by Graham Brown
He turned and cursed at McCarter, bringing the rifle up.
McCarter lowered his head. A shot rang out, but it was the mercenary who fell, collapsing like a rag doll.
The other rifles hammered away in the distance as McCarter opened his eyes and stared at the fallen man.
Danielle and Verhoven glanced around as well, and a second later a shape ran in from the depths of the forest. Verhoven spoke, “Bloody hell,” he said.
“Seems like it,” Hawker replied, grabbing the dead soldier and dragging him back behind the tree.
“You keep coming back from the dead, mate.”
Danielle smiled. “Thank God. Can you get us out of here?”
“I’ll try,” Hawker said.
McCarter barely heard them. He was silent, virtually catatonic. He stared at the dead soldier: another life taken, in exchange for his own.
As the firing in the distance ceased, Hawker crouched beside the tree and began searching the dead man for keys. “Where are the others?”
“Dead,” Danielle said. “Except Devers. He’s with them.”
“That explains a few things,” Hawker said. He rolled the dead man over and dug into his back pockets.
“And Polaski?” Danielle asked.
Hawker paused and looked at her solemnly. “No, he didn’t make it.”
The radio beside them began to crackle.
“They might have heard the shot,” Verhoven said. “They’ll be coming. Get me out.”
Hawker had finished his search empty-handed. “No keys.”
Verhoven looked at the dead man. “Wrong bloke,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. Get me out.”
Hawker weighed the consequences of Verhoven’s request, while the demands from the radio increased.
“Come on!” Verhoven shouted. “Get me off this damn chain!”
The others could only guess at the subject of their discussion, but Hawker and Verhoven understood each other. Hawker stood up. “Which hand?”
“Left,” Verhoven said, shifting position, resting his left hand sideways against the base of the tree, thumb up and smallest finger against the tree’s roots. He pulled his other hand as far away as the cuffs would allow.
The others watched in confusion before turning away as Hawker lifted up a heavily booted foot and brought it crashing down on Verhoven’s outstretched hand, crushing the bones and tearing the tendons and ligaments in the process.
Despite his obvious agony Verhoven didn’t shout. He clenched his teeth and rolled to the side.
Hawker dropped down on him, pinning him and grabbing the wounded hand, crushing the fingers together in a way that would have been impossible moments before. He forced it through the cuff and out.
Verhoven spun away in agony, writhing in pain, crawling on his knees and cradling the wounded hand. It would be useless now, but it no longer held him captive. Grunting and gritting his teeth, he turned toward Hawker, his eyes the slits of a mad dog.
“You’ll need this,” Hawker said, holding out the forty-five caliber gun.
Verhoven could not hold a rifle, but the black pistol fit in one hand. He snatched it from Hawker then watched as Hawker grabbed the dead German’s rifle. “Two men armed,” Verhoven said. “Better odds than I’d even dared to hope for.”
“I’ve been watching for a little while,” Hawker said, “but you’d better explain the situation.”
“They’ve dug some foxholes in a circular pattern,” Verhoven told him, pausing to fight off a wave of pain. “Six or seven, two soldiers in each, maybe fifty meters apart, sixty degrees of arc between each one. My bet: this bloke came from the closest one,” he pointed. “Which might leave only one man there.”
The radio crackled again and Hawker grabbed it. He caught only part of the call, but it was orders, not questions. The man talking wasn’t looking for a response.
The clearing remained lit by the red flare up above, but it had drifted lower and southward on the wind, floating out beyond the tree line and over the forest. The angle of light left the prisoners in the shadows, but thirty yards out those shadows ended. There was too much light for a sneak attack and not enough time to wait for the flare to go out. “We’ll get only one shot at this,” he said. “Wait here.”
Hawker put on the dead soldier’s coat and the man’s distinctive foreign legion-style cap. He threw the rifle over his shoulder, straightened the coat.
“You must be mad,” Verhoven said.
Hawker didn’t reply. He’d already started into the clearing.
As he moved, a call came over the radio asking him what he was doing. Why was he coming back? Hawker put the radio to his mouth and clicked the switch on and off as he replied in his best German. It was a bad bluff, but he had no choice.
The calls from the other Germans stopped momentarily and Hawker continued toward the foxhole. A figure there waved at him to hurry up and he broke into a jog.
With the flare sinking low behind him, Hawker knew the mercenaries could only see his silhouette. He hoped they’d see their fellow soldier.
Thirty feet from the bunker, Hawker slowed. There were two soldiers in the foxhole, not one as Verhoven had guessed. Both had rifles in hand.
CHAPTER 32
Surprised, Hawker continued forward. To turn around would be suicide. His eyes went from one soldier to the next and then to the tools they’d used to dig the ditch.
As he approached the edge, Hawker held up the radio, shaking it, hoping to reinforce the thought that it was broken and to draw their eyes away from his face. He tossed it to the closer of the two soldiers and then jumped into the bunker, landing beside a large shovel. He grabbed it with both hands, spinning around and swinging hard. The edged smashed into the bridge of the first man’s nose, killing him instantly.
The other soldier jumped back, finding himself in the awkward position of offering a new radio to a man who was trying to kill him. He dropped the radio and tried to bring his rifle to bear, but before he could get off a shot, Hawker landed a blow with the shovel, knocking him down. A strike to the side of the head finished him off.
Hawker dropped down into the bunker and slumped against the crude dirt wall. Seconds later, the flare above burned out and the clearing went dark once again.
————
Back at the tree Verhoven watched intently. He’d seen part of the struggle in the light of the flare and then nothing, no signal, no shooting, no sign of Hawker.
Beside him, McCarter had begun to escape the trance that he’d fallen into. Danielle fidgeted, trying to see. “What happened?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Verhoven said.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing, he’s out of sight.”
Verhoven kept watching and the longer Hawker stayed down, the more Verhoven feared he might have been killed or badly injured. If that was the case, Verhoven would try to reach him and bring him back, a suicide mission if Kaufman’s men spotted him. But Hawker had come back for them and Verhoven wouldn’t let him die out there alone.
Finally, a pinprick of light hit his eyes, flashing on and off, tapping out a message in Morse code. Move your ass! It had to come from Hawker.
Without the flare, the darkness was complete, but their enemies had night scopes and he’d still make an easy target if he was spotted crossing the field.
Verhoven looked across to the center of camp. He could see the flashing of the defense console but nothing else. He guessed that each foxhole had a zone to cover, a distinct section of forest to watch. Under such conditions, a soldier’s eyes were unlikely to stray. He ran, hoping this zone was the responsibility of the foxhole Hawker had taken.
As he jumped into the ditch, Verhoven took a quick look around. “Do they have the keys?”
“No keys,” Hawker said. “But plenty of our stuff.” Hawker held out a familiar set of night-vision goggles, NRI equipment.
“They ransacked everything when they took over,” Verhoven said.
“
Looking for something?”
“Seemed that way.”
Hawker put the goggles up to his eyes and surveyed the camp. The foxholes were indeed set up in a circular pattern, just as Verhoven had described. He could see most of the soldiers in the other holes, scanning the perimeter and clutching their rifles. Each of them focused on a different zone.
“They don’t know we’re here,” he guessed.
Beside them, the radio came to life, and in the same instant gunfire rang out from several rifles. The two men dove for cover.
“You sure about that?” Verhoven asked, looking up from the floor of the bunker.
The gunfire continued, but the sound wasn’t right. The German guns were firing away from them. Verhoven poked his head above the edge of the pit cautiously. “Maybe they’re trying to flush you out. I’m guessing that you set those flares, right?”
“I thought it would be helpful if they were looking for a target in the wrong direction.”
“How’d you get past the sensors?” Verhoven asked.
“I still have my transponder,” Hawker said. “Once I realized they were using our system. I just walked right through.”
“Smart,” Verhoven said. “And lucky.”
Hawker nodded. “We could use a little bit of both right now.”
Another order to fire came over the radio and the rifles lit up a section to the north. Hawker and Verhoven took cover again, but less severely this time.
“What the hell are they shooting at now?” Verhoven said.
“I have no idea,” Hawker admitted. “But we better do something. Before they kill us by accident.”
“We need to go forward,” Verhoven said. “Take the command center. From there we can see all of them, and we’ll be at their backs.”
Hawker looked toward the center of the camp. “That’s a long way.”
Verhoven glanced at his hand and then across the open space. It was about seventy yards to the command center; he knew he wouldn’t be able to fire an accurate shot across such a distance, not with a pistol, not in the dark. “Looks like this is my run.”
Hawker nodded.
“When they open fire again,” Verhoven said.
Hawker braced the rifle for a shot. “Stay to the right of my line.”
Verhoven got in position to run, and the two men waited in silence for the mercenaries to fire again. A full minute ticked by and then another, but the radio and the German guns remained idle.
“Come on,” Hawker whispered.
“Maybe they’re done,” Verhoven said.
That was a possibility Hawker didn’t want to consider. He tightened his grip on the rifle, and squinted through the scope. The figures at the defense console were close to the screen, leaning into it, examining it carefully. He could hit them with ease, but in the silence of the night that would have given them away.
The silence lingered and Verhoven shook his head. “We’re going to need a new plan.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know but this isn’t—”
Beside them the radio squawked and Verhoven pushed off, just as the guns began shredding a new section of rainforest.
Hawker braced the rifle, exhaled calmly and squeezed the trigger.
The first bullet hit one target square in the chest, eight inches below his Adam’s apple. The man collapsed backward without a sound, just as Hawker fired again.
Running hard, Verhoven heard the second bullet whistle past. He saw the target fall and an instant later he was on them. He recognized Devers rolling on the ground clutching at a shoulder wound and the man who’d called himself Kaufman leaning over the body of one of his mercenaries, desperately trying to pull a rifle out from underneath the dead man.
At Verhoven’s approach, Kaufman turned, only to be pistol-whipped across the side of the head. He fell awkwardly, stunned and moaning, only semiconscious.
Beside him, recognition hit Devers like an electric shock. Bullet wound and all, he lunged for the defense console where his own weapon lay, but Verhoven blocked him and shoved him back to the ground. He aimed the .45 at the linguist’s head. “That’s right, boy,” he said. “This is going to be a bad night for you.”
The firing in the distance stopped, perhaps saving Devers’ life, and Verhoven heard Hawker come running up. He pointed to Kaufman. “You missed one.”
“Looks like we both need to work on our counting,” Hawker replied.
Verhoven turned to survey the field. From where they stood, a direct line could be drawn to each of Kaufman’s foxholes, like spokes emanating from the center of a wheel. Leaving out the bunker they had just come from, there were five manned foxholes, with two mercenaries in four of the five and a solitary soldier in the fifth. The battle was far from over, but he and Hawker now held the advantages of surprise, position and control. Only the numbers were still against them, and that was about to change.
“They’re still watching the trees,” Verhoven said. “Waiting for the natives to come screaming through the forest like the bloody Zulus.”
Verhoven’s hand floated over the defense console as he waited for Hawker to get ready. “Too bad for them,” Hawker said, steadying his rifle.
With the barrel of the .45, Verhoven casually flicked a switch and the world around them turned to daylight. In the same instant, Hawker drew a line and began to fire.
Kaufman’s mercenaries were suddenly exposed, caught against the far walls of their foxholes and looking into the distance, their backs to Hawker and Verhoven. They heard firing but no orders, and they were confused by the sudden use of the floodlights.
They scrambled around, some of them reaching for their radios, others firing in various directions—out into the trees and across the clearing, almost everywhere but toward the center. Those who did turn around saw only the blinding glare of the spotlight. And in the swirling confusion they fell in rapid succession.
Hawker aimed and fired and retrained his rifle, turning rapidly from bunker to bunker. In ten quick seconds, four of the bunkers had gone silent. But before he could draw on the fifth, a spread of shells ripped through the equipment lockers beside him. He and Verhoven scrambled for cover.
“North side,” Verhoven shouted. “That’s all that’s left.”
Hawker ducked, turned and fired back.
The men in the bunker popped up and fired again, the bullets kicking up dirt and splintering part of a wooden crate. A stone hit Verhoven, stinging his neck. He put his hand to the spot to make sure he hadn’t been hit, then fired back angrily as Hawker changed his position.
“Two at least,” Verhoven shouted.
Amid the carnage, Kaufman began to move. “No,” he growled, semicoherent and trying to stand. “No. You don’t realize what you’re doing.”
Verhoven kicked him back to the ground as more bullets whipped past, blasting out one of the floodlights in a shower of embers. Hawker’s return fire was more accurate and the mercenary who’d taken the shot fell, dead. The other soldier ducked back into the bunker.
“Listen to me,” Kaufman begged. “We can stop this.”
“Shut up!” Verhoven shouted.
It was too late. The last of Kaufman’s men took a chance that he shouldn’t have, stepping up for a shot.
Hawker pulled the trigger. The soldier stiffened at the bullet’s impact, his rifle tilting skyward and firing straight up into the darkness. A second shot knocked him backward and he fell out of sight. The massacre was over.
CHAPTER 33
Much like the night of the Chollokwan inferno, this battle ended with a shroud of smoke hanging in the air. In this case, there was also the acrid smell of gunpowder, exhaust from the flares and a growing swarm of moths and other insects flicking around the lights in a maddening, random dance.
In the dark void between the floodlights, Hawker and Verhoven turned from point to point, checking for any sign of life and warning Devers and Kaufman not to move.
Eventually Hawker lowered the rif
le, his face a mask of despair. His friends were safe now, but at a terrible cost.
Verhoven seemed to sense the conflict within him. “This is what you are,” he said. “Whatever you chose to believe, this is what you were made for.”
Behind them Richard Kaufman spoke. “You don’t know what you’ve done. You just don’t know.”
Hawker stepped toward him, putting the tip of the rifle under his chin and tilting his head up. “But I know what you’ve done, you son of a bitch. And I’m about to undo it. I’m going to go get my people free, and then I’m going to come back here, and I’m going to kill you.”
Kaufman replied coldly, strangely confident for a man in such a position. “Go get your friends, then. You should, they can help. But don’t waste your time if you plan on killing me, because without my help, none of you will make it out of here alive.”
“We’ll see about that,” Hawker said. “Where are the keys?”
Kaufman gestured unsteadily toward the dead mercenary. “On him.”
Hawker searched the man and pulled a set of keys from his breast pocket, testing the small key on Verhoven’s remaining handcuff. It released and fell to the ground.
Hawker turned to go. “Kill the lights,” he said.
Verhoven flicked the switch and the metal-halide bulbs faded to a dull orange and then went black. The artificial daylight vanished and the darkness rushed in again, swallowing them whole.
Hawker moved across the clearing quickly, traveling with the distinct impression that he was being watched—a feeling that had come and gone several times in the past few hours. He’d had a similar feeling at the Wall of Skulls. And he now wondered if Kaufman had additional men out there somewhere, if that was the basis for the man’s arrogant boast. He stopped, taking cover in one of the foxholes and scanning the area with the night-vision scope. He didn’t see anything.
————
Left behind at the command center, Verhoven moved to a position where he could better see his two prisoners. He waved the gun at Devers, instructing him to move closer to Kaufman.
Devers slid over, his good arm putting pressure on his injury, which was a through-and-through bullet hole in the fleshy part of his shoulder. “You could at least give me something to stop the blood,” he said.