Bolan noted this with interest, and jabbed Davis with his elbow. The two Pakistani soldiers were already alert to what was happening.
Yasmin and her companion spoke briefly and rapidly to the group around them before grabbing extra weapons. The two women ran over to where Bolan and his crew sat, saying something to Lasi that made her spit. Then they handed over the spare guns.
“I don’t care what Indira or Shirani says,” Yasmin began breathlessly. “I don’t think you’re on my side a hundred percent, but you’re sure as hell not on the side of whoever’s coming after us, and that’s what matters right now. We need you, and I’ll talk to you about whatever you want after, if you’ll help us now.”
Bolan nodded as he took one of the proffered AKs.
* * *
THREE BLACK-CLAD FIGURES swooped over the landscape. Their informants had provided the times and routes of the recon patrol from the PWLA camp, and these men, who had been sent as an advance guard by their group, knew that their job was to intercept and eliminate. They were to clear the way for the rest of their forces to sweep into the camp without resistance or forewarning.
They settled into crevices in the rock, covered by scrub, and waited. Like the force that had been wiped out earlier in the day, they were part of an Islamist cell. And like that force, they were determined to gain the upper hand among the rival groups in the region.
They settled in and waited for the patrol to approach. The women detailed to the route were obviously inexperienced. They didn’t speak as they moved, but their progress was noisier than they could have wished. Loose shale and rock shot from under their feet, no matter how carefully they trod. They winced as they took each step, hesitating as they tried to adjust their footfalls.
It was that hesitancy that saved them from instant death.
Deep in cover, one of the fighters drew a bead and loosed a short burst of fire that should have stitched both women across the chest. But one of the women spotted loose shale about to go under the sole of her companion’s boot and snatched at her sleeve, jerking her back. With a yelp of surprise, she stumbled and fell against her partner. The two of them tumbled to the ground. The bullets pinged harmlessly into the rock near where the women had been standing.
To their credit, the two women may not have been the most experienced, but their shock was short-lived, and they scrambled into the closest cover they could find, shrugging their rifles from their shoulders and aiming in the direction they thought the shots had come from. Both women sent a short tap into the darkness.
Return fire came from three directions—one volley came from the original shooter, while the two others pinned them down on either side of the scant cover they had found.
Again and again, the two women kept up a rearguard action, trying, at least, to carve out enough space to make an escape. But with each round of fire, they realized they had not made a dent on their opponents, and had only pinpointed their own position.
The three men took advantage of the women’s inexperience, closing them down and keeping them in place until they stood above the fissure in which they were hiding, trapping them in a triangle of fire.
Desperately looking up and firing into the darkness, the two women kept up their fight until the end. But with one final, decisive volley, the men cut their opponents to ribbons and silenced their guns.
* * *
IN THE SILENCE that ensued, the women in camp appeared confused. Bolan exchanged looks with Jinnah, Zia and Davis. The corporal shook his head.
“They are through,” he said simply.
Bolan yelled for Yasmin to come over. She complied, much to the chagrin of Indira and Shirani, who screamed for her to turn back toward them.
“This better be good,” she panted as she came close. “There’s going to be hell to pay—”
“There’ll be hell if you don’t listen,” Bolan snapped, “no matter what they think. Can you trust your people?”
“They’ll listen to me,” she affirmed.
“Good. Split them into four parties.” He indicated Jinnah, Zia, Davis and himself. “We’ll head up one each. We have to work on the assumption that they took out your patrol,” he added more gently, noting her shocked expression. “You need to hold it together for everyone. If you all follow what we say, then we’ve got a chance. They’ll be here soon, and we need to be ready....”
He considered the young woman and gazed beyond her to the rest of the PWLA camp.
They would need luck, too.
Chapter Twelve
Yasmin had taken well to her task, and although the two PWLA leaders looked as though they’d rather be doing things their way, they had reluctantly bowed to pressure and joined the others. The women were now clustered into groups of four to six, ready to be directed.
The soldier lifted his head and listened to the silence. Out there in the darkness, an enemy force of indeterminate size was closing on them. He had a rough idea of their initial direction from the sounds of the firefight, but how they had spread now that they had a bridgehead was another matter.
He assigned Zia, Jinnah and Davis to three groups and took the fourth himself. Davis shot him a quizzical look. He had chosen the group that included Yasmin.
“My mission, my responsibility,” he answered her querying gaze. “I’ll look after her, Davis. No worries.”
* * *
IN THE DARKNESS, the raiding party moved forward to join the advance fighters. There were a dozen of them, and they moved en bloc until they reached the other three men, and they looked on the corpses of the PWLA patrol with grim satisfaction. Like all groups in these hills, they had only a rough idea of how many people made up each of the opposing factions, but they had enough intel to know that the PWLA was one of the smaller groups. It was entirely possible that they outnumbered the female rebels. They’d learned that the PWLA had gained some outside help, but not much, and considering the devastation on the battlefield earlier in the day, any remaining forces would have been depleted by fatigue and injury as well as death.
Their battle plan was simple: they would spread out and form a cordon along the path that had been the patrol route encircling the camp. Once they were in position, they would signal each other and mount an attack that would come from all sides, overwhelming their enemy before they had a chance to muster a response.
Once they had the flask, then they would be able to do what they wanted, and demand that the other fighting factions in Balochistan rally behind them. Power—that was the simple aim.
Who could stop them?
* * *
BOLAN GATHERED THE four parties together in the center of camp. The silence around them was growing oppressive, and he could almost feel the steel band of the opposition tightening around them.
It wasn’t too much of a leap to assume that the approaching enemy would use the patrol route around the camp to close in on them. Bolan instructed each group to take a compass point on the route. Once they each reached their positions, they could spread out if they hadn’t already encountered the enemy. If they met them en route, then it would be up to the four professionals to use their experience to fight them off.
Bolan’s briefing was swift, and his upbeat and encouraging tone fired up the nervous PWLA. He kept his concerns to himself as they mobilized, but he knew there was every possibility that they were lambs for the slaughter.
It was up to the four shepherds to keep them safe.
* * *
ZIA TOOK HIS squad to the north, and they were the first to encounter and engage with the enemy. He spread his party out in a fan movement as they progressed over the terrain, staying in the center so that he could keep each wing in full view. He had little faith in the women and was acutely aware of his responsibility as both the sole professional and as the youngest of the military left standing.
He could see little in the darkness, but his finely tuned hearing compensated for this. His ears alerted him to the approaching forces. Loose shale to his left and a few hundred meters ahead. He scanned for any sign of the enemy. There—a patch of darkness was moving when it shouldn’t be.
The hairs bristled on the back of his neck, and he knew that he was right. A fraction of a second before the enemy warrior rose enough to take fire, Zia had his AK aimed squarely in the center of the dark patch. He yelled a warning to his women as he loosed a volley of fire. The patch of shadow dropped away, the fighter ripped to shreds by Zia’s accurate aim.
The resultant chaos severely tested both his powers of leadership and the mettle of his fighters. Out of the darkness, shapes rose and formed from the cover of rocks and scrub. Two of the women, slow and scared by the sudden activity, were taken out before they had a chance to return fire. But this only served to galvanize those remaining, and they followed Zia’s directions to take any available cover, to aim at the center of anything moving in the dark, and to keep tapping out rapid, short bursts.
The firefight was short and savage. The raiders moved quickly, seeking to use the advantage of surprise to overrun their opponents, but they found themselves at the mercy of women whose nerves were steeled by their survival instinct. They stayed in cover, picked their targets well and waited until their aim was clear before taking down their assailants.
Then it was over, and in the sudden silence, Zia surveyed his troops and the havoc they had wrought with satisfaction and a little surprise. He scanned the darkness, listening to the gunfire that had erupted elsewhere. When he was sure that they had fought off the wave from the north, he nodded and rose slowly, gesturing to the women to pull back to the camp, where they could back up the other factions if necessary.
Mission partially accomplished.
* * *
DAVIS TOOK THE EAST. They left the valley by the same path they had entered it, and while the trail left them partially exposed, any approaching contingent would give themselves away on the loose rocks.
She led her troops out of the valley quickly, wanting to get them on level ground before the enemy had a chance to come down on them. The sharp rise of rock, with some overhanging vegetation, gave her team the perfect location to mount an ambush, and her plan was to place her people and wait.
As she directed them to crevices and clusters of rock and scrub, she realized they hadn’t been as quick as she’d hoped they’d be. As the sounds of firefights breaking out in first one and then another compass point started to ring in her ears, a single sniper shot pierced the night air, and the woman standing two yards from her toppled to the ground without the chance to utter a sound.
This threw her troops into panic, and two more were picked off rapidly by the sniper as she tried to rally them. She was lucky to have Lasi in her party. Lasi would not have trusted any of the men to lead her, and before Davis had a chance to issue any orders, the woman had skipped off into the darkness, scaling the rocks and hauling herself up and over the point where the sniper was located. His silhouette became visible as he rose up and tried to turn his weapon on her, but he was too slow for the nimble-footed warrior, who didn’t bother with her rifle at such close quarters. She opted instead for the knife she carried and eliminated her foe.
With three women down and Lasi otherwise occupied, Davis pulled the two remaining women in her crew into cover as the enemy horde descended like a swarm of bats in the darkness. She gestured for them to remain silent. With a seemingly clear path down to the camp, the intruders likely assumed they’d taken out everyone in their way. It was a risky strategy, but the only one she could play at such short notice. She needed to get in behind the opposition and use surprise, but in order to do this she was—for the moment—leaving the PWLA camp wide open.
As the enemy swept past them, she could read the confusion and fear in the eyes of the two women beside her. Seeing their comrades fall and hearing the distant firefights, they likely felt they were on the losing side. It was up to her to change that view. She gave them silent reassurance, and counted off on her fingers as she watched the enemy charge down the winding trail.
Davis counted to three after the last man passed their position, to allow for stragglers, then she stepped into the open, first sweeping her rifle around to take in any men that might be lingering in the shadows. There were none; it was a straight call. The two women were at her back, and Lasi had dropped down from the rocks to join them. She nodded approvingly at Davis, realizing what the Captain had done.
The four of them opened fire at once, and a hail of bullets tore into the backs of the enemy fighters. Hemmed in by the rock face on one side and a drop on the other, there was little the men could do except try to turn around on the narrow path.
It was a chicken shoot. The four women kept up a barrage of fire, standing firm against any random shots that were returned. They did not stop until the last man was down. Even then, Lasi advanced toward them, still firing random bursts into the corpses, as if to make sure. The path ahead of them was littered with bodies and blood, but they had at least seen off the opposition from this direction.
But at what cost? Davis looked at the three women with her, and then back up the trail to where the three dead PWLA fighters lay.
A 50 percent loss was bad. If that was an indication of the overall casualties, then they would be in serious trouble in another onslaught.
For the first time, Davis found herself hoping Colonel Stone had an answer to this problem.
* * *
JINNAH LED HIS fighters to the south. They traveled up a soft incline and onto a plateau where there was little cover. He could see that this was worrying them, so he calmly pointed out that if they had no cover, neither did the encroaching troops. They were on a level playing field in more ways than one. The best thing they could do was to find positions from which they could spy the enemy before the enemy caught sight of them.
His words and his calm manner seemed to do much to reassure the four women who were under his command, but he did not feel the composure he was radiating. As far as he was concerned, he had four novice fighters facing an unknown number of attackers, each one of whom had more experience in his little finger than these women had between them.
But Jinnah had spent his life battling overwhelming odds, and he was damned if he was going to go down without a fight. In fact, he was damned if he was going to go down at all.
The dark plateau was split in places by small ravines and crevices, including covered paths. Yasmin had briefed him on the regular patrol route, and the one thing he knew for certain was that to try to use these covered areas for shelter would be fatal.
However, if he could trap any opponents in one of these, then it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
The question was: How could he do this?
Surveying the land, he believed he had the answer. Spaced out across the plateau were a few rock outcrops that would provide a vantage point. Swiftly, he detailed women to four of these points. In the distance, he could see movement, ill-defined in the darkness, but undoubtedly the approaching enemy.
He lagged behind his troops slightly, ready to give them backup and to maintain a panorama of the scene.
The women did little to conceal their movement, but Jinnah calculated that speed was better than stealth right now. By his reckoning, the enemy was still too far away to shoot with any degree of accuracy, even if they could see their targets. He would rather they were seen now than proceed cautiously and be caught out in the open later.
Jinnah’s idea was simple. From their four positions, the women would start a barrage of fire in order to contain movement as much as cause
collateral damage. One by one, as they got into place, they started to carry out his plan. Short, controlled bursts stopped the enemy line from diffusing, and drove the men into one central spot. Only a couple of them went down, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the women remained safe in their secured perches. The opposition was right where Jinnah wanted them.
The women were funneling the enemy fighters into a dip in the plateau, where a small path—used on PWLA patrols—wound through a section of rock. Jinnah and the PWLA members knew exactly where they were driving the enemy, who—for their part—would be thankful for this apparent shelter.
* * *
MOVING QUICKLY OVER the terrain, using some shelter but prizing speed and surprise over stealth, Jinnah pulled a grenade from his fatigues. He halted momentarily—so slightly that it looked like no more than a stumble in his step—and threw a slow right-arm delivery that would have baffled any batsman. It planted his egg right where he wanted it, and he hit the ground to avoid the full impact of dirt, pebbles and shards of rock thrown up in the blast. Then he was on his feet and running to the path, his rifle set to rapid and off his shoulder. He began to fire into the ditch when he was within ten meters, though in truth he didn’t expect much return fire after the explosion. He continued to fire as he closed on the ditch, and only stopped when he was standing over it and could see that everyone within it had been permanently taken out of the game.
With a nod of satisfaction, he drew back to a more secure position, signaling for his four troops to join him. In the background, he could still hear the rumbling of gunfire.
He wondered how Stone was faring.
* * *
BOLAN HAD CHOSEN the sector that he thought would be the hardest. Despite the fact that Yasmin was by his side, and he needed to ensure her safety in order to complete the mission, he couldn’t bring himself to put the other soldiers at greater risk than himself.
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