The Devil's Footprint (80 page)

Palmer
explained the system of observation posts.
 
Each sector was being watched by two teams, one using thermal sights and
the other using night vision.
 
In addition,
antipersonnel radar equipment and chemical sensors had been set up.
 
Theoretically a snake should not have been
able to slither through without being detected, but Gannon knew that completely
sealing off an area in reality was close to impossible.
 
People got tired, equipment failed, batteries
had to be changed.
 
Even if you put a
soldier every couple of yards, a skilled operator could get through.

"How long
will she wait?" said Gannon.

"Forty-eight
hours minimum," said Fitzduane.
 
"Up to a month if she has to.
 
Her main problem will be water, but she's had plenty of time to prepare
so there's probably a tank of it down there.
 
But my guess would be that she'll try and move out sooner rather than
later.
 
If she gives us too much time we
could just get lucky.
 
Also, our chemical
sensors will have more to work with.
 
She
could well have carbon filters down there, but every day the stench is going to
get worse."

Gannon walked
around the map.
 
It was hard to fault the
staff work, but something — some assumption — just wasn't right.
 
Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that
Oshima was probably still around and that she was certainly worth taking out of
the loop.

But something
was wrong.
 
It came to him.

"Your
surveillance is based on the assumption she's going to emerge outside the
perimeter?" he asked.

Fitzduane
nodded.

"And
outside the perimeter minefields?" said Gannon.

"Affirmative,
General
," said Palmer.

Gannon
shrugged.
 
"Maybe," he
said.
 
"But if I was her, I would
come up
inside
the minefield.
 
Especially if I knew where the mines were
laid."

"Tiptoe
through the tulips," said Fitzduane.
 
"Only, the next in line gets blown up."

"I've got
another point," said Gannon.
 
"This meticulous surveillance is all very well if the Tecuno
plateau remains its normal equable self — hot days and cold clear nights.
 
But if the weather takes a
turn?
 
If Oshima
isn't alone?"

"It could
get messy, sir," said Palmer.

"Colonel
Fitzduane?" said Gannon.

"It will
be our mess," said Fitzduane.

"Does
‘our’ include Lieutenant Brock's Scouts?" said Gannon.

"I guess
it does, General," said Fitzduane.
 
"Instant compatibility, you might say."

Gannon smiled
thinly.

28

Lightning
lanced out of the sky and the battlefield radar blew in a shower of sparks.

"What the
fuck!" said
Brock.
 
"Whose side is this guy on?"

The sky flared
again and again and the deafening cracks of thunder cut in so fast that
Fitzduane had the sense of being directly bombarded.
 
The sensations were primeval,
terrifying.
 
He wanted to crawl under
cover, to pull the blankets over his head.
 
This was not a thunderstorm.
 
This
was not weather.
 
This was violence on an
almost supernatural scale.
 
And he had no
blanket.
 
Conditions in the observation
post were basic.

A scorpion
raced across the ground, stopped to stare at them, then headed down into a
hole.

"Did he
say something?" said Lonsdale.

"
‘Follow
me!’" said Cochrane.

Lightning
cracked into a massive boulder off to the right.
 
The huge rock cracked in two with a smell of
ozone.
 
One side swayed and then rolled
over toward the Scout fire team.
 
There
was a single short scream and then a brief silence.
 
Brock, bent double, headed toward the noise.

The thunder
cut in again, and Fitzduane could hear the sound of shouting.
 
He checked his watch.
 
It was 0323.
 
Something was moving up ahead and to the right.
 
They were in an observation post on a slight
rise overlooking the minefield and it was beginning to look as if Oshima was
making her run.
 
Unfortunately, she had
picked her time all too well.
 
Air was
grounded, communications were haywire, and the array of vision and detection
equipment was effectively neutered.

Nature was
effortlessly sweeping aside their technological advantage.

The entire
ground in front of him was beginning to move.
 
The wind gusted and screamed.
 
The
surface was being blasted into the air and there flung against — and into —
anything that protruded.
 
Sand and grit
stung his face, clogged his mouth and nostrils, and cut down his vision.

There was a
sharp, deadly crack of high explosives, and then secondary explosions.
 
The thunder of the storm was so loud and so
close that at first Fitzduane was unsure whether he was hearing nature at work
or the killing blast of a mine.
 
The secondaries
suggested a mine.
 
Someone had stepped in
the wrong place and the explosion had set off grenades they were carrying.

Oshima was
out, but her people could not see much better than they themselves could.
 
Still, they had some advantage, because the
wind was coming from behind them and blowing almost directly towards the observation
posts.

Lonsdale,
lying beside him with the .50 Barrett, fired.

Fire blasted
back, its sounds of origin blending with the storm.
 
Beside them a trooper slumped, his face black
with blood.
 
Further aimed bursts
searched out the paratroopers' position and filled the air with splinters.

The terrorists
must have fixed their position from their exit hole.
 
A flash of lightning revealed that the
screaming wind had blown away much of their cover.
 
The camouflage netting was gone.
 
The carefully covered mesh of their hides had
been scoured clean of earth and now served only to identify their position.

Fitzduane
searched for a target.
 
He caught a blur
and opened up with two aimed shots.
 
The
blur dropped and he fired again.
 
Muzzle
flashes and incoming showed he had missed.

The flying
sand seemed to part in front of him, and he saw a black shape emerge out of the
storm.
 
He slid back behind the parapet
as the hand grenade blew.
 
They were
being pinned down and flanked.

Lonsdale
rolled backward, his Kevlar split open and blood oozing from his skull.

Fitzduane
rolled out of the observation post and sought out the grenade thrower.
 
What kind of force were they up against?
 
He realized that he had assumed that Oshima
would either be alone or accompanied by only two or three followers.
 
Could he be wrong?
 
Had some external force managed to
infiltrate?
 
Were they being attacked
from behind as well?

He knew that a
line of observation posts overlooked the minefield and that there were hundreds
of troopers within rifle shot and thousands more on the secured base, yet for
all practical purposes he was virtually alone.

He wriggled
forward, trying to detect movement.
 
The
wind was gusting.
 
Sometimes he could see
little further than the hand in front of his face, and then the wind would ease
for a moment or gust in a different direction and he would be given a brief,
tantalizing snapshot before the image was lost again.

He moved his
right hand forward and felt flesh.

Pain screamed
up his arm.
 
He was being bitten.

The sky lit up
and showed a face in front of him.
 
The
man's teeth were embedded in his hand.

Fitzduane
lashed out with his left hand and caught the terrorist on the side of the
head.
 
The man's mouth opened in shock
and Fitzduane felt his right hand come free.
 
The cessation of pain as the man's teeth relaxed their grip was
immediate and overwhelming.

He tried to
grab his rifle, but his right hand would not seem to do his bidding.

The terrorist
leaped forward as Fitzduane was rolling to one side.

The attacker
missed Fitzduane but lashed out with his knife as he landed.
 
The blow cut into Fitzduane's webbing and
made a long thin diagonal cut across his torso.

Fitzduane
unclipped a grenade and, using both hands, smashed the metal sphere into his
attacker's face.

The man
grunted and fell back.

Fitzduane
raised himself over his attacker and hit him again and again in the face with
the grenade.
 
He could feel the man's
bones breaking and the grenade getting slippery with blood.
 
Each blow made his injured hand hurt agonizingly,
but the intensity of the pain made him hit all the harder.

He dropped the
grenade, found his rifle, put the muzzle against the side of the terrorist's
head and pulled the trigger.
 
The man's
body jerked and he was completely still.
 
Half his head had been blown away.

Fitzduane lay
back panting.
 
He flexed his right
hand.
 
It hurt, but his hand would now
work.
 
Compared to the intensity of the
agony of the terrorist's bite had inflicted, the duller pain was almost
welcome.

A figure
rushed out of the swirling sand to Fitzduane's left.
 
He was running hard.
 
Fitzduane caught the silhouette of a
Kalashnikov and fired two rounds from his rifle.
 
The 5.56mm rounds hit, Fitzduane was certain,
but the terrorist kept on coming.
 
Adrenaline and desperation drove him.
 
Waiting for days to break through the cordon of paratroopers, his body
was now nearly unstoppable.

Fitzduane
fired two three-round bursts and the terrorist stumbled and fell to his knees.

There was a
vivid flash of flame and the terrorist was flung backward as a .50 explosive
round hit him.

Fitzduane saw
Lonsdale slumped against a rock, the Barrett wavering in his hand.
 
Half his face was obscured with blood.
 
Fitzduane moved forward and as Lonsdale began
to collapse, then helped him to the ground.
 
Brock appeared and slid into the observation post.
 
He took one look at Lonsdale and pulled out a
field dressing.

"Oshima?"
said Fitzduane.

Brock made a
gesture.
 
"At least two of them got
through on the right," he said.
 
"Thirty meters away.
 
Cochrane and a fire team have gone after them."

The storm was
easing.
 
As suddenly as it had started,
it was vanishing.

"I'm
calling in a blocking force," said Brock, "if this fucking this now
works."
 
He keyed the radio.

Fitzduane was
gone.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Dawn was breaking.

As he ran,
Fitzduane tried to put himself in Oshima's position.
 
She had broken through, but where would she
go?

The electrical
storm had passed and communications were now working.
 
Cloud cover was still low, and rain was
forecast.
 
The air effort was cranking
up, but it would be hampered.

Scout Platoon
was spread out in a loose
V
.
 
The lead runner, Specialist Tennant, had
sworn that he could see two people running up ahead, and Fitzduane was
following.
 
Personally, he had not seen
anything, but in the absence of any other lead, Tennant's certainty was as good
an option as anything else.

They were
running east.
 
This meant they were
running into the rising sun, and that one thought alone persuaded Fitzduane
that Oshima could well be up ahead.
 
She
left little to chance, and the fact that any pursuers would have the sun in
their eyes as they followed would be something she would think of.

There was a
good case to be made for abandoning the search and continuing it later on by
air, but the sheer scale of the terrain made Fitzduane reluctant to concede
Oshima any advantage.
 
The Tecuno plateau
consisted of thousands of square kilometers of brutal terrain, and if Oshima
really did manage to shake her pursuers, she could hide indefinitely.

It had
occurred to Fitzduane that his assumption that Oshima would move from the air
base tunnel to a cache might well be oversimplifying.
 
If Oshima had prepared a series of
underground hides, then locating her would be well nigh impossible.
 
There was too much ground to cover.
 
A hide could be stood on by a searcher and
still not be detected.