Don Pendleton - Assassin's Tripwire

“So somebody knew about the meet,” Bolan said. “Which means our operation may be compromised before it begins.”

“Someone in the network, or with access to it, intercepted coordinates,” Yenni said. “These men were left to conceal themselves beneath the dirt. They did not know what was coming. Do you think they would have worn oxygen masks and let the sand fleas bite them for just one American?” She held up the mask the nearest corpse had worn on a rubber cord around his neck.

Bolan had to admit that she had a point, but he was still worried about the implications. There was no telling where the leak came from. The entire process was potentially porous, from Hahmir’s government—which knew that a force of some kind was to be inserted by the United States to track the missing weapons—all the way down to boots on the soil.

“Your move, then,” he told her. “I’m counting on you.”

“And I am counting on the Americans. I’ll help you to free Syria. Whether that happens now or twenty years from now does not matter. What matters is that the work is done.”

“We’ll need to bury these men,” Bolan said.

“No,” Yenni replied. “There is no time. There are frequent patrols. The gunfire will have attracted one of these.”

“Fafniyal’s people?”

“Yes,” she said. “Leave them. I will take their magazines.” She went from soldier to soldier, stripping the bodies of ammunition, adding it to her gear. She also reloaded the little Krinkov.

“Are we on foot?” Bolan asked.

“I have a truck half a kilometer east, under a camouflage net.”

Bolan patted down his web gear. The little ruggedized tablet was right where it should be. He used it to access a real-time topographical overlay of their position against a satellite map of the area. The encrypted tablet also contained the coordinates of the weapons caches. He noted the position of several icons on the screen and read through the captions.

“We should get moving to the closest target site,” he told Yenni. “Before…” He let his words trail off. He could hear something on the night wind.

“Cooper,” Yenni said. “Do you hear that?”

“Trucks.”

“It is a Fafniyal patrol. We must go quickly.”

“That’s not all,” Bolan said. “I hear a helicopter.”

“Not merely a helicopter. It is a gunship. The Wolf makes use of many Soviet surplus Hind aircraft.”

“Not good,” Bolan said. “But I think I have a plan.”

“What is your plan, Cooper?”

“We run like hell.”

Bolan and Yenni ran east, through the scrub and rocks, toward a defile Bolan had spotted on the topographical map.

“Where are we going?” Yenni asked. She didn’t seem winded at all, even sprinting alongside him, working harder to keep up with his long strides.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Bolan said, casting a wary glance over his shoulder. “Slow down. Pretty soon we’re going to—”

“You are very slow. You should run faster.”

“That’s me,” he replied, not breaking stride. “Slow as molasses.” He eased the Beretta 93R from its holster, checked the selector and looked behind him once more. Somewhere high above, the whirring of the enemy helicopter was louder. He couldn’t see the Hind, if Yenni was correct. He hoped she wasn’t.

Yenni surged ahead of him by a pace, then three. He opened his mouth to warn her.

She disappeared.

Bolan dropped in behind her. The almost invisible hole she’d fallen into was nearly as deep as he was tall. He landed heavily on his combat boots, crouching in the dirt. He couldn’t see her in the darkness.

“I’m all right,” she said without prompting. “You could have warned me.”

“You could have waited,” he said.

The “hole” extended in either direction in a straight line. It was five feet wide and five feet deep. In the darkness, against the sky above, Bolan could see Yenni moving to one knee.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Leftovers,” he said. “Satellite imaging says these trenches crisscross the area for miles. Immediately after the Arab Spring unrest, when civil war first broke out, the network was dug out by the first rebel forces. From the tactical reports we received—”

“We?” Yenni asked.

“From the reports my government received,” Bolan said, ignoring her attempt to pry, “that group of rebels was wiped out before they got a chance to fall back to their trenches. Outdated tactics, used in the wrong context. There’s a right way and a wrong way to make war.”

“And so the trenches remained.”

“Yes.” Bolan took out his tablet and brought up the overlaid map grid of their location. “The last time this area was imaged from space, the leading strip of trench went on for several hundred yards. There are cross trenches branching off along its length. The entire area has been dug out.”

“We must hurry, Cooper,” Yenni said. The chopper was almost on top of them now.

“Do you have an e-tool in your pack?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding confused. “Why would you—”

“Give it to me,” Bolan said. “And your RPG. And then run that way,” he told her, pointing.

She handed over the folding entrenching tool and unslung the RPG tube. “I have only one round,” she said.

“It will have to be enough.” Bolan took the rocket-propelled grenade from her and slung the tube over his shoulder, jamming the folding e-tool as far as he could into the outer slash pocket of his jacket. He tucked the RPG round inside the coat, making the garment sag heavily. “I’m heading in the opposite direction,” he said. “Draw them off me, but don’t do too good a job. When I open up on them I want that chopper coming at me.”

“You’ll be killed.”

“Sooner or later,” Bolan said, “we all are. Now scram.”

Yenni looked as if she might ask a question, but instead she closed her mouth, turned and ran without another word. Bolan did the same, fleeing through the rough-hewn trench, increasing the distance between them. The folding e-tool and the rocket-propelled grenade battered his flanks as his coat moved against his body.

The helicopter roared past.

He looked up just in time to see the chopper cut through the rectangle of sky delineated by the trench walls. He caught only a glimpse, but there was no mistaking that silhouette. He’d seen it many times before.

It was definitely a Mil Mi-24, designated the Hind by NATO. Introduced in the early seventies by the Soviets, the Hind was called the “flying tank.” With twin turboshaft engines driving a midmounted five-blade rotor, not to mention a pair of stub wings that served as three-station weapon hardpoints, the flying beast could carry a Gryazev-Shipunov twin-barreled autocannon, AT-2 “Swatter” antitank missiles, and a rocket pod or pods bearing S-8 rockets.

He pressed himself against the wall of the trench. Voices were coming closer, and the helicopter’s buzzing was receding. Sound echoed strangely inside the old trench network, but as near as Bolan could tell, that meant the chopper was circling around the target site as the ground troops closed in.

Mack Bolan stopped running. He cocked his head to one side.

A man fell into the trench at his feet.

Bolan had time to step back before two more enemy soldiers, both wearing the black armbands of the Wolf, tumbled into the trench. The enemy gunners had obviously been running in pursuit and encountered the trench network as abruptly as Yenni had. Bolan didn’t wait for them to recover, didn’t wait for them to shout a warning. He simply swept the suppressor-equipped barrel of his Beretta across the fallen, scrambling men and stroked the trigger repeatedly.