Deathrace

18

Franklin gunned the engine as soon as everything was loaded in the Citroen, but Douglas waved him off.

"We need a drag, something to pull behind the rig to brush out our tire tracks so they can't follow us. A bunch of brush usually works, but there ain't none here."

"Tie one blanket on the bumper behind each rear tire," Franklin said. 'Should do in a pinch."

They tried it.

Douglas walked behind the car for a hundred yards, and couldn't make out the tire tracks. Nobody could see them from the air.

They drove.

Franklin rattled the old car along as fast as he dared in the rock-strewn dirt track. Sometimes he hit fifteen miles an hour. It should be enough.

Twice Nard had them stop and back up to take a different branch of the dirt trails. They climbed a slope that Douglas was sure would tip over the rig, but it was built heavy, and low to the ground, and made it up and over, then down the far side. They came to a spring that had spawned a palm tree and fifty square feet of green grass. They paused only a moment. The choppers would search this area carefully.

Douglas checked the drags again. Yes, they blotted out the tire tracks well. Now if they could just get enough miles between them and the dead bodies, all would be well.

Maybe. "Getting low on gas," Franklin said.

"Those two 10-gallon tanks. Were they piped into the fuel line?" Douglas asked.

Franklin pulled into the shade of a towering peak and took a look. He crawled into the backseat, moved a ton of stuff, and come out smiling. "Both have valves on them. I switched on one, which should take us for another day at this pace. Which way there, our dependable scout and guide?" He had asked the question in Farsi.

Nard was catching on to some of Franklin's jokes. He pointed to the left again, and they rolled.

Every ten minutes they stopped to listen. They could hear no aircraft, fixed-wing or rotary.

"So far we is staying alive," Franklin said. He repeated it in Farsi and Nard grinned.

"Twelve miles," Douglas said. "We've come twelve fucking miles today. Are we getting too far to the east?"

Franklin repeated the question to Nard in his language. He looked out the window, then, when they came to a break in the hills to the north, asked Franklin to stop the car. He got out and stared at the hills for some time, then nodded and went to Franklin.

"See that second mountain up there, the one with the twin peaks and saddle in the middle. Saddle Mountain, we call it. The place you look for is just beyond that mountain two, three kilometers."

"You're sure?"

"Oh, yes. Almost got killed near Saddle Mountain. Soldiers came, searched all day. I lay in a small canyon with sand and gravel covering me except for a breathing straw made from a desert plant with a hollow stem. One soldier stepped on my leg, but he didn't notice. Oh, yes, I know that spot. Almost died there."

"Where do we turn north?"

"Another short ways, half a kilometer. Then only drive another two kilometers or so before road runs out. No more trail. Only mountain goat climb from there on."

Franklin told Douglas what Nard had said.

"We might just be getting somewhere."

Before they could get moving again, they heard the chopper.

Quickly they pushed the car into the shadows of the mountain, then spread the camouflage tarp over it. This time they didn't tie it down, just draped it, and crawled underneath.

All three men under the canvas had rifles ready. The long guns were nothing that either SEAL had ever seen before.

But they had 30-round magazines. Douglas snapped off the safety and turned the selector switch to fully automatic fire.

Then he waited.

Franklin found a small hole in the canvas he could look through.

"Damn chopper is still a ridge over. He's looking for anything he can find."

"If he spots us and hovers, we all get clear of the canvas, and fire at him on full auto. If he's only four or five hundred feet, we should be able to hurt him a lot."

"Shoot the fucker down," Franklin said.

Nard pointed the other way. "Helicopter," he said in Farsi and Franklin grunted.

"Another chopper south of us. Wonder how many they put out to try to nail our hides?"

"All they've got, my guess," Douglas said.

They listened then.

"Nearest bird is moving away," Franklin said.

"Hope we're outside their containment area. They must think we're still inside their web."

"So, we wait, or we move?" Franklin said.

"I'm too tired to spit. When did we get any sleep? Let's conk off here until dark. I think we beat them for right now. The closer we get, the tougher their security should be."

"Yeah, but out maybe ten miles?"

"That's where I'd put my first line." They listened for a moment, and both grinned. "No more choppers up here. Good. Ask Nard how much farther we can drive."

Franklin had the answer a moment later. "He says maybe three more kilometers. We turn north again until we run out of the next canyon. Then it's almost due north to that saddle mountain. He says we will be able to see the nuke plant from the far side of the saddle."

"We better rig up something to use for packs. We'll need to carry food, ammo, and our weapons."

"Yeah, and don't forget water. We can't order shakes from Jack in the Box."

"Chogie straps," Douglas said.

"What?"

"Chogie straps. The Koreans used them during the Korean war to carry shit with. My dad told me about them, and I saw pictures. Take a box or a sack full of stuff, use this long loop strap made out of canvas or cloth and loop it around the box, and two loops to put your arms through. Works fine, or at least it did for the guys over there."

They began sorting through the gear to find something to make the straps out of. Franklin snorted and used his knife to cut two eight-foot-long strips two inches wide from the camouflage canvas.

He tied the ends together.

"Show me," Franklin said.

"Damned if I know. Let's figure it out."

Ten minutes later they figured it, and then concentrated on picking out the gear, food, and water they would need for the hike on to Saddle Mountain.

"How much we taking?" Franklin asked.

"Enough water for three days — no, four days. How long will it take our guys to get in here from Coronado?"

"Three or four days. We better leave a batch of supplies at the end of the road so we can come back and get them if we need to."

They continued to sort out food and water. There would be plenty for a cache, and to get Nard on to his next dig in his continual search for chromium.

Franklin took the first watch, and Douglas went to sleep. They decided not to trust Nard this late in the game. He could bug out with everything, and leave them dying of thirst in the high desert.

Two hours later, Franklin took his turn sleeping. As soon as the sun went down, and the shadows grew into dusk, they hung out the blanket drags and began driving into the night.

Four hours later, Franklin switched on the car's headlights.

"Yep, like the man said, this is the end of the line. No way a car or a camel is going to go up that cliff."

He killed the lights, and they began checking the gear they had laid out.

Franklin explained to the Iranian what they were doing. He nodded.

"Good idea to have water and food here. You might have longer stay, and need to get back out. Should I wait for you for two days before I leave this spot?"

For a moment Franklin was sorry that they hadn't trusted their guide. He shook his head.

"We'll have enough supply here to last us even if we had to walk out to Chah Bahar. You take the rest, and get the rig moved away from here. Keep the drags on the rear to wipe out your tire tracks. Remember, the choppers will be looking for this vehicle."

Hope you make a rich strike."

They left six of the five-gallon cans of water, and half of the freeze-dried food behind under a small shelf of rock, and covered it all with slabs of stone to keep away any predators. There were various big cats in the mountains, but Douglas wasn't sure if that was down here or farther up north in the forested areas.

They waved at Nard, and sent him down the canyon and on his way. He said he would travel well out of the danger zone, so there would be no chance the soldiers would destroy his new transport. They also gave him half of the rials they had left, something like one hundred thousand. That figured out to three hundred dollars, but was probably more cash money than Nard had seen in years. The Citroen was probably worth twice that much. Nard was now a rich man by Chah Bahar standards.

They began hiking north. The chogie straps cut into their shoulders, but they simply bent over more and endured. You weren't really a SEAL if you weren't in pain somewhere. They had to detour around the shear cliff in front of them, but found a canyon leading up a quarter of a klick to the left.

Douglas took a bearing on a star, and kept it as his guidepost. By the time they had climbed up halfway on the hill in front of them, they could spot the dark blotch of the saddle mountain where it blotted out the stars in silhouette.

"Only five miles forward," Douglas said. "That doesn't count another six to ten straight up, and straight down."

They stopped after an hour for a breather. They had been up and down four smaller hills, and still the saddle mountain seemed as far away as when they started.

"A mountain always looks closer than it really is when you're sighting across a bunch of other hills and empty space," Franklin said. "That's what my Boy Scout Scoutmaster always used to tell us."

"You believed him?"

"I was ten, what did I know? Yeah, I believed him. I still do. We might not get onto that saddle before daylight."

"Bet you a case of beer we do," Douglas said. "You're on, sucker. I'd like some of that German beer."

"That'll be the day. Let's haul ass."