Countdown_ The Liberators Part 53

Under its thin coat of dust, the limousine was brightly polished. It bounced and jarred over the potholed highway between the airfield and the town of Nugaal.

"And how many guards?" Welch asked Mr. Dayid, as the two sped up the highway. Terry rescrewed the suppressor onto the muzzle of his submachine gun as they rolled.

Pigf.u.c.ker drove the limo. It was followed by the largest truck the parking lot in front of the palace had held, a more or less long-bed five ton. That was driven by Ryan, with Graft and Semmerlin in the back. All the men from Terry on down sported freshly touched up "Black-is-Beautiful." It wouldn't fool anybody for more than a second. That said, given the velocity of a bullet, even a subsonic one, a second was awfully long time to be laboring under an error.

The accountant shrugged, answering, "It varies sometimes but never more than a dozen. Of those, not more than two or three are actually on duty at any given time."

"And the rest?" Welch asked.

"At this time of the morning? Asleep. Probably with one of the slave girls each."

f.u.c.k. More slaves. I will not, not, NOT take on responsibility for liberating any more slaves.

"Your slaves?" Terry asked, a note of malice creeping into his voice.

"No," Jama Dayid said. "I follow the teachings of al-Nabhani, UHBP, that times have changed, that slavery is wrong, and that Allah intended that when times changed slavery would be seen as wrong. But . . . I am probably in the minority."

Terry just grunted. How did one answer that? He tolerates? Am I as guilty because I've tolerated? I don't feel a twinge of regret about those Afghan men Stauer and his commandos killed; but what about the women and kids they carted off? I tolerated . . . and I have much to make up for.

"How many slaves in the town."

"Hundreds," Dayid said. "Too many. Mostly individually owned, and . . . maybe, too . . . maybe all not that unhappy."

In a way, the discussion of the plight of the slaves put Terry in the proper mood. Thus, even though he might have been able to force the guards on the gates to Dayid's house to surrender, the thought didn't even cross his mind. The limo rolled up; a guard came over, and Terry shot him down like a dog even as Pigf.u.c.ker cut down the one on the other side.

Then Terry got out of the limo, shot first one then the other man again, to make sure. He opened the lift gate himself, then waved Hammell through. A few brisk steps brought him to the guardhouse, a small mud brick structure built against the wall. That half-sleeping guard he shot with a short burst, every round of four slamming the man's midsection.

"Go round up your family," He told Dayid. "Pigf.u.c.ker, go with him."

As Dayid and Hammell walked off, Terry called out, "Semmerlin, come with me. Hey, Mr. Dayid, where's the guard barracks?"

While Mr. Dayid and Pigf.u.c.ker, along with several men of Dayid's family, helped children and older people onto the back of the fiveton, Graft standing just behind the cab, with a machine gun, watched Welch and Semmerlin walk back from the barracks. Both Terry's submachine gun and Semmerlin's VSSK smoked from their muzzles. A half dozen veiled women walked behind the two. Some of the women wept, softly, half bent over, bodies shuddering with shock and fear. Still others skipped on dancing feet.

"You always were a soft touch, Terry." Graft shouted. "How the f.u.c.k you plan on fitting them all in two helicopters?"

"I don't f.u.c.king know. Have them all p.i.s.s, s.h.i.+t, and puke first, maybe?"

D-Day, Bandar Cisman, Ophir

While bullets still occasionally snapped overhead, the shooting was rather desultory now, on both sides. That was fine, as far as Cazz was concerned. He wasn't expected to take the town on his own, anyway.

And fat chance I'd have doing it, with seven or eight hundred armed men in the buildings, and a hundred and twenty or so of us, and no heavy armor.

Besides, I'm only required to make sure everyone stays put until the Irish b.a.s.t.a.r.d gets back with the heavy s.h.i.+t and his captives.

Cazz hadn't yet had call to use either the one helicopter-f.u.c.king green beanies; I was supposed to have two-or the two armed CH-801s to actually strike the town. The Hip was engaged in running ammunition, especially mortar ammunition-seven and a half tons of it-and small arms to his own men, while the two fixed wing jobs, having wrecked all the boats, circled counterclockwise above, keeping well outside of machine gun range, reporting whatever there was to be seen.

Another reason Cazz was perfectly happy to wait to a.s.sault was that the dustoff bird, carrying the colonel's lady, so he'd heard, was off somewhere to the west where Reilly had apparently executed the ambush he'd intended.

D-Day, Rako-Dhuudo-Bandar Cisman highway, Ophir

The CH-801 seemed to be straining to get back in the air, shuddering as its engine and propeller pushed almost enough air to lift it, then lost that air behind and below. The propeller also picked up smoke from the still-burning vehicles, sucking it in like a fan with cigarette smoke, and pus.h.i.+ng it out behind, too.

"I could use some more morphine for my nine expectants," Coffee said to Phillie. "Expectant" was a code word for "expected to die." Since the Ophiris, who made up Coffee's entire population of expectants, were unlikely to speak English, it didn't really matter if they'd spoken freely. Still, old habits die hard.

"There are ninety one-hundred-milligram ampoules in the plane's kit," Phillie answered. "You can have half. I'll need the rest to sedate our own."

"Fair enough," Coffee agreed, turning for the plane.

Phillie, an ER nurse with several years experience of terribly hurt people behind her, couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with the scene. It wasn't the burning vehicles or the rent, burnt, crushed, and sundered bodies littering the road. It wasn't the smell. It wasn't the roar of armored vehicle engines as Reilly's first sergeant lined them up to push on. It wasn't . . .

n.o.body's whining, she thought. There's no "oh, my back," no "oh, the pain, the pain," no 'I wanna lawyerrr!' They're stoic and tough. I didn't know people could be like this.

Somebody did groan, though. Phillie looked over and, by the light of the burning tanks, saw someone being bounced on a stretcher.

"Gently, you a.s.sholes!" she shouted.

"Yes, ma'am," the two men at either end said, together. "We thought speed . . . "

"Speed won't do a f.u.c.king bit of good if you put him into shock."

"Yes, ma'am."

"It's a tough call, Phillie," Coffee said.

"Yeah, I know," she answered. I'm a big girl. If I stay here, we can fit four of the worst wounded on the plane instead of three. They won't have any medical attention in flight, but the flight will only be about fifteen minutes. And they are tough men; they don't need me holding their hands which is nearly all I could do in the cramped confines of the plane.

And here there's enough work to keep me busy for a while. And Coffee's got to move out with the main column . . . and . . .

"Can you leave me one medic?" she asked. "And some guards?"

"I know Reilly," Coffee answered. "He won't give up able bodied troops for guards. h.e.l.l, he's taking some of the walking wounded with him. But . . . three or four of our wounded can still use a rifle. He's leaving them to guard prisoners. Will that do? And I can leave a medic. My junior one."

"It'll have to," Phillie said. "I'm staying. I'll go out with a later flight."

Coffee nodded and began to turn away. He turned back, suddenly, and said, "Phillie, I'm awful sorry for dumping you into the mud back in Brazil."

"Oh, shush," she answered, reaching out to spin him back around and send him on his way. "Don't sweat it; did me a world of good."

D Day, Bandar Qa.s.sim Airport. Ophir

As with the other strike, the one on the truck convoy, this pilot led off with an illumination rocket. Having seen and heard what followed the previous such, the Ophiris dotted about the landscape of the ridge's northern slope-about half of them-dropped their c.r.a.p and began to leg it for the north.

The rockets came fast after that: Flechette-which whined in with the drone of thousands of homicidal bees, high explosive, incendiary, high explosive, incendiary, flechette again, another flare, more flechette, and then three HE, interspersed with two incendiaries. They came in close enough together in time, if not in s.p.a.ce, that the crest of the ridge lit up as if by strobe light.

Buckwheat doubted they hit much of anything-well, except maybe for the flechette-but that almost wasn't the point of an airstrike, which was usually much more about frightening and disorganizing people than about killing them.

"All right, Rattus, you maniac," Buckwheat Fulton shouted, kicking the back of the medic's seat, "f.u.c.king charrrge!"

The engine was already running. Hampson slammed on the gas, causing the Hummer to lurch forward, spitting rocks and gravel out the back. Fulton barely hung on to the rollbar and the bungeed machine gun. Off to the left, they heard Fletcher howling with pure delight.

The Hummer crested the ridge, launching itself into the air for a moment before slamming back down. Buckwheat waited for it to settle a bit from the pounding, then opened up with the machine gun, spraying ball and tracer pretty much at random to the front. Below him, Rattus drove with his left hand, firing a rifle out the right side. If either of them hit anything, moving and bouncing like that, it was a miracle.

Still, they didn't have to. After the strike on the truck convoy, the second strike on themselves, and the totally unexpected charge of the light vehicles, most of the Ophiris who had pursued the snipers up the slope broke and ran. Neither Rattus nor Buckwheat tried to kill them. Rather, they fired more to encourage them in their flight.

"s.h.i.+t," Fulton said. "We might just get away with this."

Sergeant Nurto Nuur, fiercely scar-faced, shook his head with disgust at the younger generation. So the bandits raiding them had called in a little air strike. So what? He'd faced worse, more than once, fighting Americans, Ethiopians, Malayans, Kenyans, his own former countrymen . . .

Bah. f.u.c.king cowards.

Some of his own men had tried to run off, right after the light went off overhead. Nuur wasn't sure he could have restrained them except that the first real war rocket had killed the first man to get up and run, and done so faster and deader than a stomped mouse. That had made the rest listen to him, and crouch down behind his protecting rock.

Under the light of the overhead flare, Nuur counted six others, not all of them from his own squad. One of these had a machine gun, and had managed to retain his ammunition. That was to the good. Nuur gave the boy a terse commendation.

They almost bolted again, when the bandits' vehicles topped the crest and charged, spitting bullets. Then, Nuur had had to put his rifle on his own men to hold them in position.

"Stay put, unless you want to die," he'd said, without reference to whether he meant die from the enemy's bullets, or from his own.

His judgment had been proved correct when the bullets that had been pinging off the great boulder to his front had stopped moments after they'd begun.

They can't control the machine gun from a moving vehicle, he thought. They're doing well to keep them going generally to the north.

"Give me your gun," Nuur then demanded of the machine gunner, holding his hands out to receive it. The gunner pa.s.sed his machine gun over without demur. Nuur took it, gave it the most cursory inspection under the waning light of the overhead flare, and told the others, "Get behind me."

Then he took a p.r.o.ne firing position and waited. He didn't have to wait long.

Rattus heard Buckwheat's shout, "s.h.i.+t, we might just get away with this,"and laughed.

"Of course we . . . "

Hampson stopped speaking as a long stream of bullets, one in five a green-flaring tracer, pa.s.sed around and-based on sound and feel-through his Hummer. They came from behind him, to his right. His winds.h.i.+eld cracked, physically and audibly. He couldn't return fire.

"Buckwheat!" Rattus called, "get . . . "

He didn't bother continuing as Buckwheat had slumped forward onto his right shoulder. The medic's nose was a.s.sailed by the smell of blood and s.h.i.+t. Rattus aimed for the field and drove like a madman.

D-Day, Airfield, Five north-northeast of Nugaal, Ophir

Between Dayid's extended family, the liberated slaves, his own people, and the translator's body, Terry had eighty-nine people to shove, somehow, onto two helicopters.

He had one of his people, Graft, explaining through the remaining translator what they had to do. That wasn't a problem- "No water, no food, no baggage, no arms, no . . . "-until he got to the real stickler- "and get rid of any clothing that isn't absolutely essential to minimum modesty. That means shorts, ripped off skirts, and bras; no more."

When the people, other than the troops and the liberated slaves, began to rise in protest, Terry said, "Mr. Dayid, please go and explain to your relatives that they either do what they are told or they get left behind to the tender mercies of your clan chief while we do whatever it takes to extract the necessary information from you despite what will happen to them."

"Yes, sir," Dayid said, then hurried over to calm his people down. He must have been persuasive, because the men began removing trousers and robes as the women began to strip.

Venegas was on the radio to higher. Two of Terry's men had had to go and bring him in, but he could still run communications well enough.