smoke."
"Another false alarm," McCarter grumbled. "They settling in for the night?"
Katz raised an eyebrow. "Better than we think. The jackpot maybe. My calculations put us within twenty or thirty miles of Aswan. Lake Nasser is right over the mountains."
"He still thinks we're back in Sudan," Keio remarked.
"Good," said Yakov. "Let him keep thinking that." Directing McCarter to edge the Land Rover behind a fifty-foot dune, he got out and began swatting dust from his clothes. He buckled on his cartridge belt, reached for the Uzi. "Well, Manning and Rafael? Feel like taking a little walk?"
"Hey, Katz," McCarter protested. "Don't go leaving me behind."
"Dust off the Mark 19, McCarter. You and Salibogo get the FAV ready. Keio, keep at that radio. We'll be needing it before the night gets much older."
Moving out to the right, using the endless ranks of sand dunes for cover, the three men began moving west.
McCarter began running a swift field check on the supergun, checking the starting links on the sausage-sized cartridges that led up from the Mark 19's huge magazine.
It took Yakov, Rafael and Manning an hour to reach the outermost perimeters of the Black Cobra camp. By then dusk had fallen. Still, there was enough light for visual recon.
As they looked down into the deep, pitted ravine, they were awed. The area was apparently an abandoned mine, the terrain giving way to a great crater. Farther away, the land provided excellent cover for Blackwell's evil purposes. A hundred missiles could be set up with no one the wiser.
Encizo whistled softly. "What do you make of it, compadre?"
"Phosphate, probably," Katz replied. 'The mine didn't pay off, and they abandoned it. Egypt's mineral poor."
"And we've got to flush the Cobras out of that maze?" Manning said, his heart sinking.
They watched in silence as the Black Cobra troops moved with obvious unconcern, preoccupied with their evening meal. Small fires pierced the gloom of the cavernous encampment.
"Is our friend, the Blood Doctor that sure of himself?" Rafael asked. "I could pot six of them from here. Yet I don't see a guard."