Cobra Strike Page 23

  “There!” The colonel pointed down to a group of women working in a field. The gunship and the following slick made fast descents and touched down in the field, close to the women, before they could scatter very far. The infantrymen from the slick knew their job by this time: they rounded up two of the women whose small children clung to them like lambs to a ewe. One soldier seized a girl about five, and another poured kerosene over her head so that it ran into her eyes and over her skin and soaked her clothes.

  “You see Americans?” the colonel asked the struggling mother.

  “No! No Americans!”

  The lieutenant tossed a match on the kerosene-soaked child. The flaming figure ran toward her mother, who was dragged away by the infantrymen and then held so she could watch her now blinded child die an agonized death before her eyes. They did not release the woman until the fire-blackened little torso lay still on the ground.

  Then the lieutenant seized a child from the second woman, one of four who clung close to her. This mother managed to hang on to her boy by one arm as the lieutenant pulled him away by the other.

  “I see Americans!” she shouted. “I see Americans!”

  The lieutenant immediately released her boy and stepped back from her.

  The colonel walked over, looked her in the eyes, and said in her slow, deliberate Dari, “If I think you are lying to me, I will burn all your children.”

  “I see Americans! I will tell you where they are!

  Campbell had abandoned the idea of going as far south as Herat because of the communist forces now being set up to intercept. Word was coming in to Noor Qader’s men of major troop movements just north of the city. The main road into Iran went from Herat, and in time it, too, would be blocked. Along with Verdoux, Campbell studied the maps and listened to the advice of Qader’s men. They were presently about thirty miles south of the Soviet border and about a hundred and fifty miles east of the line with Iran. Old smugglers’ routes ran due west for hundreds of miles, and these were still used today by Afghan opium smugglers.

  It seemed that in spite of all the Islamic fervor in Iran, the country still had a huge population of opium addicts. The Afghans grew the poppies, as they had done for centuries, and smuggled in the sticky opiate they drained from slits in the pods. Campbell refused to go in as an armed escort to a drug train, and instead exacted a deal that made it worth the smugglers’ while to transport the team in place of opium. They would travel by horseback one day’s ride and wait there for a truck to bring them the rest of the way.

  The team moved out of Noor Qader’s territory as quickly as they could because word of the savagery of the Russian search methods had spread, and Mike did not want to have those who helped them punished like this. Once the team had moved out, the Russians would follow. But they were back in the mountains now; there any movement in a horizontal direction could involve strenuous and time-consuming climbs and descents. Still he was satisfied to have put more than ten miles between themselves and the place of the tank ambush in only a few hours, and to the west rather than the south, where the Russians would expect them to be headed. Campbell was less pleased about having to stop in one place to wait for the truck to transport them, but there was no way around this at such short notice.

  Who exactly these opium smugglers were, and what their relationship was with Noor Qader’s men, remained vague.

  Noor Qader had broken up his temporary camp after the attack on the tanks, and the team had left with a body of almost fifty rebels. Sixteen were still riding with them as they neared the place where the team was to wait. The lead riders spotted a Russian infantry patrol and prepared to attack. Campbell did not want this, since it could easily draw attention to the team’s present whereabouts, but he had no control over Noor’s men and they were clearly going to attack the Russian unit whether or not they got help from the Americans.

  The Russians were spooked. Some of them had made visual contact with the mounted rebels, but they had no way of knowing how many were in the area and whether the ones seen had fled or were waiting in ambush for them. When the unit called in air support, none was available because all aircraft were engaged in looking for the Americans toward Herat. So the patrol of eight soldiers moved out in a regularly spaced line with a case of the jitters as they wound their way through steep-walled gulches and skirted massive outcrops that could have concealed a whole enemy battalion.

  Noor’s men followed at a distance, until they knew the route the Soviets would take. They gave two men to the mercs as guides, and the fourteen others set out in a wide half circle to bypass the Russian patrol. The ten mercs and the Institute men, along with their two guides, set out in a similar half circle in the other direction. Where these two forces met ahead of the patrol would be the point of ambush. This turned out to be a broad low pass through which flowed a narrow stream. The hills rose only gradually on both sides, and at no point would the movement of soldiers moving through it be constricted by a narrowing. It looked safe enough, which, of course, was why the Afghan rebels had chosen it. What could not be seen from down in the pass were the trails high on its sides that would permit the horsemen to move out fast from concealment once the Soviet patrol was in the valley below. They could then pick off the soldiers on foot who could not move as fast as they could.

  The mercs concealed themselves high on one side of the pass entrance, knowing that Noor’s fourteen men were already hidden somewhere on the, opposite side. In about half an hour the Russian patrol appeared and looked as if it were going to pass as planned between them.

  The Russians stopped short. With an infantryman’s sixth sense they detected that something was wrong. They took cover among some small rocks and carefully surveyed everything around them. Nothing stirred.

  Mike Campbell felt sort of sorry for them. He knew that feeling well: knowing that to keep moving ahead meant certain disaster and not having any other choice but to keep going. A foot patrol like this one, without air, artillery or mortar support, was just so much condemned meat. Mike himself had survived situations like this, only just barely. No doubt the Russians would find it ironic that the same force they had lost their air support in search of was the one now menacing them. But the Russians didn’t know that. Yet.

  The uniformed men warily formed their line of patrol again and advanced into the pass. As they probed deeper into the pass and nothing happened, they started to move in a more relaxed fashion. This was when the horsemen appeared high on the far side of the valley. The mercs led out their horses and climbed onto their backs, and they, too, cantered forward along a narrow track high on the valley side.

  The Russians sought cover. However, anything that protected them from one side of the valley exposed their backs to the other. They fired on the horsemen catching up with them on both sides. Bob Murphy felt his horse stagger. Its front legs doubled up beneath it, and the heavy Australian was thrown into the stony dirt. Joe Nolan’s horse narrowly missed the fallen man’s head with its hooves. Murphy climbed painfully to his feet and was about to yell at his horse, lying on its side, threshing its legs, making unsuccessful attempts to scramble upright, when he noticed a hole in its chest and blood washing down over its hide. Bob drew his pistol and put the animal out of its misery with a bullet in the forehead. The horse’s head immediately fell to the ground. Bob collected his things and hobbled after the others, who had not waited for him.

  Bursts of automatic fire from two directions toppled the Soviet foot soldiers like skittles. Three climbed to their feet again, their hands held high above their heads.

  Andre Verdoux made an unwilling Baker double-up behind Turner on his horse and sent Lance Hardwick back with the free horse for Murphy. Verdoux had deliberately made the Australian wait to be picked up but knew that no horse could have borne his weight as a second rider.

  When the mercs reached the Russians, Noor’s men were finished off the wounded with their long knives and stripping the bodies.

  “We are keeping thes
e ones alive long enough for you to spit in their faces and tell them who you are,” one rebel told Jed Crippenby, who translated it for Mike.

  Campbell said, “Aren’t they going to take them prisoners?”

  “We have hardly food enough for ourselves,” the rebel replied angrily. “Do you want us to feed our oppressors too? You take them with you since you care so much how Russians are treated in Afghanistan. We do not want them, here!”

  “We can’t take them with us because of our journey,” Mike explained. “They are your prisoners, not ours.”

  “Then they will die,” the rebel announced, pleased that they had come to an understanding.

  “If you guys can’t make up your minds,” Harvey Waller offered, “I’ll shoot them for you. No problem.”

  “Stay out of this, Harvey,” Mike snapped. “We got to be moving on for our meet-up with the truck.” He turned to the soldiers and said in his poor Russian, “If you have anything you want sent back to your families, you better let me have it.”

  The Russian soldiers, overcome with emotion at the sound of their language, pressed photos and papers on Mike, begged him to intercede for them with the rebels. All three were nineteen-year-olds, conscripts who had never even heard of Afghanistan before coming here. They claimed they had never killed anyone while here, and all they wanted to do was go home, forget this nightmare, and live peacefully.

  Verdoux and Crippenby also spoke to them in Russian, and even Baker and Winston joined in. The Russians knew from the outset that their position was hopeless. It was their own army that was causing all the death and destruction and which had not provided them with air support or responded to their emergency calls.

  The rebels looked on at all this fraternizing between the Americans and Russians with stony faces and unyielding stares. Harvey Waller stood apart also, glowering at the scene. As he left, Mike made sure to lead Harvey with him.

  “They’re just young guys who got pushed out to bear all the burdens while the clever ones stay home,” Mike said. “They’re not here because they’re communists, Harvey, they’re here because they’re draft age. Go easy on them.”

  “You’re getting soft, Campbell,” Waller snarled.

  Mike shook his head and sighed, resigned that it was hopeless to discuss this further. He turned around sharply when he heard a pistol shot and saw one of the three Russians sink to his knees, his face in a tight grimace of pain. The rebel then shot the second Russian prisoner in the belly, and they all watched in silence while he clutched his gut and staggered a few steps before falling. Mike exchanged a glance with the third man and turned away before the shot rang out, the shot that would leave him to die slowly, too, in this rocky Afghan valley.

  To the west. Toward Iran, not Herat. So that’s where the Americans were going. No wonder she hadn’t been able to verify any sightings of them for so long. But now she was getting results! A little kerosene here, a little there, and she was hearing how ten Americans—now it was ten!—had ridden west through these parts with a force of Noor Qader’s men. Then the infantry patrol’s distress signals came over the air and the fool command refused them help because they were too busy combing empty hills far to the south. The Americans were about to strike again. It had to be them! She had almost been tempted to alert General Kudimov by radio and would have done so had she not been aware that the old fox would somehow have done dirty, gone there himself and sent her somewhere else. No, any credit she would get from comrade Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov would only be what he couldn’t deny her. But she was ahead of him now, beyond his control for the time being.

  She had two choppers, recently refueled, two crews, the lieutenant, and eight men. The gunship had taken on more rockets, and both choppers had big ammo supplies for their door gunners. All she had to do was take some or all of ten Americans on horseback in rugged terrain. She would do it and take the credit for it back in Moscow. Viktor Mikhailovich Kudimov could go to hell.

  The colonel told the senior pilot to head for the map coordinates given in the patrol’s final emergency signal that they had monitored over their radio but to continue to maintain radio silence himself. She wanted to give Kudimov no clue as to where she might be. Hovering high over the valley, they saw the eight bodies below and no visible signs of continued rebel presence. The colonel was tempted to fly on without touching down, but for the sake of morale she ordered the two craft down. The men might have grown sullen if she had not tried to help their comrades. She walked around the eight bodies, half naked, their uniforms, boots, and weapons taken, lying twisted on the stones, eviscerated, slashed, their private parts stuffed in their mouths.

  She had seen all this before and she would see it again. She was not nearly as upset by this carnage as her men, including the lieutenant, who could stand there grinning as a child burned to death in kerosene. Here he was on the verge of tears, calling the Afghans inhuman bandits and animals.

  “The Americans did this!” she shouted, knowing this was not true but wanting to derive some benefit from the men’s anger at the slaughter. “Are we going to let them escape over the border into Iran? I’m not!”

  She ran back to the gunship, the men hurried back to their places filled with rage at the Americans, and the two choppers lifted off in a newly dedicated search for the monstrous capitalist brigands.

  After a while the colonel recognized where they were. A heavily timbered area stretched ahead of them. “I know this place, Anatoly,” she told the senior pilot. “Don’t overfly it or you’ll draw fire. Everyone will take pot shots at you, even with 9mm pistols, from the cover of the trees. Swing around to the left and follow the line of trees without coming too close. It would be better for us if the Americans don’t know we’re in the vicinity. There’s a village somewhere along here in the next few kilometers—I will know the place when I see it. The opium smugglers on their way to Iran use it. We have tried to eradicate them in the past because they use their profits from the drugs to buy guns in Iran. Noor Qader sent them here. They must have only just arrived, or perhaps they haven’t reached here yet.”

  The lieutenant looked unhappily at the forest. “We will have to engage them on the ground.”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant,” the colonel said. “You and I will take those eight men in after them. This gunship will stand by to provide us with air support, and the slick will stand ready to evacuate.”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel,” the lieutenant said obediently, if not very enthusiastically.

  She sneered at him, saying nothing, but letting her face show that she could see he was not nearly so anxious to hunt down armed Americans in these woods as he was women and children in open fields.

  It would be three hours, maybe four or even five hours before the truck came for them. Drug smugglers did not stick to strict time schedules. They would come when the time was right. Campbell pointed out that the longer things were delayed, the greater the chance of Russian intervention. There was nothing anyone could do, he was informed. The truck would come when it was ready—almost as if the truck were the one who was making the decision. Mike sent to a nearby village for warm food. When they had finished the mutton, yogurt, and rice dishes, he ordered the men to rest. When Lance Hardwick told him he wanted to look around, Mike told him all right but not to go far. Lance walked in the woods in the direction of the village where two of Noor’s men had bought food. Any bit of urban action at all sounded good to Lance after all this time in the mountains. He knew that all he could expect was a tumbledown place built of mud where fierce, bearded men loaded down with daggers and guns would stare at him suspiciously. He reckoned he had hardly seen a dozen women since he had come to Afghanistan, and they had been so shrouded up in cloth that they looked like kids dressed up as Halloween ghosts. His expectations were low.

  Two of Noor Qader’s men had bought large quantities of hot food in the village. The informant pointed out to the Russians the direction in which the men had ridden away, less than two hours ago.
The colonel felt her heart skip a beat. At last she felt she was close to her quarry. She would take them alive. At least some of them. Kill the others. Even if some escaped, so long as she had at least one alive to put on trial, her name would be remembered in military records and she would lack for nothing the rest of her life. Moscow knew how to reward its faithful, loyal ones.

  The colonel, the lieutenant, and the eight men moved out of the village on the double. They were well armed, in radio contact with the two choppers, and making no effort to hide their presence in the village. This would frighten off any local rebels who might have ideas of attacking them. It would be essential to move with speed to reach the Americans before word of their presence did. They moved fast through the tree trunks parallel to the dirt road that Noor’s two horsemen had taken with the food. In less than ten minutes they saw a lone American, heavily armed, walking along the dirt road. The Russians froze. They watched him amble along, kicking the dirt and looking around him as if he were on a country stroll. Realizing that her men wanted to mow him down, the colonel thought fast.

  She eased her Kalashnikov from her shoulder and handed it to one man, undid her pistol belt, and handed that with its attached holster to another. She whispered to them, “I will take this one alive. He will tell us where the others are. So long as I have at least one alive, I don’t care if you kill all the rest.” She did care, because the more she brought in alive, the greater her triumph, but she knew she had to promise the men blood to keep them in line. “That house we passed farther on—two of you go and empty it and keep the owners away. I will bring him there.”