VICTOR LOGAN PRESSED HIS face hard against the cheek pad of a Russian-made Dragunov SVD sniper rifle to steady the four-power telescopic sight on the place where the helicopters had crashed. His partner, Jimbo Collins, scanned the rest of the area with night-vision goggles, looking for infrared heat emitters. Since kidnapping General Middleton, they had been waiting for the rescue attempt that was sure to come, ready to ambush the Marines, only to have it all go to hell right in front of them.
“Nothing but the wreckage,” said Collins as he put the goggles away. “The fire and the hot metal just kills this heat-sensitive imagery. All I can pick up are those damned ragheads running around.” He glanced at the brightening sky. “Think the Harriers will be back to burn it?” Collins had a shoulder-fired Stinger ground-to-air missile beside him. Other Stingers lay scattered in the other trenches.
“That’s the SOR Makes no sense to leave all that gear for the sand monkeys to pick over, but the Harriers seemed to be getting out of here in a hurry.” Vic Logan had been in too many emergencies, in too many places, too many times, to let shit like this bother him. “Let’s go see who’s what. Big fuckup, this.”
The American mercenaries moved from the sandbagged trench and walked around a large ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft weapon. The gunner had abandoned his position behind the ammunition feed trays immediately after the helos went down, leaving the powerful radar-guided gun useless in his run to get to whatever booty he might steal from the helicopters. The quad rack of 23 mm cannons was still locked into position, useless if the Harriers returned.
Logan and Collins walked easily, not bothering to keep distance between them, because they were in no danger. “Too damned bad, Vic,” said Collins. “This was a good ambush configuration.”
Logan’s big strides ate up the ground. His head was on a swivel and his hard eyes captured the tactical situation. The ragheads from the trench to the right, which would have supplied a cross-fire, were also out of their holes and heading toward the wreckage, along with women and children from the village. From soldiers and civilians to scavengers in the blink of an eye. A verse of Kipling came to him: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.” Afghanistan then, Iraq yesterday, Syria today, who knows where tomorrow? These people were going out to the crash site to do what they had been doing to foreign soldiers for centuries. Fuckin’ vultures.
Logan sort of hoped none of those jarheads were still alive, although the idea of killing Americans had not cost him a moment of sleep. It was a business deal, sweet payback for being screwed over by the navy, and Logan was determined to come out of all this rich. He had shopped his services around until he discovered that being part of a Shark Team paid better than any of the other private billets. He was pulling in ten thousand dollars U.S. a month, and complicated things like this brought more. For these big bucks, he didn’t give a fuck if he had to kill the pope.
The fact that the birds went down by themselves made no difference to Logan, because the result was the same. He got fifty thousand for snatching the general and now the rescue mission had failed, which meant still another fifty would flow into his bank account. He figured to retire when he topped two million.
He clicked his AK-47 to full automatic and fired an entire clip into the air while shouting in Arabic for the ragheads to clear out until he and Collins were done searching the area. Reluctantly, the crowd pulled back away from their looting and stood in sullen groups while the two American mercenaries got to work.
“Get the camera going,” Logan said as they approached the twisted wreckage. “I’ll look around the perimeter. You take pictures of every one of those Marines, get the dog tags, and read off the names loud enough to be recorded, clear enough to be understood. Any funny names, spell them out. I want a stone-cold positive ID on every one of those dudes.”
“Got it.” Collins stepped into the wreckage. It was a mess in there. He started photographing.
“And make sure all the arms and legs add up!” Logan called, then began a slow walk around the site, circling from the nose of one of the choppers out to about a hundred meters. That put the helicopter in the center of an imaginary clock, with the nose pointed to twelve o’clock, and Logan switched on a powerful flashlight as he worked back and forth in pie-shaped segments. One o’clock. Two o’clock. Raghead footprints and chunks of debris from the aircraft reached out in all directions. He would have missed the puddle of vomit near the seven o’clock position had he not smelled it before locating it with the bright beam of his flashlight. Nothing much more than some discolored yellow bile. A raghead sickened by the sights and smell of new death? Not likely, but possible. He walked on, and two slices of the clock later, almost obscured by the scuffed footprints of the scavengers, he found the unmistakable tire tracks of a motorcycle. He did not recall hearing any. How old was the track? Some civilian ride through yesterday? It led toward the road, east.
“Hey, Vic!” Collins hollered from the ruptured end of one of the helicopters. “Take a look.”
Logan was there in a couple of big strides. “What?”
Collins was squatting down and had the loose end of a big strap in one hand. He tugged on it to show that the other end was secured to the deck of the fuselage. “Three more of these straps. There, there… and there.”
All four ends had been sliced clean. Something had been secured here. Had the ragheads already stolen it? Something large? No, he would have noticed. Logan backed out of the wrecked bird and Collins followed, putting away his camera after photographing and identifying the final two bodies. They went to the fuselage of the other helicopter. A little Kawasaki dirt bike, badly damaged, was still lashed to the deck with straps like the ones that had been cut on the first helo.
Logan scratched his neck, came to a conclusion. He waved to the onlookers and they poured back into the wreckage like honeybees after a lump of sugar.
“Somebody survived that mess,” he told Jimbo as they returned to the village and their satellite radio. “We got a runner.”