rear came the groan of a wounded man, one of several piled up like bloody sacks.
“Sorry about that,” Douglas said.
“Talkin’ to me or him?” Dare jerked his thumb at the back window.
Doug glanced at the odometer. A wonder he could read it, with the talcum-thick dust blowing through the windows. “At this rate, we’ll make the last of it around moonrise.”
They were in a dry riverbed, all six of the Russian army truck’s wheels seeking purchase in the sand. In planning the operation, Michael had neglected to find out which of his men knew how to drive. It turned out none could, with the exception of Suleiman, Major Kasli, and Michael himself. Considering that the object had been to capture motor vehicles, Dare thought that a right strange oversight, but it did save him from leaving the comfort of his prejudices. Michael’s diligent planning and efficient execution of the attack had almost forced him to change his opinions about Africans; now he didn’t have to. No Vietnamese officer would have overlooked such a critical detail, hell no Arab, Honduran, or Nicaraguan would have. It was a very African thing to do.
So Michael had to take the wheel of one truck, with his second in command riding shotgun. Douglas and Dare took the other, and Suleiman, the ex-heavy-equipment operator for the Ministry of Aviation, drove the Land Rover. It was leading the column. Michael’s truck followed, carrying the captured weapons and the dead (he’d lost seven men), then Dare’s and Douglas’s with the seriously wounded. The riverbed made a natural road, and the trees galleried along its banks helped to mask the convoy’s movement from the air. It couldn’t go much faster than a walking pace, so the troops tramping behind and alongside had no trouble keeping up.
“Let me know when you want me to spell you,” Dare said, a sour taste in his mouth.
“Doing fine. Good to go all day. This has been an incredible experience.”
“That’s what you call it? An experience?”
His partner’s face seemed to glow beneath the film of dust. “Seeing the difference we’ve made in action. Two, three months ago these guys couldn’t have pulled off what they did today.”
“Gives you that nice warm feeling, and the best part is, this experience ain’t over yet.”
They drove on, the riverbed narrowing as it rose toward its source in the mountains, wavering insubstantially in the heat shimmer, like an illusion of mountains. Half a mile farther on, the banks became miniature cliffs the height of the trucks’ roofs, with not much more than a yard’s space on either side. Suleiman stopped and climbed out of the Land Rover.
“We cannot go more this way. No room to pass. We must back up.”
They did, and after Suleiman found a way up the bank, they proceeded along the river, weaving through the corridor of trees, until a steep-sided gully twenty feet deep blocked their path. Suleiman turned a hard right and followed the gully out into the rolling, open grasslands. He stuck out his hand, signaling for a halt, then got out again to range ahead on foot, looking for a way across.
“This keeps up,” Dare grumbled, “it won’t be moonrise, it’ll be sunrise tomorrow.”
Then he saw Suleiman running toward them, waving his long arms. “Heel-o-coptar!”
Dare flung his door open, leaped out, and cowered in the riverbed, Doug beside him with the video camera. All around, men were jumping in, taking up firing positions. The helicopter came on with a throaty growl, following the course of the river. Dare reckoned he had a good idea what it feels like to be a field mouse when a hawk shows up in the neighborhood. From somewhere up ahead Michael and Kasli yelled to the men to hold their fire until they got the order. Suleiman, sprawled flat under the opposite bank, was praying out loud—Bismillah ar-rahman, ar-rahim—and Doug lay on his back, the camera aimed toward the sky. Dare tore off his baseball cap and clapped it over the lens. “That thing will flash like a mirror, you goddamned—” He didn’t get a chance to say what kind of a goddamned thing he was. The chopper passed directly overhead, its shadow broken by the trees: an old Soviet MI-24, the gunship that had raised holy hell in Afghanistan, a flying tank. It was five hundred feet above, drifting, almost hovering, its armored underside like the breast of some pterodactyl, bombs and rocket pods racked under its stubby wings, minigun barrels protruding from the nose.