Before they parted, they spoke a little longer about incidental family concerns, Alex trying to ease things up a little, showing he understood how they felt, complaining about his kids’ dental bills. “Christ — they’ll break me,” he said, smiling.
“You’d be covered by the Con Ed benefits?” Mike said.
“Yeah but not ‘preexisting conditions.’ “
“What the hell does that mean?” Mike asked.
Alex shrugged. “Anything they don’t want to pay for, I guess.”
Stefan nodded toward the boy across the pool. “That kid’ll fall in if he’s not careful.”
“The weather should help us,” Alex said. “They say there’s a cold front moving down from Canada.”
He was half right. There was a cold front moving down from Canada, but it was the storm brewing over Virginia and moving up the coast that would help them most of all to shatter American morale.
“Oh shit,” Stefan said, and started off around the edge of the pool — the kid with the boat having fallen in and the old man frantically reaching for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Over three thousand miles away, on the other side of the world, the old Mongolian herdsman entered his gher, reached down toward the four sleeping SAS/D men, first grabbing David Brentwood by the collar, then shaking Choir Williams, Aussie Lewis, and Salvini. Instantly Aussie slipped his hand beneath the del for his pistol. The Mongolian stopped him. “Dogs,” he said quietly.
“Dogs?” Brentwood asked sleepily. “What do you—”
The old man put his finger to his mouth and motioned to listen. “We tell you dogs. They are—”
“Jesus!” Salvini said, whipping the sheepskin cover off him. “Tracking dogs.”
It wasn’t yet dark — no way could they risk a daylight trek from the gher through the desert.
“How far away?” David asked.
The old man made a circling motion with his hand. “Helos. Minutes.”
“Bastards are probably searching every settlement,” Aussie said.
“Right,” David instructed. “Sal, get on your blower and call in our map reference for a FUST — we’ve got no choice. We’re in too far for our helos to help.”
Within a minute Salvini had his whip aerial up through the gher’s smoke opening and broke radio silence, giving their position for a FUST.
“Choir,” Brentwood instructed. “You go first.”
“Ta!” It was an ironic Cockney thank-you.
“Aussie, you and I’ll provide covering fire if any Spets show up to intercept. Sal, you stay here. Aussie and I’ll fan out outside the gher and see whether we can spot them first.” Suddenly Brentwood turned to the old man. “How do you know there are helos and dogs coming?”
The old man was astonished that the American didn’t know. “Herdsmen,” the old man explained — one camel herdsman told another and so on. Then the old man had a stroke of genius for Aussie and Brentwood if they were to make a reconnaissance outside the gher. Camels.
Dressed in their dels high atop the animals, they would be able to see for miles across the plain toward the mountains, and this way everyone else could stay under cover in the gher. Salvini was inside the gher, manning the radio. He’d only used a burst message, and hopefully there had not been time for any enemy intercept to backplot him. No sooner had Brentwood and Aussie mounted their respective camels than a bulbous-eyed Hind E passed low overhead, heading further to the northeast, Aussie waving up at them.
“Silly bastard!” Choir called out.
“Gotta play the part, ‘aven’t we, squire?” Aussie said.
“What are you going to do,” Choir asked, “when they come back and let out some dogs sniffing for us? Thanks to that bastard Jenghiz they’ll have scent from stuff we handled back at the drop-off.”
“Not to worry, sport,” Aussie said flippantly. “The old CT’ll be here in a jiff.” He meant the Combat Talon aircraft.
But for all of Aussie’s patter, they knew it was more bravado than certainty. The “old CT” or MC-13 °Combat Talon wouldn’t be over them in a jiff, and the best hope they had now was the low-flying F-15 Eagles coming in in fluid four formation, screaming low overhead to avoid radar, the first pair closer together than the second pair, the wingman further apart, all four releasing four packs from their hard points.
As quickly as they had appeared over the Mongolian desert, the Eagles were gone in a screaming U-turn, with the high Hentiyn Nuruu as a backdrop. Only when the Mongolian herdsmen from the ghers had retrieved the four drum-size packages and like excited schoolchildren were feeling the silk canopy of the bundles did Brentwood think they might have a chance. Problem was, you didn’t even get a chance to practice a FUST it was considered so dangerous — it was only ever used as a last resort. The best they could do in training was to use dummies to show you how it should be done.
“Go check the helium tanks!” Brentwood called out to Choir amid the excited chatter of the Mongolians as they gathered around to see what was inside the cylindrical-shaped helium canisters. One canister was already open, a FUST harness spilling out. Afraid that some of the FUST tackle might get tangled in the herdsmen’s excitement, Brentwood asked the old man to call his herdsmen off. It took one command, the headman smacking the butt of his slung rifle for emphasis, and they were gone, leaving only Aussie and Brentwood, still on the camels, as Choir checked the packs.
“Bloody lovely in’t it?” Aussie complained. “Bloody lovely. There they are, opening the packs, and I’m stuck up ere having my ass reamed out by this bloody great beast while Sal’s inside having a cuppa!”
“Looks like you got a bum rap!” Brentwood jousted.
“Oh, very droll. Very fucking amusing I’m sure. Let’s see what your ass looks like after—” He stopped as Salvini burst from the gher to tell them the fighter-escorted Talon would be there in twenty minutes.
“You beaut!” Aussie said, slapping the camel’s rump in his excitement, the animal immediately taking off, throwing Aussie two feet in the air before he came crashing down and saw three specks coming out of the eastern sky: Spets helicopters, one of them probably the one that had previously passed overhead. The enemy helos looked to be losing altitude, coming straight for the ghers.
“Only one chance,” Aussie said, calling out to Brentwood, who had just spotted the approaching helos.
Within minutes Aussie and Brentwood, devoid of the dels, showing only their light SAS/D camouflage drill uniforms, were tied together as the headman waved at the three helos. One helo peeled off, the other two fanning out toward other settlements some miles to the south of Nalayh. As the helo came down, blowing up dust of such intensity it was as if the whole settlement had been momentarily obliterated, Aussie could barely see the black rotor spin of the Hind.
The headman holding on to the rope that was tied to Aussie and Brentwood waved up again at the Spets pilot, who saluted back and who could see several of the other herdsmen now jeering at the two Americans, one of the herdsmen throwing patties of camel dung at the two bound SAS/D men.
As the high whine of the Spets chopper’s two 2,200 SHP turboshafts decreased, making a chunky sound in the gritty sand cloud, Aussie could hear the rear door opening where the eight-man assault squad would be soon filing out to take aboard their prisoners and setting loose the dogs. As the door was opened, the head herdsman, in a swift movement that belied his age, shot the pilot point blank with his range rifle, while Brentwood and Aussie, with one pull on the bowline knot that bound them, quickly tossed six stun grenades into the rear cabin. The explosion was loud, yet the sounds of the dogs and men screaming and dying was muffled as if inside a great boiler.