Sabotage (7 page)

"Are we hanging around here until nightfall?" Karl asked.

"Don't be a stubborn ass,” Vince demanded, "If you're hurt just tell me, okay?"

The two men locked eyes. Karl was the first to look away. "I'm fine, okay?"

"No you're not," Vince pressed. "Unless you tried to make out with a rock last night, something's wrong."

"I'm not hurt, okay. It's not that."

"Then what is it, dammit? You know how it works, Karl, there is no
I
in us. We work as a team. If you're hurt, you need to tell me."

"I'm not hurt, okay?"

Vince could tell by his friend's tone that he was telling the truth. Then he understood, and his heart sank. “How long have you known?" Vince coaxed.

He half expected Karl not to answer, but he did. "Seven, maybe eight months."

"And how long did they tell you you've got?"

"Seven, maybe eight months," Karl repeated.

"And there's no chance?" Karl shook his head. "So what was all that nonsense about getting that place, starting the training company?”

"It wasn't nonsense, okay?
Goddammit, Vince
. Hell, we've had some good adventures, haven't we? I thought we might have one more. I thought I might beat this thing."

"You can't beat this kind of thing by yourself," Vince said. "Have you tried to get help? Have they offered you any treatment options?"

"Of course they have, but it's all crap. The first doctor told me it was terminal. I got a second opinion and the doctor didn't say the same thing but I could see it in his eyes. He told me outright that I was dying, and a hundred million dollars couldn't save my ass. So there it is. You want to give me shit for that, you go ahead. But you can't blame me for having a dream—for thinking that maybe you and me could build something good—so that maybe we could enjoy something we deserved. So just leave me alone, okay? I'll get through this my own way."

They were both silent now. Vince was trying to digest the news that his very best friend was going to die. It was different when you knew death was a possibility like jumping from a plane or breaching a house packed with bad guys. You knew you had each other’s backs, but this was different. Hell, most of their careers they had chosen to gamble with their lives in order to protect others. There was nothing Vince could do or say. He knew at the very core of his being, if he could assume Karl’s fate, he would do so in a heartbeat. And he knew that Karl would do the same for him, but that was impossible.

So he said the only thing he could think of, "Tell me more about that place with the red roof. How good of a deal did you say we could get?"

Karl grinned and he was about to reply when they heard the deathly familiar sounds thudding in the distance followed by mortar rounds raining down all around them.

Chapter 9

One after another the rounds came in. From habit, Vince began to count the time between shots. They were regular, which meant it wasn't some hillbilly troop of rebels just lobbing rounds their way. There was somebody skilled behind those guns, but what really worried him was their accuracy. From the first shot they'd been almost dead-on—well, if they'd been dead-on, they'd be dead. There had been no direct hit yet, but Vince felt that it was only a matter of time. They were getting pelted by jagged rocks, and one of those could just as easily take them out.

"We need to go find the kid and his granddad," Karl was saying. The sickness that had been stamped on his features mere moments before had been erased and the warrior had returned. It was as if some unforeseen cosmic force had tapped a finger on his head and said, "
You will be a fighter once again
," and the familiar steely-eyed gaze Vince had seen so many times before was back.

He could feel his own heartbeat elevate. Nothing crazy; he'd been under fire before. He took the mortar attack as a given, not really worried about why it was happening. He was more concerned about how they would get themselves out of it.

"I'll go check on them," Vince said.

Christian and his grandfather were about twenty feet away in another depression. They couldn't all huddle in the same hole, so they'd decided to split up, but they were gone from the spot where Vince and Karl had left them. He'd half expected to find them in the bottom of a crater from a mortar, but the hole was intact.

He ran back to Karl.

"They're gone; I'm not sure where they went.”

"Do you think they ratted us out?"

"What do you mean?" Vince asked.

"Do you think they gave us up to the bad guys?"

That thought hadn't even crossed Vince's mind, but anything was possible. The coincidence of rounds on target was too demanding to ignore. Maybe Christian had lied; maybe they'd decided that it was safer to give the Americans up than risk their lives. Now that Vince thought about it, the story
did
seem too perfect. But no, he had to believe that the two men hadn't lied to them. For all intents and purposes, Christian was an American. Vince hadn't smelled a whiff of that fanatical air that he had gotten from a lot of kids Christian's age—the ones that kissed their mothers
goodbye only to blow themselves up in the middle of an Israeli bus.

"No," Vince said. "It couldn't have been them. Maybe it was something else. Maybe they had—"

Karl cut him off and pointed up in the sky and said, "Look."

Vince looked up. There it was, unmistakable and unbelievable, some type of helicopter drone hovering in the sky. It was providing whoever was manning it a perfect view of the area. Vince cursed himself for not taking the AK-47 from Christian, but then his mind turned down a darker path.

The kid had said that whoever was after them was some ragtag bunch of locals, but he'd never heard of any kind of rebels or militias using homemade drones on a regular basis. Besides, the level of competency it took to fly a drone in conjunction with pinpoint accuracy of mortar fire suggested someone outside the Third World was heading the attack. He immediately ruled out the Americans. There's no way they'd be helping to hunt down the two Delta operators.

It could be that the Somalis or maybe the Eritreans had sent over some crack team to hunt them down. Money and prestige had a way of incentivizing such incursions. But why?

There was only one answer that made sense, and that filled Vince with the first hint of dread since their plane had gone down. It had to be the Chinese. They had to be the ones helping whoever was behind those mortars. They had the technology and the expertise, and that made Vince realize that their mission wasn't over. It was no longer an escape and evasion anymore. They had to determine, for sure this time, whether the Chinese were involved. They'd seen all the signs and monitored the construction crews, but to provide proof the Chinese were behind some Djibouti paramilitary force, that was something else entirely.

"We have to go find those mortars," Vince said. "Do you think you can make it?"

Karl's set expression was all the answer he needed. Dying or not, Karl was still a warrior, and he would never say quit, ever. One problem: they weren't going anywhere with that drone sitting up watching their actions. What they needed was a bit of luck, like that rainstorm the first day. Vince wasn't alone in thinking that luck was that special ingredient you could never expect, but when it came along, it always shone just as brightly as prior preparation. While no freak rainstorm showed up, maybe the next best thing did.

Over the booms of the landing mortars, Vince suddenly heard gunfire, but it wasn't the steady staccato of an automatic fire aimed their way. It was one shot after another—steady, precise, timed—and the next chance Vince had to look up to the sky for the drone, he could've sworn he saw a spark flare on its dark hull. It was a long shot with a rifle, but still doable. He and Karl probably could've taken it out with a shot or two depending on the thing's armament and movement. There was only one explanation for the gunshots. Vince knew they came from an AK-47; it had to be Christian.

Karl had obviously arrived at the same conclusion because he said, "Come on, let's go find the kid."

The steady fire helped them zero in as they bounded from crater to crater, rock to rock, trying to keep their path as erratic as possible while still running toward the sound of the gun.

"Come on kid," Vince said under his breath, hoping that Christian would take the drone down before the drone operator figured out where the gunfire was coming from and shifted the camera from them to the boy and his grandfather.

The silent request was answered, and Vince saw the drone tilt, first in a plume of smoke, and then it veered hard. The operator was obviously trying to get it back to whatever base they had, but it was no use. Another crack of gunfire and the drone was coming down, useless to whoever was behind it. The mortar fire fell off behind them now that the enemy's eye in the sky was gone, and for the first time in minutes Vince could breathe a little bit easier.

He thought he had Christian's location to the mark. He was right; a couple more minutes of stealthily heading that way, they'd found him. He and his grandfather looked unharmed. A little dirty, but no worse for the wear. Christian wore a broad smile, his pearly white teeth a stark contrast to his dark skin.

"Did you see that shot?" he asked, but then his smile faded. He was staring at Karl. "Are you okay? Did you get hit?" Christian asked.

Karl shook his head and coughed once into his hand. Vince saw him wipe it on the back of his trousers. "I'm fine kid. Good shooting there. You really saved our asses."

Christian smiled again and Vince couldn't help but think how strange it was to see a teenager beaming while mortar rounds were still firing in the distance. He could make an excellent shooter one day. Calm under pressure. Vince filed that thought away for another day. If they ever got out of this mess, he'd make sure that Christian and his grandfather were well taken care of for their valiance.

"We need to find those mortar tubes," Vince said. "How well do you guys know the area?"

Christian turned to his grandfather and asked a question in their native tongue. They had a brief conversation and then Christian turned back to Vince.

"My grandfather says there's a dry creek bed not far from here. It runs up to some high ground where he thinks perhaps they've set up the mortar tubes."

"Can they see us if we head in that direction?”

The grandfather shook his head and motioned at the sand low to the ground with his hand. Vince understood that if they stayed low, they could probably stay concealed.

"Alright, we'll lead the way. Do you mind if I borrow that?" Vince asked, pointing to the weapon in Christian's hands.

Christian gave it to him without a word and he then pulled three more full magazines out of his backpack, handing them over to Vince.

"I'd like that back when we're done, if that's okay," Christian said.

Karl chuckled. "Kid, when we get out of this thing I'll buy you a whole armory of these."

It took them at least thirty minutes to get as close to the enemy position as they dared. The whole time Vince kept glancing at the sky, half expecting a fleet of drones to come out searching for their lost companion. But no more little birds showed themselves, even though there was a possibility that some predator-like unmanned aircraft could be high in the air, of course that took special flight clearances. Vince didn't think even the Chinese could get away with that.

There was one five-minute stretch when all sound stopped, the mortar tubes taking a break from their pounding, but then they resumed. The four travelers debated stopping as the first rounds went downrange, but they didn't rain down on Vince and the others. The mortar fire was focused at where they'd been hiding earlier that morning, so while the enemy was focused on their old location, Vince was on point, creeping closer to the enemy.

Then he saw them.

The four mortar tubes were arranged in a neat line on the far side of a small hill. There were two battered Toyota pickup trucks behind them, and a gaggle of fifteen or so men lounging about. There was no conformity to their uniforms as far as he could see, but as he watched he saw precise movements by the mortar gunners, loading in unison and calling out shots. There were neat stacks of rounds behind them that an ammo carrier could keep bringing to each gun.

Vince watched it all for a minute, trying to pinpoint the flow of the operation. It really had the laidback feel of a day on the gun range, and if he hadn't been on the receiving end of those rounds and had just walked up on the scene, he might've assumed that's exactly what it was.

Vince Sweeney had no problem with killing these men. The odds of this being some random attack were high if not extreme, and while he liked their odds, especially considering the fact that there were no guards posted and most of the men behind the tubes had laid their weapons on the ground. Vince was still wary about leading his four-man band up against twenty or more if there were some he couldn’t see.

In the end it wasn't Vince or even Karl who made the decision. It was Christian's grandfather, who hopped out of the creek bed and marched purposefully toward the enemy emplacement.

"What's he doing?" Karl hissed.