A few feet away, Anna Cherkshan stood working on a computer tablet, doubtless reviewing her notes for the story or already writing parts of it. Startled by the cracks of the small arms fire, she looked up, then shoved her tablet PC into her messenger bag and ran toward the front of the cave.
“Anna! Wait!” Lourds’s shout seemed to galvanize her into greater effort.
“I can’t! There’s a story going on out there, and I need to see it!”
Fearing for the young woman’s safety, Lourds held the backpack strap crossing his chest and ran after her with Boris racing along behind him.
19
Lying in the frozen waste overlooking the mountain where the diggers worked so diligently, Mafouz Abu Walid took aim again through the telescopic sight of the Dragunov sniper rifle that was his pride and joy. He’d carried a lot of black tar opium through the mountains to purchase the Russian long gun, and he had never been more enthusiastic in using it than right now.
He ignored the searing cold of the packed snow against his left cheek as well as the hard ground and winter’s chill embrace that tried to leach the warmth from his body. Instead, he let his desire for vengeance and his bloodthirstiness run rampant.
The Dragunov was capable of delivering its 7.62mm rounds out to thirteen hundred meters and still kill a man. At eight hundred yards it was extremely lethal. Most of his men carried AK-47s, which only had an effective range out to four hundred yards.
Below Mafouz’s sniping position, his scattered men squeezed off concentrated fire at the group of Westerners in front of the cave.
Mafouz didn’t know or care what the dirt diggers had found that was so important. All that mattered to him was avenging his brother’s death by killing the man who had murdered him. Ghairat had died back in June, in another cave not far from here. At the time, Mafouz had learned of the Russian professor Boris Glukov and the American professor Thomas Lourds, but going after his brother’s killer hadn’t been possible then because the ANP had locked down the area.
Now, though, there were too many people for the ANP to protect. In fact, they couldn’t even protect themselves.
Mafouz peered through the telescopic sights, caught sight of an ANP policeman taking cover behind an SUV, and focused on the man. When the policeman popped up again to fire a volley of rounds at the ridge where the Taliban warriors lay, Mafouz stroked the trigger and felt the Dragunov bang against his shoulder with the force of a camel kick.
He managed to keep the sniper scope locked on his target and saw the man’s head turn into a raging mist of flying blood and broken bone. He searched again for another target and found one. This was a woman, one of the Westerners who worked with the dirt diggers. She ran from one of the vehicles, obviously frightened at being alone, and headed back to the cave.
Mafouz led her slightly, practiced at his skill from years of using the sniper rifle against fleeing victims. He squeezed the trigger again, and this time the bullet caught the target in the side at heart level. The bullet’s velocity and mass knocked the woman aside like she was a doll.
The cacophony of rifle shots cracked again and again. Mafouz had brought in forty-three warriors during the night, and they’d lain there all day, waiting for the reporters to cluster. He’d planned to attack at dawn, while the Westerners were still in their tents and unprepared for the death that would come for them. Then one of his men had overheard that Thomas Lourds was coming to the site as well.
Giving in to his desire for revenge against both of the men responsible for Ghairat’s death, Mafouz had told his men to wait, that there would be even more Westerners for them to kill soon. And so they had waited.
Twenty-two of his warriors remained with him on this ridge to the west where the sun was now starting to drop. The ANP policemen below were partially blinded, staring into the sun as they tried to return fire.
The other twenty-one men were making their way around to the south side of the mountain and would be in place any moment. Then they would have the dig site trapped in a lethal crossfire.
Herat was thirty minutes away even by the fastest military Jeep. Unless the ANA or the ISAF arrived in force, they would only be targets awaiting Taliban vengeance as well.
One of the vehicles suddenly raced from the pack.
Mafouz took aim and put a round through its left front tire. Out of control in the snow, the truck jerked hard to the right and careened into a ditch. Unable to handle the steep grade, it rolled over onto its side.
Patiently, Mafouz waited, knowing the driver was probably not badly injured. A moment later, the man clambered from the truck. Mafouz took aim again, then squeezed the trigger, and another dead man joined those already lying on the blood-drenched snow.
Bullets chopped into the icy ridge, but they didn’t get close enough to Mafouz to drive him into hiding. He searched for new targets, found yet another journalist, and grinned with glee.
Ghairat would be avenged several times over today.
Taking cover behind a cargo van filled with television equipment, Colonel Sergay Linko knew he was a lucky man. He hadn’t been one of the first people targeted when their unseen attackers had launched their offensive. If he had been, he would have been among the first casualties.
He’d been drinking hot coffee from one of the media trucks, crouched down out of the wind, and thinking furiously about how he was supposed to get close to Boris Glukov while the professor was still inside the cave. Now he wanted a gun, something with more range than the 9mm pistol he’d set up in the video camera shell he’d been given by the crew aboard the airplane that had brought him to Herat.
He’d planned on using the handgun to kill Boris once he’d found out what the professor knew. That plan hadn’t come even close to fruition yet. Now, it looked as though it never would.
Calmly, he watched as the journalists and media people foolishly got themselves killed by abandoning their positions in search of another one. If they hadn’t gotten killed in the first onslaught, chances were good that their attackers wouldn’t see them on a second pass through.
Linko crept to the front of the vehicle and peered around the bumper. Scanning the western ridge of the mountain, he counted at least eight men. A dead ANP policeman lay in the snow four meters away. The man was on his back, face and chest bloody and his rifle practically resting in his hand.
The itch to dart out for the weapon was almost too strong to resist, but Linko did. He’d been in bad circumstances before. With the way the ANP police were dying around him, there’d probably be a closer weapon before long.
Running footsteps came up behind him. He turned and watched as a woman ran toward the cargo van. Snow flew in all directions as she sprinted, trying to stay low to the ground. She grabbed the door to the van and levered herself inside, snatching the radio mic and switching on the engine.
“Hello! This is an emergency! The archeology dig thirty-five miles south of Herat is under attack! I repeat, this is an emergency!”
Linko gazed up at the woman and saw that she was sitting up in the seat. He was just about to call up and advise her that such a course of action was foolish.
Before he could do more than open his mouth, a bullet cored through the windshield and exploded the woman’s head. Pummeled by the heavy-caliber, high-velocity round, the woman’s corpse fell back out of the cargo van and on top of Linko, showering him with blood and brain matter.