The Devil's Footprint (55 page)

Shadow Two, the strongpoint commanding the two valleys below them now
secure, looked south at the new arrivals.
 
A quick estimate suggested a battalion-size force.

No matter how you looked at it, it was not a visit from the tooth fairy.

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The Barracks,
The
Devil's Footprint,

Tecuno
,
Mexico

Rheiman made sure the small window was covered and then lit the six
candles he had brought.
 
He liked to look
at her by candlelight, and he had made the occasions something of a ritual.

It was his eighth visit, she thought.
 
Her mental makeup, she was discovering, was tougher than she would ever
have believed.

Rheiman had undressed her after his last visit, and as her soiled
clothing was removed she had expected the inevitable to follow.
 
There was not much she could do to
resist.
 
A chained victim was every
rapist's dream.
 
But he had not raped
her.
 
Instead, he washed her and tended
to her cuts and bruises and gave her water and extra food and vitamin pills and
antibiotics.
 
He was saving her life.

The Voice and the other terrorists thought he was screwing her every time
he visited, but all he actually wanted to do was undress her and look at her by
candlelight and talk.

And his talk was not sexual.
 
He
talked of his creation and the destruction it would wreak and the fame it would
bring.
 
He talked of the missile it would
carry and the lethal nerve agent it would carry.
 
He digressed into technicalities and
explained at length why hydrogen was a superior propellant to anything Bull had
ever thought up.

It came to Kathleen with some force that her plight was of little
significance in the scheme of things.
 
The carnage that Rheiman's warped mind threatened to let loose must be
stopped.

He talked on, and Kathleen encouraged him.
 
He held her hand.

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Chifune prepared to enter Kathleen's door.

Freeman turned the handle and flung it open.
 
There seemed to be candles everywhere, and
she could see a naked figure chained to the wall.

"FRIENDS, KATHLEEN!" she shouted.

Kathleen!
 
It did not look like her at first.
 
The contrast between the beautiful
full-bodied woman she had met in
Ireland
and this abused figure was
truly shocking.

Bile rose in her throat.

She took in another figure, a European in desert khakis, and was within a
tenth of a second of shooting him when Kathleen screamed.

"NO!
 
NO!
 
DON'T KILL HIM.
 
WE NEED HIM."

Chifune grunted, and smashed Rheiman against the wall.

She spun him around and tied his wrists with plasticuffs.
 
She had a great desire to put a burst through
his head, but she heard Kathleen's plea, and if she, who had been through all
this, wanted the bastard kept alive there had to be a good reason.

There had better be, or she would kill him where he stood.

Freeman removed the hostage's blindfold, then took the bolt cutters from
a belt pouch and cut through the chains.
 
Kathleen!
 
It was definitely her.
 
She was crying and gesturing toward the man
in khaki.
 
"You mustn't kill
him.
 
We need him.
 
He knows."

Freeman wrapped her clothes around her and then a bulletproof vest.
 
"Hugo is outside," he said.
 
"We're taking you home."
 
He indicated Rheiman.
 
"What about this fuck?
 
Friend or enemy?"

Kathleen looked at him, her hands rubbing her eyes.
 
"He's one of them," she said,
"but we
must
take him.
 
He knows too much."

"Roger that," said Freeman.
 
He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.
 
He was used to exercising with a
hundred-and-fifty-pound pack.
 
She felt
disturbingly light.

"Shadow One," said Chifune.
 
"Yaibo barracks clear and we have Kathleen.
 
She's okay.
 
We have a prisoner.
 
Leaving now."

"Roger that, Shadow
Two
," said
Fitzduane.
 
He felt light-headed with
relief at the news, but fought to keep his mind focused.
 
"Move it fucking fast.
 
We have visitors coming up the perimeter road
from the southern.
 
ETA
less than five minutes."

A prisoner?
 
There were to be
no
prisoners.
 
Chifune knew that as well as
anyone, so there had to be a reason.

"Shadow Four," said the Brick.
 
He was inside the supergun bunker working on the firing mechanism, aided
by Hayden, while Sergeant Oga kept watch outside.
 
The shattered bodies of the Yaibo guards lay
where they had fallen.
 
The work was demanding.
 
"We are in, but we need a minimum seven
to ten minutes more — I repeat, seven to ten."

Fitzduane made a quick assessment.

He currently had four teams inside the camps.
 
Two had neutralized the Yaibo barracks and
looked like they would get out in time, but the remaining two units would be
cut off when the approaching column arrived.

It would occupy the road end to end, from the main camp to way beyond the
supergun valley.
 
It was dark, and he
considered having them infiltrate the column, but that would mean leaving the
Guntracks, and they still had to make the pickup point forty kilometers
away.
 
The logic was simple and the
outcome would be bloody, but there was very little choice.

The lights flickered as the generator in the main camp coughed and then
died again.
 
Suddenly it was dark.
 
Chifune and the five other members of her
assault group ran for the main gates and then across the perimeter road to
their waiting Guntracks.

"I'm going to thin out the approaching column," said
Fitzduane.
 
"Heavy shit for the next
ten minutes and then we all bug out for the emergency RV.
 
Acknowledge."

The four teams acknowledged in numerical order.

"Go!
 
Go!
 
Go!" said Fitzduane.
 
"Calvin, where the
fuck are you?"

There was no reply.

Fitzduane's Shadow One shot forward toward the approaching column.
 
The Guntrack was maneuvering through the low
hills beside the perimeter road, travelling a roughly parallel route.

In a little over a minute they would be side by side, separated by little
more than a hundred meters but traveling in opposite directions.
 
It was, Fitzduane reflected briefly as he
roared toward the T55 tank that headed the column, almost a modern version of
medieval jousting, except that only one side knew he had an enemy to deal
with.
 
The Guntracks had not been
detected.

This was not a joust.
 
It was
war.
 
It was the business of
killing.
 
Fair play did not come into it.

Fitzduane spoke into his microphone on the internal net, and Steve Kent
slewed to a halt and crept into a firing position shielded by a rocky outcrop.

Lee Cochrane readied
the .50 GECAL heavy machine gun
.

Fitzduane brought his RAW up to the point of aim.

A T55 tank looked disconcertingly formidable to rifle-equipped infantry
and was strongly armored at the front, but it was vulnerable from the side and
at the rear engine compartment.
 
And
Shadow One would be firing down, which would help.
 
Tanks were thinly armored at the top.
 
It was a matter of keeping the weight
down.
 
Maximum armor everywhere had the
same effect as on a knight of old.
 
The
end result was unwieldy and virtually too heavy to move.

The T55 ground tank passed them, treads squealing in protest.
 
This was a tank that had been six months on
routine patrols and needed tender loving care from the maintenance shop.
 
It did not get it.
 
A split second after the RAW smashed into its
engine compartment it ignited, flames jetting into the darkness.

Fitzduane fitted another RAW and fired at the next vehicle, an armored
personnel carrier.
 
The vehicle exploded.

Troop-laden trucks following the two lead vehicles braked to avoid
crashing into the burning wrecks, and several crashed into each other.
 
Soldiers poured out of the backs of the
trucks, and it was into this chaos that the rotating-barreled .50 GECAL began
to fire.

Seconds afterward, Shadow Four leapfrogged Fitzduane and headed down to
the end of the column, guns blazing and extending the slaughter.
 
Shortly afterward, the Brick aimed his
Dilger's Baby at the vehicle bringing up the rear.

There was an earsplitting crack and a tongue of flame, and the
uranium-depleted projectile smashed through the side of the tank and ignited
the ammunition inside.
 
The whole tank
blew and the turret sailed into the air and turned, landing upside down.

"Reverse!
 
Move fifty," said
Fitzduane, and Steve Kent shot Shadow One backward and moved to a fresh firing
position fifty meters away.

And so it continued.
 
Fire and movement.
 
Shoot and maneuver.
 
And using night-vision equipment under cover of darkness so that
the Guntracks were almost never seen.

Take every advantage.

The engagement was brutal, and it took little time before most of the
vehicles in the convoy were ablaze.
 
Cochrane raked the carnage one more time and the two vehicles sped away
to the rendezvous point.
 
The survivors
were convinced they had been hit by at least a battalion-size force.

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Al Lonsdale's team high in the blockhouse and commanding both valleys and
the perimeter road below entered the fray.

When the order came to shoot up the main camp, he sent Dana down to the
Guntrack while he and Shanley stayed on the blockhouse roof to use the weapons
available.
 
Team Rapier had massive
firepower, but ammunition was limited and it made sense to use what the other
side was kind enough to provide.
 
They
appeared to have been generous.
 
Apart
from the 12.7mm heavy machine gun, there was an 82mm mortar and substantial
stocks of ammunition.

Dana maneuvered the Guntrack into firing position and then went back to
man the 40mm grenade launcher.
 
Below
them they could see sudden frantic action as the tented lines heard the sound
of the perimeter guard column being shot up.
 
A klaxon sounded.
 
Tank crew ran
toward their vehicles.
 
Weapons teams
sped toward mortar pits.
 
Other troops
spilled out of their tents while officers shouted and tried to impose some
order.

Al Lonsdale's first mortar bomb exploded in the middle of the tented
lines at almost the same time as Dana and Shanley opened fire.

Armored personnel carriers ignited and their crews ran from them into the
maelstrom as 40mm grenades cut through their thin armor.
 
Dana was firing a cocktail of armor-piercing,
high explosive, and fléchettes in three-round bursts at a cyclical rate of 350
rounds a minute.

In the confined space of the camp, the destruction was appalling.
 
Each single high-explosive grenade had a kill
radius of five meters.
 
It was
intensified by the green tracer from Shanley's heavy machine gun.

Further firepower came from Guntracks firing from the low hills opposite
the main entrance outside the camp.
 
RAW
projectiles were followed by streams of armor-piercing Ultimax fire and the
earsplitting crack of Dilger's Baby.

The tank guarding the main entrance gate burst into flame.
 
Another T55 had its track blown off and spun
slow round in circles until a depleted uranium shell blew its turret off.
 
The colonel commanding the armored battalion
tried to make a run for his armored command vehicle but was eviscerated by a
Dilger round as he was climbing in.
 
The
APC ignited and commander and vehicle were burned together.

Laser sights, night-vision equipment, and high-magnification optics not
only had vastly increased the first hit probability of Team Rapier's weapons
but also, at such close ranges, made the business of killing disturbingly
personal.