“Like it did to the Green Coats, Blainey.”
“How far to the boat?”
“Two hours in the dark. Easy level ground.”
McCracken was strapping the M-60 to his shoulder. “No reason to travel light then.”
The moon would have made for plenty of light, if its rays had been strong enough to push themselves through the dense cover of the jungle. In some places it might as well have been a darkened cave they were walking through. Occasionally slivers of moonbeams briefly illuminated a path that seemed unchanging.
In the darkest parts, the range finder’s sweeping red grid made for a grim luminescence. McCracken had been carrying it since they’d left the clearing and the corpses of Ben Norseman’s team. The thing made a slight beeping sound with each circular pass. Blaine figured they were still thirty minutes from the river. There were no guarantees Luis would have waited the extra time with the boat. Their best chance there lay in the hope that the whiskey had lasted longer than expected. If not—
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…
McCracken heard the range finder come alive in his hand. Suddenly its circular sweep was lined with red flashing dots clustered along a narrow sphere in the bottom left-hand grid.
Wareagle had already gone rigid.
“We’ve got company, Indian.”
“Where, Blainey?”
“Behind us to the south. Five hundred yards back, if I’m reading this right.”
McCracken stripped the M-60 machine gun from his shoulder. Damn thing weighed a ton. He’d handled a 7.62-mm Vulcan in the streets of Tehran, but not dead tired and in darkness so profound it was sure to confound his aim.
“No, Blainey,” said Wareagle.
“What?”
“Norseman and his men would have seen the same thing. They reached the clearing and made their stand because that is what the Wakinyan wanted. The Green Coats saw only what they were supposed to see.”
On the range finder, the blips had moved into the next grid.
“What are you saying?”
“The graves, Blainey. I realize now the graves are the key. They did not dig them to bury Norseman and his men. The holes were already there when the Green Coats arrived. The Wakinyan dug them so they could hide and then lunge upon the Green Coats from within their midst. It explains everything. By the time Norseman and the others opened fire, it was too late.”
Beep, beep, beep…
“Then…”
“They’re ahead of us as well as behind. Planted somewhere, camouflaged, waiting in the very spot they know we will make our stand.”
McCracken’s eyes darted back and forth from the range finder to Wareagle. “But they knew Norseman was trailing them. We’re a different story.”
“The night has betrayed us. They must have circled back. Or…”
“Four hundred yards, Indian. Or what?”
“They knew about our presence from the start.”
“And left Norseman’s weapons out in the open?”
“Giving us what we wanted, what we needed to play their game.”
“Three hundred and fifty yards…What now?”
“They timed their move perfectly. All routes north and south are impassable.”
The range finder seemed to be getting louder. “Leaving us with only east and west. Terrific.”
“There is a third option, Blainey.”
“Three hundred yards, Indian.”
“They know even before we do where we will choose to make our stand ahead. Their greatest weapon is this very understanding. It was no different in the hellfire with the Black Hearts. Remember, Blainey?”
McCracken’s mind drifted back and wanted to stay there. “We became the Black Hearts, and that’s how we beat them. That’s how we stayed alive.”
“As we must do again, Blainey.”
Beep, beep, beep…
Chapter 9
The ditches they dug in the ground were just deep enough to conceal them under a layer of dirt and brush. Blaine had switched the range finder off when the blips were less than one hundred yards away. Then Johnny helped him cover himself. How the big Indian could manage the same task all by himself, Blaine would never know. But there was plenty about Johnny he couldn’t fathom and never would.
Blaine silently counted out the steps of their pursuers, trying to anticipate the second those steps would be upon their position. If Wareagle’s ploy didn’t work, death would come with no chance for resistance. But Johnny’s words had their usual ring of confidence. The best strategy makes use of something the enemy uses himself, something so personal that the idea of another using it is inconceivable.
Blaine recognized that the means by which the Wakinyan had dispatched Norseman’s team had changed Johnny’s view of them. Their use of such a brilliant stratagem revealed them to be clever tacticians as well as murderous monsters.
A faint rustling reached Blaine in his self-made crypt. Not a sound so much as a disturbance in the ground he had become a part of. It was no more than the here-and-gone ruffle a small creature would make as it went its way in the underbrush. And yet it belonged to creatures powerful enough to savagely murder seven Green Berets.
He could feel the ground stir directly above him.
One of them’s right above me…
Gone, though, before he could even complete the thought. Somehow that slowed Blaine’s heart. The test had been passed. Johnny’s plan, this part anyway, was going to work.
But a fresh fear washed over him like cold water down the back on a hot summer day. He had made the world of the enemy his own world in Vietnam, in Israel, in a dozen other countries. He had felt his heart lurching for his throat and his guts twisted into bag ties to hold in his breath. The feeling that had just passed over him now was not the black cold he remembered. It was more like a frigid void, a white noise darkening in the night, as if a vacuum were walking above.
Blaine hardened his resolve to keep from trembling. He almost retched, and his sense of time deserted him. With his other senses already stifled, the vise of panic tightened around him.
Fight it, dammit! Fight it!
Forming that resolve coherently was enough to do the job. The shallow breathing he allowed himself steadied. Blaine flexed his fingers to regain physical control.
Then a hand drove down into his hollow. McCracken kicked for freedom as it pushed for his face.
Blaine recognized the hand as Johnny’s just in time to still himself.
“We must move quickly, Blainey. They will be back before long.” Wareagle helped McCracken to his feet and watched him stretch the life back into his limbs. Then Blaine leaned back over and retrieved the range finder from his hollow.
Beep, beep, beep…
“Moving away from us, Indian.”
“Not for long.”
The red blips continued to move farther from the center of the grid.
“So, what now?”
“We use more of their medicine against them. We set a trap, Blainey. With us as bait.”
“Because Ben Norseman was kind enough to leave us with the snare we needed,” McCracken said as he pulled the fuel air explosive cylinder from his pack.
“The Wakinyan who walked upon our graves will meet up with the rest soon,” said Wareagle. “When they backtrack our way, our own personal hellfire will greet them.”
“Gonna piss off a lot of conservationists, Indian.”
“The land will understand, Blainey. Something must die if the balance of nature is to be preserved.” Wareagle gazed through the dark jungle in the same direction the range finder was aimed. “They’re coming.”