Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,40

herself unwilling to follow the wishes of Uncle Trung. She had already given him her life. She would not die for him, too. Not willingly.

She leaned her head onto her arm. Blood seeped over and dripped from the knife hilt. As she watched her life fade, drop by drop, she became filled with a need for vengeance. King had to be told. Pawn was gone. She breathed deep, intending to shout a warning over the gunfire, but the knife stole her breath as it cut deeper. She tried to move, but found the pain overbearing.

There was nothing she could do.

Somi rolled onto her back and watched as the occasional sliver of blue sky peeked through the thick canopy above.

FIFTEEN

ROOK’S CHEEK SHOOK as he fired the last three shots in his clip. He jammed in his fourth and final clip and took careful aim. A three-shot burst ripped through the air and into the body of another fleeing soldier. The VPA regular army had been brutalized. At least one hundred of them lay dead and dying on the cleared mountain slope. But they kept on coming, though more slowly and carefully now. Their initial enthusiasm brought on by superior numbers had faded after encountering the Chess Team’s lethal aim and devastating tactics.

The gunfire had died down on both sides to sporadic bursts, allowing the team to talk again.

“Like pigeons in front of a 747,” Rook said, before firing three more shots. “Splat.”

Knight fired a shot. The bullet blasted through the chest of a VPA soldier, splattering those around him in blood. They turned and fled. Others across the field followed suit. Knight pulled away from his sniper scope, which he’d been staring through for the past five minutes. “They’re bugging out.”

They’d succeeded in holding off a small army, but no one hooted a victory cheer. They weren’t done until they were back at Fort Bragg sharing a case of Sam Adams.

“Anybody hit?” King asked.

No one answered.

“I think a mosquito bit me,” Rook said. Then he felt something on his leg, squeezing. He turned and instinctively raised his weapon. He dropped it a second later. “Pawn Two is down!”

He knelt next to Somi. Her eyes were glossy and her lips were purple. But her chest rose and fell. She was alive. Then he saw the knife in her chest. “How did—”

“Bishop, Knight, keep an eye on our friends down there,” King said as he and Queen joined Rook by Somi’s side.

“Cut her shirt off,” Queen said. She shrugged out of her backpack and opened it up. A medical kit sat on top. She removed it and popped it open. She set aside a roll of gauze, two gauze pads, and a package of QuikClot. Then she began assembling a needle and syringe.

Knight untucked Somi’s long-sleeve black shirt. It was like a second skin on her and getting his KA-BAR knife underneath proved a challenge. He didn’t want to stab her again. Once the knife slid in, he moved with confidence, slicing her shirt up the middle. A second slice from her collar to the knife sticking out of her chest freed the shirt, which fell away. Somi’s tattooed stomach and black bra were revealed. The knife stuck out of her chest like a skyscraper in the middle of Arkansas, just to the inside of her right-side shoulder strap.

A near-lethal strike, it had missed her lungs by inches. Instead it had chipped bone and sliced through muscle. Normally, the wound wouldn’t be fatal, but in the field, where operating tables and surgeons were in short order, a variety of wounds could slowly take a life.

Knight fired twice. The blast cut through the momentary silence. “They’re regrouping just out of sight. I’m catching a few stragglers, but they’re up to something.”

“Rook,” King said, “call it in. Get us an armed evac over this clearing. Get it yesterday.”

“You do remember that we’re not supposed to be here, right?” Rook said as he opened his backpack where his secure satellite phone was hidden beneath a cache of equipment. Their orders had been to remain silent and only make contact when they had completed their mission and returned to the designated EZ . . . in Laos. But that plan didn’t include two hostile forces and a reenactment of the Vietnam War.

“Screw it,” King said. “We need to get out of here now. We have what we came for.”

Somi suddenly reached up and grabbed King’s arm. Her lips moved slowly, parting and closing like those of a