Victor O'Reilly - The Devil's footprint

"Oshima?" said Fitzduane.

Brock made a gesture. "At least two of them got through on the right," he said. "Thirty meters away. Cochrane and a fire team have gone after them."

The storm was easing. As suddenly as it had started, it was vanishing.

"I'm calling in a blocking force," said Brock, "if this fucking this now works." He keyed the radio.

Fitzduane was gone.

Dawn was breaking.

As he ran, Fitzduane tried to put himself in Oshima's position. She had broken through, but where would she go?

The electrical storm had passed and communications were now working. Cloud cover was still low, and rain was forecast. The air effort was cranking up, but it would be hampered.

Scout Platoon was spread out in a loose V. The lead runner, Specialist Tennant, had sworn that he could see two people running up ahead, and Fitzduane was following. Personally, he had not seen anything, but in the absence of any other lead, Tennant's certainty was as good an option as anything else.

They were running east. This meant they were running into the rising sun, and that one thought alone persuaded Fitzduane that Oshima could well be up ahead. She left little to chance, and the fact that any pursuers would have the sun in their eyes as they followed would be something she would think of.

There was a good case to be made for abandoning the search and continuing it later on by air, but the sheer scale of the terrain made Fitzduane reluctant to concede Oshima any advantage. The Tecuno plateau consisted of thousands of square kilometers of brutal terrain, and if Oshima really did manage to shake her pursuers, she could hide indefinitely.

It had occurred to Fitzduane that his assumption that Oshima would move from the air base tunnel to a cache might well be oversimplifying. If Oshima had prepared a series of underground hides, then locating her would be well nigh impossible. There was too much ground to cover. A hide could be stood on by a searcher and still not be detected.

All Oshima had to do to gain was to elude her pursuers for a few hours, and then the advantage would pass to her.

The light increased, and Fitzduane strained to see what was up ahead.

Suddenly, he thought he could see something. He wiped the sweat from his face and tried again. This time he was sure. Over a thousand meters ahead, he could see the faintest shape of a running figure. There were supposed to be two, but he could detect no sign of a second figure.

It was running down an open, boulder-strewn valley. The hills on either side looked as if they had been made by some giant dumping buckets of jagged rocks at random. The nearest incline was about eight hundred meters away.

It went against all of Fitzduane's training to move exposed through such terrain, but if they wanted to keep up with their quarry there was no other option.

He longed for the reassuring shapes of a couple of Kiowas, but several had sustained damage in the storm and one was not due for another half hour.

Up ahead, Tennant stumbled and fell. Two seconds later, the second runner collapsed.

"SNIPER!" he shouted.

As he fell to the ground, he saw that the man immediately in front of him had been hit by the third shot. He crawled forward. The trooper had been struck at an angle below the breastbone. His face was gray, and as Fitzduane approached, blood frothed from his mouth and he died. The man's name was Zalinski. He was one of Scout Platoon's snipers. His M24 lay beside him.

Fitzduane searched the high ground. The wound on the dead trooper looked as if it had been made by a 7.62mm. Three shots and three hits suggested a custom sniper rifle and a shooting talent enough to yield a world of woe. The angle suggested the hills to the left.

The jagged rocks offered endless options.

All around him paratroopers were firing single shots at possible firing positions in the rocks. Using iron sights at that range, they would be lucky to score a hit even if they could see a target. But a round could get lucky. At least it would help keep the sniper's head down.

If they did nothing, they were going to get picked off one by one.

Bent double, using the cover of the return fire, Brock ran up.

"Shit!" he said quietly when he saw Zalinkski. He looked at Fitzduane. "I hope that damn woman's worth it."

Gallo was about twenty meters away. He studied the distant rocks, then closed his eyes.

Brock said nothing. He watched the performance and then crawled toward Gallo. The man's eyes opened. "Got him?" Brock asked.

"Think so," said Gallo. "The tall butte is my twelve. Go to ten, drop twenty meters and look at the ledge below the skyline."

Brock had picked up the dead paratrooper's M24 and was studying the rocks through the telescopic sight. "Negative," he said.

"Fucker's pulled back," said Gallo. "Wait one and you'll see."

"Hold your fire," shouted Brock. The command was passed along the firing line. He pulled a set of spotter's binoculars from his pocket and called Fitzduane over, and tossed the glasses in his direction.

Fitzduane moved to within ten meters and took the glasses. He did not like coming even that close, since bunched-up targets brought out a mean streak in hostiles. On the other hand, countersniper work was a collaborative effort.

Brock and Gallo were glued to the eyepieces of their rifles. Their problem now was that their angle of vision was severely restricted. A spotter would cover a wider field and then talk the shooters onto target. He would keep an eye out for other opposition.

Fitzduane focused where instructed. Thirty seconds later, he saw movement twenty meters to the right of where Gallo had originally indicated.

The enemy sniper was moving every couple of shots.

"Right twenty," said Fitzduane.

Gallo fired, followed a fraction of a second later by Brock.

Fitzduane saw a slight movement as a long black shape dropped off the ledge.

"He's dropped his rifle," he said.

Galle's eyes were closed. "We got him," he said.

Fitzduane scanned the rocks. There could be another sniper, but only two had got through and one was ahead. He thought of Oshima increasing her lead in front of them.

"We're going on," he said to Brock.

Brock opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. "Airborne, sir," he said.

He rose to his feet. "Move out," he said.

The survivors of Scout Platoon rose to their feet. He had logged three dead. The RT operator had taken a round, making it four.

Fitzduane was already running.

Brock and his men followed on. They left the bodies where they lay. Brock felt numb. The drove him on. Hate for Oshima and, as of the moment, a profound and irrational hate for Fitzduane.

The interlude had bought Oshima thirteen minutes and had cost five lives.

Up on the ledge, Jin Endo lay sprawled with a 7.62 round through the bridge of his nose and the back of his skull missing.

Brock's round had torn out his throat.

Up above, the vultures were already circling. Soon two extra black dots swept toward the corpse but kept on going.

Oshima crested the hill and looked backward. In the distance she could see her pursuers. They were now too far behind to catch up, she was certain. She turned and ran for a further ten minutes. She stopped at a pile of rocks and began to pull them aside. Behind the rocks there was earth and then camouflage netting.

She worked furiously. Soon a 250cc motorcycle was uncovered. The fuel tank was full and the panniers were full of supplies. There were other caches up ahead. She now had everything she needed to escape.

She unclipped field glasses and surveyed the terrain. The paratroopers were still out of sight, probably still sweating up the hill in their heavy equipment.