“You don’t care for the stress, sir?”
“Oh, the stress isn’t a problem,” the president said. “Stress comes with the job, but this is likely to be Shannon’s swan song, and I know how hard it is for the good general to maintain his composure with me in the room.”
Brooks pursed his lips. “Then we won’t be lending Shannon any support at all?”
“He’s still in Russia, Glen. I already took a huge risk to bring him out, and he took a pass. There’s nothing more I can do. And with Bob Pope lying in the recovery room?” The president shook his head. “I’m afraid Gil Shannon may well have overplayed his hand this time.”
74
Gil heard the safety lever eject from a grenade to his right. He saw the orb flying toward him on an almost level trajectory, and his brain calculated a solution with computerlike speed. The fuse on a Russian grenade was only 3.8 seconds, and after the first 1.8 seconds, it would detonate on impact. So when he reached up, it wasn’t to catch it — but to fling it past him. The grenade detonated on the other side of a tree, and he sprang into a crouch, firing a 40 mm grenade into the trunk of a tree on the far side of a rotting log forty feet to his right. The grenade exploded, and the Chechen hiding behind the log was killed by the blast.
Gil knifed him behind the ear to make sure and ran to get back on course for Mukhammad’s camp. He was moving fast along a well-worn foot trail when he ran headlong into a patrol of four men running north to investigate the explosions. He shot three of them down, firing from the hip as he charged into the column and taking out the last man with a butt stroke to the face. He kept going, reloading the AN-94 on the run.
There was shouting up ahead. Smoke from a cooking fire drifted through the trees among a number of well-camouflaged lean-tos, where men grabbed for their weapons. This was an Umarov outpost — an outpost not designated on the Russian map — and without a doubt, the garrison would be in radio contact with Mukhammad’s main force.
Once again, Gil had lost the element of surprise in his pursuit of Kovalenko.
He lobbed a grenade over the rhododendron as he moved to skirt the encampment. It detonated near the cooking fire, blowing away three men and sowing confusion as everyone in the camp realized the perimeter had been breached. He wanted no part of these people in daylight and needed to break off contact before they realized he was only one man. Taking cover behind a tree, Gil hurled another grenade toward a cluster of men receiving hurried instructions from an officer. They didn’t see him, but they spotted the grenade in the air and scattered for cover as it detonated harmlessly on the roof of a lean-to with a radio antenna sticking out of it.
He disappeared down a trail to the south, knowing the dangers of sticking to the trails, but the rhododendron left him no other choice. His only chance was to put as much distance between himself and the outpost as he could, hoping for a break in the rhododendron grove. Gil stopped behind a rock to reload the GP-34 and to attach another hand grenade to the ready-hook on his harness. He heard footfalls coming down the trail and drew the suppressed pistol, aiming over the rock as a man came through the curve in the trail. He shot him in the base of throat, and the guy grabbed his neck, pitching forward off the trail.
Gil got back on the move and after twenty minutes began to believe he may have shaken them, but his fantasies were dispelled the moment he heard the faint rattle of equipment moving parallel to him on the far side of an impenetrable thicket. He slowed and stopped, and the rattling stopped as well. There were at least two men shadowing him, but he didn’t have time for a cat-and-mouse game, so he took off running.
The two paths came to an abrupt intersection a hundred feet down the trail, and he slammed broadside into one of the men, sending him flying. The second guy jumped on Gil and knocked him down. Fortunately, the impact knocked the man’s AK-47 from his hands, and the guy had to turn around to pick it up. Gil machine-gunned them both from his back and sprang to his feet. There was a burst of fire behind him, and the rounds impacted against the armor panel on his back and sent him sprawling forward. He rolled to his back as the Chechen charged, catching his toe on the nub of a root and stumbling forward off his feet, landing in Gil’s guard.
Gil wrapped his legs around the Chechen’s waist and grabbed him around the neck with his arm, gouging out the Chechen’s eye with the thumb of his free hand. The guy screamed and tore off Gil’s helmet, trying to get free. Gil released his guard and performed a hip escape, bashing him in the temple with his knee as he got to his feet. He grabbed the AN-94 and finished him with a rifle butt to the head before taking off again.
There was plenty of shouting to his rear now, and Gil knew that the rest of the outpost wouldn’t be more than thirty seconds behind him. He guessed there were a dozen men or so bearing down on him, but who the hell knew? It may as well have been a hundred, because his reserves were spent. Every time his right foot hit the trail, it felt like he was stomping on a bowie knife. His lungs burned with fire, and the calves of his legs were beginning to knot up with lactic acid. He desperately needed a chance to catch his wind, but the hounds never allowed the fox that kind of time.
What was it Dragunov had said the night before, that running back toward the hounds was never an option for the fox?
“Fuck it. Better to meet it head-on than to let ’em run you down.”
He turned and charged back up the trail.
A dark figure leapt out of the undergrowth and tackled him. Two more men fell on him a second later and pinned him fast to the ground. Gil screamed and went berserk, slugging away and trying to throw them off, but they were too heavy and too strong. They immobilized him, and one of them sat on his head while his hands were zip-tied behind his back. They dragged him into the undergrowth, and Gil lay on his back watching as six men in black quickly fanned out to either side of the trail with AN-94s.
Thirteen Chechens rounded the bend and were met by a hail of fire. The two men at the front of the column virtually disintegrated. Those to the center were cut down without getting off a shot, and those at the rear turned to run — but they didn’t make it far. The forest fell silent, and the men in black rose to their feet, dumping the empty magazines from their rifles.
Gil struggled to sit up as one of them came forward. The man knelt in front of him and lowered a black balaclava to reveal his unshaven visage.
“I am Colonel Yablonsky of the Spetsnaz Spetsgruppa A,” he said, his eyes almost black beneath dark eyebrows. “Where is Major Dragunov?”
Gil swallowed. “He was medevac’d out by an American mercenary unit.”
Yablonsky said something to his lieutenant in Russian. “When?”
“Around noon.”
“Why were you left behind?”
Gil watched as the other Spetsnaz men took up defensive positions. “Because I’m going to kill Dokka Umarov and Sasha Kovalenko. Did Moscow send you in?”
Yablonsky shook his head, looking pensive. “We jumped in on our own — against orders. Dragunov is a good friend.”
Gil was exhausted, but he found the energy to smile. “My kinda group.”
“How badly is Ivan wounded?”
“Bad enough to take him out of the fight,” Gil said, “but he’ll survive. He’s tough.”
“And where exactly are you going?”
“Mukhammad’s camp.”
Yablonsky spoke again with his lieutenant and then returned his attention to Gil. “Do you know Mukhammad has more than two hundred men in that camp?”
Gil nodded. “It was mentioned, yeah.”