Cobra Strike (19 page)

“We'll go, we'll go,” Mike said. “I can see that you guys are going to fall to pieces if I don't get you out of here fast.”

Mike went alone to find Aga Akbar, who agreed to leave immediately. Together they went to the arms dealer in the market, the
one Naseeb Amin introduced him to. They sat on cushions and sipped tea, surrounded by stacks of weapons available to anyone
who could pay the price, following
the ceremonial civilities before anyone mentioned business. Mike's weapons were ready. The dealer and Aga Akbar spoke rapidly
in Pushtu, arranging the details.

They left Peshawar before dawn in a rented van with a driver. They reached a village in the foothills at first light and examined
their weapons and equipment there. Cuthbert Colquitt had proved himself reliable once again—the agreed-upon list had been
fully supplied. Mike paid two fighters from the village to cross the border with them. This was more a gesture of goodwill
than a necessity, Aga Akbar explained. From here on they would be on foot. They climbed up into the hills, bitching and whining
like troops always do when they initially head out. Mike listened to the complaints grow fewer and finally stop altogether
as the hills got steeper and they had to save their breath.

Bob Murphy had cursed loudest back in Pakistan about dyeing his beard and hair black. On Mike’s instructions, all of them
quit shaving as soon as agreeing to go on the mission. Then the night before crossing the border into Afghanistan, Mike had
produced black hair dye. Only a few days later Bob was sporting a black beard with bright yellow roots! With the weapons and
supplies Naseeb Amin had stored at the village for them were the Afghan ethnic outfits they now wore. They all settled for
the flat woolen hats with rolled bottoms rather than the bulky turban of many windings that many Afghans favored. They also
skipped the blanketlike capes, long leather tunics, and all the other loose, flapping garments the mountain tribesmen wore.
Instead they adopted the obviously new style of dress of the modern fighting Afghan—combat boots, baggy pants, and an assortment
of oversize shirts, loose vests, and a Western parka or windproof jacket. After a few days of trekking in the mountains, at
first sight they looked just like any of the other guerrilla patrols that infested the mountains.

They had slipped across the border without incident, and
Aga Akbar led them to Sayad Jan’s emplacement. From there they followed in the footsteps of Baker, Winston, and Turner, often
using the same guides they had. Not being held up by a train of six burdened asses, they made much faster progress than the
three previous Americans had. They were helped, too, by Jed Crippenby’s knowledge of Pushtu, and none of the local tribesmen
even considered tangling with this tough-looking bunch.

Each day they headed out at dawn and made camp at dusk. They bought what food they could along the way in order to conserve
their C rations. They met no Soviet or Afghan communist ground troops while they were still being guided by local rebels,
although they frequently had to throw themselves to the ground and remain motionless while Soviet jets or choppers passed
over their position. If they were seen on any of these occasions, as they assumed they must have been, they were not attacked,
perhaps because there were bigger and better targets available elsewhere. But this all ended early one afternoon when the
four Afghans acting as their guides stopped, and all began talking volubly together to Jed Crippenby, who kept nodding his
head to what they were telling him.

“This is as far as they will take us, Mike,” Jed explained. ‘They claim that the Russians have sealed all the passes.in the
range ahead of us, and beyond that range the Russians have more or less cleared away all rebel activity because of their troop
concentrations, sweeps, and aerial surveillance. And these are Soviet troops, not Afghan government forces who might be expected
to be halfhearted about it. They have heard of attacks launched by these three mysterious Americans, but some of these are
obviously just stories. However, since’ the Soviet troops are still in place to cut off their escape back to Pakistan, it
is reasonable to assume that the Americans are still alive and on the loose.”

“Do you know where Gul Daoud is?”

After another excited conversation with the four Afghans, Crippenby said, “Gul Daoud simply retreats back into the mountains
when attacked. The more the communists attack, the higher he goes. Finally the communists give up and go away, and he and
his men come down again to resume
control. These men say that the Americans are with some of Gul Daoud’s warriors, so presumably they stay in contact or at
least know where to find each other.”

Mike nodded. “Finding Gul Daoud’s main force will be a hell of a lot easier than trying to locate the three crazy bastards
we’ve come for. Do these men know anything about the Soviet troop deployments in the mountains ahead?”

“No,” Crippenby said right off. “They’ve been keeping a safe distance from them.”

Mike paid off the four rebels in Pakistani rupees, and after much traditional handshaking and embracing they went back the
way they had come, leaving the mere team to face the forbidding-looking jagged peaks ahead with their pockets of hidden Soviet
soldiers.

That night was their first night in the open, since they had always stayed in rebel huts before. Although they had ultralight
nylon tents, each sleeping two men, Mike decided against erecting them in his dangerous terrain. Seven men sleeping concealed
on the side of a mountain were unfindable, whereas the sight of even one tent told a whole story. The next day, Mike teamed
Bob Murphy with Lance Hardwick, Andre Verdoux with Joe Nolan, and kept the unpredictable Harvey Waller and the inexperienced
Jed Crippenby with him. Bob and Lance’s task was to locate military posts, and the other two teams were to check the approaches
toward two high passages to the north, which might be less well guarded then the main pass. They were to meet back at their
starting place in two hours.

“If you’re seen, even if you kill some easy target, you’ll give our presence away,” Mike warned. “Then we’ll never break through.
As it is, they’ll be watching for someone coming through from the other side of this range, so we’re catching them from behind.
We need to keep that advantage. Don’t blow it for us.”

The man Mike was really afraid might blow it for them was in his own group. Harvey Waller could be hard to restrain when he
was rarin’ to go. Of all of them on the team, Waller was by far the best fighting man--he had an instinct and imagination
in combat that made the others
look second-rate. Off the leash, Harvey could qualify for one of those TV nature programs about magnificent natural predators;
on the leash, he might start shooting at any time, regardless of consequences. But not with Mike. Harvey never tried to disguise
the fact that he was in awe of Mike. Whatever Mike said was law to Harvey.

“I think Jed should be point man,” Waller said. “He’s so skinny, he’ll be able to walk through a hail of bullets.”

Crippenby swallowed and looked uncomfortable.

Mike pointed to Waller. “You lead, I’ll take the rear.” Mike saw that Waller, with his instinct for someone’s vulnerability,
had sensed Jed’s fear—something that Mike himself had not noticed. Crippenby was no fool; he knew they could not hope to break
through the Soviet line without some contact. Up until now all had been plain sailing, easy going, apart from sudden alarms
caused by approaching aircraft. Now the danger was from something unseen on the ground, something from which there would be
no easy escape, since they were the ones who were advancing. No doubt Crippenby had been through all this in textbooks a hundred
times, only now he was finding out that the mind and muscles behave in a different way in the presence of a real threat. “Are
you going to be okay?” Mike asked softly.

“Sure. Sure, Mike.”

“Stay between Harvey and me and you’ll do just fine. Do what you see us doing. Don’t try to prove anything.”

Jed unexpectedly grinned. “Prove anything? My mind’s gone blank.”

“That happens.”

They moved out at a cautious walk toward some stands of timber that they might be able to follow up onto higher ground toward
the small northernmost pass. It was still early in the morning, and they could see smoke and dust from activity in the valley
and hear distant trucks change gear as they climbed the road toward the main pass. Up where they were, the soil was too poor
to cultivate and the trees had not been cut for fuel because they were too inaccessible to make it worthwhile. They climbed
awhile, keeping to the cover of the trees, until they came to an overlook above a winding dirt road that clearly led up to
the small pass.

Mike and Harvey had spotted a machine-gun emplacement by the side of the road and were moving forward cautiously for a closer
look when Jed started fluttering his hands at them in alarm. They stood still and looked around them into the heavy undergrowth,
guns ready, but they saw nothing. Jed pointed, his eyes bulging in alarm, at what could have been the topless trunk of a pine
leaning at an angle maybe thirty yards away. Only it wasn’t a branchless pine, it was the long barrel of a heavy gun.

Now that Mike and Harvey could see that, they could also see the camouflaged tank to which the gun barrel was attached, emplaced
in a thick clump of what looked like rhododendrons, its outline broken by boughs thrown on its top. The two men started walking
backward, with Jed keeping his long, lean form doubled down and staying between them. After they had backed off to safety
and were retracing their steps, both Mike and Harvey praised Jed.

“Last goddamn thing on earth I expected,” Harvey said. 44Shit, when I saw those tracked wheels through the leaves, I thought
to myself that I must be going blind if I missed that. I just wasn’t looking for it. I’d have walked right in front of it.”

“That’s how we nearly fucked up, Harvey, knowing it all,” Mike said. “Jed here has no idea what to expect. His eyes are peeled
for everything from a hydrogen bomb to an elephant trap. He see, we don’t. We were lucky to have you along today, Jed.”

“You’re okay, kid,” Waller conceded grumpily.

Jed blushed.

“Just don’t go thinking you know anything,” Harvey added, “ “cause you don’t.”

The other four were at the arranged meeting place when they got back. Mike just shook his head.

Andre Verdoux said, “Joe and I may have something. A lot of flatbed trucks with loads of cinder blocks are arriving along
the road to the middle pass. The Russians must be building something in a hurry up that way. A truck ride up there would be
just the thing to take the weight off our feet.”

“What about checkpoints?” Mike asked.

“We didn’t see any,” Andre replied. “Maybe they feel that an uncovered truck with a small load of cinder blocks can’t conceal
very much. They have to keep the loads small because the road is so bad and the trucks are so ancient. One truck lost eight
blocks on a bump as we watched. We hid them in bushes alongside the road for possible later use. Murphy says the trucks passed
a checkpoint before they left the main road for the side road to the middle pass.”

Bob nodded. “Lance and I went back the main road a bit because of the sound of engines. All vehicles, commercial and military,
were being carefully checked by uniformed Soviets. When we tried to follow the road toward the pass, we’d gone no more than
a hundred yards when we started seeing sandbagged dugouts all the way along. It looks like they’re expecting die Marines.”

“And they got the road covered by tanks in the hills, and, nearer in, mortar crews,” Lance added. “We nearly ran headlong
into one mortar crew on the way back here. They were just sitting there smoking and talking. We smelled the Russian tobacco
before we heard their voices.”

Mike was interested. “How many?”

“Three,” Lance said. “One on the tube, one to reload, one with a mobile radio.”

“Bob, Lance, Harvey,” Mike said, and drew his finger across his throat. “Jed, you speak Russian?” Jed nodded. “So do Andre
and I,” Mike went on. “More or less, anyway. So be careful with the radio, it will come in handy. We will cover you three
and come in to pick up the mortar tube and rounds. Jed will pick up the radio. Andre and Joe will then lead us to those cinder
blocks on the roadside. Any questions? No? Good,” he said without waiting. “Let’s move out.”

Mike’s nostrils twitched. He smelled the sweet pungent smoke of Russian cigarettes. He winked at Bob Murphy, who undraped
his Kalashnikov and backpack and pulled his flat wool hat down on his ears. Lance Hard wick and Harvey Waller quietly dropped
their rifles and backpacks, too, and together all three men moved forward very slowly. Mike motioned to the remaining men
to hold their ground and not
to cock their rifles-a metallic scrape or click could be heard a long way and was unmistakable.

Lance and” Bob had peeped through the scrub and bushes last time to see who was there. It had been necessary then, but this
time they had to go in blind in case a glimpse of them gave the mortar crew warning enough to fire a shot and raise a general
alarm. These men had to die silently and fast. To do this the team members had to go in blind, and it was just too bad if
there were more men than the three who had been with the mortar previously. The meres drew their combat knives and advanced
to the point where they could commence their rush.

Waller edged in front to form the spearhead of the three men. He held up his left hand. When he dropped it, they charged.
They broke through the brush and into the small clearing in which the mortar tube was placed, rounds lying near it in an aluminum
carrying case. The Russian with the radio backpack was sitting on a stone and reading from a magazine to the two others, also
seated on stones, who were laughing. They could have been soldiers of any army, passing the long, dull hours of uneventful
duty. As the three meres broke from the brush and into the clearing, the three Soviet soldiers jumped to their feet with frightened
faces.