Aswan Hellbox

by Gar Wilson

  "I'd step carefully," Manning offered. "When there are no sentries, that means alternative security devices. The perimeter's mined, or I miss my bet." He tore up long strands of bunch grass from the area in which they hunkered. "Sit tight, I'll go check."

  Then, wincing and hissing when his bandages pulled, he slithered over the lip of the dune, oozed down the other side. He moved toward the firebase with deliberate care, holding a long strand of grass before him, a foot above the ground. Shortly he faded out of sight.

  "Yes," he said, having crawled back after fifteen minutes. "Claymores all over the place. This is no bivouac, guys. The real McCoy. They don't want any unexpected visitors."

  "The missile?" Yakov asked. "See any sign of it?"

  "No. They must have it in one of the deepest pits. Probably setting it up, arming it right now. It's here, though."

  "How do you know?"

  "I saw the carrier tracks. No mistaking them."

  The urgency was reborn within Katzenelenbogen. "We've got to infiltrate as soon as we can. Hit that rocket before it goes up."

  The desert night was deepening. But still, aided by the star shine, by the glow of dozens of campfires, they continued to study the cuts and gullies below, the hardpacked crisscross of loading roads. They paid special attention to one haul area in particular, the one skirting the whole two-mile curve of the main section.

  "I'd suggest diversion," Manning said levelly. "Infiltration against two hundred well-armed troops? Not with six men. We have to set up a smoke screen, then swat them when they're looking the other way."

  "You're right," Katz said, sending a respectful smile at the Canadian. "What have you got in mind?"

  "I figure if we can get the FAV up on that road, have McCarter and Keio open up with rifles, that will suck Blackwell's stooges in. They don't know about the Mark 19... or Keio's kiddy car... yet. When they move in, thinking to cut them up, McCarter will switch to Big Ben. Keio will keep whizzing up and down that road overhead. They'll never know what hit them.

  "We, in the meantime, will circle in from the rear, attack from there. That way we'll get the main force in a matter of minutes."

  "And the missile team?" Rafael challenged, "once they hear the commotion, they'll..."

  "They'll crap," Manning finished for him. "What can they do? If the rocket's ready, it'll go off. If it isn't ready, there's not a damned thing they can do. Except eat it, maybe."

  "I'm betting it isn't ready," Yakov said.

  For five more minutes they remained prone, double-checking the network of roads, pinpointing pockets of greatest possible difficulty, establishing their own firebase.

  As they started back: "Yakov? A favor?"

  "Yes, Gary? What is it?"

  "Tell the rest of them, will you... If there's any possible way... that Blackwell bastard. He's mine, understand? Mine..."

  17

  Even in the swifi-encroaching chill, Gary Manning was sweating bullets. Two antipersonnel mines to defuse before the FAV could pass, he was hovering over the first, a blade of grass floating around in a deadly cat-and-mouse struggle. He located a trip wire on each side of the charge and traced it back to the O-ring a millimeter at a time.

  His fingers skated along the machined ridge of the striker housing until they found the empty firing-pin hole. His fingers slid up deftly, found the trigger arm, extended halfway down from the perpendicular. With a hissing intake of breath he eased the arm down and held it. His left hand snaked up, pulling a finishing nail from between his teeth. A click, and the mine was back on safety.

  He moved to the right, following an eight-foot strand of monofilament. Again his fingers moved, the grass skated fleetingly. The slightest jar and...

  "Through here, gang," he husked thirty seconds later. "All clear." He stacked the two claymores behind a rock to the left, then stood and waved Keio forward. The humming vehicle crunched past, Katz and Rafael walking slowly in front of it, indicating where the access road started.

  There was hurried, last-minute briefing, as Yakov acquainted Keio and McCarter with the lay of the land. "We'll be circling around back there." He pointed. "No rounds farther than the third road, understand? Give us ten minutes to move in. Open up at 2020 hours exactly. When they start coming at you, go into phase two. Got it?"

  "Ten-four," McCarter snapped, checking his watch. "Balls to the wall for them bloody bastards."

  Then heads nodded, eyes met for last, swift reaffirmation of concern — and trust. Seconds later the FAV was sliding up the incline. Keio hugged the sheer inner wall to keep the Cobras from catching a glimpse of it.

  "This way," Yakov urged, hitting low crouch, beginning a measured lope toward the length of the ditch closely skirting the main of the Black Cobra encampment. The sound of laughter, muttered conversations carried from less than twenty feet away as they infiltrated the chopped-up moonscape terrain.

  Yakov, Rafael, Salibogo and Manning labored through the sand-rock clutter with deliberate movements, methodically testing each foothold before putting their weight down.

  Breaths searing their throats, hearts hammering painfully in their chests, they paused at a crumbled opening in one interstice and took a long view of the main marshaling area. The vehicles were scattered, the Black Cobras hanging close to the fire. Some, oblivious to possible danger, confidently slept. The site resembled a stockyard, with its varied cutouts and separating walls.

  It was a perfect place to use the MK-19. Animals penned for slaughter.

  Manning climbed an incline, went on hands and knees again and made a cursory test for mines. Shortly he waved the others up. Yakov indicated that each man position himself at least one hundred feet apart. They waited, surprised that even though they knew where to look, they could not spot the FAV.

  Which of these phosphorous-slagged cubicles contains our butcher friend, Blackwell, Katzenelenbogen mused. More importantly, where was the missile stashed? He strained for sight of distant glare, for something resembling a nose cone protruding from one of the pits. If the missile team was putting finishing touches on the liftoff, it would not be operating by firelight, that was certain.

  Though decidedly dubious about the wisdom of his decision — the ARC-51 was still down; there had been no contact with Stony Man or Grimaldi in the past eight hours — Yakov was committed. What else could Phoenix Force do, with time slipping away on them so swiftly?

  There was a flicker of motion overhead; Katz recognized McCarter, an AK-47 in his mitt. The Israeli sent a hasty high sigh to his flankers, then dropped behind a pile of rubble. The others followed his example.

  Suddenly the night exploded. Two assault rifles opened up at full automatic from the forty-foot ledge overlooking the bivouac. Yakov saw seven terrorists fall in that first burst alone. He nodded silent encouragement as he noted how McCarter and Keio raced along the lip of the overhang, deliberately drawing fire, retreating, reappearing in another spot to give illusion of many troopers instead of just two.

  The Black Cobras reacted coolly. Weapons were recovered, magazines slammed home. Hardcore mercs, they did not panic, but fell into position and began flanking left and right, closing on the high ground. AK-47s chattered in steady clamor, Russian lead screaming upward, punching into the solid rock face behind McCarter and Keio with potentially dangerous ricochet.

  Yakov suppressed a smile as he saw how eagerly the Cobras hurried forward, arrogant in their intention to swat these pesky interlopers in swift frontal attack.

  To the right, Katz saw the tall, cadaverous black, a ridiculously ornate dress cap on his head. The armed man decisively took charge, shouted orders, ran left in extreme sweep with a select cadre.

  Katz glanced left and saw Manning watching Blackwell with rapt fascination. There's your man, Manning, he thought. And he would honor his comrade's request. Blackwell's execution would be in his hands alone.

  By now the mine site was a crawling mass of humanity. And when the swarming was at its height...

  Th
e FAV was suddenly darting along the rim of the roadway, the Mark 19 punching out its murderous, stunning charges in incredibly swift rangabang. Again the Israeli was amazed at the superpowerful shearing blast each HE shell set off, at the d-r-r-r-r-t stutter-in-and-out, leaving a dozen men reeling, falling, rolling, screaming in pain from the concussive effects alone.

  Entire bodies came apart as if they had been stuffed with TNT. Clouds of blood, gristle, bone, bits of clothing exploded in a ten-foot radius.

  Small wonder the majority of Blackwell's hardmen stood transfixed, staring, unable to react. Even had they had presence of mind to fire their Kalashnikovs, there was nothing to shoot at. The devil wagon was gone, streaking down the mountain trail, the monstrous gun spitting death into another area.

  While behind them, before the faintest semblance of sanity returned, Manning, Encizo, Salibogo and Katzenelenbogen rose up as one and began filling their sector of the crater with flesh-shredders. Those who had not died during the thunder-fire overture checked out now.

  Manning, his lips drawn back over his teeth, lost his battlefield smarts. Jamming three twenty-round mags in a row into the rifle, he fired wide open. One terrorist stood in stiff freeze, his finger locked on the trigger of his AK-47, spilling rounds heedlessly into the sky, his chest torn wide open, scraps of flesh flying like crimson confetti as Manning's slugs kept pouring in.

  Then the ghost vehicle was skimming back again. The earth was erupting beneath their feet once more.

  Encizo checkmated one particularly tenacious terrorist who — despite the fact that half of his face was a gaping, hanging flap of flesh and bone — was calmly leading the FAV with his rifle, waiting on a killing shot. What was left of his head was snapped back, where it hung in wobbling slack, the neck almost totally severed by the Cuban's last-minute burst.

  Encizo began popping mercy rounds into three other still-flopping men in the slaughter pit.

  Salibogo babbled an Arabic chant, gave his victims a traditional Koran send-off. Six Cobras fell before his clattering Kalashnikov.

  By now the pits were dancing in flame. The Mark 19 scorchers chewed up Unimogs and random supply vehicles, spewed burning diesel into the night sky, set those hardmen unlucky enough to survive afire, turned them into screaming bundles of burning rags.

  Little by little the sounds of rapid fire died down. Yakov and company now used judicious rounds — methodical extermination. McCarter and Ohara, holding the AK-47 and M-16 again, picked off those terrorists who had managed to take cover in select foxholes away from the main marshaling area.

  Then it was into-the-valley time. Cleanup, the dirtiest part of any battle. Find Blackwell. Find that missile, chop it down before the night was minutes older.

  Although the initial rat-shoot had consigned at least a hundred fifty Black Cobras to an eternal hell-slide, there were still forty-odd diehards at large on the outer peripheries of the battle zone, hardboys who clustered in pockets, caves and gullies, and were dedicated to fighting to the last.

  Then there were some who had had quite enough for one night. A dozen or so of these Phoenix Force heard in the distance, as they stumbled over trip lines and were turned into flying dog-scraps, courtesy of the deadly claymores ringing their enclave.

  "Ignorant bastards," McCarter growled as he looked down from his overhead vantage point. "Serves them right."

  Movement to his right, a squad dashing closer to the base of his outlook, alerted McCarter. An ambush party setting in for a long vigil. He tried for an angle on them with his rifle, but there was no way he could get a shot without making a clay pigeon of himself. Abruptly he was up, running back to the fast attack vehicle.

  "Live rounds," he howled as he returned and came to a stop above the spot where the four would-be bushwhackers were settling in. Three M-26 grenades, pins pulled in quick succession, homed in on the shallow gully.

  His command carried clearly, and Phoenix's ground troops hit the dirt. The flat, concussive reports — BLAM-BLAM-BLAM — jarred them, rattled in echoing replay among the hills for ten seconds.

  From the death-cage below McCarter and Keio came the sound of gurgling last breaths.

  "Rotten, motherfucking bastards," Jeremiah Blackwell growled from an outlook located roughly two hundred feet south of where the pineapples had just bloomed. Blackwell grasped his badly bleeding left shoulder — a numbing shrapnel crease — and his panic rose.

  He turned to the two men beside him, their glistening eyes reflecting the orange glow from the burning vehicles. "We gotta get to that missile, whip some Russian asses," he said. "That bird's gotta go. Once it does, we clear out. We get back to DeRosa, look us up a new stake. The mission worked, dammit. They can't turn us down now. C'mon, you poky shits, move."

  McCarter and Ohara shouted overhead warnings. pinpointed ground pockets and distant straggler movement as their comrades moved deeper into the canyon in search of the missile silo. Their rifles and the MK-19 ineffective now (the fleeing Cobras widening their range by the minute,) they followed the south-seeking scouts as far as they could on the stony ramp.

  Now, as Yakov and the rest were finally lost in the eerie moonscape that seemed to stretch halfway to Sudan, they raced back toward the FAV.

  Five minutes later they were entering the valley themselves. Keio driving, his M-16 across his lap, McCarter in half crouch beside him, the AK-47 panning. They dared any of Blackwell's diehards to take their chances.

  They were two hundred yards into the mine floor, feeling their way along a main feeder road, when a Kalashnikov opened up to their right. "Down," McCarter bawled, instantly spotting the muzzle-flash. The Cobra was dug into a crevice some thirty feet along the pit's west face. He had been in the process of climbing up after the American death wagon. But now death had come looking for him.

  McCarter slapped off six rounds of 5.56mm. The rounds did not faze the terrorist holdout. "We'll see about that," McCarter said. He swung up the Mark 19 and swatted three ear-splitting rounds toward the shielded hideout. In the blink of an eye the whole wall gave way, slammed down.

  The FAV moved cautiously on.

  It was Manning, exploring the extreme left flank, who heard the slight sound of a falling stone in a place where stone had been stable for a decade. He froze, sent a stand-off signal to Rafael, who followed behind and to the right. Manning eased to his knees, began a careful crawl forward.

  He had covered eighteen feet and was just coming to the lip of the plateau, when he heard a muffled cough from below. He came to the edge, brought up his head inch-by-inch. There were three hardguys, in a boulder-hugging pose, all staring to their right, away from Manning.

  The H&K slid into position, held bead on the man in the middle. Blackwell. Dear God, Manning thought, his heart hammering crazily, this is it.

  "Freeze," he barked, the loud command jarring the three men, spinning them around. "Don't anybody move."

  But the fools panicked; they would take a last shot at being heroes. The assault rifles swung up, fingers scrabbled for triggers. Manning pressured his own trigger and saw the guy on the left straighten up, spin into the rocks, his throat shattered. Simultaneously rounds from the right, from Blackwell, slid inches above his head, igniting a grating chill of mortality within Manning's brain. He dropped, rolled sideways.

  Before he could take a stealthy peek, chance a second burst, Encizo had charged forward, hit the prone. The Stoner bellowed, the muzzle-flash illuminating the Cuban's snarling face, and the officer to Blackwell's right was sledged backward, taking four hard ones in the gut. The Stoner swung left and zeroed on the Black Cobra topcock as he flung himself over a low stone parapet, ran in zigzag crouch, heading deeper into the rubble of tracks, abandoned mining trolleys and slag.

  "No," Manning yelled. "He's mine."

  Encizo caught himself, slumped back. "Yeah, buddy," he sighed. "Go get the rat."

  Two more shots cleaved the darkness, whistled wide and high. Blackwell's fireburst provided clear beacon for Manni
ng. He saw the black maw of the tunnel almost at the same time that Blackwell did. And as the man broke for it, seeking to lose himself in its tangled depths, Manning sent a desperation grouping at the stone wall just above it.

  The 7.62mm slugs hammered the soft shale, sent chips spattering back at Blackwell, momentarily blinding him. He ducked, threw his hands over his face, fought to clear his vision just long enough to still achieve his objective.

  He was stumbling forward, his rifle out of action, groggily driving toward the cave, when Manning tackled him from behind.

  Manning was standing over Blackwell, the H&K poised inches from his eyes, challenging him to wiggle, when Encizo, then Katzenelenbogen broke into view.

  "The missile," Manning demanded, his voice emerging in a strange croak because of the overload of emotion in it. "Where is it?" The rifle barrel slashed, once, twice, across the sweat-glistening face, gouged out pieces of flesh. "Talk, damn you. Talk."

  Quickly eyes became accustomed to the flickering half light. Seeing the cold, hateful stare Blackwell sent them, they felt a grudging sense of admiration for his cool control. "I ain't telling you motherfuckers nothing," he finally said. The words were dipped in venom.

  But if his lips did not betray the missile's location, his eyes did. There was a furtive, sidelong twitch in them, a small veering to the right — indication that the silo was hidden farther on in the hellish maze of mining pits.

  It was all the signal that Manning needed. His lust to avenge Nemtala throttled for too long now, the reality of having her tormentor now at hand, served to undermine any tenuous control.

  "Manning," Katz called, his voice sharp, commanding, "stop."

  "No!" Manning choked. The H&K came up again, began drifting across Blackwell's face, across his chest, across his belly, as if uncertain as to where to start shooting first.

  The rifle came up again. It caressed Blackwell teasingly under the chin. "Do you remember that girl you abducted from Abu Darash?" Manning said in a hushed voice. "A girl named Nemtala?"