“I’m fine. You got clipped too.” She pointed to his left knee.
A trickle of blood was trailing over his torn pants.
“A sharp rock.” Justin shrugged.
“Get in. We can still catch the pricks.”
“You think so?”
“Positive. I poured two mags into the chopper. Khalid here believes an RPG tore through its tail. That’s on top of your grenade. They can’t go too far.”
Khalid nodded, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin.
Justin sat behind him and Carrie gunned the Land Rover. They passed by the checkpoint and Carrie slowed down. She avoided the debris and the dead bodies littering the area. The two BMWs were burning slowly, bright orange flames chewing through the front tires and the rear doors. A column of dark smoke was rising up. It followed sudden gusts of a soft breeze changing direction almost every second.
“No survivors,” Justin said.
Khalid spat out the window. “Good. Those Arabs brought death here, like they always do. They deserved to die.”
Carrie entered the narrow pathway. She drove fast through the broken terrain. The Land Rover bounced over natural speed bumps, its wheels turning dangerously with every swinging curve. The left side of the hood scraped against the wall.
“Maybe you want to slow down,” Justin suggested as the Land Rover jumped over a pile of rocks.
Carrie eased on the gas pedal but only for a few seconds.
“What’s the status of your team?” Justin asked Khalid.
The gunman took a moment to process the question. “Some men dead. Seven, maybe eight. Two or three still alive,” he replied in broken English.
“Ali, how’s Ali?” Justin asked.
Khalid shook his head. “He got shot in chest by shrap… rocket pieces.”
Justin frowned.
“How did they find us?” Carrie asked.
“The Arabs. They gave enemy our location,” Khalid replied.
OK, but who is this enemy? Justin wondered while they passed through the last turns of the pathway.
They had not reached the open desert when an ear-splitting explosion caught them by surprise.
Carrie steered around a sand dune, and the helicopter crash site appeared in front of them. Reddish dust had begun to rise over the wreckage about five miles away from the ridge.
“Unlucky bastard,” Justin said in a low voice. “Escaping the battleground only to fall to his death.”
They drove toward the crash site. Justin took in the scene, imagining how the crash might have taken place. The tail boom of the helicopter was split in half and the cabin was turned to its starboard side. The fuselage was buried halfway into the sand, evidence of a violent but fireless crash. The rotor blades were twisted and tangled.
“Watch out for survivors,” Carrie said.
They surveyed the area from a distance of a few dozen feet without leaving their vehicle.
“I don’t see anything moving but let’s push in carefully,” Justin said.
They stepped out of the car and began to advance very slowly. Guns drawn, they carefully covered every direction and every angle.
“Pilot and co-pilot dead.” Justin peeked at the flight deck through the crushed windshield. He sidestepped around a mound of sand and fragments of rotor blades to reach the port side of the helicopter.
“Gunner’s toast.” Carrie pointed to the body of a young, dark-skinned man.
Justin looked around.
“What’s that?” He gestured toward a brown square-shaped object tossed about fifty feet away from the helicopter’s mangled doors.
“I don’t know,” Carrie replied.
She walked over to the object. “It’s a military pack.”
“How did it get there?”
“Thrown by the crash, I assume.”
A deep sigh, almost a rasp, followed by a muted cough startled them.
Justin pointed his gun to the left, in the direction of the sound, which came from behind a small dune.
“Did you hear that?” he asked Carrie in a hushed voice
Carrie nodded. “A survivor.”
They fell down, their noses inches away from the sand.
Carrie said, “He’s wounded but probably armed.”
A short burst of automatic gunfire confirmed her words.
“I’ll go left. You cover me.” Justin pointed to the small dune.
“Let’s do it.”
Carrie cocked her rifle and gestured to Justin to move forward. He began crawling, his pistol in his right hand and ready for fire. After Justin had covered about twenty feet up the gentle slope, Carrie got up to her feet and began pounding the dune. She fired short bursts, two or three rounds each time, advancing a few steps between the shots. The return fire was weak, sporadic, and not on target.
After reloading, Carrie switched her rifle to automatic. She fired a long barrage, about half of her 30- round magazine. Her bullets pierced through the crest and the slopes of the dune. Their purpose was to force the shooter to stay down and seek cover. She glanced at Justin, but he had already edged around the dune and out of sight.
A couple of seconds later, she heard a loud shout. “Drop it,” Justin barked in Arabic. “Drop it now! I said put down your gun!”
There was no reply.
Carrie rushed to the top of the dune. She saw Justin pressing his pistol against the head of a young man. He was wavering on his knees, struggling to balance his weak body. The young man had raised his right arm over his head in sign of surrender. His left arm dangled along his side like a withered branch. He was no older than thirty, clean-shaven and was wearing a beige shirt and matching pants. They resembled some kind of uniform, the same as the clothes worn by the dead helicopter crew. A camouflage pattern bulletproof vest and a rig with ammunitions and supplies covered his chest and his waist.
“Justin, you’re OK?” Carrie asked, moving behind the captive.
“Yes, I’m OK.”
“Is he Sudanese militia?”
“Haven’t questioned him yet.”
The young man gasped, his head falling over his chest. Khalid ran toward Carrie.
“Oh, good, one of them alive,” Khalid said in English while catching his breath. He switched to Arabic and asked the captive, “What’s the name of your unit?”
The young man shook his head. When Khalid repeated the question, the young man barked his reply in two short, broken sentences.
“What did he say?” Carrie asked impatiently, her eyes bouncing between Justin and Khalid.
Justin’s gaze was fixed on the captive’s chest. Khalid shook his head and spat on the ground.
“What the hell did he say?” Carrie asked.
“Not the words but how he speak,” Khalid replied. “This man, this fighter, he’s no Sudanese. He’s no Egyptian.”
“So, where did he come from?” Carrie glared at the man’s dark face. Justin could tell what she was thinking: he looks Arab to me.
Justin locked eyes with Carrie. “Come here,” he said.
He was paying more attention to Khalid, who was headed toward the helicopter, than to the captive’s hands. When she got really close, he whispered in her ear, “I think he’s Israeli.”
“What? Impossible!”
“He’s wearing a necklace and the pendant is the Star of David. See for yourself.”
Carrie pushed down the young man’s shirt collar with the muzzle of her rifle. A thin gold chain held a small pendant in the hexagon shape, the well-known symbol of the Hebrew nation.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Carrie blurted out. “Who the hell are you? IDF? Mil Intel? Mossad? Tell us!”
The captive offered them a tired but stoic grin.
Justin sighed. “Whoever this man is, our mess just got ten times harder than we thought.”
Chapter Seven