The Devil's Footprint (29 page)

The sergeant made two circumferences.
 
On the third sweep, her arm came out and pointed.

Kilmara looked where she indicated.
 
He could just see something — maybe — but mostly it looked like more
torn-up ground.
 
He pulled out the
personal radio he had been issued and pointed at the location.
 
"Sergeant Hawkeye got you on her third
iteration," he said.
 
"I can't
see a fucking thing."

"Encouraging," said Fitzduane's voice, "especially since
there are five of us and we are all around you."

Small pieces of ground started to move.

Four lined up about thirty meters away, and the fifth came up close.
 
It was not until the vehicles were less than
fifty meters away that they were noticeable at all, and even then it was their
movement more than shape that made them stand out from the landscape.

"Sexy," breathed Sergeant Hawkeye.
 
"What are they, sir?"

"Think of the Three Wise Monkeys," said Kilmara, "and I'll
tell you."

"See, hear, and say nothing," said Hawkeye, who had been
cleared to Level One.
 
"Deal,
sir."

Fitzduane came over.
 
"It's a
Swiss-made material," he said.
 
"Typically Swiss.
 
Bloody expensive, but the stuff seems to work.
 
Basically, within a limited range, it picks
up the color of the surrounding terrain and blends.
 
And it also cuts way down on your thermal
signature.
 
It is not general-purpose
camouflage, but if you know where you're going, it will do the job."

Hawkeye was examining the Guntrack close up.
 
"If you deploy your weapons fully, you
lose some of the camouflage effect on the top, sir," she said.
 
"You were cheating a bit."

Fitzduane smiled.
 
"We were
testing lying-up during the day, Sergeant," he said.
 
"But you've got a point."

Kilmara was amused.
 
"We
really came to see Dilger's Baby," he said.
 
"Surprise me."

Fitzduane pointed at what looked like a thick-walled pipe mounted on the
back of a Guntrack.
 
It had a crude,
almost agricultural look, but the sight on top looked state-of-the-art.
 
The whole thing, including the breech, was no
more than seven feet long.

"You start off with the A10 Thunderbolt tank-busting aircraft,"
he said.
 
"The
Warthog.
 
As you know, it's a
slow-flying, rather ugly aircraft built around a huge multibarreled Gatling-gun
that fires uranium-depleted rounds the size of milk bottles that go right
through armor.
 
Ground troops love it
because it can stay in the battle zone for hours.
 
Rumor has it the USAAF aren't too keen on it
because it's slow and lacks avionics and they are not too fond of CAS —
close-air support — in the first place.

"The upshot is that the A10 is being phased out.
 
That means that a load of their GAU-8A
Avenger guns are becoming available."

Kilmara made a gesture.
 
"But
that's a huge weapon," he said.
 
"It's — I don't know — twenty feet long and weighs as much as a
Cadillac."
 
He pointed at the weapon
on the Guntrack.
 
"I don't get the
connection."

"Think laterally," said Fitzduane agreeably.
 
"That's what a man called Bob Dilger
did.
 
I guess it helped that he had been
behind the A10 gun program in the first place.
 
Anyway, he had the idea of taking just
one
barrel out of the seven and a simple six-shot, clip-fed breech
and making a much simpler anti-armor weapon.
 
Now you've got Dilger's Baby.
 
It's the size you see, it weighs under a hundred pounds without mount,
and it's deadly accurate.
 
Ballistically
it is remarkable.
 
The projectile hits
1.9 kilometers a second, and up to two kilometers the trajectory is damn near
flat.
 
Armed with a laser sight it will
substantially outrange any Soviet tanks short of the very latest models.
 
Add Shanley's thermal gizmos and night
becomes day.
 
A single shot can plow
through five feet of reinforced concrete or make the Fourth of July out of
armor."

Kilmara was taking a folded checklist out of his map pocket.
 
"It has come to a pretty pass when a
cheap high-speed plastic box like the Guntrack can take out heavy armor."

Fitzduane smiled.
 
"I don't
know what it is, but there is something about a tank that makes people
want
to shoot at it.
 
Thanks to technology, now they can.
 
I expect people felt much the same about armored knights and bows and
arrows."

He indicated the front gunner's seat.

Kilmara climbed in.
 
He had ridden
in all three crew positions quite a few times before, but always on testing and
exercises.
 
The knowledge that they were
now preparing for a combat mission was a sharp reality check.

He put on the proffered helmet and plugged in the intercom.
 
The helmet fit.
 
A tag tied to the chin strap had listed his
name.
 
Hugo was like that.

The Guntrack purred almost silently into life.
 
Early models had sounded like sports cars and
had emitted the same exhilarating engine growls.
 
Good for the adrenaline and bad for the life
span.
 
Now Guntracks were very, very
quiet.
 
And even that, in Fitzduane's
opinion, was too noisy.
 
Sound tended to
travel at night, and that was when special-operations people, like vampires,
mostly functioned best also.
 
The idea
was not to be seen — or heard.

Ten minutes later, Kilmara had gotten the point.
 
The Guntrack had air brakes and
hydraulics.
 
They hissed to a halt.

Kilmara was contemplative.
 
It had
been a wild ride and the targets had snapped up without warning.

From exhilaration to absolute threat in maybe a tenth of a second.
 
Maybe less.

"It's — it's different," he said.

Fitzduane looked across.
 
It had
only been minutes, but his face was strained from concentration and when he
took off the helmet his hair was matted with sweat.
 
"We practiced in
Ireland
amidst
the rocks and rain and mud," he said.
 
"Hard to get up serious speed.
 
And there was not the same urgency.
 
This terrain is hot and dry and will soon be
the real thing.
 
That adds a certain
dimension.
 
It is more like flying a
fighter in World War Two.
 
It's fast and
you don't too often have a second chance.
 
And you end up drained and exhausted and dying for a pint of beer."

"Or dead," said Kilmara exhaustedly.
 
"Probably from a heart
attack."
 
He climbed out of
the Guntrack unsteadily.

Sergeant Hawkins was staring, fascinated.
 
There was a pronounced delay, and then her hand snapped up in a
salute.
 
Kilmara was a general and he had
reappeared.
 
Which was
something of a surprise.

The whole thing had been so incredibly fast and yet had gone on for so
long.
 
Could people really maneuver and
fight this way?
 
It was a hell of a thing
to see.

She snapped her hand down and glanced discreetly at her watch.
 
Only ten fucking minutes!
 
Unreal!

"You're still too vulnerable from the air," said Kilmara.
 
"You've got Stingers, and they're fine
if you are static, but if you're on the move and get strafed you want something
heavier than the 5.56mm Ultimaxs you've mounted that will really persuade a
pilot to keep his distance if he doesn't want to fly right into a buzz
saw.
 
My suggestion is that you mount a
GECAL .50 as the standoff weapon on at least one Guntrack.
 
Use the three-barrel version and you can get
off two-thousand rounds an minute if you're feeling sociable."

Fitzduane's eyebrows had both risen.
 
A GECAL .50 was a Gatling gun designed originally for aircraft use.
 
He did not doubt its effectiveness but was
far from sure it could be mounted on a Guntrack.
 
"Surely, it would be too heavy," he
said.

"Well under a hundred pounds," said Kilmara.
 
"As to ammunition, you will have to work
that out.
 
The problem with GECALs is
keeping them fed.
 
But you have that NATO
pallet on the back of each Guntrack, and we put in load-carrying capacity for a
reason."

"I'll look at it," said Fitzduane.
 
"Subject to
time."

There really was not much time.
 
He
was operating on the minimum time necessary to do the job right the first time.

He had allowed three weeks.
 
Twenty-one days to plan, assemble equipment, recruit, train, and
rehearse to such a level of perfection that when they hit they would not fail.

They could not fail
.
 
It was far too long to his mind, but there
was so much to be done and he knew that for the duration of this mission his
head must rule his heart.
 
Every
emotional feeling made him want to throw together an ad hoc mission and go
storming in by helicopter, but all his experience dictated that such an
approach had a high chance of failure.
 
That was exactly what the opposition would expect and had taken
precautions against.
 
He had to find
another way, even if it took longer.

He felt he was letting Kathleen down.

It was tearing him apart.

Surprisingly little showed.

Kilmara swung back into the Humvee.

Sergeant Hawkeye looked across at him.
 
He had expected the inquiry.
 
Fitzduane seemed to have that effect.
 
Women almost always did ask about him, even when it was a need-to-know
operation and such a question was most decidedly out of line.

"Who was that man, sir?" she said.
 
"The colonel?
 
The one you called Hugo?"

"The rules say
its
none of your business,
Sergeant," said Kilmara.

"I know, sir," said Hawkeye quietly.
 
"But I don't often see men like
that.
 
He seemed exceptional and maybe a
little sad.
 
Is that the way it is,
sir?"

"He was my pupil once and he is my friend now, and I guess that is
the way it is," said Kilmara heavily.
 
"Life has a habit of screwing up the best-laid plans."

"Amen to that," said the sergeant fervently, and Kilmara looked
at her and wondered.

Then the Humvee's suspension cut in and the General had more immediate
and painful concerns on his mind.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It was late when Fitzduane and Kilmara got back from the Aberdeen Proving
Grounds to the apartment in
Arlington
.

Fitzduane made Kilmara an Irish coffee.
 
He took his black and straight.
 
Kilmara sprawled with relief in one of the armchairs.
 
Fitzduane sat on the edge of his chair
nursing his coffee mug.
 
It was near
midnight.

"Still no news?" inquired Kilmara cautiously but with the
privilege of an old friend.

He had delayed asking earlier.
 
Fitzduane was wound tight as a drum but seemed to be controlling himself
by shutting down unnecessary thoughts of Kathleen.
 
He rarely mentioned her name and was focused
almost coldly on the mission.
 
Kilmara
could almost feel the tension building up day by day, but he knew from
experience that Fitzduane had the stamina to stay in control as long as was
necessary.
 
Eventually there would be a
catharsis, an explosion of pent-up feeling.

Right now the mask of normality was down.
 
It was almost convincing.

Fitzduane had made some calls before sitting.
 
Since the kidnapping there had been no word
of Kathleen at all.
 
No messages, no
demands for ransom, nothing.

Kathleen had vanished without a trace, yet Fitzduane proceeded as if he
knew with absolute certainty that she was in
Mexico
.
 
He was running entirely on instinct.
 
He was probably right, Kilmara
reflected.
 
He had seen Hugo like this on
a number of occasions before, and it was uncanny how often the man's feelings
had proved right.