The First Casualty

68

With one hand Jason held on to the side of the truck bed while he picked up the Barrett with the other. He had no intent to kill or injure the men behind. They were simply doing a thankless job of trying to keep order in a lawless place in a fourth-world country. On the other hand, he had no intent of spending time in some hellhole of a jail while explaining the destruction of part of the mosque as well as the deaths of several of its occupants, either.

Kneeling, he rested the Barrett’s barrel on the truck’s tailgate. The precision sight was worse than useless in the bouncing truck. He removed it, clumsily dropping one of the mounting screws. No matter. If he failed in what he was about to attempt he would have to ditch the incriminating rifle anyway. He used his knees to wedge himself into a corner of the bed while one hand held the rifle and the other searched the pockets of his cargo pants until he found what he was looking for. Then he spread out in a position as close to the prone as possible.

Although probably not doing forty miles an hour, the rutted road made the ride bone jarring. Without the scope, there was no rear sight, only the circled post sight well aft of the muzzle. With the following vehicle bouncing above and under his aiming point, a single sight would do. This was an imperative shot, but one that did not require great precision.

Patiently, Jason waited. The front of the truck behind jounced into the air as it hit a rock, something, then dove as its front wheels dug into a pothole or rut. The process repeated itself irregularly. As the bumper came up again, he fired.

For an instant, he thought he had missed. He was already jacking another round into the chamber when the truck disappeared behind a geyser of steam. A .50-caliber armor-piercing bullet into the already overheated radiator will do it every time.

He made his way forward, careful to hold on and tapped on the glass. The response was a thumbs-up from Andrews.

Jason’s smile faded as he put down the rifle and knelt beside Emphani. The man’s eyes were closed and the slight rise and fall of the chest bespoke shallow breathing. Jason removed, replaced, and tightened the tourniquet, more because it was the only thing he could do than because he thought it would do any good. As if to mock him, the blood seemed to pump even faster than before. Emphani’s lips moved slightly although his eyes remained closed. Perhaps a final prayer to Allah before he went to meet the Prophet in person?

The roar of aircraft engines overhead made Jason look up to see a venerable old DeHavilland Twin Otter descending. To Jason’s right was the two-story brown terminal building, its sole decoration fading red letters across the front proclaiming aéroport de tombouctou. There was no parking lot per se, but a gaggle of vintage Japanese trucks with varying degrees of body damage was double-parked in front.

Past the terminal, an olive drab Bell UH-1 “Heuy” helicopter sat among rusting remnants of general aviation aircraft. Only the slowly rotating blades and the characteristic wump-wump of its jet turbine engine indicated it was not a part of the aviation graveyard. Jason knew the identification numbers along the rear fuselage probably belonged to some long dead plane, possibly one in Vietnam where the model had starred on nightly newscasts into the 1970s.

As Viktor drove the Toyota closer to the left side, the overhead blades whined into a blur. Two men in flying helmets and uniforms without insignia appeared at the open cargo door. They placed what looked like a Browning .50-caliber machine gun into a mount and fed in an ammunition belt.

Viktor screeched to a stop within a few feet of the open door. He and Andrews were on the ground almost before the truck’s engine died and began ticking with heat. The two men lowered the truck’s tailgate. Viktor climbed in and slid his hands under Emphani’s limp arms, started to lift, stopped, and looked at Jason, shaking his head.

Emphani was gone.

Jason jumped to the ground and took each of Emphani’s boots in a hand before snapping at Viktor. “Go ahead and lift. We’ll put him aboard. We don’t leave our dead.”

Viktor’s face showed that the Russian Spetsnaz did not share that tradition with the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. Nonetheless, he did as Jason requested. As gently as possible, Jason and Viktor carried Emphani to the helicopter where the two men inside, faceless behind the shields of their helmets, lifted him aboard.

As Andrews, Viktor, and Jason threw their backpacks aboard and climbed in after them, the intensity of the whine from the rotor blades increased, the aircraft pitched forward, and the ground dropped away. There was no sound of a radio from the headphones inside the helmet one of the crewmen offered Jason. He guessed the ’copter was taking off without clearance from the tower. And why not? The Twin Otter was probably the sole traffic in the area for the next hour or so, and Mali had no air force to enforce order on departures.

But the country did have an army of militia, four or five of whom were gathered on the tarmac in front of the terminal with raised rifles. Although altitude and rotor noise prevented the sound of gunfire from being audible, Jason could hear the occasional rattle of small arms piercing the helicopter’s aluminum skin. The odds were the Huey would be out of range before a lucky shot hit an engine, fuel line, or rotor blade.

The ship’s crew elected not to take the chance. The .50 caliber rattled, sending a whiff of cordite throughout the cabin. Below, the tarmac erupted in a line of shattered pavement only ten feet or so from the men in uniform, sending them scattering for cover.

At what Jason guessed was about 2,500 feet, the Huey leveled off. Below, the silver ribbon of the silted up Niger River sparkled in the morning sun before the ship changed course. Now the scenery below was uniform, the trackless sands of the world’s largest desert.

He shifted his view from the open cargo door to the Chief and Viktor. Both were staring straight ahead, their thoughts no doubt on what had happened, the mission completed, though at the cost of a comrade. Jason knew the feeling well. The adrenaline drained away, leaving an empty shell of weariness. The humor and bravado of the pre-mission minutes were replaced by quiet reflection.

Jason was not looking forward to delivering Emphani’s body to his wife and daughter. He could, of course, simply have the remains shipped, but that was the coward’s way, a violation of the sacred duty comrades in this line of endeavor owed one another. At the same time, he would turn over Emphani’s share of Momma’s largess, more money than he guessed the family had ever seen.

Then there was Maria, questions he would find difficult to evade, the issue of where to live next. He sighed. Sometimes combat was easier than the peaceful life. Before he knew what was happening, he fell into a light sleep. Had Andrews or Viktor noticed, they might have wondered why he was smiling. There was no way to know he was dreaming of a large, shaggy dog and a very fat cat with half an ear missing.