Retribution (36 page)

CHAPTER 70

 

“P
raise Allah,” breathed Yousef as he saw the convoy moving up the valley.

Now in the truck, Yousef stayed low behind the front wheel, waiting for the others to arrive as the wind whipped over his truck. He checked his rifle again to make sure that the magazine was seated. He had another full clip. He left on the vehicle's lights, knowing that it made him a target, but equally sure that Zulfiqar's men wouldn't find him quickly enough without a lighted beacon to follow.

A round struck the front hood of the truck.

Yousef felt the vehicle move, rocked by the force of the round. His fear began to take over again.

Another round struck the radiator. Again, the truck rocked back and forth. Liquid started to gurgle out the bottom of the engine.

Yousef rubbed his forehead, feeling extremely feverish. In fact, despite the cold he was dripping in sweat. Muscles shaking.

The lights of the trucks came closer.

He became emboldened once more by the approaching lights.

Yousef stepped out of the truck and sprayed the rocks with a full clip of ammunition. Sparks popped up as the bullets careened off the harder rocks. He stooped down below the truck, ejected the empty magazine, and loaded another.

Just as Yousef turned to spray the rocks with another clip, he felt a metal cylinder pressed against the back of his head.

“Put the rifle down.” The voice was in English.

Yousef didn't turn around. Without doubt, the man he knew as Sadik Zabara would squeeze the trigger. He heard not an inkling of hesitation in his voice. Yousef dropped the rifle.

“You will not escape this valley,” said Yousef. “You will die here.”

“Lie down on the ground.”

Yousef lay spread-eagled with Parker's foot on his back. Parker slid his hand down the side of Yousef 's coat, finding a cell phone. He tossed it into the rocks.

Yousef started to raise himself up, and Parker popped him on the side of the head with the pistol.

“Who are you?”

Parker didn't answer.

“I'll have them cut your throat with a dull blade.”

Parker ignored the threat and searched through the other side of Yousef's coat until he found what he wanted. The international cell phone.

“You have meningitis. You can feel it by now. The fever. Neck and head pain? At best, you have a few hours of consciousness left. Do you understand?”

Now Yousef lay in silence.

 

 

Parker turned the cell phone on, hunching below the truck and out of sight of the approaching trucks. The phone only had two numbers in it. He looked at them closely, memorizing the numbers carefully despite his head aching, nausea, and fever overwhelming his body.

Parker crushed the second phone and tossed it far in to the darkness. He turned to Yousef.

“December twenty-first, 1988. You recognize the date?”

“No.”

“How about Pan Am 103?”

Sullen silence.

Parker cracked Yousef on the back of his skull with the pistol butt. It was a good, solid hit, but only intended to stun him. Yousef would remain conscious, but the disease would continue its progress. The lining to his brain would continue to swell and the bleeding would start. Blood seeping out of the corners of his eyes and ears, his fingers and toes turning black, with the blackness progressing up his legs and arms. Shortly, his legs would not work. He would try to speak, but nothing would come out. Soon the smell of rotten flesh from gangrene would keep any human away. It would not be a fair death nor one that Yousef would want his young son to watch. It would only be fair to the many whose deaths Yousef had caused.

“With exactness grinds He all.” Parker slipped into the darkness.

CHAPTER 71

 

“W
hat the hell is going on?” Scott looked at the thermal sensor from the Predator floating over the valley. An armada of vehicles was coming up the valley, each vehicle loaded with small white thermal dots signifying an army of men.

“Sir, it's a pile.”

The airman moved the thermal sensor on the aircraft. In the hillside above the valley two white dots were moving back up the valley. Farther up, three more white dots were on the ridgeline.

Scott could see two white dots next to the lead vehicle. The truck remained motionless. Its lights stood out in the thermal-registered darkness like the beacon of a lighthouse.

“We need some help.”

Prevatt sat in the chair in front of the terminal. “I have a fully loaded Predator on station to the south. I can get it up there in thirty minutes.”

“But can we get them out of there?”

Prevatt was silent for a moment.

“You had a mission of Blackhawks, but the wind and altitude killed it.” Even in perfect weather, Blackhawk helicopters could, at best, climb to a ceiling of fifteen to twenty thousand feet, which barely puts them in the valleys of these ranges.

“Sir, we have another problem.” The junior airman zoomed the view on another terminal out to a hundred-mile radius. It was the radar for the sector. Several objects were moving in from the south.

“Pakistani Air Force.”

“A flight of helicopters.” The airman spoke up. “On the other side of the front.”

“Maybe they can help,” said Scott.

“I don't think so, sir.”

“What's wrong?”

“They will assume that no one is friendly up there,” Prevatt cut in, “and if we tell them otherwise, they will probably take your men down just out of spite. Remember: They're missing a couple of freshly stolen nukes. They are royally pissed off. I expect they'll shoot at any moving target. Period.”

“What are our options?”

“Your men could pull back into the mountains and wait a couple of weeks.”

“That's not an option. One of them is very sick.” Scott knew that Parker would never make it another day, let alone another week. Plus, he was contagious. “By now, more than one.”

“We have a Marine special-ops team about an hour south of here,” said the younger airman.

“If an Army team can't get in with Blackhawks, what are the Marines supposed to do to get there in time?”

“They—ah—have another way of getting there.”

Scott looked at the convoy of trucks moving up the pass, then to Prevatt. “What do you think, Colonel?”

Prevatt shrugged. “It's our only choice.”

CHAPTER 72

 

Bullets started to pop over Parker's head as he struggled to get back to Moncrief and the safety of the rocks.

Parker tried to zig and zag, but the disease seemed to have affected his sense of balance. Every step felt as if his foot were sinking into a bog. The wind did the rest, resisting every step he tried to make. He bounced off the boulders, trying to keep his balance.

A much larger caliber bullet flew over his head. This time the rifle was firing from the rocks ahead and shooting back toward the approaching convoy. Moncrief's Windrunner was tearing through the engine blocks of the vehicles in the chase. Occasionally, a man would drop as well. The .338 bullet needed only to strike a meaty portion of the target's body, for then the force of the blow would punch out the arm or the leg or the flank of the target. It was like being pummeled at close range with a shotgun loaded with ball bearings.

Whoosh
.

Parker heard the small
crack
that followed as the round passed through the air at supersonic speed. But this time the rifle was coming from yet another direction. From behind Parker came a long, sickly moan.

Gut shot,
he thought automatically.
Another sniper from our team, shooting to wound.

Others in the army heard the man's moans and cries for help, and with those cries others began decelerating their trucks, lightening their attack. The
rat-tat-tat
of AK-47s slowed, like popcorn finishing in a microwave.

“William?”

Parker heard the voice from behind a rock that he just passed.

“Gunny?”

“Well, I hope you got what in the hell you wanted to get. Does the word
Alamo
mean anything to you?” Moncrief's wide smile could be seen in the flash of headlights from the trucks.

“I bet you tell jokes at your best friend's funeral too, don't you?”

“We need to head up to our alternate rendezvous site. It's about a click.” Moncrief didn't even ask if Parker could make it. It didn't matter. He had to make it.

“Lead the way.”

The gunny had slung over his shoulder a pair of bi-oculars like Furlong's. With bi-oculars, a single lens takes in the light, the thermal computer registers the heat, and the two eyepieces on the other end act like binoculars. The thermal AN/PAS-28 bi-oculars made night into day as Moncrief looked up the valley, and also had a built-in direction finder that pointed the way.

“Stop.”

“What is it?”

“Listen.” The rifle shots coming from up the valley were increasing, the big bullets volleying over their heads.

“Good, some cover.”

“Yeah, and the wind's letting up a little.” With the wind dying down, the others in the team were able to better locate their targets and make more kills.

“Come on!”

Moncrief headed north through the
whap
,
whap
of bullets flying past. The pursuing men's shots were not well aimed and flew by harmlessly. But that wasn't the case with Villegas's Windrunner. With each booming shot Parker knew that another man fell.

“Does that other team know to get out of there?” he whispered to Moncrief.

“They should, but hold on.” Moncrief stopped to radio them.

“Slashing talon one, this is slashing talon alpha. Are you on the move?”

“Alpha, this is one. We are out of here.”

It was a good thing, as the guns below had become silent.

They're reorganizing and making their plan.
Parker knew that if they were led by an experienced warrior, their leader would adapt to the situation, move his forces uphill, and try to get the high ground. From there, his men could fire rocket-propelled grenades down onto them.

A bright flash of yellow light suddenly lit up the darkness.

The ear-shattering sound of the Predator's strike followed the flash a millisecond later. Parker felt the rush of wind, dust, and chips of rock blow past as he was knocked to the ground by the concussion wave.

“What the hell was that?” Moncrief lay next to Parker, their ears ringing from the blast.

“Our guardian angel.” Parker rubbed the dust from his face and eyes.

Just as suddenly, the lights of the remaining vehicles went dark. The ragtag army had learned a painful lesson. Headlights only guided drone bombs to their targets.

“They're gonna move above us,” Parker whispered to Moncrief.

“Yeah, and they'll be spreading out so another missile will not catch them together.”

“They know that this valley is a dead end. They were raised in these mountains, so they know every rock.”

“Shit, yeah.”

“Worse problem is that they know there's no way out.”

Parker's team was in a box with one side being Zulfiqar and the other three being the twenty-five-thousand-foot Himalayan peaks.

Moncrief nodded. “And as long as they think we have this”—he patted the box that held the nuclear core—“they won't stop, no matter what.”

CHAPTER 73

 

“Y
our man's not looking good.” Sergeant Frix leaned over Parker as he spoke to Moncrief. “I'm gonna give him a lollipop. It will at least make it easier.”

Frix unwrapped the fentanyl-laced lollipop and stuck it in Parker's mouth. The morphine drug would release into Parker's bloodstream at an even pace.

“What can we do?” The climb had been brutal, taking Moncrief to his physical limits, and Parker beyond that. But the sniper fire had served to make their retreat possible, at least so long as their bodies held out.

“Clark, Clark.” Parker was starting to mumble to himself, semiconscious and in obvious pain.

“We need to get him on the antibiotics as soon as we can. And even then, it's going to be close.”

“I'm not sure how they are going to get us out of here.” Furlong was on his knee, huddled nearby. “The winds are moving fast over the mountains, so they say helicopters are out.”

“Do they know about the nuke?” Moncrief had placed the box on the ground in the center in front of them.

“Yeah. Believe me, they do.”

“What about the other one?”

Moncrief stared. “There's two?”

“Yeah.”

“That may be why he went back to the truck.”

“Back to one of their trucks?”

“Yeah.”

“How is he, doc?”

“It's going to be close.”

Parker lay immobile and seemingly insensate on the ground.

Moncrief looked around in frustration. “There's got to be something else we can do until help comes.”

“Did he use both of the IV bags?”

“Both? I don't know. I only saw what looked like one empty bag near the tent.”

“There was another.”

“In the cooler?”

“Yeah, there were two IV bags.”

Furlong shook his head and whispered to Moncrief, “Without that second bag, he has a zero chance. He just didn't get enough antibiotic into him.”

“Shit!” Moncrief cried. “All right. I'll go check and see.”

“What?” Furlong stared at him. “Have you lost your mind? That tent is a thousand-plus yards from here and in the middle of a beehive.”

“I'll go with him.” Villegas spoke with his back facing the team as he looked down the valley.

“Like hell you will,” said Furlong. “I don't need everyone scattered out all over this damn place.”

“I'll be back in an hour,” said Moncrief. “If anything happens during that time and I'm not back, go home without me.”

“I can stop Villegas, but I can't stop you,” said Furlong quietly. “But remember: He may already be dead.”

Moncrief shrugged, his mind made up.

“Good luck, Gunny,” said Furlong. “We're going to move to alternate site delta.”

The move would push them farther up the valley. It would also buy them more time as the army below tried to outflank them.

“I'll keep him alive for an hour,” said Frix, pulling out a plastic tube like the one that each of them carried.

“Who are you going to use?” asked Furlong.

“Mine,” said Frix. “I know how much to give without burning me out.”

Moncrief realized Frix was talking about transfusing his own blood into Parker's system.

He clasped hands with each of them in turn before turning to leave.

“Okay, Gunny,” said Furlong. “You have one hour.”

 

 

The thermal bi-oculars gave Moncrief a chance of making it. They also revealed his situation starkly:

Goddamn, they are
every
where.

He cut down, on the far left side of the valley, thinking that was the one place no one had been. But the small army's leader was also thinking that he didn't want anyone to escape by going downhill. So as Moncrief moved down a washed-out streambed, he saw with his bi-oculars five men moving in the opposite direction.

Moncrief stopped, burying himself between two rocks by making himself into a small, tight ball. Even so, he sensed the body heat of the two men as they moved by. He could even smell the same cardamom scent from the tea he'd drunk in the aircraft. More important, they didn't smell him. He didn't stand out.

The two were whispering to each other, stopping within an arm's reach of Moncrief. Even in the foreign language, he could tell by their voices that the two were young, barely out of their teens, and bitching about the cold and the wind.

Moncrief smiled.

He counted to a hundred after they passed, waiting to be sure that it was safe. And then he climbed out of the rocks and scanned the horizon. The team of five had moved up the creek bed, stopping every so often, and then moving again. He scanned the valley to the different sides and counted the white shapes in the thermals.

The white shapes appeared everywhere in his bi-ocular's range of vision. Most were walking in line, following a trail on the top of the ridge.

With daylight, the thermals would be neutralized as an advantage. The high ground was what any force would want.

Moncrief followed the bed farther down the hill, and then cut across using the trail of the two. He felt his Apache blood taking over as he looked for the subtle markings left by both the two that had passed him and the others moving into the valley. At the base of the valley he took his bearings from Yousef 's ruined truck and calculated that the tent stood less than a hundred yards away.

“How in the hell am I going to do this?”

Two of the enemy were posted by the site of the tent, seemingly in case Zabara decided to return.

Moncrief drew his pistol and tightened the silencer. But it would take more than the silencer to quiet the round. With the enemy army covering most of the mountainside, a bullet had to be perfectly silent. He sidled up to Yousef 's truck, finding the body of a young fighter. Yousef was gone. Moncrief had to get close to the two guards without raising their suspicion.

The sky was starting to turn gray.

I'm running out of time
.

He picked up the dead body that had taken the sniper round to the head and hauled it over his shoulder. Moncrief slid the pistol and silencer in between his own chest and the body. The dead man was small and weighed little, even in death.

“
As sala'amu alaikum,
” he called out to the two guards.

Both turned and, seeing a fellow soldier in the dark with a wounded warrior, lowered their rifles for a moment. It only took a moment. Moncrief's silenced rounds tore through each of the guards.

One fell onto the remains of the tent. Moncrief pulled the body away and as he did he struck the boot of another, larger man wedged between the rocks. A moan came from the body.

Moncrief pulled out his pistol and aimed a round at the head of the body on the ground and then, for some reason, paused.

“Shit, I don't have time to pop every damn body.”

He turned and dug through the collapsed tent until he felt the outline of a small ice chest. He plunged his hand in and retrieved the full IV bag just as two other fighters marched toward him noisily from the direction of the truck. Moncrief slipped behind the boulder and quietly moved down toward the creek bed, carefully cradling the bag in between his shirt and warm body.