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They ran.
Armitraj
took a position behind the
wounded
Mutabe
, pushing the drugged soldier along at
a halting pace. If Higgins and Kismet had not been burdened by the task of
bearing Corporal Singh’s remains, they would have easily outdistanced the first
pair, but as it was, no one made rapid progress. Their pursuers quickly closed
the gap.

After what seemed like only a few minutes of running, Higgins began to
see strange patterns on the dunes; shifting figures of shadow that made the
sand seem almost alive. He knew immediately what it was: the headlights of the
approaching enemy convoy.

Armitraj
turned and dropped to one knee, firing another grenade. Then,
spread-eagled on the sand, he extended the bipod legs of the machine gun and
gripped the trigger before the explosive round finished its journey, detonating
harmlessly forty meters from the foremost troop carrier.

Kismet, at the front of the litter, stopped abruptly.

“Sir, we should keep moving.
Armitraj
will
buy us some time.”

“So they can hunt us down one at a time?” He lowered his end of the
makeshift stretcher to the sand. “I don’t think so. We’ll make our stand here.”

Neither man noticed
Mutabe
, still meandering
forward in the grip of a narcotic fugue, but it would have changed nothing;
Kismet and the
Gurkhas
knew that their lives were now
measured in minutes, perhaps only seconds.

Sergeant
Armitraj
opened fire with the
machine gun, sweeping across the approaching headlights. It was impossible to
judge the strength of the advancing force, but there were two armored troop
carriers, side by side, leading the charge. Higgins suspected they were only
the tip of the spear.

The machine gun rounds seemed to have no effect, prompting the two
Gurkhas
to fire another volley of grenades.
Armitraj
selected a white phosphorus round, and both men
fired together, point blank at the vehicles. This time there was no delay.

Higgins’ round detonated on the hood of the
APC
on the left, decapitating the vehicle and lighting up the night.
The WP grenade from
Armitraj’s
launcher
hit directly behind the other vehicle, erupting in a blaze of solar intensity.
The surviving personnel carrier continued to advance, now only fifty meters
away, but the wreckage caused by the grenades hampered the rest of the column,
forcing the other vehicles to swing wide out into the desert. Higgins now
caught a glimpse of the size of the attack force: there were seven vehicles
altogether. Two of those were out of commission thanks to the grenades. Higgins
had killed one of the armored personnel carriers, but there remained three
more, at least a full platoon sized element. The white phosphorus grenade had
showered an old military Jeep with flaming metal, forcing the surviving
officers to abandon it to the flames, but there were two additional Land
Cruisers, each stuffed full of combatants in black berets, charging nimbly
around the wreckage toward their flanks.

Higgins quickly loaded another grenade, but the leading vehicle was
already too close. Kismet meanwhile, opened fire with his CAR15, showering the
driver of the
APC
with armor piercing rounds. The
hardened tungsten and steel bullets ripped through the armor, and began
ricocheting crazily inside the metal interior. The vehicle swerved and stalled.

Armitraj
once more unleashed a stream of lead from the machine gun. Every tenth
round was a tracer, zipping through the night like a red laser beam to mark the
path of destruction as he homed in on one of the flanking
APC’s
.
A second line of tracer fire appeared from the opposite direction however, as
the gunner in turret of the armored vehicle targeted his
DShK
12.7-millimeter machine gun on the
Gurkha
sergeant’s
location.
Armitraj
knew what was coming but his only
reaction as the incoming tracers walked across the sand toward him, was to
close his eyes.

A bullet struck the
Minimi
gun, shattering
its mechanism and exploding the unfired rounds in the feed tray. An instant
later, Sergeant
Taranjeet
Armitraj
erupted in a spray of red, his body shredded by an unrelenting torrent of enemy
fire and fragments of his own weapon.

Higgins knew without looking that
Armitraj
had fallen; he had marked the cessation of heavy automatic fire from his fellow
soldier’s location. He did not mourn for his brother, not even to the extent he
had felt grief at the earlier loss of Corporal Singh. The immediacy of the
current battle, and the certainty that at any moment, he too would feel the icy
hand of death on his shoulder, made such grief irrelevant. He emptied his
magazine at a Land Cruiser, shattering its windshield, and then rapidly loaded
another HE grenade into the launcher.

Not far away, Kismet was reloading his weapon, burning through
magazines rapidly, but making every shot count. The enemy convoy had ceased
advancing, their vehicles now a liability. The troops inside hastened from the
impossible-to-miss targets, spreading out and seeking cover. More than a dozen
had fallen, picked off by Kismet as they filed through the narrow doorways of
the
APCs
; God alone knew how many more would never
leave those vehicles, yet their numbers seemed undiminished.

Higgins dropped a grenade close enough to blast the nearest Land
Cruiser over on its side. The fuel tank ignited in a secondary explosion that
jetted sideways away from the exposed undercarriage. The shock wave momentarily
stunned the
Gurkha
. His vision doubled, leading him
to wonder if he had taken some shrapnel to the skull, but he ignored the
side-effect of the concussion and slammed another magazine into his rifle. It
was his last.

Kismet was attempting to fix enemy positions by the angle of incoming
fire and rising from cover only long enough to snap off one round at a time
before ducking down again. Higgins switched the selector on his own weapon to
single shot as well, but knew it would merely delay the inevitable—that moment
when he squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. He raised the M16 above a
dune crest, firing at what he thought might be a sniper position, then ducked
down again.

It would be over soon, he realized, and for some reason decided that he
didn’t want to die alone. He had always known death in combat was a
possibility—for a
Gurkha
it was almost inevitable—but
he had never imagined that he would be the last man standing. Kismet was only
twenty meters away, but reaching his position would mean running a gauntlet of
enemy fire.

Kismet wasn’t a
Gurkha
. He was by his own
admission barely a soldier; he was a reserve officer, engaging in military
drills in order to pay for a college education, with no combat experience.
Higgins would have willingly died for any man in his regiment, even the
much-loathed officers, but for this American?

You’re going to die anyway,
mate
.

He almost laughed aloud at the admonishment of his inner voice. “So I
am.”

He triggered a three-round burst over the dune crest, then launched
into motion. He had gone three steps when a 7.62-millimeter slug from an enemy
AK-47 ripped across the back of his right thigh. He winced at the unexpected
burning sensation, but his leg did not fail and he did not stop running. After
a dozen more strides, with blood streaming down his leg and into his boot, he
made a desperate dive for Kismet’s position.

“I’m out,” shouted Kismet.

Higgins indicated his own weapon.
“My last.”

Kismet nodded gravely and laid his carbine aside. Then he did something
that left Higgins stunned. He drew his blade, the
kukri
Higgins had given him earlier.

The large knife was the signature weapon of all
Gurkha
fighters, and this one had belonged to the fallen Corporal Singh. Higgins had
offered it as a token of his respect for Kismet, in that now barely-remembered moment
when he had glimpsed a bit of steel in the young officer, but had never
expected to see it used by the American.

You’re one of us now
, he had said. And at the time he had meant
it, even though so much about what had happened that night remained beyond his
comprehension.

How did I forget that
? He wondered.

The lull in firing from their position gave a clear signal to the
enemy. Higgins could hear the orders, barked in Arabic, for the soldiers to
advance cautiously on their position.
Not
much longer now
.

He had no idea how many rounds remained in the magazine of his M16—he
figured he could probably count them on one hand. He set his gun beside
Kismet’s and drew his own
kukri
.

The first man to crest the dune led with his rifle, flagging his
approach with the barrel of his AK-47. Kismet heaved the boomerang shaped blade
against the gun, smashing it aside in a spray of sparks then reversed the edge,
hacking across the soldier’s torso. Higgins sprang at the next man, pivoting on
his good leg and putting his full weight behind the cut.

A headless enemy soldier fell back into the arms of his comrades.

As if linked by a common mind, Higgins and Kismet dove into the heart
of the approach. The stunned Iraqi riflemen had no idea how to repulse the crazed
attack; they could not shoot for fear of hitting each other. They parried the
assault with their rifles, swinging the wooden stocks like cudgels when they
saw an opportunity, but several of their number prudently fell back.

As retreating soldiers formed a ring around the knife-wielding pair,
Kismet and Higgins repositioned, back to back, to meet whatever attack was to
follow. Both men were bruised from numerous blunt traumas and Higgins’ right
trouser leg was soaked in his own blood, yet the fire in their eyes was
undimmed.

There was fire in the eyes of their enemy as well. The soldiers of the
Republican Guard orbited their position warily, their visages twisted with a
mixture of rage and trepidation. Some of them drew bayonets which they affixed
to their AK-47s while others drew long fixed-blade combat knives.

One strident but nevertheless commanding voice was audible above the
rest. Higgins didn’t know enough Arabic to translate, but he had been a soldier
long enough to know when an order to attack was given. The ranks began moving
in, more cautiously this time, determined not to be taken off guard.

Higgins gripped the haft of his
kukri
fiercely and waved it back and forth in front of the advance. He assumed Kismet
was doing the same. The American officer’s back was pressed reassuringly
against his own. At least he wouldn’t die alone.
“A pleasure
serving with you, sir.”

“The pleasure was all yours.”

Kismet’s voice sounded strange when he said it, and it took Higgins a
moment to realize that the American was laughing; a harsh, sarcastic chuckle,
but a chuckle nonetheless.

My God
, thought Higgins.
He’s actually laughing in the face of death
.

“Hey, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir?”
Higgins was in awe, wondering what the
American would say or do next, but Kismet’s voice was now only solemn.

“See you in the next life.”

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ABOUT
THE AUTHORS

JEREMY
ROBINSON
is the bestselling author of more than thirty novels including PULSE, INSTINCT,
THRESHOLD and RAGNAROK, the first four books in his exciting Jack Sigler
series, as well as PROJECT NEMESIS and THE ANTARKTOS SAGA. Robinson also known
as the #1 Amazon.com horror
writer
, Jeremy Bishop,
author of THE SENTINEL, THE RAVEN and the controversial novel, TORMENT. His
novels have been translated into eleven languages. He lives in New Hampshire
with his wife and three children.

Visit
him on the web, here:
www.jeremyrobinsononline.com

SEAN
ELLIS
is the author of several thriller and adventure novels. He is a veteran of
Operation Enduring Freedom, and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural
Resources Policy from Oregon State University. Sean is also a member of the
International Thriller Writers organization. He currently resides in Arizona,
where he divides his time between writing, adventure sports, and trying to
figure out how to save the world.

Visit
him on the web, here:
seanellisthrillers.webs.com