Ted Bell - Warlord

FOUR HOURS LATER, ALEX HAWKE was awakened by Harry Brock. The man was kneeling beside him, squeezing his shoulder. Hawke opened his eyes, blinded by the light of the rising desert sun.

"Harry? What's going on?"

"Bad news, chief. We got a bunch of horsemen headed our way. Full gallop."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Patoo. Little guy puts his ear to the ground every sixty seconds or so. Been doing it all frigging night. This time he picked up riders. Lots of them. Damn it. Some shepherd or goatherd must have spotted us and told the bad guys we were coming."

"Number of bad guys?"

"A very large group, he says. Very, very large."

"How far out?"

"Thirty minutes. Maybe twenty. Do you think we can outrun them?"

"Only if we left all the camels, mules, ammunition, and supplies behind. Which we clearly can't do."

"Yeah, right. So we can't run and we can't hide. Shit. Now what?"

Hawke said, "Look, I've got an idea. Get Stoke and Patoo. Meet me at the base of the dune where all the livestock and horses are penned. Two minutes. Have Patoo get all the militia fighters up and ready and scared silly. Order them to use their pack shovels and start building a five-foot-high berm. Circular. Radius of thirty feet. And tell them to build it far enough away from this dune that we can't take fire from above. And make sure all the horses are tethered safely on the other side of that dune. We're not going anywhere without them."

"Done."

"Got it all? Hurry."

Harry was gone.

Sahira peeked out from under the zipped-up bag. "What can I do, Alex?"

"How are you doing with your M4 rifle?"

"I'd say, comfortable."

"Ever killed a man?"

"Of course not."

"Get ready, then, darling. Every bullet helps."

HAWKE, ABDUL DAKKON, AND A NUMBER of solemn-faced Pakistani militia fighters led some of the livestock, the maximum number of mules and camels they thought they could spare, around the circular berm now being constructed by their brethren, who were digging madly. Hawke had never seen men move with such ferocious alacrity in his life. Like a scared sailor with a bucket on a sinking ship. The thing was about three feet high and thirty feet across. And it was almost complete.

Patoo was prone in the center of the ring, his ear to the ground.

"Patoo," Hawke said, "how long?"

"Another twenty minutes if we're lucky, sir."

"Well, then I guess we have to be lucky," Hawke said, with a reassuring smile.

Hawke then ordered the men to tether the big animals nose to tail in a large circle all around the exterior circumference of the makeshift redoubt, putting a space of about two feet between each camel or mule. When this was done, he pulled his pistol and told the others to do the same.

"Now comes the hard part," Hawke said, walking over to the nearest camel. First, he removed the leather saddlebags from the animal and threw them to the ground. Then he put his pistol to the side of the beast's head and pulled the trigger. The camel shuddered and dropped right on top of the berm. Hawke then cinched the saddlebags to the camel's carcass facing outward. All those leather packs and saddles full of water and canned goods would afford a little more protection.

He turned and beckoned Patoo toward him.

"Patoo, I want you to go make sure absolutely every one of your men is armed to the teeth, has plenty of ammunition, and is positioned shoulder to shoulder inside this circle in five minutes. Run!"

"Yes, sir!"

"This is how you do it," he said to his men, moving on to the next mule, raising his pistol to the animal's head and repeating the process. In five minutes he, Brock, Stoke, and a couple of others had killed all the animals, creating a makeshift breastworks around the diameter that now stood about five feet in height. High enough to provide protection, low enough to fire over. It was hardly an ideal fortification, Hawke thought, surveying it, but it would simply have to do under the circumstances.

At least he'd fight with good men at his side.

One look at the dark-eyed and heavily bearded militia and he knew Patoo had chosen his small band of fighters carefully. Hawke had been constantly studying them, assessing their willingness to fight when things got spicy.

Then he'd seen the looks on their faces as the battle drew nigh. He'd never seen such volcanic hatred in men's eyes. These were men-and boys-who'd seen the Taliban stone their sisters and mothers to death for sport, or cut off the fingers of anyone caught smoking. Seen Taliban thugs drag their fathers and brothers from their houses into the streets. Where they were castrated and then beheaded and left to rot where they died. Their brothers' heads mounted on pikes on the roads that led into their villages, welcoming them home with empty eye sockets.

At night, the Taliban would roam the streets, amusing themselves with a game they laughingly called the "Dance of the Dead."

They would prop a beheaded corpse upright and pour gasoline into the open neck. When they set them afire, the dead would jerk their limbs spasmodically and kick their hideously bent legs outward before collapsing into the street. This blasphemy, the self-righteous Taliban seemed to find endlessly amusing.

The militiamen now standing with Hawke had seen this kind of thing happen to their families for decades. They would fight to the last man.

Five minutes later, Hawke's entire army was in readiness, standing side by side inside the perimeter of the hastily built breastworks. The tension was palpable and Hawke stepped to the center. He felt it necessary to say a few words.

"We are reasonably well protected. We have enormous firepower and unlimited ammunition. The men who are coming for us will be on horseback and they will fight to the death, which, for them, is the ultimate reward. I want each of you to pick individual targets and stay with them until the kill before moving on to the next. Make every shot count. Shoot the horses out from under them if necessary. When the fighters get up, kill them quickly before they can charge us on foot. I guess that's it. Good luck, God bless you, and good shooting."

He went silently around the circle, shaking hands with each and every one of them, looking them in the eye, showing his confidence in them with his eyes and his smile. When he got to Sahira, he held her hand a little longer and bent his head toward her ear.

"Listen carefully. I am sure we will be all right. But if the worst should happen, you should know that under no circumstances will I let these barbarians take you alive. Do you clearly understand what I am saying? What I will have to do?"

"I do, Alex. And I appreciate your concern."

"It's more than concern, Sahira," Hawke said with a gentle smile before walking away to take his place among the men standing at the breastworks.

THEY SAW THE RISING CLOUD of dust long before they heard the thunderous pounding of hoofbeats drawing nearer. Stokely Jones, who was standing to Hawke's immediate right, was leaning over the berm, peering through a pair of tripod-mounted, extremely high-powered Zeiss 8X30 binocs, his well-used M24 SWS sniper rifle at the ready beside him.

He would see the enemy long before the enemy saw the tiny band of fighters taking a desperate stand behind a pitiful mound of sand, the carcasses of dead animals, and old leather saddlebags. Stoke was a trained ex-SEAL sniper and it was said he could shoot the wings off a firefly at a hundred paces. He would start picking off the enemy in the vanguard as soon as they appeared in his lenses. The opposition's day always got off to a bad start seeing their commanding officers toppling from their saddles before they'd seen, or even engaged, the foe.

"See anything yet?" Hawke asked Stoke. He'd been looking around at his defenders, all of them doing last-minute weapons checks, adjusting their Kevlar flak vests for the tenth time, getting mentally prepared for battle.