The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,22

bobbed and clapped to a rhythm in his head. " 'Sanctify my lord, sanctify my lord.' "

"Hardaway," Janson warned, putting a hand on his gear belt.

The crack of a rifle told them that the enemy had learned of their presence. They would have to dive to the ground, to take immediate evasive action.

For Hardaway, however, it was too late. A small geyser of blood erupted from his neck. He staggered forward several yards, like a sprinter who had crossed the finish line. Then he collapsed to the ground.

As Maguire's machine gun began to fire bullets over their heads, Janson scrambled over to Hardaway. He had been struck in the lower outside part of his neck, near his right shoulder; Janson cradled his head, applying pressure with both hands to the pulsing wound on the front of his neck, desperately trying to staunch the flow.

"Sanctify my lord," Hardaway said weakly.

The pressure was not working. Janson felt his shirt becoming warm and wet, and he realized what was wrong. There was an exit wound, at the back of Hardaway's neck, perilously near his spine, from which bright arterial blood was gouting.

In a sudden display of strength, he wrenched Janson's hands from his neck. "Leave me, Janson." He was trying to shout, but it came out as a low rasp. "Leave me!" He crawled away a few feet, then used his arms to raise himself, his head swiveling around the tree line as he tried to make out the shapes of his assailants.

Immediately, a blast hit his midriff, slamming him to the ground. His abdomen had been torn apart, Janson saw. Recovery was out of the question. One man down. How many more?

Janson rolled behind a thornbush.

It was a goddamn ambush!

The VC had been lying in wait for them.

Dialing his scope furiously, zooming through the marsh grasses and palms, Janson saw three VCs running down a jungle path directly toward him.

A direct assault? No, he decided: it was more likely that the raking overhead fire from the M60 had caused them to change their position. A few seconds later, he heard the sharp thwack of bullets hitting the ground near him.

Dammit! There was no way the fire could be this heavy and well targeted unless Charlie had received advance word of the infiltration. But how?

He shifted his rifle scope rapidly to different directions and focal points. There: a hooch on stilts. And just behind it, a VC aiming a Chicom AK-47 in his direction. A small, skilled man who must have been responsible for the last blast that had hit Hardaway.

In the moonlight, he saw the man's eyes, and just underneath, the bore hole of the AK-47. Each, he knew, had spotted the other, and what AK-47 fire lacked in precision it made up for in volume. Now he saw the VC brace the butt on his shoulder and prepare to squeeze off a fusillade just as Janson located the man's torso in his crosshairs. Within seconds, one of them would be dead.

Janson's universe constricted to the three elements: finger, trigger, crosshairs. At that instant, they were all he knew, all he needed to know.

A double tap - two carefully aimed shots - and the little man with the submachine gun pitched forward.

Yet how many more were out there?

"Get us the fuck out of here!" Janson radioed back to base. "We need backup now! Send a Mike boat. Send whatever the hell you've got. Just do it now!"

"Just one moment," the radio operator said. Then Janson heard the voice of his commanding officer coming on the line: "You holding up OK, son?" Demarest asked.

"Sir, they were expecting us!" Janson said.

After a pause, Demarest's voice crackled on the radio headphones. "Of course they were."

"But how, sir?"

"Just consider it a test, son. A test that will show which of my men have what it takes." Janson thought he heard choral music in the background. "You're not going to complain to me about the VCs, are you? They're just a bunch of overgrown kids in pajamas."

Despite the oppressive tropical heat, Janson felt a chill. "How did they know, sir?"

"If you wanted to find out how good you were at shooting paper targets, you could have stayed at camp in Little Creek, Virginia."

"But Hardaway - "

Demarest cut him off. "He was weak. He failed the test."

He was weak: Alan Demarest's voice. But Janson would not be. Now he opened his eyes with a shudder as the plane touched down on the macadamized landing strip.

Katchall had for years