being treated like a covey of bloody grouse or quails."
Almost against his will, Smith grinned back at him, fighting down the urge to laugh out loud. His old friend sounded genuinely insulted at being manipulated so contemptuously by their enemies.
Peter turned his head, speculatively eyeing the rougher, even more overgrown stretch of old farmland to the north. "They'll have a nasty little ambush set out somewhere up that way," he said, stripping out the used magazine on his submachine gun and inserting a new thirty-round clip. "Getting past that will be tricky."
"Sure," Smith said. "But we do have at least one advantage."
Peter raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Oh? Care to enlighten me?"
"Yep." Smith patted his own MP5. "The last time I checked, grouse and quails don't shoot back."
This time it was Peter's turn to suppress a snort of rueful laughter. "True enough," he agreed quietly. "Very well, Jon, let's go and see if we can turn the hunters into the hunted."
They left the drainage ditch and crawled off to the north. Their path through the thick undergrowth was a circuitous one. They were following
the rambling narrow trails made by small animals that made their dens and warrens in the overgrown fields. Both men stayed very low, hugging the ground and using their feet, knees, and elbows to wriggle forward as fast as they could without making too much noise or shaking the tangled tufts of brush and grass above them. The knowledge that an enemy force lurked unseen somewhere ahead in the darkness again made stealth nearly as vital as speed.
Smith could feel droplets of sweat rolling down through the dirt streaking his forehead. He shook them away impatiently, not wanting them to drip into his eyes under the mask holding his night-vision goggles. Plant stalks and curling vines loomed up suddenly in his green-tinted vision and then vanished off to the sides as he squirmed past. Deep in the heart of these jumbled thickets, his field of view was down to just a few feet. The air was warm and thick with the smell of dank, mossy earth and fresh animal droppings.
From time to time bullets hissed over their heads or shredded the bushes and thickets off on either flank. All four of the mercenaries deployed in a line behind them were shooting now - firing occasional bursts into the field to force their unseen quarry toward the ambush set to kill them.
Smith's breathing was becoming labored under the strain and physical exertion imposed by crawling so far and so rapidly. He concentrated on following Peter as closely as he could - watching carefully to see where the older man put his elbows and feet to avoid disturbing the vegetation through which they were moving.
Suddenly Peter froze. For long seconds he stayed absolutely motionless, watching and listening. Then, slowly and carefully, he held out one gloved hand and waved Jon forward to his side.
Smith peered cautiously through a screen of tall grass, studying the terrain in front of them. They were very near the northern edge of the field. The weathered and rotting remnants of an old rail fence stretched to the east and west. Just beyond the broken-down fence, the ground fell
away gently into a little hollow before rising again in a low embankment that ran off to the northeast. A few patches of scrub brush and small birch trees dotted the forward slopes of this rise, but the countryside was generally more open here - offering less cover and concealment.
Peter jabbed a finger toward this elevation. Then he made the hand signal for "enemy."
Smith nodded. That embankment was a likely spot for the ambush they were being herded toward. Anyone stationed just behind its crest would have decent fields of observation and fire along most of this side of the rundown farm. He frowned. The odds against them were stacking up fast.
Peter saw the look on his face and shrugged. "Can't be helped," he murmured. He pulled the spent magazine for his MP5 out of the ammo pouch on his combat vest. He waited while Jon followed suit.
"Very well," Peter said very quietly. "Here's the plan." He held up the empty magazine. "As a distraction, we toss these as far to the right as we can. Then we make a dash over the crest, turn right, and assault along the reverse slope - killing hostiles we meet."
Smith stared back at him. "That's it?"
"There's no time for anything fancy, Jon," the Englishman told him patiently. "We must