M.I.A. Hunter

by Mertz, Stephen

  Stone was dead—unless he got some help before they zeroed in on him. Unless a timely blow from somewhere on the camp perimeter distracted opposition soldiers and alerted them to other dangers in their rear.

  Hog raised his CAR-l5, sighting quickly, smoothly down the barrel, lining up a clustered group of targets by the nearest barracks. They were waiting for instructions, and the hesitation sealed their fate before they got a chance to act.

  He squeezed the trigger gently, sent a measured burst among them, watched them fall apart. Two of them tumbled to the left, a third to the right, and Wiley missed the fourth completely, sending him scurrying back inside the flimsy barracks, seeking shelter there. Outside, his late companions writhed upon the ground, their vital juices spilling from the ugly wounds his bullets had opened in flesh and khaki fabric.

  Tracking on, he spied a sniper over by the generator hut, about to draw a bead on Stone and the little clutch of P.O.W.'s. Hog loosed a burst that nearly cut the guy in two and left him lying on the ground, thrashing feebly.

  On his flanks, Loughlin and the squat Laotian were weighing in with cover fire from their concealed positions, giving Stone's opponents something else to think about, picking some of them off where they stood, driving the majority back and under cover for the moment. Half a dozen of the armed Vietnamese were still inside the nearest barracks, starting to return fire now from slits cut in the walls, and Hog decided it was time he took the situation in hand.

  He freed a thermite grenade from his web belt, pulled the pin, and let the egg fly, all in one fluid motion. It struck the thatch roof of the barracks, hung there for a heartbeat, and exploded just as it began to roll along the downslope. Instantly the bug, low hut became a white inferno, coals of thermite spewing out in all directions, catching on the other barracks huts nearby, igniting them as well. Inside the blazing hut, someone was screaming hopelessly, and all the gunfire was extinguished as another type of flame took top priority.

  Hog waited, and a moment later men came spilling out of there, some of them burning like torches, others jostling past them in their haste to save themselves. He raked their ranks from end to end and back again the other way, emptying his magazine before he finished, dropping half a dozen of them in their tracks and penning several others up to die within the raging flames.

  A ghastly silence overcame the burning barracks, the hungry whooshing of the flames devouring every other sound. No more hostile fire from that direction, no more life inside, and it was time to worry now about the enemy in other quarters, just as deadly, still alive and fighting.

  He had given Stone a breather, momentarily, but the game was far from over, and as he reloaded, Hog was still not sure which way the odds were falling.

  Commander Chong Tn Minh was frightened, disbelieving. For the first time within living memory, he felt his control of a combat situation slipping through his fingers, and the feeling was unsettling. It emasculated him, left him ashamed and quaking where he lay, pressed against the outer wall of his command hut in the fire-lit darkness.

  He had no idea what was happening in his compound, why his men were firing wildly, blindly into the darkness.

  Someone had triggered a burst—he had recognized the telltale sound of a CAR-15—but still, he had no way of knowing who, or why.

  If they were under attack, it might be anyone. Hmong. Cambodians. Thais. Americans?

  He scowled at the idea, dismissing it from his mind. Americans were weaklings; they let the United Nations do their talking for them, and for years now they had done nothing except talk. Had not the Vietnamese People's Republic already defeated the American paper tiger once in combat? They had driven it back eastward across the Pacific with its tail tucked between its legs, and someday they would wipe the last traces of its presence out of all Southeast Asian nations. But for now, Commander Chong had more immediate concerns—such as personal survival.

  Someone, somewhere, was trying to kill him, or so it appeared. The bullets that had missed him so narrowly might have been stray rounds, of course, his own men firing blindly at shadows, but still—he could take no such thing for granted here and now, with gunfire tearing the night apart all around him.

  He drew his pistol, taking some marginal comfort from its familiar presence in his fist, and began worming his way along on his belly, crawling from his CP in the general direction of the small communications hut. If there were some hostilities afoot, he would have to find out about it from Command Central. And if this was nothing but some kind of border feint by the Thais, he would surprise them with a call for reinforcements from the north.

  As he wormed his way along, he wondered whether any reinforcements could arrive in time to help him. They were miles away, at Tran Li, and at night it would be slow going in the jungle, even with the incentive of combat to spur them on.

  Or slow them down, he thought, and quickly put the thought away. It was disloyal of him to question the integrity and courage of Vietnamese freedom fighters; but still, he had seen enough of them in action here in Laos to know that they would usually rather run than fight. The army was becoming lazy, and while still capable of brutality on occasion, troops were seemingly more interested in rape and plunder than in spreading revolution for the motherland, in memory of Ho Chi Minh.

  Halfway to the communications hut, he saw the muzzle flashes in among the trees, outside his own perimeter, and knew that he was truly under hostile fire. He had no way to count the weapons from his prone position, with restricted visibility, but there were several, firing now in unison, scattering his troops and leaving casualties strewn about the field like broken mannequins.

  He picked up speed, and was almost there when the communications hut exploded, the force of the concussion picking him up and hurling him backward, airborne, his senses reeling.

  Stone dragged the door of Alex Bradford's little bamboo cage open, reached inside, and hauled the P.O.W. out into the compound. Moving swiftly, he tracked on, blasting the lock off Wilcox's cage and edging back as Wilcox found freedom on his own, emerging on all fours, a giant spider crawling from its burrow, trapped and cringing in the firelight.

  They were out of time, and now the enemy was closing on them, even under the continuous cover fire from his commandos hidden in the trees. Mandrell had dropped a couple of them in their tracks, cackling as the bullets ripped them open, but suddenly his gun was empty, leaving him to scramble back and search the corpses for extra magazines.

  Snipers were finding the range, bullets eating up the night all around them, and Stone knew the time had come to move or die. Another moment here, no more, and their position would be overrun.

  He spotted two Viets attempting to outflank them, and met them with a burst that swept them both away and left them sprawling on the turf. A third, about to take the same approach route, now thought better of it, diving back for cover as Stone chased him with another triple-punch.

  Stone grabbed for another magazine to feed into the CAR-15 when their position was overrun sooner than he expected at a moment when Mandrell also held an empty weapon.

  A half-dozen N.V.A. regulars in various stages of Undress had seen Stone and Mandrell come up empty, and had decided to close in fast and capture the escapees and Stone alive. The regulars were too cocky, and one of them even chuckled to his comrades as they advanced.

  Stone and Mandrell assaulted the troopers as if on a prearranged signal, with enough surprise and ferocity to gain them a margin for survival.

  Stone flayed sideways with the CAR-15 and knocked three of their rifles aside in one punching arc. He followed through with a hand-heel punch to the bridge of the nearest soldier's nose, sending shards of bone into his brain. Stone's right boot lashed out and caught the next soldier in the crotch, smashing genitalia all the way up into this creep's throat. The guy groaned and collapsed to his knees, puking. Stone stepped forward as the third soldier attempted to bring his rifle around again to fire. Before he could, Stone smashed the guy in the throat,
crushing his windpipe. The man dropped his weapon and grabbed at his throat, choking. Stone slugged him in the forehead with the butt of the CAR-15, killing him. Then he clubbed the kneeling soldier to death with one hard bop across the back of his head with the rifle butt.

  Stone turned to see Mandrell pin one N.V.A. regular to the ground, bashing the guy's head over and over against a tree trunk until blood bubbled from the soldier's ears, nose, and mouth, and Mandrell knew he was dead.

  Another soldier brought up his rifle to shoot Mandrell. Stone came up behind the guy and wrapped the CAR-15 around his throat. He twisted the rifle brutally and heard the man's neck snap above the other sounds around them.

  Mandrell shouted a warning and Stone turned, still propping up the dead soldier with the carbine under his throat, as the last of these six regulars tracked his own rifle to open fire. Stone shoved the body he was supporting, and the man with the broken neck tumbled into the soldier aiming at Stone. The guy lost his balance just long enough for Stone to unsheath the knife on his webbing and flick it fast and true to pierce the man's heart before he could fire. Stone hurried over to retrieve his knife, and wiped off the blood on the dead soldier's tunic. Then he returned the knife to its sheath.

  It had all happened in less than thirty seconds.

  Mandrell found another full clip on one of the dead men, and Stone finished reloading.

  It was a losing game, no doubt about it. He called out to Mandrell, urging him to hurry up, for Christ's sake, and help him get the others out of there. The prisoner responded with a crisp "Affirmative"—some of the military starch still present under stress —and he was turning back to help when thunderous explosions started marching through the night, surrounding them, sending the camp to hell in a hurry.

  Stone hugged the ground, clenching his teeth and riding out the concussion, waiting for the doomsday drumroll to wash over them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Colonel Alex Bradford heard the automatic fire from miles away, a ringing, hammering, staccato counterpoint to all the humming in his skull. Dizzy, out of focus, he was reeling, now unable to stay upright, cursing the darkness that was threatening to envelop him.

  There was something . . . he could not quite place it. Space.

  Elbow room. Freedom?

  His mind cut off the thought before it had a chance to germinate and put down roots. He had already blown his chance, and had been punished for the effort. Chong had taken pleasure in the ceremony, held the knife himself and brought it down, with the other P.O.W.'s looking on. It was a lesson, not so much to Bradford, but to any others who might try to follow his example.

  It would have been just as easy for Chong to kill him, but that would have been a mercy, a reward, and Chong was far too clever to be duped so easily. He knew his prisoners, their terrors and weaknesses. He knew how far he could push each one of them, how much their weakened bodies could endure before he lost them.

  Chong was a professional at inflicting suffering, and he seemed to love his work. Bradford wished he could have a chance to kill the camp commander, but he knew that was impossible, a dream he cherished in the silent darkness of the night.

  But still, there was something . . . something different in his environment. He had fallen, he could feel familiar earth against his cheek, but there was no room in his cage to stand and fall. If that was true ...

  He was outside! The hand upon his arm, the slide across the threshold of his cell—these had not been dreamed, imagined.

  He was out!

  Bradford rolled over onto his stomach, fighting desperately to focus on the sounds of combat all around him. Automatic weapons, bullets striking earth and splintering bamboo. A battle, close at hand, almost surrounding him.

  He opened bleary eyes and saw a figure clad in camouflage fatigues, crouching just in front of him, firing in the general direction of Chong's command hut with an assault rifle. From the man's size, Bradford knew he was a Westerner, but the outfit and gear told him nothing more.

  Another figure leaped into his field of vision, and there could be no mistaking this one. It was Mandrell, still decked out in his faded, jungle-rotted uniform, and he was carrying an AK-47, laying down a stream of fire from one end of the nearest barracks to the other. He was dancing, stroking out short bursts and interspersing them with longer ones whenever a moving target presented itself. He seemed to be having the time of his life.

  Realization struck Alex Bradford like a fist above the heart, and as he recognized his situation and knew that it might last only another moment, or maybe forever, he brought his legs up beneath him with a supreme effort, using his remaining hand and the stump of his left wrist to push himself upward, rising to his feet.

  A bullet buzzed beside his ear, and Bradford flinched away from it, grinning fiercely in spite of himself. He knew what Mandrell was feeling, could feel something of the grim, suicidal elation himself.

  Someone had come for them, god dammit, and it didn't matter who or why, it no longer counted even if the rescue attempt was unsuccessful. All that mattered was the effort, and Bradford knew that he would die, standing up and fighting back, barehanded if need be, before he let Chong put him back inside a cage.

  He cast about for something, anything, with which to join the battle. Twenty yards away and to his left, a sentry sprawled facedown beside the fire, his automatic rifle inches from one outstretched hand. Bradford focused on the weapon, forgetting everything else in that supreme moment of concentration, putting one rubbery leg in front of the other and reeling away from the cages like a drunkard.

  He covered all of seven strides before gravity overcame his weakened muscles and pulled him down. The hard earth rushed to meet him, the impact knocked the breath out of him, and then the sounds of firing carried him away.

  Terrance Loughlin squeezed another burst out of his overheated assault carbine, then set the smoking gun aside. He reached down for the detonator on the ground beside him, found it without ever taking his eyes off the killing ground in front of him.

  The Brit had made good use of his time in preparation for the raid. While Stone and Hog were staking out the village, counting sentries and determining their beats, he had performed a penetration of his own upon the enemy encampment. Nothing deep, no contact, strictly silent ... but he was about to make his presence felt among the Vietnamese in a way that they would not forget. Assuming that they lived.

  He had selected certain buildings in the compound for disposal, and gooped them with generous helpings of his C-4 plastic explosive, plugging in the detonators that would let him set them off, simultaneously or in sequence, with a touch on the buttons of his radio remote-control box. Moving swiftly, silently, taking care to miss the roving sentries, he had mined the communications hut, the generator shack, and several of the long, low barracks buildings. Time restrictions had prevented him from dropping off a package at the camp command post, but from what he could see, the occupants had problems enough at the moment.

  As for the rest...

  He raised the detonator box, found the first of several deadly buttons with his index finger, and pressed it lightly.

  On his left front, the communications shack seemed to rise on a plume of fire, the four walls blowing outward simultaneously, thatched roof disintegrating into flaming strands of grass. Personnel, equipment, everything inside was gone within the twinkling of an eye.

  Smiling, Loughlin stroked the second button, then the third. Two barracks huts went up almost together, like twin giant firecrackers on the southern perimeter of the camp. Parts of bodies were airborne now, raining down on the camp like fallout from an exploding butcher shop. Twenty feet away, a human arm fell to the earth, still smoking, fingers clenched in death.

  The commando let his other charges go in tandem, throwing a ring of blazing death around the camp, bringing down the fires of hell upon his enemies. The charges wouldn't get them all, or even most of them, but they would damn sure add confusion to the recipe, and that was all
he asked for at the moment.

  Chaos was an ally tonight, helping to buy the time they needed for delivery of their human quarry from the cages in the center of the camp. Stone was there already, busy at the task and taking fire while he was at it. Loughlin moved to help his comrade, breaking out of cover with the CAR-15 at his hip and roaring as he joined-the dance of death.

  They had to stand together now, fight their way out as a unit, or they would be cut off and slaughtered piecemeal.

  Loughlin kept his head down, running in a combat crouch, the stream of bullets from his automatic rifle opening the way and leaving twisted, writhing bodies in his wake. Another thirty yards and he would make it. After that, they only had to stand off an army, and fight their way back through the living jungle to their transportation rendezvous. Simple. It would be as easy as falling off a log—and landing in an empty, open grave.

  Mark Stone was fighting for his life, and for the moment he was not sure who was winning. Enemies were all around him, pouring constant fire into his position; and the ring of bamboo cages' offered precious little in the way of fortification. He had spent two magazines already, and beside him, crouching under cover and returning bursts each time the ground fire lifted, Jack Mandrell was clearly low on ammunition.

  In the end, it was the Brit who saved them with his plastic charges. At once, half of the enemy forces were thrown into confusion, firing now in all directions, certain that hostile reinforcements were assailing them on every side.

  Stone paused, correcting himself.

  On every side but one.

  Loughlin had been careful in his planting of the charges, leaving them an avenue of exit to the west. While the explosives danced and flared around them, tossing men and equipment skyward like toys, the westward way lay open, virtually unguarded. Just a scattering of fire from that direction, but Stone knew that they could make it—if the others kept their heads and made it in on schedule.