Line Of Honor. Don Pendleton
the wrong kind of attention. He was humiliated, and he’s going to have to explain how he got his ass kicked to his superiors. I’m betting he won’t. He’s going to pay off whoever pulls him and his men out of that stalled truck. If he tries to come after us, it’s going to be a private vendetta. I’d like to think I forestalled any official notice of our departure.”
“You have a gorgeous mind.” Nelsonne sighed again longingly. “I would still like to have seen you kill him.”
“It may still come to that.”
Ceallach appeared at the other cab door. He held a couple of steaming coffee mugs and passed them out. “Bit of all right this morning, then.”
“Yeah, you gorilla-slamming one of Osmani’s men was pretty impressive.”
The Briton made a self-deprecating noise. “Call that a ‘potato toss’ back home.”
Bolan knew Ceallach hadn’t come to reminisce about the morning brawl. “What’s on your mind, Scotty?”
“Been talk among the lads.”
“What kind of talk?” Bolan prompted.
“Well, we’re feeling a bit like mushrooms, then, aren’t we?”
It was a mantra invented by U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War.
Mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed on shit.
Ceallach sipped coffee and turned a contemplative eye to the Sudanese night. “Well, you wouldn’t hear me saying it… .”
Bolan decided to give a little. “The target is a high-value individual, and may require forcible extraction out of a refugee situation.”
Ceallach nodded knowingly. “You know, Striker? I’ve seen this movie. Wrong part of Africa, but in the end everyone dies but you and the sexy bird.”
“I saw that movie, too.” Bolan nodded. “Wasn’t bad.”
“Is there a sexy bird, then?” He gave Nelsonne a wink. “Besides the one we already brought along?”
“There is,” Bolan stated. He slid out of the cab. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
“I’ll stay here and guard Russo.”
Nelsonne smirked.
Bolan scooped up his rifle.
Lkhümbengarav had issued weapons just before the convoy had headed out, and grumbling had ensued immediately. Ceallach went so far as to give it the raspberry. Bolan’s team were all spec ops or at least elite-unit veterans. It had been some time since they had seen wood-and-gunmetal-blue weapons rather than black plastic and matte-black Parkerized steel. That wasn’t quite true. They saw it often, but almost always in the hands of the hapless people opposing them.
The Chinese Type 81 rifle looked like a stretched version of an AK. The one nod to the twenty-first century was the forward-mounted optical sight that John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s armorer, had mounted where the rear iron sight used to have been. In its favor, the rifle could fire the ubiquitous Russian .30-caliber ammo littering the Sahel, it came equipped with rifle grenade-launching rings, and Bolan’s team was currently dripping in them.
Mrda was on sentry duty. The Serb spoke quietly across the link. “Striker.”
“Yeah, Rad?”
“Contact.”
“All units, arm up. Prepare to break camp. Everyone get your night-vision eyes on. Drivers, get behind your wheels but do not start your engines. Sancho! Haitham! With me!”
Ochoa appeared at Bolan’s elbow in an eyeblink. He had volunteered for the role of the soldier’s right-hand man, unasked for but with admirable will. Haitham loped out of the darkness. “Striker-man!”
Bolan put a finger to his lips. Haitham fell into formation and the three warriors jogged toward Mrda’s position. They stopped running and quietly climbed the ladderlike clay side of the arroyo. They stretched out on either side of Mrda. The Serb was staring intently through the scope of his Dragunov sniper rifle into the wasteland. “They’re coming straight toward us, Striker.”
Bolan brought up his binoculars.
It was a scene he had seen more times than he could count. The people walked and limped in a small mob. Everything they owned they carried. The lucky ones had blankets wrapped around them against the evening cold. There were far too many women, children and the elderly, and far too few men and boys. They hunched and searched the sky for the sound of jets or rotors. They cast fearful looks behind them for the terror that had driven them into the desert night. Bolan saw no weapons beyond walking sticks and crutches.
“Jesus,” Ochoa muttered. “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…’”
“‘Yearning to breathe free,’” Bolan continued. “‘The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’”
Ochoa turned to Bolan. “Jesus, Striker! You gave me goose bumps!”
“You been to the Statue of Liberty, Sancho?”
“No.” Ochoa grinned beneath his night-vision goggles. “But I’ve been to the Rio Grande.”
Bolan snorted. “You’ll do, Sancho.” He clicked his com link. “Scotty, bring up the SAW. I also need a canteen of coffee. Put a lot of sugar and powdered cream in it.”
“Roger that, Striker. On the double.”
Mrda’s sniper rifle never wavered from the refugees. “How do we play it?”
“Me, Sancho and Haitham are going to go talk to them. You and Scotty are going to cover us.”
Ceallach trotted up the arroyo with his Type 81-1. It was simply a Type 81 assault rifle with a longer, heavier barrel, a bipod and a 75-round drum. The Briton handed Bolan the canteen, then snapped open the legs of the bipod and took position next to Mrda. “Bob’s your uncle, Striker!”
Ochoa sighed. “I don’t understand a word he says.”
“Let’s take a walk.” Bolan walked out into the night flanked by Ochoa and Haitham. They covered about a hundred yards and stopped. Bolan watched the mob blindly approach through his night-vision goggles. At fifty yards he pushed up the device on top of his head and took a glow stick out of his web gear. He gave the stick a bend and a shake and a green glow filled the night. The platoon of refugees immediately came to a halt. Several individuals bolted from the group in random directions. Bolan stood with his rifle slung and waved in a friendly fashion. Haitham called out in Arabic. An old man and an old woman detached themselves from the group. Each wore a gray humanitarian-relief-issue blanket like a shawl and each leaned on a stick. The two came forward warily. The old man had an ancient-looking Sudanese arm dagger strapped just below his shoulder. Haitham nodded to the elderly couple and exchanged quiet words with them.
He turned to Bolan. “They are Sirel and Mina. They are Christians, and displaced farmers.”
Bolan uncapped the canteen and held it out. Sirel caught the smell of coffee and insisted that Mina drink first. Sirel waved his arms and spoke rapidly. Haitham translated.
“They say bad men attacked their camp, though they got warning across the missionary radio and managed to leave. They fear the bad men are still looking for them.”
Ochoa rolled his eyes. “What do they have that anyone would want?”
“Women,” Bolan said. “And children. They’re commodities around here.”
Ochoa turned his head and spit. “Christ wept.”
“Haitham,” Bolan said, “ask them if it’s Captain Osmani they’re afraid of.”
Mina spoke for the first time. She started speaking low,