Foreign Enemies and Traitors (69 page)

“Okay, stop here,” said Boone, dropping down inside the turret.  Two soldiers approached the ASV, walking slowly.  One carried a Kalashnikov at port arms, the other cradled an RPD light machine gun.  The rifleman wore night goggles, so he could see their blinking ‘K’ strobe, signifying friendly forces.  The ASV’s turret was facing forward, almost toward the troop truck.  The truck’s machine gun was facing forward as well, aiming it away from the Americans’ stolen ASV.  But then it began to turn.

“Oh shit, I was hoping to avoid this—” said Boone, cutting loose with a burst of .50 caliber machine-gun fire aimed at the cab of the troop truck.  Bambambambambam!  The big machine gun’s blast and recoil hammered the ASV.  He switched to 40mm grenades, and fired a quick burst, boom-boom-boom!  Carson watched the impacting explosions beginning at the cab, working down the length of the truck and then detonating on the ground among the dismounted soldiers. 

On the intercom Boone yelled, “Hit it, Phil—go go go!  Drive behind the truck, drive right through them!”

Carson floored the accelerator, swerved and ran over the two closest troops, who had dropped to the ground when the first shots were fired over their heads only seconds before.  He distinctly felt the bumps made by their bodies as they were crushed beneath his giant, tractor-sized wheels.  The ASV rapidly closed the gap to the rear end of the troop truck.  Most of the enemy soldiers were now already proned out, either dead, wounded or low-crawling for cover.  In just a few seconds, the ASV was accelerating past thirty miles an hour.  Then it hit the next groups of men, bumping and bouncing over their bodies as some tried to roll out of the way.  Boone slued the turret clockwise as they passed the back of the truck, the ASV tilting precariously as it negotiated the steep shoulder and climbed back onto the pavement.  Because they were inside the minimum arming range of the 40mm grenades, Boone slammed it with another burst from the .50 caliber.  The cab of the truck burst into flames behind them, and Carson saw the orange eruption reflected in the two wide rearview mirrors.  A few meaningless small-arms rounds pinged off the armor plate on the rear of the ASV as they sped away from the area.

“Everybody good?” shouted Boone.  “Everything running okay?”

“We’re good down here,” answered Phil.  “Gauges look normal, tires feel the same.”

“Flip off the strobe, okay?”

Doug said, “It’s off now.”

Boone’s voice brimmed with excitement.  “Okay, guys, forget about the bridge over to the Nigerian side—the whole world is awake now.  They’ll block the bridge, so now it’s time for Plan B.  Phil, how’s your visibility at this speed?”  They were traveling over forty miles an hour on a straight section of two-lane road.  There was less fog in this more wide-open area, but visibility was still impaired.

“I can see okay; I just hope there’s no more Kazaks up in front of us.”

“We’re turning north, that’ll be left, in about a mile.”

A metallic clang banged through the ASV, a green tracer streaked past, then more tracers, and another ringing bang. 

“We’ve got company!” shouted Boone, sluing the turret rearward.  “Looks like a couple of ASVs are on our six o’clock.  Put the hammer down, Phil!”  Boone let loose a short, controlled burst from the .50 cal.  He’d estimated they had about two hundred rounds of .50 caliber and about twenty 40mm grenades.  He’d used maybe eight or ten of the grenades already.  From his approach on foot behind the ASV, Carson knew that the slatted exhaust louvers on the rear of the stolen ASV would be a weak spot.  Would they stop .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds?  If they couldn’t, the vehicle’s engine would soon be grinding to a halt. 

“Okay, Phil, just after this barn, hit the brakes and swing left into the field—just don’t roll this sucker!  Hang on!”

Carson jumped on the brake pedal as they passed the old wooden structure, turned and smashed through a pole fence, bumping and swaying, briefly going onto two wheels before regaining control.

Boone continued his directions.  “Head straight for the woods across the field, see where it goes down?  See the road, the low part by the fence?  That’s it, follow that.”

Carson struggled to keep control, the ASV sometimes bouncing airborne or threatening to go up on two wheels again.  More tracers flew in front and above them.  Their pursuers were not directly behind them now, but were angling after them, and their fire was obviously unaimed.  The dirt farm road followed a depression in the terrain, partially shielding them from effective fire.  Another hundred yards and they entered a tree line.  Then ahead of them, he saw open water, maybe sixty yards across to the other bank.  “What now, Boone?”  The turret was still facing backward, so Carson knew that Boone would have to twist clear around in the turret to see forward. 

“Slow down, and ease into it.  I’ll keep these guys busy.”

“How deep is it?” asked Carson, as the front wheels slipped into the current.

“Three, four feet…I hope.”

“How deep can this buggy go?”

“We’re going to find out!  Maybe five feet, max.”

The bottom was rocky, and slippery beneath the wheels.  As the water depth increased, their traction decreased.  Icy water leaked in through the side doors and other unseen gaps.  Halfway across, the ASV seemed to bob or float, turned partially sideways as the wheels spun to no effect, then found bottom and gripped again.  Finally the depth began to lessen, the angle of the vehicle turned upward, and they approached the opposite shore as more slugs caromed off their armor plates and grenades exploded around them.

The bank on the opposite shore was steep, at least forty-five degrees, and Carson struggled to find an open path through deadfall trees and saplings.  He floored the accelerator and took the slope at an angle, the turbo diesel roaring, the ASV’s four big tractor tires clawing and churning at the earth like a monster truck.  With his vehicle angled steeply upward, Carson could see nothing but blank green sky and tree branches through the narrow slot of his armored glass front window.  “Come on, baby, come on!” he shouted.  After seconds that stretched on forever, the vehicle topped the crest and rolled to level again, allowing him to see the terrain to his front.  Relief flooded through him even as more heavy shots rang off their ASV’s armored hull.  Then a massive explosion seemed to detonate inside the vehicle, shaking it and stunning the three American crew.

“What was
that
?” Doug screamed.

Boone called back, “I think a grenade hit the engine compartment.  Phil, how’s she running?”  The turbo diesel had a new sound, ragged and rough.

“I’m losing RPMs, and the engine temp is going up fast.”

“Phil, there’s a dirt road straight in front, running parallel to the creek.  Hang a left and slow down, we just need a few more minutes.  I have two ASVs behind us in the water now, but they can only see our turret.  We’re hull-down to them since we cleared the bank.”

“Then shoot them!” Carson yelled back.  “Are you out of ammo?” 

“Almost, but I have another idea—we’re going to visit the Nigerians.  Our guns can’t stop an ASV from the front anyway.  Okay, the Nigerian outpost is just ahead, it’s those buildings.  Doug, put the strobe back on.”  The stream marked the border between the counties assigned to the Kazak Battalion and the Nigerian Peacekeeping Force.  The Nigerians had taken over two large farms, one fronting each side of the paved county road that crossed the stream into Kazak territory.  The old steel cantilevered-truss bridge had survived the earthquakes.  Now the ASV was approaching the Nigerian position from behind, at a walking speed.  Boone swung the turret back around to the front.

Through the narrow bulletproof front windshield, Carson could see that the dirt road led alongside and then between several farm outbuildings and a large tractor shed.  He glanced down: RPMs were surging up and down even with the same pressure on the accelerator pedal, oil pressure was dropping and the engine temperature was reading over 220 degrees.  But they were still driving forward.

Boone said, “Their security is facing the bridge, and we’re already behind it in their rear.  Okay, here we go, we’ve got company—the Nigerians are coming out to play.”  From behind a small building, an SUV backed up directly in front of the ASV’s path and stopped.  Soldiers spilled out of a barn, hopping around in bare feet on the cold ground while pulling up trousers and throwing on coats.  Even in the green light, it was possible to tell that they were Africans, from the Nigerian contingent of “peacekeepers.”

“Hit the truck, Phil, slam it, let’s go!”  Boone depressed the .50 caliber’s barrel and fired it in short bursts of three or four shots, continually traversing, taking on any targets of opportunity: vehicles, buildings, men running in the open.  Carson drove straight ahead, smashed the big SUV out of the way, knocking down soldiers who in their disorientation and confusion stood in the ASV’s path.  Most appeared not even to see the armored machine before they were hit and run over.

More soldiers appeared from several farmhouses and outbuildings, some taking cover and firing their rifles, which had no effect at all on the ASV.  Other Nigerian thin-skinned vehicles began to move about in the confusion.  It was obvious that the troops were unsure about who was friendly and who was not.  Armored vehicles were synonymous with allied international peacekeepers, and the Nigerians could not seem to wrap their minds around a peacekeeping vehicle intentionally opening fire on them.

Tracers flew past the ASV from behind, and more heavy rounds impacted its hull.  Boone yelled, “The Cossacks are on our ass again!” as he swung the turret and rattled off a long burst of .50 caliber toward the ASV’s rear, and then fired the last of the 40mm grenades from the M-19.  This was answered with 40mm grenades from their pursuers, which exploded among the half-dressed Nigerian troops, who were now running madly in all directions at once between barns and sheds. 

“Phil, when you reach the next pavement, hang a right and give her everything you’ve got.”  As soon as Carson felt the smoother asphalt beneath their wheels, he turned and Boone unexpectedly launched the ASV’s turret-mounted smoke grenades.  When they hit the ground, their phosphorous igniters exploded in sheets of brilliant flame.  In seconds, the high-capacity military smokes were blooming and merging into a vast, impenetrable manmade fog.  The firing behind them continued as they rolled northward on the two-lane road, leaving the green cloud and accelerating to thirty miles an hour.  Now the .50 caliber and 40mm grenade explosions were joined by at least a dozen rifles and light machine guns, crackling and roaring behind them.  The ASV’s motor emitted a new high-pitched grinding squeal, and a new burning smell invaded the inerior.

“Doug, kill the signal strobe.  Phil, we’re taking the next paved road to the right.”

Carson said, “That’ll take us right back toward the fight—”

“Don’t worry; I know these roads.  Just take it, this one here.”  The sounds of firing continued unabated behind them; explosions, cracks, booms and the whiz of ricocheting rounds.

They approached a two-story residence on their right side.  Enough moonlight filtered through the low cloud cover and reflected off the remaining snow crust for them to make out the shape of a small mansion, uphill between bare trees.  A dark civilian pickup truck rolled backward down its long driveway, a squad of soldiers in the back.  “N.P.F” was painted in foot-high white block letters on the tailgate and side of the shiny truck.  Over the intercom from the turret, Boone said, “Stop them, Phil—that’s our next ride.”

Carson left the road, angled up the lawn to the driveway, and tipped the back corner of the pickup in a heavy-duty Pitt maneuver, smashing into its rear bumper and spinning the truck around.  The occupants appeared totally shocked by the unexpected appearance of the monster ASV, and before the pickup came to a stop, they leaped from the truck bed.  At the same time, both cab doors flew open.  All six or seven of the Nigerian troops fled back up the lawn toward the house, leaving their shoulder weapons scattered behind them.  Before they had made it thirty yards, Boone cut most of them to pieces with a raking burst from the .50 caliber, and all of them hit the ground.

“All right,” he shouted over the intercom, “this is our new car; we’re getting out here.  Phil, make sure those guys are down for the count.  They’re too low for me to get with the fifty, and I’m out of 40 mike-mike.”  The ASV was parked sideways to the slope of the hill, its left wheels in a ditch, and the machine gun’s barrel could not be depressed far enough to reach the prone soldiers.

Carson reached up and threw open his hatch, pulled off his crew helmet with its night vision lens, then grabbed his carbine and stood on the driver’s seat.  In a moment, his eyes adjusted to the ambient light.  Several of the Nigerian soldiers were screaming and moaning, rolling on the snowy lawn leading up to the mansion.  Dark men against the white snow. He shouldered the rifle and found the Aimpoint’s red dot with his right eye, flicked the safety back with his thumb, and put two quick rounds into each torso, moving or not.  One man sprang to his feet and began to run away uphill, but slipped in the snow, his arms windmilling.  Carson aimed the floating red dot between his shoulder blades and hit him twice more, before he could regain his balance and take off again. 
Nice shooting, Phil
, he thought, as the man twisted down in a heap. 

The blood veil had fallen over Carson’s eyes, and he wasn’t about to risk being shot from behind by some foreign interloper playing possum. 
I’ll bet you never dreamed you’d die in the cold snow
popped into his mind and he suppressed a laugh.  Still watching for other Nigerians or Kazaks to appear, he climbed all the way up through the hatch, standing watch while Boone grabbed their packs and exited through the ASV’s side door.

It took them less than a minute to change vehicles, including time for Boone to leave a four-pound C-4 demolition charge with a three-minute time fuse.  The demo charge was already prepared; the white dough was packed into a large plastic mayonnaise jar.  The inside bottom of the jar had been built up into a hollow cone, forming an improvised shaped charge.  Boone only had to push a non-electric blasting cap through a hole in the lid and into the explosive.  The silver cap was already crimped onto the end of a short piece of waterproof military time fuse.  His last act, after grabbing the M-79 grenade launcher and a bandolier of 40mm grenades from the ASV, was to pull the ring of the magic marker-sized igniter at the end of the foot-long fuse.  It lit with a pop, acrid smoke pouring from the fuse inside the igniter.  Boone jumped into the driver’s seat of the black pickup truck, Carson rode shotgun, Doug climbed in the back, and they were off.