Barry Sadler - Desert mercenary

Sunni Ali heard the muted gunfire. Rising from his bed he rushed out of his tent, calling his men to him. He had no doubt as to what was taking place. From their slumbers confused men gathered clutching their weapons.

"To the caves!" he cried. "They are after my hostages. Go! Run! They must be stopped."

Tuaregs swarmed in the dark running, Sunni Ali whipping them on. This was no time for tactics. He didn't care if his men ran into an ambush as long as they slowed up the raiders. He yelled to his senior radio operator, "Reach all you can. Have them on alert and ready to ride!" Then he raced after his men, jacking a round into the chamber of his SMG. He was only fifteen seconds behind them.

The first ragged group of eleven Tuaregs entered the light of the campfire. Roman took up the slack. Between the rapid fire of the machine gun and the Mats-49s of Sharif Mamud and Egon, they all went down.

Carl came out of the cave dragging the girl behind him. Her husband bent over to take a weapon from a dead Tuareg. Carl saw. A good sign this, the young man was ready to fight. Turning the hostages over to Egon and Sharif Mamud he told them, "Get them away. We'll slow things up here.'' Sharif Mamud led the way past Roman and Abdul, taking them into the dark and removing their Tuareg robes as they went.

Carl gave the rest of the team their orders. "Into the shadows by Roman. Form a perimeter. Let the main body get into the light by the cave. Wait for my orders to fire." He knew it wasn't likely that the next body of Tuaregs to reach them would take off blindly into the dark. They would wait for someone in authority to tell them what to do.

Carl could hear them coming. "Get grenades ready and pass the word to the others," he whispered to Gus. Pins were straightened out and the small bombs set where they were easy to reach.

Sunni Ali came to the entrance of the cave. He didn't have to go inside. He knew his captives were gone. The bodies of the dead did not concern him. What he wanted to know was which way had they gone and how many were there. To his men he cried out, "Spread out and search for their trail!"

Carl couldn't let them do that. He sighted on the man giving the orders and took up the trigger slack. As the last thousandth of an inch was reached, a Tuareg warrior ran in front of his leader and took five rounds meant for Sunni Ali. Carl cursed his luck. When he fired, the rest of the team came in with rapid fire, no fancy shooting. It didn't matter whether what they hit was killed or wounded as long as it stopped them from being able to follow.

"Grenades. Now!"

While the bombs were in the air he told Roman and Abdul, "Take your guns and move out. Set up in the canyon where you can give us cover fire at first light. We'll be right behind you."

Confusion was on their side. The rapid fire from the submachine guns gave them an edge they used to its maximum effectiveness. The sole surviving Tuareg moved away from the glow of the campfire.

Sunni Ali burned up two magazines firing at the ring of boulders. He thought he'd hit one. Whoever it was in the rocks, they were good. They had waited for him to be in an exposed position with his men, when most would have just taken their prize and run for it.

To his lieutenants he ordered, "Take men, spread out, and keep firing. There can't be too many of them."

Mamud led the way back into the rocks. Then he turned to cover a section of rough ground, leaving a trail which, if they were lucky, the Tuaregs would think they had taken.

" Let's do it! " Carl yelled as loud as he could over the increasing crescendo of gunfire. "Leapfrog it out by twos and threes."

The rest of the team was doing good, steady work, giving each other cover as they withdrew. When the first men passed Kitchner he started dropping rounds down the tube. He placed the first rounds on the far side away from Carl and his men, then started walking them in to the front of the cave.

Sunni Ali ran into the mouth of the cave to take cover. He knew the fire wouldn't last long. The one advantage he had was time. The raiders could not stand and fight. They would have to run, and that was when he would catch them. But right now he had to check on his vehicles to see if they had been damaged or destroyed. His men would pick up their trail and stay on them the rest of the night. With dawn he'd know which way to move and have a better idea of how many of the enemy there were to deal with.

With Gus on his heels, Carl was the last to break contact when the mortar rounds started coming in. The Tuareg went into instant panic and confusion. They weren't used to that kind of firepower coming at them. But Carl didn't fool himself by thinking this was the end of it. He knew they had a long way to go.

When they reached Kitchner dropping shells down the mortar tube, Carl yelled out, "Pack it up, blow the rest of your ammo, and get gone!"

Kitchner dropped a grenade down the tube, then another by his remaining rounds — no sense in leaving the enemy anything that might be useful — and took off after Langers and Gus.

They pushed it hard for an hour. Contact was broken with the Tuaregs but he knew it wouldn't stay that way long. When dawn came the nomads would be after them.

"Take five," Carl ordered. "Dominic, set out some trip wires on the back trail. The rest of you spread out where you can rest and still see what's going on. Let's not get careless now.

"Egon, get Sims on the radio. Tell him to move out. We'll be at the rendezvous point by 1100 hours and we'll check in again with him at 0900. Then have him relay the info to Monpelier. Got it?" Egon repeated the message, took the radio, and began to send word.

Sunni Ali was relieved to see that at least the raiders had not gotten far enough back in the tunnels to find his vehicles. They would be needed shortly, but first he had to do some thinking.

Retiring to his tent, he took from a mahogany case his own maps of the region. Time and movement were the keys. Once he had the direction of the enemy's route confirmed, then he'd be able to plan. Logic was now needed. Eyes poring over the map, he checked it against his mind and memory.

The raiders were on foot and had gone back into the mountain. They must have transport waiting for them somewhere. Their commander must know that if they stayed even one day in the area they would be found. Their job was to get in and get out as fast as possible with their prize. Therefore they must be heading to a place where they would be retrieved by either ground transport or aircraft.

Considering their rate of movement and the maximum distance they could travel in a given period of time, and he would give heavy odds that he was right about the time factor, it was inconceivable that the raiders would plan on spending more than twenty-four hours in his land. The options would be severely reduced once he had their direction confirmed. There could only be so many places from which to leave the mountain and reach a site where transport could pick them up. When they arrived there, Sunni Ali would be waiting for them with his own armored cars and heavy weapons.

The lone Tuareg moved between the ancient boulders. For a brief moment his eyes rose to the distant horizon. That was his mistake. The trip wire was broken and a grenade blew his left leg off at the knee. Sunni Ali had his direction.

While he was waiting for such information, he had given orders that the Hanamogs and American jeeps be made ready. Their crews stood by. These men he had trained as carefully as the panzer crews had been trained in Germany during the early days of the war. They knew their jobs.

On his map Sunni Ali made a check mark where the booby trap had exploded. Soon he would have another mark on his map and with each one he would be closer to reclaiming that which was his. His radiomen had been given the order to contact all outposts. They were put on the alert for any ferengi in the area and were told to stop all forms of motor transport. Nothing was to go through or get out.