Cobra Strike

by J. B. Hadley

  Campbell nodded, pleased to have his suspicions confirmed. Together they pored over the map inside the bouncing, swaying personnel carrier. Mike put his finger on the crossing of the Murghab River and shook his head. Andre nodded his head to show he agreed that it would be suicide for them to attempt a crossing. Mike was suddenly restless now, fidgeting in the crowded, enclosed space of the carrier. He poked Lance Hardwick in the leg, and Lance, who had been riding with the top half of his body out of the personnel carrier, took the binoculars from his eyes and drew inside.

  “What do you see?”

  “I dunno, Mike. Once, a while back, I thought I saw a high-flying speck behind us to the east. Now I could almost swear I glimpsed it to the west of us, making use of the sun setting in our eyes. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I think we might—no, hell, I think we are being tailed by either a light observation plane or a chopper that’s really hanging back and giving us room to move. I wasn’t going to sound the alarm till I caught another look at it, because what I saw might have been a hawk or even a goddamn pigeon, just a high-flying dot—”

  Mike pointed upward. “Look out for a track for us to pull off this road.” Then he went back to intensely studying the map, a silence spread among the men cooped inside the armored vehicle, who realized that something was about to happen now to change the tedium of the journey. Baker, who had been in an almost wordless sulk for days, looked carefully around him and began to take close note of things.

  General Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov had flown in by Mi-24 to inspect the bridge over the Murghab River for himself. Things were set up as he ordered. Two heavy trucks waited to the side at each end of the bridge. When the personnel carrier mounted the bridge, the trucks would seal off both ends, leaving the armored vehicle trapped on the spans. Coils of barbed wire had been laid according to his instructions on all the parapets of the bridge to stop the Americans from jumping into the water. Floodlights were strategically placed, since the crossing would almost certainly be attempted after dark.

  The general was not particularly concerned when Colonel Matveyeva’s helicopter radioed a coded signal that the personnel carrier had left the road. They were nearby and stopping to wait for dark. Her helicopter could not just stay out there without being spotted, so he ordered it to Moghor. This pleased Yekaterina, who thought she was still communicating with him in Kabul, more than four hundred miles to the east. No doubt she expected him to be present for the confrontation between the tanks and the personnel carrier, a scenario she still believed was in his serious planning.

  He would personally trap these Americans on that bridge. They would probably try some dramatic stunt, like holding out inside the armored vehicle and raking the bridge with fire from their two machine guns. The bridge walls were too strong for them to break through and topple down into the water. He would let them strut and storm for a while. It would only make their final personal surrender to him all the more sweet.

  * * *

  Bob Murphy peered through the grating and into the fading light, and Lance Hardwick yelled down directions to him from on top.

  “Just keep pushing south any way you can,” Mike urged them, “and we got to hit the river.”

  Waller had fitted the machine guns with tracer bullets every fourth or fifth cartridge. He manned one gun, and Turner the other. Harvey expected company on the river-bank. It would be fully dark when they got there. If there was going to be a firefight, they would need the glowing tracers to indicate to them where their bullets were hitting.

  But the riverbank was deserted. Campbell inflated the rubber raft from inside the carrier. He sent Op van de Bosch along with Joe Nolan to make contact with Op’s friend the local rebel leader and kept Jan Prijt, Op’s very quiet soundman, behind to make sure Op came back. Lance paddled the raft across the wide river and brought it back. Waller and Turner removed the two machine guns from their mountings and collected the ammo for them. Mike wanted to present them as a gift to the rebel leader and ordered Lance and Harvey to ferry them one at a time across the river. Each of these KPV heavy machine guns weighed about a hundred pounds and fired 14.5cm shells from a hundred-round metal-link belt-feed system. Campbell wanted the rebels to have these weapons because he knew their value as antiaircraft guns—the Cong and North Vietnamese had used these Soviet weapons very effectively against U.S. aircraft in two- and four-barrel models known as the ZPU-2 and ZPU-4.

  Everyone else stripped everything of use from the inside of the personnel carrier, and each man was ferried with this merchandise and his own weapons across the Murghab. Campbell and Murphy were the last to cross in the rubber raft, paddled by Hardwick. Before leaving, they selected a deep stretch of water close to the bank, and Bob set the personnel carrier heading for the river at about 20 m.p.h. He jumped off and removed his hat in respect for the machine as it trundled over the edge of the riverbank and tipped over into its watery grave.

  The rebels, thirty strong, came by horseback to the far bank with spare horses for the newcomers and their equipment. Some of them took the machine guns and equipment scavenged from the personnel carrier to hiding places in the steep hills that rose south of the river, while the main body of men rode with them to a temporary camp the rebel leader was not using and which was not far from the main road to Herat. He had promised the Dutch TV team that he would let them film an exploit of his, which Op suspected was blowing up the river bridge. Joe Nolan had ridden back with the rebels and assured Mike that things looked good at the other end. There were about a hundred men in this encampment, in addition to the riders with them, and all were armed with automatic rifles, according to Nolan. The leader’s name was Noor Qader.

  He met them on their arrival, welcoming each of them individually with hugs and handshakes but no English. He was a big man, not unlike some of the mountain Pathans they had come across near the Pakistani border, although he was not Pathan but a Dari-speaking Tajik. He wore the Afghan rebel’s usual collection of loose garments. Instead of a turban he wore a pale blue synthetic-fur Soviet army hat with the red star pulled off. They could see why Op had been anxious to come here. This Afghan was photogenic.

  Two riders galloped in out of the darkness, jumped from their mounts, and ran, breathless, to Noor Qader. Jed Crippenby elbowed his way in close so he could overhear. Seven tanks had left Moghor earlier. They had stopped at darkness, were now blocking the road less than ten miles away, arid could be expected to start forward again and pass close by at first light. Groups of rebels immediately began to hurry around. At first the mercs thought they were abandoning the camp. This was not the case. Men hurried back and forth all night as the team rested on full bellies in their sleeping bags to one side of the cooking fire. Campbell was insistent that his men all rest, regardless of the preparations taking place around them.

  They heard the tanks before they saw them, clanking along the road, deep roars from their powerful engines. When Campbell saw them, he knew they were T-54s, which the Russians had supplied to the North Vietnamese. These were Red Army tanks, and although they were not the latest thing in Soviet tank design, they carried a powerful 100mm cannon. It was clear to Mike that they had come in search of the Americans in the armored personnel carrier. A direct hit from one of these cannons would have left the carrier looking like one of those ultralight compacts after being totaled by a Mack truck.

  The mercs were enjoying this. For once their asses weren’t on the line. They could scrunch down and watch Noor Qader’s men do their stuff. They hadn’t been told exactly what was going on; they hadn’t seen any weapons or mines heavy enough to do much more than scratch the paint job on these tanks, and they thought it a reasonable possibility that they would be running for their lives in the next few minutes with 100mm shells ripping craters in the ground behind them. But no one had asked for their help, and as Campbell said, they weren’t going to force themselves on anybody. They caught sight of Op van de Bosch and Jan Prijt from time to time, with their camera and microphon
e, as the two men moved themselves closer and closer to the road edge, only to be pulled back by Noor’s rebels.

  The tanks descended from the higher mountains, rumbling down the center of the road, one behind the other, awkward and careless and capable of crushing all in their path. The first tank drew level with the team’s position and passed them. Then they saw the road give way beneath its front end. The lead tank fell nose first into the deep trench that had opened up across the road. The tank’s weight had broken through the light timber that had been used to support the light skin of road surface stretched over the trench. The second tank bumped into the first from behind and drove it deeper into the pit. The other five tanks ground to a stop with several yards between them and shifted into reverse as their guns swung around to bear down on anything that might try to stop them from backing out of this situation. At that moment three heavy pine trees fell across the road almost simultaneously, each more than five feet in diameter and weighing at least twenty tons. The last tank began to butt against one trunk to try to roll it out of the way.

  Noor’s rebels swarmed out onto the road and up on the tanks. They smeared mud over all the slits so that the crews inside were blinded. Then these men scattered, and the first bottle with a blazing rag stuck in its neck arced through the air and smashed on the top surface of one tank. The gasoline inside spread as the bottle smashed and was ignited by the flaming rag, so that it covered the tank with a leaping carpet of flames.

  More bottles were thrown in a constant series upon the lumbering, blinded tanks, so that they constantly remained engulfed in fire and the men inside began to scream for mercy. Some burst through the escape hatches, their hair and skin immediately catching fire. The rebels let some die slowly, half in and half out of the tanks, clawing the air and hoarsely roaring. Others they cut to bits with automatic fire as soon as they showed themselves.

  A helicopter flew in from the south to observe the action but did not present itself suitably for a rocket shot.

  Yekaterina knew they should have stopped those Americans while they were still on the plains. Now they had been allowed to regain rebel-held high ground again, and this was the result of it! Seven totally destroyed T-54s and crews! But, needless to say, wily old General Kudimov had covered his ass again by ordering her to proceed the previous night to Moghor, from where the tanks had set out. As colonel, she had found herself to be the ranking officer in the town. She saw now why that had been arranged. Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov had not remained a general in the Red Army all these years without having found a way to dispose of unwanted mistakes. She knew his immediate action, once he heard about the tanks, would be to suspend her from active duty and that after that she would have no means of restoring her reputation. So she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

  “Maintain radio silence,” she told the two pilots of her chopper, “and make for the Moghor landing zone with all speed. If either of you mention a word to anyone of what you think you may have seen down there on that road, I’ll have you executed for treason. You’ve heard what they say about me. I’m pretty, so I’ve got to be extra mean to make dumb bastards like you believe.”

  “We two saw nothing,” the senior pilot assured her, “and neither did the engineer or door gunner. I’ll talk with them.”

  “Be sure you do.”

  Her plans began to fit into a more logical framework as she turned them over in her mind on the flight back. She had met a lieutenant the night before and spent an hour in bed with him. He’d been coarse and brutal; he had even imagined he was her master because she had permitted him in her bed. He had soon learned he was mistaken there! He would be perfect for this job she had in mind. By the time she had finished, the general would have something to criticize her for—or she would have succeeded on her own where he had failed, by bringing in these Americans. At this stage it mattered little to her whether they were dead or alive. So long as she got them, she was off the hook.

  She watched impassively as her gunship raked the field and workers crumpled in the rain of bullets. She glanced at Lieutenant Tokar. The oaf was grinning. The slick carrying eight infantrymen followed the gunship as it headed north through fertile valleys in the bare red mountains. Lieutenant Tokar would do all right.

  She did not want to travel too far north, and yet the progress of the Americans would be slowed now that they had to stay off the main road into Herat. Also, she would need fairly fast results since she was operating without clearance from her superiors. In a short while she spotted an ideal village in the sheltered end of a valley. The Americans would not have lingered after the tank attack. If they had not passed through this place, they could not be very far from it.

  “Soften it up and signal to the other chopper to prepare to put the men in,” she said to the senior pilot, who had to swing around to make himself visible to the slick pilots and use hand signals to them. He then dove the gunship on the village, rocketed a few of the houses, and strafed the streets as they filled with fleeing people. The gunship then pulled back and hovered to give cover to the slick as it selected an LZ and went down to put in the men.

  After a while, when no resistance was offered, the gunship touched down beside the slick and waited for the infantrymen to bring back prisoners for questioning.

  The colonel had a basic working knowledge of Dan, the Afghan dialect of Persian. She kept her question simple. “You see Americans?” “No.” “No.” What else did she expect them to say? She told the lieutenant what she wanted him to do and waited for his reaction. He grinned again.

  “Take them over by their houses so they don’t damage the choppers or mess us up,” she told him.

  The lieutenant tied the thumbs of five people together behind their backs, after selecting an old man, two mothers who had to be separated from their children and from whom he ripped their head and face covering, two children of eight or nine who had to be separated from their mothers, and one youth he would use as a demonstration to the others. He had the five set twenty yards apart, close to the houses, and had the soldiers keep back their family and other villagers at about forty yards. Then he bound a single stick of dynamite to the belly of each of the five, set a cap at one end of each stick, and connected a twenty-foot fuse to each cap. He stood by the youth and waited for the colonel to ask her question.

  “You see Americans?”

  The youth might have been retarded; the lieutenant couldn’t tell. Or maybe just filled with hate, as so many of these rotten Afghans were. Anyway, he didn’t answer the question, so the lieutenant touched the end of the fuse with a match flame and moved away fast.

  The youth remained for some time, watching the long brown fuse turn to white ash as the point of ignition crept nearer to the stick tied to his belly. Then he tried to back away. He even tried to run, his thumbs tied behind his back, but his long tail of creeping death was attached to him and went where he did. He spent his last moments standing still with his head bowed.

  The dynamite blast knocked him on his back, splitting open his chest cavity and splashing his blood on the mud-brick wall of the house behind him.

  The lieutenant next selected a nine-year-old boy whose mother the soldiers were having trouble keeping at a distance. He waited for the colonel to ask her question.

  “No,” the boy replied in a firm voice.

  The lieutenant lit the match but did not yet touch it to the end of the fuse. He looked at the colonel.

  She walked over to the boy’s mother. “You see Americans?”

  “There are none! I would tell you if I had!” the woman screamed.

  The colonel herself had to knock her to the ground when she saw the match light the fuse leading to her small son’s body.

  CHAPTER 14

  “The crazy bitch!” General Kudimov shouted to the major. “Are you sure she’s on this rampage?”

  “Certain, Comrade General. Do you want me to send forces to restrain her?”

  “Absolutely not! Maybe she’ll g
et them this way.” The general knew the major resented having a woman for a senior officer in a combat zone and would do anything to get rid of her, which might come in handy later if Yekaterina did not succeed. On the other hand, if she did succeed, he would have no choice but to give her some of the credit. He said aloud, “Right now Colonel Matveyeva is the only senior officer making what I regard as a serious effort to apprehend these American outlaws. I think that instead of finding ways to try to block her efforts, Major, you might attempt to initiate some of your own.”

  After the major had left, suitably chastised, Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov began to worry again about what she might be up to. She was crazy enough to capture the Americans, load them into those two choppers, and fly them across the border into the U.S.S.R., all on her own, taking all the credit. No, as little as he wanted to be associated with her campaign of torture and terror, he would still have to pay her a visit in the field, if only to remind her who she still reported to, like it or not.

  He would give her a little more time and try to keep a watch on her. Then he would pay her an unexpected visit himself and see what she had to show him.

  The colonel and lieutenant had refined their technique. Their early methods had been too time-consuming. They had wasted huge amounts of time on people who had no idea what they were talking about—country people who became confused when strangers dropped out of the sky and demanded to know about other strangers these people had neither seen nor heard of. But she could never be sure if they were lying until she tested them physically. Their new technique involved fewer victims in a greater number of locations, so that she could mark off the grids in her military map of the area as having been thoroughly investigated. Coming into villages was dangerous. They had drawn fire in two of them, and now they approached people in fields just as readily as those in villages. They had run out of dynamite but had discovered a safer and even more effective replacement—kerosene. Few of the houses here had electricity, so kerosene was in plentiful supply everywhere they went.