Douglas came to his feet in a rush.
"Franklin, our friend has escaped."
Franklin came awake at once and brought up his submachine gun.
A shrill laugh caught them both by surprise. Nard stepped from behind the vehicle eating a large piece of bread and some fruit.
"You see, I did not run away. You can trust me. Neither did I slit your throats. I am poor, but honorable. We made an agreement; I will honor that pact. We eat more, then sleep again. It will be a hot day."
The spot they had stopped was where two small valleys came together. They had pulled the car into the lee of the tallest hill, and now the morning shadows covered it. By noon it would be in the direct rays of the sun.
The sun scorched everything in sight. The three men stayed under the shade of the canvas, and hoped for a slight breeze up the canyon. They cooked the last of the fresh meat they had been sent, and made instant coffee over the butane burner. Douglas had listened on the SATCOM at noon, but there were no messages from Don Stroh.
Before two that afternoon, Douglas lay down on his blanket, and tried to think cool. The throbbing sound of a helicopter brought him out of his dreams of a swimming pool.
"The choppers often fly over," Nard said in Farsi. "They try to find something. Usually they don't. It is part of a routine they do to insure their security."
The chopper moved away from them, then circled back. This time the helicopter was just one ridge over and they could see it from time to time.
A loudspeaker blared. Franklin translated it as the words came.
"You on the ground. We have followed your car tracks. We know you are there. If you do not show yourself and reverse your direction, we will send down a squad of soldiers to hunt you down like dogs, and kill you all. Give up, and return to the Chah Bahar area. There are no minerals in this area worth prospecting for. Show yourselves now."
Douglas groaned. "Damn. We did leave tracks. Most of this area hasn't had a rig through it since the last cloudburst stormed in off the Gulf of Oman. Tracks lead straight to us."
"I have heard this talk before," Nard said. "Many times they say so when they see nothing, to try to bring out Prospectors. We have learned to doubt them."
Franklin translated and nodded. "But they sure as hell got tracks from our car. Sounds like a little chopper. He won't have a squad of troops on board. Maybe two or three. He lands, and sends them along to find us, or goes back for a bigger bird with more men?"
"He's got to send in who he has, otherwise we might vanish down here," Douglas said. "What we need to do is set up a grand reception for the two or three shooters."
Franklin grinned. "That's a Roger. Which side do you want?"
They put Nard up a side canyon, then studied the layout. The chopper could land easier to the left, where the canyon was broader. Yes, they would come that way.
With a little additional work they transformed some large rocks along the side of the fifty-foot-wide gully into good shooting spots. They heard the chopper voice come twice more, then it seemed to pull back a ways. They heard it again later, and the sound came gushing up the gully.
"They're down," Douglas said. "Give them twenty minutes to work up the gully. I've got the left side."
Douglas wondered if they could waste the two or three men who came after them, then charge down the little valley, and capture the chopper. He shook his head. Not a chance. The pilot would be jumpy as hell. The first sign of firing, he probably would lift off, and wait at a safe altitude for his troops to return.
Three of them. There would be three shooters. It was a four-man chopper, so three guards with rifles or sub-guns. Either way, the element of surprise would win the day.
Douglas wiped a line of sweat off his forehead, and waited.
Ten minutes later they heard the men coming up the slight incline of the canyon. Three of them, Douglas decided before he saw them. The Iranians talked back and forth. Then forty yards away, the canyon bent a little and the three men came around it. All three had rifles with small sub-guns slung around their necks. They walked slowly, the rifles at port arms, up and ready. One man kept to each side of the canyon, here about fifty feet wide. The third one moved along the tire tracks the Citroen had left in the Iranian dust and rocks.
Douglas pulled out the metal stock on the Peruvian MGP-15. He braced it against his shoulder and turned the lever to full auto. Then he zeroed in on the man on his side of the canyon and tracked him. If he kept coming on the same line, the soldier would be less than twenty feet from where Douglas crouched behind the rocks.
He waited. They were at forty feet.
Then the men moved forward again. One of them shouted. Evidently he had seen the car. The others rushed forward.
Douglas waited a moment longer, then tracked the man, and pulled the trigger. Ten rounds slammed out of the short barrel. They sprayed in shotgun fashion, but four of them caught the soldier in the chest, and smashed him backwards into the dirt, dying as he screamed.
An instant later, Douglas heard the other sub-gun roar, and the far Iranian soldier crumpled. Douglas angled his weapon at the one survivor in the middle, and jolted out six rounds. Franklin fired again as well, and the third soldier screamed in rage as he died before he hit the ground.
Both SEALs waited, but no more troops arrived. They ran to the bodies and dragged them up against the side of the gully. Quickly Douglas pushed rocks down from the side of the slope until they covered the dead soldier. He had set aside the rifle and the sub-gun and all the magazines he could find.
Franklin had buried the man on his side, and they both dragged the third dead man to the far side, where the slope crumbled more easily. They kicked at it until they had rolled enough dirt and rocks down to cover the dead soldier.
They picked up the three rifles, three subguns, and the ammunition, and ran back to the car under its tarp.
Nard came up grinning. "You are not prospectors at all," he said. "You are soldiers, commandos, you are killers."
Franklin told Douglas what Nard had said.
"But we have not harmed you," Franklin said. "We wish nothing but the best for you, and we are paying you well. It may even be that we won't need our vehicle, and all of our supplies, once we know exactly where the big plant is. Would you like to have all of this material for your own?"
Nard smiled broadly. "Indeed Allah is all knowing, and all kindness, and wonder. I am your loyal servant until you no longer need me."
Just then they heard the chopper's engines rev up, and the bird took off. The gully was too narrow for the helicopter to make a close inspection, but it hovered overhead and moved slowly up the passage, then swung away. Douglas had no way of knowing if the pilot had seen the car under the camouflage or not.
"We've got to pack up and move," Douglas said. "They won't take kindly to losing three of their hotshot guards. They'll be sending out all the troops they can carry in their choppers. We've got to be several miles away by that time."
18
Franklin gunned the engine as soon as everything was loaded in the Citroen, but Douglas waved him off.
"We need a drag, something to pull behind the rig to brush out our tire tracks so they can't follow us. A bunch of brush usually works, but there ain't none here."
"Tie one blanket on the bumper behind each rear tire," Franklin said. 'Should do in a pinch."
They tried it.
Douglas walked behind the car for a hundred yards, and couldn't make out the tire tracks. Nobody could see them from the air.
They drove.
Franklin rattled the old car along as fast as he dared in the rock-strewn dirt track. Sometimes he hit fifteen miles an hour. It should be enough.