Don Pendleton - Rolling Thunder

With a wrenching snap nearly as loud as the explosion itself, the tall chestnut teetered to one side, then came crashing down, its upper branches slapping across the top of the ATV. By then, Encizo and Hawkins were both on their feet and charging through the meadow.

The ploy worked, flushing the enemy from the ATV. Once Encizo reached another crop of boulders, he dropped to one knee and blasted away with his carbine. Two men dropped from view into the tall grass. Judging from the way they’d gone down, Enzico doubted they’d be getting back up. Hawkins had similar luck, firing through the branches of the fallen tree and nailing a gunman seeking out cover behind the shattered trunk.

As Hawkins continued to race toward the chestnuts, however, he was nearly broadsided by a stream of gunfire coming down from the mountains to his right. He dived to the ground and rolled to one side until he reached one of the sheep, which had been caught up in the cross fire and lay dead in the grass. Peering over the carcass, Hawkins spotted two snipers up in the foothills near the rocks where Encizo had fired earlier. He trained his sights on the man who presented the best target. It took three shots, but he finally managed to send a killshot through the man’s skull. The other gunman returned fire, missing Hawkins by inches with one shot and stirring the dead sheep with another.

“Got a stray to take care of!” Hawkins called over his shoulder to Encizo. “I’ll take him out, then circle around!”

Encizo nodded. He stayed put a moment, eyes on the fallen tree, waiting for another separatist to show himself. None appeared. He stole a quick glance at the stone hut but could still see no sign of James or the shepherd boy. He was about to go have a closer look when he heard the sound of the ATV’s engine revving to life. Shifting his gaze, he saw that one of the Basques had climbed into the driver’s seat and was brushing away the branches draped across the steering wheel. Once he’d shifted gears, the man began to back the ATV up, pulling away from the fallen tree.

“Not so fast,” Encizo muttered.

He quickly fired off a few rounds, managing to hit the vehicle’s framework but not the driver. The ATV separated itself from the tree and began to turn. Encizo realized the driver was hoping to retreat the way he’d come. Cursing, he broke from cover and began to sprint after the vehicle. His carbine was slowing him, so he cast it aside. Without breaking stride, he yanked the 9 mm pistol from his web holster. There was no point in firing, however; the crate blocked his view of the driver.

By the time Encizo reached the fallen tree, the ATV had left the meadow and begun to head down a narrow dirt path that threaded its way between outcroppings and a scattering of tall mountain pines. After a couple turns the vehicle had disappeared from view.

Rather than take the trail, Encizo bounded onto the closest outcropping and followed it, leaping from rock to rock, hoping he wouldn’t lose his footing. He could still hear the ATV and tried his best to head in the same direction. Behind him, he could hear intermittent gunfire back in the meadow and figured Hawkins still had his hands full.

After sixty yards, Encizo was forced to come to a stop. The outcropping had not only narrowed to a point, but it had also come to an abrupt end, leaving him poised at the edge of a sheer, forty-foot precipice.

Another stream of expletives spilled from Encizo’s lips as he sized up his situation. He had two options: he could either backtrack the way he’d come or try to make his way down the sheer face of the cliff. In terms of catching up with the ATV, either way seemed futile. He could no longer even hear the vehicle, much less see it. Like it or not, it looked as if the enemy had gotten away.

“Way to go, Rafe,” he chastised himself.

Encizo was still deliberating his next move when he heard a rustling behind him. He whirled and saw that a mountain goat had appeared atop the outcropping twenty yards behind him. He wasn’t sure how it’d gotten there, but Encizo had a feeling the animal wasn’t about to let him pass. The goat, a full-grown male weighing more than two hundred pounds, stared intently at Encizo, then lowered its head slightly, tipping its horns forward.

“I don’t think that’s a good sign,” Encizo whispered to himself. He was inching closer to the edge of the precipice when the goat suddenly lunged forward, lowering its head still further.

Just as quickly, Encizo lowered himself over the side, seeking out the first available niches and protuberances for support. He’d make it a few yards down when the goat appeared at the edge of the precipice and stared down at him. Encizo stared back momentarily, then glanced over his shoulder, watching a handful of loose stones clatter down the side of the cliff before crashing against the hardpan below.

“Not good,” Encizo muttered. “Not good…”

“HELL, I FEEL like I’m trying to fly that damn supertank,” David McCarter groused.

“It’s no Cobra, that’s for sure,” Gary Manning conceded.

When the two men had landed at the airstrip two miles from where they’d jettisoned their teammates, they’d discovered that the two promised Cobra gunships had been deployed elsewhere. In their place, McCarter had found himself at the controls of a Sikorsky CH-54S Tarhe. Better known as the S-64 Skycrane, the Sikorsky was a forty-year-old hand-me-down that had first seen service in the early years of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In fact, beneath its sun-faded layers of paint, the Skycrane still bore the insignia of the U.S. 478th Aviation Company. One of the largest helicopters ever built, the S-64 was an unarmed workhorse, designed primarily for lifting of up to ten tons of cargo: anything from 155 mm howitzers to the 4536 kg long-fuse bombs used create instant LZs in the Vietcong heartland. In this case, the chopper’s tailboom was rigged with a service pod containing a surgical operations facility. Also riding in the pod were six well-armed members, not of the militia—which was on its way up into mountains by foot and Jeep—but rather Spain’s special forces. Weighed down with such a heavy load, the chopper lumbered slowly through the air.

Manning had his M-14 at the ready as he scouted the ridge-line of the mountain range they were flying over. In their haste to drop to their insertion point, none of the other Phoenix Force commandos had brought along communications gear, so McCarter and Manning had no idea what kind of situation they would find once they reached the meadow.

“I’m glad we’ve got some backup in the belly of this sucker,” McCarter said, “but I’d trade them in a second for some bloody rocket pods and a nose gun.”

“Maybe next time,” Manning said.

Soon they cleared the peak and were within view of the meadow. At first, the only signs of disturbance they could see were the slain dog and a couple bullet-riddled sheep lying in the tall grass. Then Manning noticed several bodies lying amid the rocks on the south side of the mountain they’d just flown over.

“Over there,” he told McCarter, pointing at the bodies.

The Briton nodded, banking the chopper and coming in from a closer look. “Looks like our guys have been busy.”

“Yeah,” Manning said, “but where are they?”

The Skycrane’s shadow drifted across the meadow as Manning continued to scout for other signs of activity. He was about to point out a few more bodies near the fallen chestnut when the young shepherd boy raced out into view from beneath the canopy of the other trees. He waved wildly as he stared up at the chopper.

“What the hell?” Manning murmured.

“Let’s check it out,” McCarter said, slowly easing the Sikorsky downward.