The Devil's footprint

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.

All Oshima had to do to gain was to elude her pursuers for a few hours, and then the advantage would pass to her.

The light increased, and Fitzduane strained to see what was up ahead.

Suddenly, he thought he could see something. He wiped the sweat from his face and tried again. This time he was sure. Over a thousand meters ahead, he could see the faintest shape of a running figure. There were supposed to be two, but he could detect no sign of a second figure.

It was running down an open, boulder-strewn valley. The hills on either side looked as if they had been made by some giant dumping buckets of jagged rocks at random. The nearest incline was about eight hundred meters away.

It went against all of Fitzduane's training to move exposed through such terrain, but if they wanted to keep up with their quarry there was no other option.

He longed for the reassuring shapes of a couple of Kiowas, but several had sustained damage in the storm and one was not due for another half hour.

Up ahead, Tennant stumbled and fell. Two seconds later, the second runner collapsed.

"SNIPER!" he shouted.

As he fell to the ground, he saw that the man immediately in front of him had been hit by the third shot. He crawled forward. The trooper had been struck at an angle below the breastbone. His face was gray, and as Fitzduane approached, blood frothed from his mouth and he died. The man's name was Zalinski. He was one of Scout Platoon's snipers. His M24 lay beside him.

Fitzduane searched the high ground. The wound on the dead trooper looked as if it had been made by a 7.62mm. Three shots and three hits suggested a custom sniper rifle and a shooting talent enough to yield a world of woe. The angle suggested the hills to the left.

The jagged rocks offered endless options.

All around him paratroopers were firing single shots at possible firing positions in the rocks. Using iron sights at that range, they would be lucky to score a hit even if they could see a target. But a round could get lucky. At least it would help keep the sniper's head down.

If they did nothing, they were going to get picked off one by one.

Bent double, using the cover of the return fire, Brock ran up.

"Shit!" he said quietly when he saw Zalinkski. He looked at Fitzduane. "I hope that damn woman's worth it."

Gallo was about twenty meters away. He studied the distant rocks, then closed his eyes.

Brock said nothing. He watched the performance and then crawled toward Gallo. The man's eyes opened. "Got him?" Brock asked.

"Think so," said Gallo. "The tall butte is my twelve. Go to ten, drop twenty meters and look at the ledge below the skyline."

Brock had picked up the dead paratrooper's M24 and was studying the rocks through the telescopic sight. "Negative," he said.

"Fucker's pulled back," said Gallo. "Wait one and you'll see."

"Hold your fire," shouted Brock. The command was passed along the firing line. He pulled a set of spotter's binoculars from his pocket and called Fitzduane over, and tossed the glasses in his direction.

Fitzduane moved to within ten meters and took the glasses. He did not like coming even that close, since bunched-up targets brought out a mean streak in hostiles. On the other hand, countersniper work was a collaborative effort.

Brock and Gallo were glued to the eyepieces of their rifles. Their problem now was that their angle of vision was severely restricted. A spotter would cover a wider field and then talk the shooters onto target. He would keep an eye out for other opposition.

Fitzduane focused where instructed. Thirty seconds later, he saw movement twenty meters to the right of where Gallo had originally indicated.

The enemy sniper was moving every couple of shots.

"Right twenty," said Fitzduane.

Gallo fired, followed a fraction of a second later by Brock.

Fitzduane saw a slight movement as a long black shape dropped off the ledge.

"He's dropped his rifle," he said.

Galle's eyes were closed. "We got him," he said.

Fitzduane scanned the rocks. There could be another sniper, but only two had got through and one was ahead. He thought of Oshima increasing her lead in front of them.

"We're going on," he said to Brock.

Brock opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. "Airborne, sir," he said.

He rose to his feet. "Move out," he said.

The survivors of Scout Platoon rose to their feet. He had logged three dead. The RT operator had taken a round, making it four.

Fitzduane was already running.

Brock and his men followed on. They left the bodies where they lay. Brock felt numb. The drove him on. Hate for Oshima and, as of the moment, a profound and irrational hate for Fitzduane.

The interlude had bought Oshima thirteen minutes and had cost five lives.

Up on the ledge, Jin Endo lay sprawled with a 7.62 round through the bridge of his nose and the back of his skull missing.

Brock's round had torn out his throat.

Up above, the vultures were already circling. Soon two extra black dots swept toward the corpse but kept on going.

Oshima crested the hill and looked backward. In the distance she could see her pursuers. They were now too far behind to catch up, she was certain. She turned and ran for a further ten minutes. She stopped at a pile of rocks and began to pull them aside. Behind the rocks there was earth and then camouflage netting.

She worked furiously. Soon a 250cc motorcycle was uncovered. The fuel tank was full and the panniers were full of supplies. There were other caches up ahead. She now had everything she needed to escape.

She unclipped field glasses and surveyed the terrain. The paratroopers were still out of sight, probably still sweating up the hill in their heavy equipment.

The sky was overcast. The weather was still on her side. All she could see were black specks in the distance.

Vultures were heading for where Jin Endo and the paratroopers he had killed. It was a good end and he had served his purpose, but Oshima felt a slight twinge as she remembered his devotion and his ardor. Endo had touched her. It was as well he was dead.

Oshima kicked her motorcycle into life and headed off down into the gorge. She had picked the route carefully. The rock overhung the gorge for some considerable distance and made the dry wadi in the bottom invisible from the air. She had outdistanced her pursuers behind her and was now safe from discovery by aerial reconnaissance. She was going to make it.

One woman and the might of the famous 82 ^ nd Airborne Division, and she was going to triumph.

She entered the gorge and felt the protection of the rock above fold over her. The sky was blotted out.

"Where?" said Gannon.

Palmer indicated the spot on the map.

"Fitzduane know?"

"Airborne, sir," said Palmer.

Gannon walked away from the map. Weather conditions were lousy and the wind was higher than he liked. But this damn terrorist was the core of all this bloodshed, and there was nothing worse than a mission half done. Politicians liked to call a halt before the job was finished, but about the only good thing he could find to think about the Devil's Footprint and the Tecuno plateau was that there were absolutely no politicians around.

"What do the air force say?" said Gannon.

"You know the C130 jocks," said Palmer. "Anywhere, anytime."

"Let's do it," said Gannon. He walked toward the door. Behind him, Palmer was already on the radio passing the word.

The C130's were going hot. Inside, paratroopers were racked like peas in a pod. The dirty yellow sand of the Tecuno plateau filled the air as the four turboprops cut in.

Gannon missed the red earth of North Carolina. FortBragg was not everyone's idea of the place to be, but if you wore a maroon beret it was something special. Soon someone else would get the division, and hell, he was going to miss the place. Jumping out of perfectly good aircraft was just something that got in your blood.

Gannon turned around. "Dave?" he said.

"Sir?" said Palmer.

"Last jump you made you never quite got around to putting on your ‘chute," said Gannon. "How would you like to make one the old-fashioned way – like we taught you?"

Colonel Dave Palmer grinned. "Nor sure I remember, General."

"Let's go," said Gannon. "I'll remind you on the way down."

Kitted out, Gannon and Palmer waddles up the ramp.

Black and green faces stared at them.

Gannon scanned them. They looked frightening. God knows why you would want to love these aggressive young people, but he did. They kept the MPs run off their feet, drank like camels, turned Fayetteville into something out of the Wild West, and fucked anything that moved.

But they kept the faith. Not too many people seemed to do that these days. His gaze stopped at one face that did not normally belong.

"Padre," he said.

"General," said the padre. Under the camouflage he was looking decidedly guilty. He had not been rostered.

Gannon studied him. "Just remember to catch Colonel Palmer," he said.

"Airborne, General," said the padre with relief.

"When he hits the ground," said Gannon.

"HOOAH, SIR!" said the padre and a planeload of paratroops.

The ramps came up. The C130s rolled.

The copilot got out of his seat reluctantly but without demur. The two-man Kiowa Warrior crews were a tight team. He did not grudge the Irishman his seat, but he was concerned about letting his crew chief down.

"Your friend still tracking?" said Fitzduane as he buckled in.

"Roger that, sir," said the crew chief as the Kiowa took off. "Call sign Viper Two."

High above, Viper Two focused his high-resolution TV camera on the speeding motorbike until it vanished under an overhang.

Fitzduane listened to the communications between the two helicopters while watching the ground recede in the distance.

Brock's face was an unreadable mask. Cochrane raised his weapon in farewell.

"The target's vanished, sir," said the crew chief.

Fitzduane's heart gave a lurch.

"Have you ever flown really low, sir?" said the crew chief.

"I hate heights," said Fitzduane.

"A lot of Airborne do," said the crew chief. "Funny thing, when you think about it."

The Kiowa roared over the crest of the hill and then dropped down as it headed into what looked from the helicopter's perspective like a tunnel.

"Relax, Colonel," said the crew chief. "Unless you get claustrophobia."

"I should live so long," said Fitzduane.

Flying five feet off the ground, the Kiowa Warrior entered the gorge and vanished under the overhang.

High up above, Viper Two flew in parallel.

In the distance up ahead, Viper Two could see the shapes of a flight of C130s.

As he flew closer he could see that the sky was filled with the ‘chutes of the Airborne.

The dry riverbed twisted and turned, and Oshima fought to keep her speed up over the irregular surface. The rock had been worn smooth enough, but the surface was strewn with pebbles and boulders. The noise of the motorbike echoed off the rock walls and pounded back at her.]

The silencer had been punctured in a skid a few kilometers back, but the deafening noise was something she could live with. It would only be a temporary inconvenience. In a few minutes she would be in her hide for the day and then could repair the damaged machine at her leisure.

She sideslipped around a patch of gravel and with relief saw the light of the open space ahead. The riverbed widened at this point and the gorge fell away, but shortly afterward there was a cave system. A quick dash across the open space and then she would be under cover.

She skidded to a halt under the final protection of the overhang. The noise was still deafening.

She looked ahead. The open space appeared to be clear.

Out of routine, she looked behind.

As she looked, a helicopter flew around the last bend and hovered a few hundred meters behind her.

Oshima's mouth went dry. She made an animal sound and gunned her machine into the open space. She was a small target traveling at speed, and if she moved very fast and zigzagged she could still get away.

She was halfway across when a salvo of 2.5 rockets blew the rock away from under her.

Oshima flew through the air and crashed into the ground. Dazed but still conscious, she saw that the natural amphitheater made by one side of the gorge and the riverbed was ringed with paratroopers.

She tried to move, but her legs would not respond.

She raised her head and saw that one leg was twisted and broken. The other limb was missing below the knee.

A figure had dismounted from the helicopter and was walking toward her.

Oshima struggled to draw her pistol, but her hand arm would not respond. She raised her arm, and her hand just hung there from its broken wrist.

The figure came closer, and now she could recognize him.

Fitzduane.

She tried to move her left hand, and with relief felt some movement in the fingers.

She eased them around to the small of her back and felt for her backup pistol.

She saw Fitzduane bend down and pick up something. He made a move, and she saw the scabbard cast aside and the blade glint in the sun. Her katana, kept always strapped to her back and now torn loose in her fall.

How many people had she killed with that blade? Too many to recall. One of them had been Christian de Guevain, Fitzduane's closest friend. It would be good to add Fitzduane himself to the list. If he was going to use the sword, then he would have to come close, and she could not miss.

Oshima was still bringing up the pistol when Fitzduane raised the sword and severed her head.