* * *
They drove out of Ghazni thankful the blizzard had eased. Conditions on the road were still treacherous, but it meant they could see most of the obstacles before they actually ran into them. He was working out how much start Massoud had on them. An hour, it probably wasn't any more. Although an hour in the agile Unimog could take them a long way. Driving the GAZ, it may be impossible to catch up with them.
Greg was driving like a crazy man, and with nothing else to do, he picked the M-60 from the back seat. With the familiar movements he'd done so many times before, he removed the belt, checked the action, and loaded a new belt. He was fastidious about his weapons, a throwback to his military training. Then he rested the heavy weapon on his knees and checked each Desert Eagle in turn. He adjusted the position of the M-60 and nudged Greg in the ribs, causing the vehicle to swerve.
He darted him a savage glance. "Be careful with that thing. It's not easy driving with a lump of iron slamming into your body. You'll have us off the road."
"This Russian crap wouldn't be on the road in any civilized country."
"Yob tvoyu mat. Besides, this isn't a civilized country."
They were leaving the town behind, and ahead of them, he could see a vehicle stopped on the road. A large vehicle painted white, apart from the red cross painted on the back door.
"The Unimog, it's stopped dead ahead of us. Maybe they broke down?"
Greg eased off the gas and slowed three hundred meters before they reached the Unimog. It was all that saved them. As they stared at the NATO ambulance, a trail of smoke streaked out from the rear door.
"RPG!" It was all Stoner had time to shout. Any possibility of taking evasive action or leaping out of the vehicle was out of the question. They only had split seconds in which to act, and they were out of split seconds. The shooter had miscalculated. In his haste, he'd fired before they reached the two hundred meter mark. The rocket exploded several hundred meters across the fields to the side of them, sending up clouds of snow.
Greg drove on for a few more meters until Stoner shouted, "Get off the road! Do it now, or we're dead."
The shooter would already be reloading, and they had scant seconds before he tried again. He wasn't likely to repeat the same mistake. Greg found a narrow track at the side of the road and swerved the GAZ onto it. A rise in the ground protected them, and they were quickly out of sight of the Unimog. Stoner wondered who was taking potshots at them with the shoulder-launched missile.
Massoud, it has to be!
He looked at Greg. "We should be okay here. He can't see us. What do we…"
A hail of machine-gun bullets hammered into the metal bodywork. Stoner was already rolling out through the door and finding cover. Greg followed him out the other side a moment later, only remembering at the last moment to grab his Dragunov. He was barely in time. Another long burst of bullets smashed into the GAZ, and the gunner kept his finger on the trigger until the mechanism clicked on empty. The bullets reduced the jeep to a wreck, and he knew it would never run again. He could see scores of holes in the bodywork, oil dripped onto the road where more bullets had smashed the engine block, and the radiator blew steam from a dozen holes.
He heard Stoner shout, "Move away from the vehicle. Get over here while he's reloading."
Greg joined him. He was crouching out of sight in a shallow, snow-filled trench and covering his clothing in snow. He told Greg to do the same to reduce his target profile.
"What next?" he asked, as he put down the Dragunov and began to plaster himself with wet snow, "The way I see it, whichever way we move, they'll get us. We go for the machine gun, and the guy in the Unimog with the RPG hits us. We go for the machine gun, and the RPG gets us."
"That's Massoud," Stoner replied absently, "It must be."
"Yeah, whatever. They destroyed the GAZ, so it seems to me we'll have to snake away out of sight and hike back to Ghazni. It's time to take a step back. Maybe there'll be another way we can get him."
"He goes down now. Pick up the rifle and cover me while I go for the machine gun."
"What…"
He'd already left. He slid through the snow, following tiny creases in the ground to stay below the direct line of fire of the gunner. At first it worked, but then the creases ran out, and he had no choice but to traverse a flat piece of ground. There was only one way to do it. Out in the open. He jumped to his feet and ran, cursing the weight of the M-60. The gunner opposite was too slow. It was several seconds before the first burst chewed up the ground several meters in front of him. He threw himself sideways as bullets split the air where he'd been a second before. He hugged the ground and snaked sideways toward the nearest cover. He'd seen the remains of another of the ancient stonewalls that crisscrossed the country. It was scarcely enough to protect him from the machine gun bullets, with large gaps where the stonework had decayed over the centuries. On the other hand, there was nothing else.
He followed the wall, creeping nearer and nearer to the gun. Greg opened up, and the distinctive whip crack of the Dragunov was loud in the still winter morning, echoing around the broad valley as he pumped shell after shell at the machine gunner. There were no screams, no shouts of agony, and it looked like he'd missed the target, although the shots acted as an irritant. The gunner made the fatal mistake of switching his aim from the man coming at him. Instead, he targeted the sniper further away who was popping bullets all around him and his loader.
Stoner crawled on, keeping low and dragging the M-60. Finally, he came to the road. The machine gun was only twenty meters away, yet to reach it he'd have to run across the highway in plain sight of both the gunner and Massoud in the Unimog. Last time he checked, an RPG rocket was lethal against human flesh. Still, he had little choice. There was only one card to play. Speed. The man operating the machine gun had already shown himself to be inexperienced. It wasn't an accusation he could make against Massoud. The drug warlord was lethal with a wide range of weapons, like the rocket launcher he waited behind now. Not the fastest or the most accurate weapon to deploy in a hurry, but one of the most lethal.
What do I have? Only speed, he reminded himself.
He left the M-60 on the snow, pulled out the Desert Eagles, and psyched himself up for what he had to do. He breathed in deeply, getting plenty of oxygen to his lungs, feeding it through his body to his muscles. The run would have to be as fast as an Olympic sprint to give him any chance of surviving the inevitable fusillade that would come his way. He glanced to the right. The warhead of the rocket poked out of the rear of the Unimog, and ahead of him, the black barrel of the machine gun. He assumed it was a Soviet made PK poking out in his direction. He waited, still filling his lungs with oxygen, flexing his muscles for what was to come.
What he was waiting for was for Greg to shoot again and draw more fire from the machine gun. Then a half dozen shots cracked out from the Dragunov. The machine gunner responded and adjusted his aim. Once again he lashed the Russian's position with a hailstorm of bullets. He didn't wait another second, just catapulted to his feet and ran across the road.
At every step, he knew he could stop a bullet. All it needed was for the machine gun barrel to shift its aim a fraction. For Massoud to fire the rocket, even a near miss would be enough to kill him. He ignored all of them. On this morning, either he would live, or he would die. As each foot came down after the other, he pounded on, almost as if he was on automatic pilot. He'd had a good life, a life filled with challenge and adventure. He'd worked with the best in the Navy SEALs, and after he came to Afghanistan, he fell in love with Madeleine, when he thought his happiness was complete.
Even after her death, he'd managed to spend the ensuing years living every moment of every day to the full. He'd filled his life with craziness to replace the love and happiness he'd enjoyed with her. It wasn't a substitute, but it was all life had on offer, and he'd had more than his share of luck and good fortune; the money, the nerve-wracking challenge of assignments to kill those enemies of Ka
bul who would bring down the government, or drown the country in an orgy of drugs and killings. He'd go home to Ma Kelly's, the lively brothel where he could always guarantee a girl in his bed, usually Anahita, his favorite whore.
If a bullet takes me now, or an exploding rocket-propelled grenade tears me to shreds, at least I’ve lived as much as most men live in ten lifetimes.
He came out of his daze and realized to his surprise that he'd almost reached the wall. A stonewall that represented a temporary haven from the bullets. The machine gun barrel moved toward him, and he knew they were about to fire. He took a last, despairing leap, to sail through the air and land over the wall as more bullets hammered toward him. A chunk of lead ripped a slice out of his black coat, another almost tore off the heel of his boot, but he was behind cover. Rolling on the ground to soften his fall, and simultaneously bringing up the automatics.
The scene that greeted him was extraordinary. The two men operating the gun stopped firing and stared; their mouths wide open like goldfish. The loader blocked his view of the gunner, so he took the man first, with two .50 caliber bullets. The heavy lead tossed him aside like garbage, and he fell over the butt of the machine gun as he tumbled to the ground.
His fall had exposed the gunner, but he had also slammed into the gun and by accident brought the barrel around to point straight at his guts. For the first time, the man on the gun moved fast. Stoner was staring at the mouth of the barrel, bringing around the big automatics to kill him, when the gunner pulled the trigger first. Theoretically, a stream of bullets should have sliced into him, but instead, the firing pin clicked on an empty round. In a flash, he understood what had happened. In his inexperience, he'd fired off two entire magazines and emptied his weapon. He opened his mouth and formed the word, 'No!' But the word died along with the man. Stoner's .50 caliber bullets smashed into his body, and he joined his loader in death.
There was no time to stop. He whirled around to scan the Unimog. Still, the lethal rocket poked out from the rear window, and he wondered when Massoud would shoot. As he had that thought, smoke streaked from the weapon as the rocket surged toward him. He dived behind the rock wall, and the missile exploded the other side about ten meters away. The explosion smashed down the wall and buried him in huge chunks of rock. He fought to extricate himself and find more cover. He'd no idea how many rockets the man had. He could only assume there'd be plenty more where that one came from, and hit the Unimog with heavy machine gun fire. He had a big problem. His M-60 lay on the other side of the track.
Thirty seconds later, a second rocket smashed into the already broken and destroyed stonewall. He was nowhere near the target area. When you faced a man with an RPG, shoot and scoot was the best policy, or in this case, scoot and shoot. He needed to get nearer to use the Desert Eagles.
Stoner was snaking along the track, keeping behind the wall and heading for the Unimog. He briefly considered the PK machine gun but remembered it was out of ammo. It was up to him and the two Desert Eagles, against Massoud with the RPG. He had no idea how many rockets the man carried, and he couldn't assume it would run out any time soon.
It’s bad odds, but so be it. Whichever way it ends, it will end today.
He wondered about Greg.
The Russian’s tough and resourceful, no question. He's already shown himself to be brave enough to take on and beat the Afghans we’ve tangled with. Massoud’s something different, as crafty as a barrel load of monkeys, and as tough as any Special Forces operator. He has something else to help him achieve his ends, a total lack of any vestige of humanity. He'll do anything to survive, kill anyone to further his aims.
He jumped to his feet and roared the challenge. "Massoud!" Then he ran.
No more rockets came his way as he raced toward his prey. The Afghan had discarded the rocket launcher, perhaps he was out of rockets, and started blazing away with an assault rifle. The same weapon he'd used in the Torgan Valley, an American M4 A1. Bullets whined through the air and hissed past him. Some cut chunks of rock from the wall to slice into his exposed skin, or chew up broken tarmac and gravel from the road surface. He kept running.
Afterward, he'd never understand how he knew it for a fact. Only that it was some sixth sense that kept him going. He'd die, sooner or later. Probably sooner, he lived his life with little expectation of longevity. Only he knew it wasn't going to be here, not in this place.
Not now, not yet.
More shots cracked out, but these were from behind. Greg had come down to the road and found a shooting stance where he could give covering fire. Massoud stopped shooting when he had to duck behind cover, and he found the rear door of a Unimog is not bulletproof. Unless it's armored, and this Unimog had no armor. A Dragunov bullet sliced through the thin metal skin, and the Afghan yelped in pain.
Stoner took the opportunity and picked up speed, pounding on toward his target. Sixty meters, fifty meters, forty meters, his lungs were on fire, and his muscles screamed at him to stop, but he kept on. Massoud suddenly threw open the rear door and jumped out of the vehicle. He stumbled and dropped his rifle into the mud and slush, but quickly scooped it up and pointed the barrel at Stoner's guts.
His face displayed an almost inhuman ferocity, a rage that was a terrible, elemental force. As if by sheer will, he could kill this foreigner who'd dared to come within seconds of killing him. He fired, and the bullet missed the charging man by a fraction. Stoner ignored the bullet and drew nearer. The breath seared through his throat, his chest heaved, but he ran like a man possessed. When he got in range, he was in no shape to take aim at the target. Massoud had no such problems.
"Stoner." He spat out the word as if to purge himself of the man who'd almost destroyed him. Blood was trickling from a wound to his leg, just above the knee, maybe enough to slow him down, but not by much, "You're dead. You should have given up while you were ahead. You can forget your friend. You're standing between him and me. He can't get off a shot without killing you. Say your prayers. When I pull this trigger, you'll be gone from my misery forever. Any last requests, American?"
He rasped out the words with a sneer, while Stoner rapidly assessed the odds as he closed with the target. Maybe he'd be dead in the next couple of seconds, but he'd never give up as long as he had breath in his body. He didn't need to look behind to know that Massoud at least spoken the truth about Greg. He had a rough idea of where he was shooting from, and the Dragunov wouldn't help him.
Massoud had the M4 A1 cradled in his arms, with the barrel pointed directly at his guts. He smiled. "Stop there!"
He lowered the Desert Eagles and waited. "What now?
Massoud laughed. "Don't be a fool. What happens next is you die. You know what this is. It's an American-made assault rifle. One of the best in the business, and do you want me to tell you why I always choose American?" He gave out a grating laugh as he said it.
"I guess a shithead like you is going to tell me."
"Perhaps I will. Precision engineering, that's what makes the difference. They've swamped this country with cheap, Russian-made equipment. Sure, the stuff has killed more than a few thousand people over the years. The problem is it's crude. Cheap metal stampings, you can't even rely on the ammunition. Whereas this," he patted the breech of his rifle, "This is superb engineering. Don't you think it's appropriate, killing an American with an American weapon?"
"Not really."
The man sneered. "It's just as well I don't care what you think. I've waited a long time for this, Stoner, and I can tell you I'm enjoying every moment of it. I just have one problem."
"What's that?"
"Whether to put a bullet in your guts, so you die screaming in agony, or put one through the head to blow out your brains. No, I think a bullet in the belly is the way to do it. So long, Stoner."
He squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened. He stared with disbelief at the breech as he pulled the trigger repeatedly. Stoner didn't need a second chance. He dived for his automatics and rolled to br
ing them around to aim at Massoud. The other man recovered fast from the shock of seeing his treasured American-made rifle malfunction. He tore the Dan Wesson from his belt and snapped off two shots. Then he disappeared around the side of the Unimog, chased by a couple of shots from Greg's Dragunov as the Russian saw his target reappear.
Stoner went around the other side of the big vehicle, keeping low. He looked underneath the chassis and saw Massoud's legs disappearing as he climbed up into the cabin. He didn't want to find out the hard way which weapons he had inside the vehicle. The man could start lobbing grenades, firing rockets, or spraying the area with bullets from any number of automatic weapons he'd brought with him. It was time for Plan B. They'd designed the Unimog with massive ground clearance. It enabled him to slide underneath with ease and lie on his back to peer upward. He couldn't see where his enemy was standing, but when the man shifted position, he could hold his hand up to the floor and feel the vibrations of his boots.
He worked out that Massoud was heading to the rear of the vehicle, and seconds later he started shooting at a distant target. It could only mean Greg was working his way toward him and presented a threat to the Afghan. Any second he could decide to use the RPG, and his chance of surviving even a near miss from the lethal projectile were little more than zero. He slid along to follow Massoud to the rear of the Unimog and pointed the Desert Eagles upward. Then he waited.
Massoud moved to one side, and then to the other, looking to see where Stoner had gone. Then he went to the rear and slammed the door shut. He had to be at the back, in the center of the cabin. Shooting upward at a man was a difficult shot. If he missed, Massoud could spray the underside of the Unimog with bullets, and they wouldn't all miss. He had to make his shots good. He continued to wait.
The sound of gunfire drummed through the floor as he shot at Greg.
He’s getting nearer. I have to move fast if my friend is to survive.
Even as he had that thought, he surprised himself. It had been a long time since he'd have considered the Russian a friend.
Yet that’s what he is, a friend. No, more than a friend, a man who shared with me the threat of death in order to protect our loved ones.
He moved the barrels of the automatics a fraction. He had to be sure. Something moved, the scrape of a boot, right above him.
Now!
He pulled the triggers and fired three rounds from each pistol into where Massoud had to be standing. A scream of pain told him he'd hit the target, but there was no sound of a body crashing to the floor.
I winged him, damn!
He put two more rounds from each gun into the floor, four bullets in all, but there was no shout of pain, no sound of a body. He heard Massoud open the rear door and then saw him drop to a crouch on the ground. The Afghan pointed the barrel of his rifle under the Unimog and tightened his finger on the trigger, ready to destroy his enemy. He shouted, "So long, Stoner. I'll see you in hell."
In his bitter hatred and determination to slaughter the American, he'd made the biggest mistake of his life, the last mistake of his life. He'd forgotten the other shooter. The Russian was still out there. Greg fired once, and Stoner crawled quickly out into the open, his guns held ready to finish the job. There was no need. The bullet had taken Massoud the upper part of his back, a heart shot. He adopted an expression of astonishment and glared down at Stoner. His mouth moved, and he started to spit out an insult he would have learned from the Soviets. "Yob..." He never got out the rest. He fell forward and painted the snow red with his blood.
"Tvoyu mat," Stoner finished off for him. Seconds later, Greg ran up to him and glanced down. "Are you okay?"
He nodded. "I am now." He looked at the Unimog. "Can you drive one of these things?"
"I could drive anything if it meant not hiking through this crappy weather. What about the bodies?"
Stoner looked down at Massoud. "Fuck 'em."