Direct Action

20

Murdock got out of the car to take a look. After the door slammed, there was a moment of stunned silence.

“It’s the karma,” Doc Ellsworth said confidently. “Jaybird and all those negative vibrations.”

“I told you I was thinking positively, goddammit!” Jaybird burst out.

“Someone’s going to get shot in about a second,” Razor Roselli warned.

Murdock got back in the car and unfolded his map.

“Why the fuck wasn’t this in the satellite photos?” Magic Brown demanded. “We checked the whole route out.”

“It was the rain,” said Kos Kosciuszko. “The whole hillside is eroded. They must get mud slides all the time in the winter.”

“Will everyone shut the fuck up for a second and let me think?” Murdock requested. He turned his flashlight on the map. They couldn’t go around the slide. Going back would lose them time and distance, and even so, the nearest alternative road went right through a village. They couldn’t afford another firefight. It was time for one of what Razor liked to scornfully call the lieutenant’s encounter groups. “All right,” said Murdock. “Give me some ideas.”

“We could drive around all night and not get any farther than we are right now,” said Higgins.

“We can’t bring a helo into this place,” said Jaybird.

“They could drop a caving ladder,” said Magic, but even he didn’t sound too convinced.

“We couldn’t even put Mister DeWitt on the hoist,” said Doc. “Not with his arm.”

“That’s not it,” Razor said impatiently. “The ground is as flat as a pancake and wide fucking open. There’s a village within half a klick. As soon as the helos popped over the mountains everybody and his uncle would be shooting at us.”

“We’ve got to assume that there are people chasing us,” Higgins broke in.

“Either moving right now or in the process of getting their shit together,” said Jaybird.

“We left so much fucking wreckage behind us, it’s not going to be that hard to figure out our route,” said Kos Kosciuszko.

“Oh, they’ll show up soon,” said Razor. “And pissed off to boot.”

“We’re too close to Baalbek as it is,” said Doc.

“We’ve got to do some walking,” said Ed DeWitt, giving voice to what was on everyone’s mind.

“Can you walk?” Murdock asked him.

“I’d do anything to get off everyone’s lap back here in this sardine car,” said DeWitt.

“I guess we walk,” said Magic.

Everyone seconded the motion. There was nothing else to do.

They opened up the trunk and removed their equipment. There were four nylon packs that had the same rough shape as guitar cases, only narrower. These were snipers’ drag bags. A sniper occasionally had to move with his weapon over very rough terrain, sometimes crawling on his belly, and sniper rifles and optics had to be treated gently. Thus the drag bag. It was padded with foam, had shoulder straps like a pack, and could also be pulled along behind the sniper over rocky ground, hence the name.

Three of the bags contained Heckler & Koch MSG-90 semiautomatic sniper rifles in 7.62mm NATO. The other held a MacMillan M-87 bolt-action sniper rifle in.50 caliber, the same as a Browning heavy machine gun. All had been brought along at the insistence of Master Chief MacKenzie, who was looking more and more prescient as the night wore on.

The other four sniper rifles had been lost in the second Mercedes. Professor Higgins had only been able to salvage two AKMs, a bag of loaded Kalashnikov magazines, a few grenades, and his backpack radio. Razor carried an identical radio from the lead Mercedes. Each vehicle had been equipped redundantly.

They had a fast discussion about their body armor. With the ceramic inserts, each set weighed well over ten pounds. It was a question of protection or foot speed. The vests and helmets were tossed into the trunk of the car.

They passed around a camouflage stick and painted their faces and hands. Kos Kosciuszko borrowed a suture kit from Doc to try to quickly stitch his torn-up trousers together.

Jaybird gunned the Mercedes up the road and skidded it sideways into the mound of mud. Then they all quickly shoved as much of the mud as possible onto the car to conceal it from aerial observation.

Razor Roselli booby-trapped the vehicle.

“Hope no one comes along and decides to strip it,” said Magic Brown.

“Then that’s what they get for being thieving bastards,” said Razor. “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

They started off, in single file, with as much interval as possible between them over the open ground. As far away as you could still see the man in front of you and stay in contact was the SEAL rule. Jaybird was on point; he’d given his PKM to Kos Kosciuszko and received a lighter, faster-handling Kalashnikov AKM from Doc. Murdock walked right behind with an AKM and an MSG-90 in the drag bag on his back. As usual, Higgins dogged his heels with the radio and an AKM. Then Kos Kosciuszko, with the machine gun and close to seven hundred rounds linked, all that had been left in the Mercedes. Doc followed with Ed DeWitt. With the shortage of weapons due to the destroyed Mercedes, DeWitt just had his backup Russian Makarov pistol; it was all he could handle anyway. Doc had removed an MSG-90 from a drag bag and was carrying it at the ready. Magic Brown and then Razor Roselli finished off the file as rear security, both with AKMs. Magic had the MacMillan.50 in the drag bag on his back, Razor an MSG-90.

The temperature was about thirty degrees, and the night air was still wet-cold from the rain. They cut around the side of the hill and then between two fields, keeping close to the dividing stone wall for cover.

Murdock was watching his men carefully as they patrolled along. DeWitt seemed to be moving all right. And there was a confidence to the others, as if they were all more comfortable being out of the car and back on the ground. It made him feel better too.

As he looked across the fields, Murdock could see trees in the distance and the mountain range farther away, covered with snow.

A dog barked, too far away to worry about. There were no other sounds but the occasional boot crunching lightly into the frost-covered earth of the field.