by J. B. Hadley
That night was their first night in the open, since they had always stayed in rebel huts before. Although they had ultralight nylon tents, each sleeping two men, Mike decided against erecting them in his dangerous terrain. Seven men sleeping concealed on the side of a mountain were unfindable, whereas the sight of even one tent told a whole story. The next day, Mike teamed Bob Murphy with Lance Hardwick, Andre Verdoux with Joe Nolan, and kept the unpredictable Harvey Waller and the inexperienced Jed Crippenby with him. Bob and Lance’s task was to locate military posts, and the other two teams were to check the approaches toward two high passages to the north, which might be less well guarded then the main pass. They were to meet back at their starting place in two hours.
“If you’re seen, even if you kill some easy target, you’ll give our presence away,” Mike warned. “Then we’ll never break through. As it is, they’ll be watching for someone coming through from the other side of this range, so we’re catching them from behind. We need to keep that advantage. Don’t blow it for us.”
The man Mike was really afraid might blow it for them was in his own group. Harvey Waller could be hard to restrain when he was rarin’ to go. Of all of them on the team, Waller was by far the best fighting man--he had an instinct and imagination in combat that made the others look second-rate. Off the leash, Harvey could qualify for one of those TV nature programs about magnificent natural predators; on the leash, he might start shooting at any time, regardless of consequences. But not with Mike. Harvey never tried to disguise the fact that he was in awe of Mike. Whatever Mike said was law to Harvey.
“I think Jed should be point man,” Waller said. “He’s so skinny, he’ll be able to walk through a hail of bullets.”
Crippenby swallowed and looked uncomfortable.
Mike pointed to Waller. “You lead, I’ll take the rear.” Mike saw that Waller, with his instinct for someone’s vulnerability, had sensed Jed’s fear—something that Mike himself had not noticed. Crippenby was no fool; he knew they could not hope to break through the Soviet line without some contact. Up until now all had been plain sailing, easy going, apart from sudden alarms caused by approaching aircraft. Now the danger was from something unseen on the ground, something from which there would be no easy escape, since they were the ones who were advancing. No doubt Crippenby had been through all this in textbooks a hundred times, only now he was finding out that the mind and muscles behave in a different way in the presence of a real threat. “Are you going to be okay?” Mike asked softly.
“Sure. Sure, Mike.”
“Stay between Harvey and me and you’ll do just fine. Do what you see us doing. Don’t try to prove anything.”
Jed unexpectedly grinned. “Prove anything? My mind’s gone blank.”
“That happens.”
They moved out at a cautious walk toward some stands of timber that they might be able to follow up onto higher ground toward the small northernmost pass. It was still early in the morning, and they could see smoke and dust from activity in the valley and hear distant trucks change gear as they climbed the road toward the main pass. Up where they were, the soil was too poor to cultivate and the trees had not been cut for fuel because they were too inaccessible to make it worthwhile. They climbed awhile, keeping to the cover of the trees, until they came to an overlook above a winding dirt road that clearly led up to the small pass.
Mike and Harvey had spotted a machine-gun emplacement by the side of the road and were moving forward cautiously for a closer look when Jed started fluttering his hands at them in alarm. They stood still and looked around them into the heavy undergrowth, guns ready, but they saw nothing. Jed pointed, his eyes bulging in alarm, at what could have been the topless trunk of a pine leaning at an angle maybe thirty yards away. Only it wasn’t a branchless pine, it was the long barrel of a heavy gun.
Now that Mike and Harvey could see that, they could also see the camouflaged tank to which the gun barrel was attached, emplaced in a thick clump of what looked like rhododendrons, its outline broken by boughs thrown on its top. The two men started walking backward, with Jed keeping his long, lean form doubled down and staying between them. After they had backed off to safety and were retracing their steps, both Mike and Harvey praised Jed.
“Last goddamn thing on earth I expected,” Harvey said. 44Shit, when I saw those tracked wheels through the leaves, I thought to myself that I must be going blind if I missed that. I just wasn’t looking for it. I’d have walked right in front of it.”
“That’s how we nearly fucked up, Harvey, knowing it all,” Mike said. “Jed here has no idea what to expect. His eyes are peeled for everything from a hydrogen bomb to an elephant trap. He see, we don’t. We were lucky to have you along today, Jed.”
“You’re okay, kid,” Waller conceded grumpily.
Jed blushed.
“Just don’t go thinking you know anything,” Harvey added, “ “cause you don’t.”
The other four were at the arranged meeting place when they got back. Mike just shook his head.
Andre Verdoux said, “Joe and I may have something. A lot of flatbed trucks with loads of cinder blocks are arriving along the road to the middle pass. The Russians must be building something in a hurry up that way. A truck ride up there would be just the thing to take the weight off our feet.”
“What about checkpoints?” Mike asked.
“We didn’t see any,” Andre replied. “Maybe they feel that an uncovered truck with a small load of cinder blocks can’t conceal very much. They have to keep the loads small because the road is so bad and the trucks are so ancient. One truck lost eight blocks on a bump as we watched. We hid them in bushes alongside the road for possible later use. Murphy says the trucks passed a checkpoint before they left the main road for the side road to the middle pass.”
Bob nodded. “Lance and I went back the main road a bit because of the sound of engines. All vehicles, commercial and military, were being carefully checked by uniformed Soviets. When we tried to follow the road toward the pass, we’d gone no more than a hundred yards when we started seeing sandbagged dugouts all the way along. It looks like they’re expecting die Marines.”
“And they got the road covered by tanks in the hills, and, nearer in, mortar crews,” Lance added. “We nearly ran headlong into one mortar crew on the way back here. They were just sitting there smoking and talking. We smelled the Russian tobacco before we heard their voices.”
Mike was interested. “How many?”
“Three,” Lance said. “One on the tube, one to reload, one with a mobile radio.”
“Bob, Lance, Harvey,” Mike said, and drew his finger across his throat. “Jed, you speak Russian?” Jed nodded. “So do Andre and I,” Mike went on. “More or less, anyway. So be careful with the radio, it will come in handy. We will cover you three and come in to pick up the mortar tube and rounds. Jed will pick up the radio. Andre and Joe will then lead us to those cinder blocks on the roadside. Any questions? No? Good,” he said without waiting. “Let’s move out.”
Mike’s nostrils twitched. He smelled the sweet pungent smoke of Russian cigarettes. He winked at Bob Murphy, who undraped his Kalashnikov and backpack and pulled his flat wool hat down on his ears. Lance Hard wick and Harvey Waller quietly dropped their rifles and backpacks, too, and together all three men moved forward very slowly. Mike motioned to the remaining men to hold their ground and not to cock their rifles-a metallic scrape or click could be heard a long way and was unmistakable.
Lance and” Bob had peeped through the scrub and bushes last time to see who was there. It had been necessary then, but this time they had to go in blind in case a glimpse of them gave the mortar crew warning enough to fire a shot and raise a general alarm. These men had to die silently and fast. To do this the team members had to go in blind, and it was just too bad if there were more men than the three who had been with the mortar previously. The meres drew their combat knives and advanced to the point where they could commence their rush.
Waller
edged in front to form the spearhead of the three men. He held up his left hand. When he dropped it, they charged. They broke through the brush and into the small clearing in which the mortar tube was placed, rounds lying near it in an aluminum carrying case. The Russian with the radio backpack was sitting on a stone and reading from a magazine to the two others, also seated on stones, who were laughing. They could have been soldiers of any army, passing the long, dull hours of uneventful duty. As the three meres broke from the brush and into the clearing, the three Soviet soldiers jumped to their feet with frightened faces.
Waller was in the lead and in the middle. He rushed at the middle Russian, who was in the act of cocking the Kalashnikov slung on his right shoulder, and hit him a straight right in the middle of the chest, like a boxer in the ring, only that in place of a glove, Waller held the steel blade of a combat knife in his right hand. The tip of the blade entered the Russian’s solar plexus, and the weight of Harvey’s shoulder behind the punch sank the blade all the way in until Harvey felt the tip scrape the inside of the man’s backbone. The Russian gripped Waller’s arm with both his hands and looked into his grinning face with imploring eyes as his body slowly collapsed and slid oflf the blade. The dying man’s fingers clutched Waller’s wrist even as his body crumpled to the ground, and the light faded from his eyes. Waller kicked him away and broke his death grip.
Murphy stood a good six inches above his opponent and weighed almost twice as much. He charged into the Soviet serviceman before he could free his automatic pistol from its holster. Both men tumbled to the ground. Bob knelt on his struggling victim’s chest, grasped a handful of his hair in his left hand and twisted his head back and to one side. With a quick, easy motion he drew the blade of his combat knife across the man’s throat. The slit on his throat opened like a wide mouth. As the Russian wrenched his body beneath the Australian’s massive strength and weight, bright red blood squirted fom the severed arteries in his neck. He died slowly, struggling like a farmyard chicken.
The Russian with the radio backpack took one look at Lance coming at him with the combat knife and turned around to run. Were it not for the radio, Lance could have buried the knife in his back. Were it not that he had been warned to avoid damaging the radio, he could have grabbed on to it and use it to pull his prey down. Lance swung the blade in an upward thrust beneath the radio, trying to drive the knife into the soldier’s right kidney, a few inches above his belt, but he ended by giving him only a superficial wound. This close call spurred the Russian on to a burst of speed. He made for the edge of the clearing, with Lance running right on his heels, thrusting at him with the blood-smeared knife. Suddenly the Russian came to a dead stop and Lance banged into him from behind. To Lance’s amazement he saw die point of a knife emerge from the back of the Russian’s neck and almost touch his own nose. The Russian fell lifeless at his feet, and Harvey Waller was standing there easing the blade out of the man’s neck with the crazy grin on his face Harvey always got when he killed people.
Jed stayed in the scrub, monitoring Russian broadcasts, while the others got into positions on both sides of the dirt road where Joe Nolan and Andre Verdoux had seen one of the construction trucks lose eight cinder blocks on a bump. They pulled the blocks out from where Joe and Andre had hidden them and left them scattered on the roadway as they had originally fallen. They were not enough to act as a block to any truck, and indeed only a few minutes after they placed them, a loaded truck passed them, steering around them so the blocks were between its wheels. Then two empty trucks came from the opposite direction, without stopping either. Mike had told them that this would happen, yet they should not try to erect a barricade because this would cause gunfire, which they could not let happen because of nearby military positions. Mike said all they need do was wait for one driver conscientious enough not to waste the blocks.
Lance, Harvey, and Mike were on one side of the road. Lance was tying his combat knife to one end of a long, straight branch from which he had trimmed the twigs and leaves. He ignored the condescending smile of Harvey. He knew Waller would be giving him a hard time now because he had not managed to kill his assigned man when they took the mortar. Harvey would move on to making remarks about Hollywood stuntmen who looked great on camera so long as everyone was pulling punches. This would go on until something else distracted Waller or until Lance proved him wrong. Which was what he was about to do. He hoped.
They heard the grind of gears as the loaded truck downshifted to negotiate the long steady climb up the winding road. This truck was a flatbed with a load of cinder blocks, identical to the others. The driver swerved to avoid the blocks on the road, going to one side of them. For a moment he appeared to be going on without stopping, then they heard his brakes squeal to a stop, and more grinding of gears, and the truck slowly reversed back. Leaving the engine running, the Afghan driver got out on one side, a Soviet soldier on the other. The soldier was mistrustful and alert. He circled the entire truck as the driver began to load the blocks. His finger rested on the trigger of his Kalashnikov, and it looked like no one could take him without a firefight.
But as he passed Lance’s position, squinting suspiciously into the undergrowth right where the men were concealed, he spun around to look at the road on the other side of the truck. Perhaps he thought he heard a sound. Lance noiselessly rose to his feet, drew back the javelin balanced in his right hand, then launched it forward with all his might. The long tapering branch with the combat knife bound to its heavy end hit the soldier in the small of his back. He staggered a few paces, dropped his assault rifle without firing it, and reached behind him to desperately try to pluck out from his back the blade and long spear whose end was trailing in the dust behind. He flopped down on his face, and the long stick drunkenly reeled upright on his back and then fell sideways at an angle, still supported by the knife blade deep in the prone soldier’s flesh.
Lance heard Harvey give a grunt of satisfaction and felt an approving poke in the ribs before Harvey burst out onto the roadway and descended on the petrified, unarmed Afghan driver, who had been in the act of picking up a cinder block. Harvey hit him head down, arms outstretched, like an enraged water buffalo. He was screaming, “Goddam fucking traitor! Selling your country to the commie robots! I’ll put some sense in your fucking head!” He began to smash the driver’s face into the corner of a cinder block. “I’ll learn you! You won’t deal with no more Russian scumbags when I’m finished with you!” He kept on beating the man’s head against the cinder black until it was hardly more than a bloody pulp upon a set of shoulders.
Andre walked out on the roadway and coolly watched Waller in his frenzy. He said, “That’s really showing him, Harvey.”
Mike told Jed to drive, since he spoke Pushtu well enough to fool a Russian. Although both spoke Russian, neither Mike nor Andre could impersonate a Russian soldier because of their black beards.
“Move out!” Campbell yelled as soon as they had thrown the bodies and bloodstained cinder block in the undergrowth. “We’re going to have another truck along any moment.”
The six men on the back of the truck worked feverishly to build themselves a hideout from the cinder blocks as the truck was in motion over the bumpy dirt road. They lost some blocks and threw others off to make room for themselves inside a rectangle of double-walled cinder blocks interlaced like brickwork and placed crosswise to provide stability. Gaps were left through which to poke rifles in this five-foot-high fortress.
They met no other trucks on the road, and Mike supposed that this was because it was early afternoon. “Keep driving till I tell you to stop,” he yelled up front to Jed, and situated himself so he could peer through the rear window and windshield to see what was ahead. Mike had no idea how soon they would come to the building site and what he would do when they arrived there. Although he and the others in the back of the truck were well fortified against enemy fire, both the driver and the truck itself were vulnerable to even the mildest form of attack. Campbell
watched the road carefully and shouted frequently to Jed to make sure his voice could be heard.
The truck continued climbing up and up the winding dirt road, and they could feel the air become cooler and thinner. Joe Nolan cursed from the moment he felt pressure on his eardrums, and he yawned constantly to relieve the discomfort. They passed through a zone of heavy timber, mostly evergreen, and after that came increasingly smaller and stunted trees until there was nothing taller than foot-high heatherlike plants. Higher still were patches of snow and clusters of bright wildflowers nourished by the runoff of melted snow and which looked out of place on these barren, exposed slopes. On the right side the road fell away in an almost sheer drop, a slope so steep, it could not be climbed in many places without ropes. Down below they saw the blacktop road leading to the main pass with trucks or military vehicles moving in both directions along it. Although they had climbed high, it was only to a pass, and there were huge snow-covered peaks and entire ranges without a break that rose into the air many times their height.
The road swung sharply to the left and ran between two gradual upward slopes as it entered the pass. As they went deeper into the pass the mountains towered on each side of them and cast the road in deep shadows, which made the air chillier than before.
“You see them, Mike? Both sides.”
“Yeah,” Mike yelled back to Jed. They were coming to one rocket and machine-gun emplacement on the right side of the road, and another two hundred yards farther on to the left. He could see three or four Soviet soldiers in light blue uniforms in each of the sandbagged bunkers, their weapons pointing along the road in both directions. They passed the first emplacement, receiving only a glance, and then the second, with only bored, frozen, miserable looks from the soldiers inside. The truck continued on around a gradual bend in the high-walled pass and came to the highest point in the road, beneath a mud-walled fort that looked as if it had been there since the days of Genghis Khan. Six or seven hundred yards before the fort, they saw the construction site, which was composed of stacks of cinder blocks, two empty trucks, and a cement mixer next to trenches excavated in the ground. A circle of turbaned men gathered around a fire some distance back from the road-obviously workers and drivers on their lunch break. There would be no siesta at this cold temperature.