“A knife, is it? You think you can save yourself with that?”
While he was talking he lashed out again with a leg. It was a kick designed to distract me, tempt me to go for his leg again with the knife.
I didn’t, so when he spun around and sent another of those iron-fisted artillery shots toward my head, I was ready. I went under the incoming punch and slashed his stomach with the knife.
I cut him bad.
Now he grunted in pain, sagged toward the radio table.
I gathered myself, got out of his way, got into a crouch so I could defend myself.
He was holding his stomach with both hands. In the dim light I could see blood. I had really gotten him.
“Shouldn’t have played with you,” he said, and reached for the pistol in the holster on his belt.
Too late. I was too close. With one mighty swing of my arm I slashed his throat. Blood spewed out, a look of surprise registered on his face, then he collapsed.
Blood continued to pump from his neck.
I had to wipe the sweat from my eyes.
Jesus! My hands were shaking, trembling.
Never again, God! I promise. Never again!
I stowed the little knife back in my boot, retrieved the rucksack and my fighting knife from the table.
Outside in the corridor I carefully pulled the door to the radio room shut, made sure it latched.
Down the stairs, across the courtyard, through the gate. Safe in the darkness outside, I retrieved my M-16 and puked up my MREs.
Yeah, I’m a real tough guy. Shit!
Then I trotted for the trail to the oasis. It wasn’t much of a trot. My side, back, and arm were on fire, and my face was still numb. The best I could manage was a hell-bent staggering gait.
As I ran the numbness in my side and back wore off. I wheezed like an old horse and savored the pain, which was proof positive I was still alive.
Julie Giraud was standing beside the Humvee chewing her fingernails. I took my time looking over the area, made sure she was really alone, then walked the last hundred feet.
“Hey,” I said.
My voice made her jump. She glanced at my face, then stared. “What happened?”
I eased myself into the driver’s seat.
“A guy was waiting for me.”
“What?”
“He spoke to me in English.”
“Well …”
“Didn’t even try a phrase in Arabic. Just spoke to me in English.”
“You’re bleeding under your right eye, I think. With all that grease it’s hard to tell.”
“Pay attention to what I’m telling you. He spoke to me in English. He knew I understood it. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“What about the radio?”
“He knew I was coming. Someone told him. He was waiting for me.”
“You’re just guessing.” “He almost killed me.”
“He didn’t.”
“If they knew we were coming, we’re dead.”
Before I could draw another breath, she had a pistol pointed at me. She placed the muzzle against the side of my head.
“I’ll tell you one more time, Charlie Dean, one more time. These people are baby-killers, murderers of women and kids and old people. They have been tried in a court of law and found guilty. We are going to kill them so they can never kill again.”
Crazy! She was crazy as hell!
Her voice was low, every word distinctly pronounced: “I don’t care what they know or who told them what. We are going to kill these men. You will help me do it or I will kill you. Have I made it plain enough? Do you understand?”
“Did the court sentence these people to die?” I asked. “
I sentenced them! Me! Julie Giraud. And I am going to carry it out. Death. For every one of them.”
SEVEN
The sabellibe photos showed a wash just off the east end of the runway. We worked our way along it, then crawled to a spot that allowed us to look the length of it.
The runway was narrow, no more than fifty feet wide. The planes were parked on a mat about halfway down. The wind was out of the west, as it usually was at night. To take off, the planes would have to taxi individually to the east end of the runway, this end, turn around, then take off to the west.
“If they don’t discover that the guards are missing, search the place, find the bombs and disable them, we’ve got a chance,” I said. “Just a chance.”
“You’re a pessimist.”
“You got that right.”
“How many guards do you think are around the planes?”
“I don’t know. All of the pilots could be there; there could easily be a dozen people down there.”
“So we just sneak over, see what’s what?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“For three million dollars I thought I was getting someone who knew how to pull this off.”
“And I thought the person hiring me was sane. We both made a bad deal. You want to fly the Osprey back to Germany and tell them you’re sorry you borrowed it?”
“They didn’t kill your parents.”
“I guarantee you, before this is over you’re going to be elbow-deep in blood, lady. And your parents will still be dead.”
“You said that before.”
“It’s still true.”
I was tempted to give the bitch a rifle and send her down the runway to do her damnedest, but I didn’t.
I took the goddamn M-16, adjusted the night-vision goggles, and went myself. My left side hurt like hell, from my shoulder to my hip. I flexed my arm repeatedly, trying to work the pain out.
The planes were readily visible with the goggles. I kept to the waist-high brush on the side of the runway toward the planes, which were parked in a row. It wasn’t until I got about halfway there that I could count them. Six planes.
The idea was to get the terrorists into the planes, then destroy the planes in the air. The last thing we wanted was the terrorists and the guards out here in this desert running around looking for us. With dozens of them and only two of us, there was only one way for that tale to end.
No, we needed to get them into the planes. I didn’t have enough radio-controlled detonators to put on all the planes, so I thought if I could disable some of the planes and put bombs on the rest, we would have a chance. But first we had to eliminate the guards.
If the flight crews were bivouacked near the planes, this was going to get really dicey.
I took my time, went slowly from bush to bush, looking at everything. When I used infrared, I could see a heat source to the south of the planes that had to be an open fire. No people, though.
I was crouched near the main wheel of the plane on the end of the mat when I saw my first guard. He was relieving himself against the nearest airplane’s nose-wheel.
When he finished he zipped up and resumed his stroll along the mat.
I went behind the plane and made my way toward the fire.
They had built the thing in a fifty-five-gallon drum. Two people stood with their backs to the fire, warming up. I could have used a stretch by that fire myself: The temperature was below sixty degrees by that time and going lower.
No tents. No one in sleeping bags that I could see.
Three of them.
I settled down to wait. Before we made a move, I had to be certain of the number of people that were here and where they were. If I missed one I wouldn’t live to spend a dollar of Julie Giraud’s blood money.
Lying there in the darkness, I tried to figure it all out. Didn’t get anywhere. Why that guy addressed me in English I had no idea. He was certainly no Englishman; nor was he a native of any English-speaking country.
Julie Giraud wanted these sons of the desert dead and in hell — of that I was absolutely convinced. She wasn’t a good enough actress to fake it. The money she had paid me was real enough, the V-22 Osprey was real, the guns were real, the bombs were real, we were so deep in the desert we could never drive or hike out. Never.