One shouted something and groped for his AK assault rifle. Roselli squeezed the trigger on his HK, a feather-light caress, and the man pitched up and backward onto the fire. Roselli tensed, waiting for ammo the man might be carrying to cook off… but evidently any spare mags he had were in one of the rucksacks nearby. He fired again, knocking down a second, just as Sterling nailed numbers three and four. Four up, four down. "Alex One, this is Three. Clear."
"We heard you, Three," came the reply. "The party's just beginning!"
"What the shit was that?"
Jankovic ran to the stone parapet, along with the sentry he'd just been inspecting. Those flashes, those explosions, they'd been from the northwest, about where the castle access road came down to join the highway. What had it been? Gunfire? Grenades? It was silent enough now…
He reached into his back pocket and extracted a radio. "Command Center, this is Sergeant Jankovic, west wall. Something is happening at Post One."
"We heard, Sergeant," Captain Chemy's voice snapped back. "We are investigating."
Yes, investigating, Jankovic thought savagely. With your head tucked up your ass…
Jankovic's immediate thought was to lead a party of men down to Sentry Post One to find out what had happened. It could have been an accident… a grenade or some ammo dropped in a fire.
But Jankovic didn't believe that for a moment, not when the night still held the memory of Dubrovnik, and every shadow held the threat of nightmare. If this was an assault of some kind, why would they attack a sentry post outside the walls so noisily?…
… unless they wanted a diversion. Where did they, whoever "they" were, not want the garrison to look?
Jankovic turned, sweeping the compound, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Damn Mihajlovic. It was so brightly lit inside the place that it was hard to see much of anything outside. It would have been better to light the outside and keep the inside dark.
The courtyard below was occupied by a number of confused-looking troops. Four guards stood inside the front gate, and two more in the gate tower above. The east wall was manned by half-a-dozen sentries, including one with a bulky Mitrajez M80 machine gun. An officer stumbled out of the main building, still buckling his trousers as he shouted orders. He was gathering a squad to go down the hill. Someone started up one of the jeeps, backing it out into the courtyard.
Something caught Jankovic's attention, some movement near the gate. He looked back and saw nothing. Three guards…
No, there'd been four. Where was the fourth? As he watched, horrified, part of the shadow behind one of the sentries by the gate seemed to solidify, flowing about the man's neck from behind, dragging him back.
He lifted the radio to his mouth again. "Commander! This is Jankovic! They're inside the castle. Repeat, they're inside the castle, front gate!"
There was a heavy thump from somewhere outside, and the lights went out.
Murdock dropped from the top of the wall and landed in the courtyard, letting his momentum carry him into a low crouch. To his right, the Professor lowered a dead Serb to the flagstone pavement. Another guard stepped out of a low doorway on the west side of the gate tower, and Murdock stopped him with a single three-round burst that punched him back into the room he'd been leaving. Nicholson followed up, tossing a concussion grenade through the stone opening. "Grenade!" Nicholson yelled, and Murdock flattened himself against his side of the gate tower. The blast, a heavy thump that struck him through the soles of his boots, blew out the twentieth-century glass windows that had been installed in sixteenth-century window slits.
Across the courtyard, four more Serbian soldiers appeared bursting out of the barracks door. Murdock dropped two with quick, three-round bursts, tapping the trigger twice and sending both men tumbling across the ground. The other two ran another couple of steps, and then the thunder of Mac's Maremont opened up from the parapet wall above and behind Murdock's position, the muzzle flash stabbing and stuttering against the night. Both Serbs collapsed as though their legs had been yanked out from under them. "This is Alex One-Two" sounded in Murdock's earphone, Mac's call sign. "I'm moving."
The SEALs possessed a considerable advantage in the M-60E3s they were humping, two weapons that could provide them with tremendous portable firepower. The disadvantage was that the gunner had to move each time he gave away his position with the gun's muzzle flash.
For this op, however, that was not a serious problem, since the SEALs were going to be moving constantly anyway. If they stopped in one position for more than a few seconds, the enemy would move in troops enough to pin them down like butterflies on a board. If they kept moving, the Serb defenders of Gorazamak would never be able to organize an effective defense, would never even be able to guess how many invaders they were fighting or where they were coming from.
Kick ass and take initials, the SEAL saying went, 'cause we're gonna be moving too fast to take names!
When Mac had cut the main outside power lines leading to the castle, the defenders had been left in blind confusion, but the SEALS couldn't expect that to last for long. They had to take advantage of the darkness — and their high-tech night-vision gear — before the Serbs found their generator.
"Alex One!" Murdock called to his men over the tactical channel. "One-One! Move!"
Mihajlovic had just fallen asleep; it felt as though he'd only just closed his eyes. The crump of a grenade blast, followed by the rattle of a machine gun, instantly brought him wide awake. An attack! Rolling over in bed, he fumbled for his bedside lamp, then cursed when he turned the switch and the light didn't come on. He rose, fumbling about in the dark. Someone pounded on the door to his room.
"Enter, damn it!"
The door opened, and a soldier entered, an assault rifle in one hand, a heavy-duty flashlight in the other. The movements of the light sent fantastic shadows dancing around the room. "My General!"
"What is it?"
"An attack, my General!"
"Yes, yes, I can hear that, damn you!" More explosions, and the crackle of automatic weapons were sounding outside. "Who? Where?"
"Sir!" The man snapped to attention and tried to deliver an official report. "Sir, unknown forces of unknown strength and composition have entered the compound at the gate tower! Sir!" Another rumbling boom echoed through the stone walls of the tower.
Mihajlovic was already pulling his uniform trousers up over his pajama bottoms. "Has Communications reported the attack?"
"Sir… I'm not sure-"
"Go to Communications. Have the duty officer flash a Priority One message to Ohrid Command Center, my authorization. Tell them we're under attack and require immediate assistance. Understood?"
"Yes, my General!"
"Next. Go down to the basement. To the generator room. If you don't know how to start the generator, find someone who can. Get us some power, damn it!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Go! Do it!"
"Sir!"
Mihajlovic found his way to a dresser drawer, opened it, and fumbled inside. His hand closed on the small, cold, stamped-metal shape of an M610, the Yugoslav version of the Czech-made CZ-61 machine pistol. By touch, he checked that the twenty-round magazine was in place, then snicked back the charging knob, chambering a round.