Deathrace sts-7

by Keith Douglass

  "True. Lieutenant, I think I better get you to your quarters. We have an oh-seven-thirty call in the morning."

  At her door, she turned to face him. She wasn't sure what he would do. He was single, she knew that. Of all the men in the platoon, she had guessed he might be the only one who would try to come on to her.

  He touched her shoulder. "Hey, Kat, have good dreams. See you in the morning." He turned, and walked away. Kat smiled faintly, and felt just a little rejected.

  "What the hell, Kat," she whispered to herself. "You're a grown-up girl, you could have reached out and kissed him first." Then she shook her head. He was right. They had a mission. No entanglements, no baggage. She was just one of the guys. She had to be, at least until this mission was over, and they were back in the U.S.A. Then, who knows? She grinned as she unlocked her door and went inside.

  17

  Friday, October 28

  1040 hours

  Safe house

  Chah Bahar, Iran

  Joe Douglas dug the sleep out of his eyes with a pair of HE fraggers and stared at the new day.

  Iran. Hot already.

  Wheels. He jumped off the bed and pulled on the loose-fitting Iranian clothing they had provided, stepped into his black Iranian shoes, and hurried down the stairs to the ground floor. He heard a motor kicking over in the interior of the quadrangle.

  A minute later he saw it, a French-built Citroen sedan, at least ten years old. It had been repainted brown, but the driver's side front door was from another car, and still held the blue paint job. The motor sounded good.

  Franklin pulled his head out from under the hood, and waved.

  "Damn thing looks like it's been taken good care of. Should run a ton of miles unless somebody opens up on it with an Uzi or an MP-5. Look what we have in back already."

  Franklin opened the rear door on the four-door model. There were heavy plastic bottles, each holding five gallons of water. There were a dozen boxes filled with food, most of it freeze-dried or dry, two loaves of bread, baskets of fruit, four rough brown blankets, an assortment of picks and shovels, and other prospecting gear to make them look legitimate.

  They spent another hour going over the car and its contents. Murrah and her helpers brought more items they might need, such as a small butane bottle for cooking and a large piece of brown camouflage-painted canvas they could use to hide the car. The tank was filled with gasoline, and there were two 10-gallon tanks built into the back that were also filled.

  "When's the best time to leave?" Douglas asked Murrah.

  "As soon as it gets dark. Seven hours from now, maybe more." She frowned. "We need to have a private talk before then."

  Douglas smiled. "Just how private?"

  "The most private — in your room."

  She left then, and the two SEALs looked at the captured weapons. Both were short, compact, with an extension stock. With the stock folded, they were less than a foot long.

  "It's an MGP-15, what it says on the side," Franklin said.

  Douglas grunted. "Yeah, heard about it. Made in Peru. Rate of fire only seven hundred rounds a minute, but you can shoot the sucker with one hand with the stock folded. Kicks out a lot of firepower with one hand."

  "Magazines look like they should hold thirty rounds, nine mike, mike," Franklin said.

  "No three-round bursts, but can go fully auto or single."

  Franklin nodded."Yeah, I think I'll keep this one until I can rob, plunder, or steal something better."

  At high noon, Douglas set up the SATCOM in the courtyard and aimed the round antenna at the satellite.

  When it was aligned, a light popped on, and he switch set to receive.

  A minute later a voice came loud and clear from the small speaker after the set processed the encrypted message through the code breaker.

  "Douglas. Uncle Don here. We've found some interesting tracks in your wilderness. Widest highway goes forty-five miles almost due north, then splits. Best road heads east toward Pakistan. Estimate fifteen miles, then comes south another five, and vanishes into what looks like a fairly tall mountain.

  "Gives you a place to start. Third Platoon reports ready to go when you are. Careful on that prospecting run. Stroh out."

  Murrah brought out a local map, and they traced the roads. The one going north wasn't on the map. She plotted it in with a ballpoint pen, then at the forty-five-mile point, she turned it hard to the right for fifteen, then back south for five miles.

  "How the hell do we get in there?" Douglas asked. "Are there any small trails or little-used roads, maybe old mines up in there?"

  Murrah shrugged. "I don't know this area. Let me get Tabib, he can tell you."

  She came back a moment later with the teacher, who was Iranian despite his Turkish name. He had a map of the area that did show some dirt roads and trails.

  "Most of these are little more than trails, and often they run into a mountain and stop. One or two go through. I'll mark those. But those will be the ones that the military guards will be watching."

  They bent over the map. He sketched in where the satellite photos had shown where the end of one wide roadway could be.

  Tabib nodded. "Yes, there could be something there. That's an exceedingly tall peak for this range. Some of them are at the ten-thousand-foot level."

  "So we should keep to the left as we head north," Douglas said. "If we can get within ten miles of that place on the map, we can hike in and take a look."

  "If you leave the car, camouflage it carefully," Tabib said. "They do have several helicopters in this area. We never know where they stay, but it isn't at our small dirt-strip airport."

  "Choppers," Franklin said. "That would make it hard to hide the Citroen in a wadi somewhere, but we'll try."

  "Enough," Murrah said. "Time for you both to get some sleep if you're going to be driving most of the night. There will be a full moon tonight, so that will help. Get some rest, now, both of you."

  The two SEALs laughed, and went up the stairs to their rooms.

  "This going to work?" Franklin asked.

  "Damn well better. George didn't get the job done, so it's up to us. No location, no drop-in by the platoon."

  Douglas smacked his fist into his palm. "Damn, wish we had a small chopper. We could tie down that location in a few hours, and have the platoon on their way loaded for nukes."

  "Yeah, now you think of it," Douglas said. He turned into his room and closed the door.

  He figured five minutes. It was no more than three minutes before his door opened gently, and someone slipped in.

  "What took you so long?" Douglas asked.

  "You Americans always make the jokes," Murrah said as she lay down on the bed beside him.

  They left the house a little after 1930. Darkness was gathering quickly, and Tabib rode with them to the far edge of town. He headed them out a track of a road he said would parallel the main truck road for twenty miles or more. Then they would need to move carefully, working through a maze of roads, to try to get another dirt road that might or might not lead closer to their suspected target.

  At the edge of town Tabib shook hands with them.

  "We hope you destroy the bombs, my friends. The world does not need a wild-eyed Iranian General calling the shots in this section of the world with nuclear blackmail." He stepped back from the car, and waved as they moved into the countryside with their lights off, and only the pale moon to help them see the way.

  Douglas drove. Every few miles, Franklin turned on a small flashlight and checked the creaking odometer.

  "That's fifteen miles, we're getting there."

  Douglas hoped he was right. Now and then they had seen a series of headlights moving along the road to their left. It seemed like most of the traffic was heading into the mountains. Why would that be? Maybe vital supplies were still needed to finish the fabrication of the weapons.

  Two hours into the drive, the engine sputtered, stopped, came to life again, then died.

&nbs
p; Franklin crawled out of the rig and lifted the hood.

  "Try the starter."

  Douglas ground it over.

  "Oh, damn!" Franklin yelped. "Okay, we've got lots of hot spark on the plugs. Now we check for fuel. Did this old rig have a fuel filter on it?"

  Douglas had no idea, and didn't answer. Franklin hummed a little tune as he checked the engine with the small light held in his mouth.

  "Yeah, here it is. Let me get it apart." It was a twist-and-pull type cylinder half an inch in diameter and two inches long. He pulled it off and checked it with the light.

  "Sucker is plugged up solid. Must be great gasoline they sell in this shit hole."

  He poured a cup of water into one of the small cooking pots they had in their gear and began shaking and washing the filter and thumping it on his hand.

  At last he had it clean, then blew on it until it dried out. He wiped it off with a cloth and put it back in place.

  "Give it a whirl."

  The engine ground twice, then the third time until enough fuel had worked through the inlet pipes and through the filter to get to the engine. It fired, caught, and purred contentedly.

  In the half-light, they had to drive slowly, carefully. They traded off driving every half hour. Just before 2300, they came to what looked like the end of the road.

  They had moved deeply into the barren hills that now rose higher and higher around them. The small valley they had been in came to an end suddenly against a mountain. To the left they saw a scratched-out road that seemed to climb the side of the hill and vanish.

  Douglas did a scouting run on the road, and was back in twenty minutes.

  "Looks like it keeps going to the right. We need about five or six miles that direction. Let's give it a try."

  They had trouble on the first incline. Douglas rolled rocks out of the way, and they scraped through. Then the slant down was so great that Franklin used the brakes all the way. At the bottom of the grade, the mountains seemed to close in around them. In the shadows they could see no road or even a trail.

  "Better wait for some daylight," Douglas decided. They took out the camouflaged brown canvas and staked it down over the car, stretching it out ten feet on each side. From a couple of thousand feet the little car should be invisible.

  They rolled out their blankets on the ground, put their small submachine guns at their sides, and tried to get some sleep.

  It was daylight when Douglas awoke at 0510. He lay perfectly still. Something had disturbed his sleep. What? He looked around without moving his head. At once he saw a man at the side of the car. He had just pulled out one of the five-gallon cans of water.

  In one swift move, Douglas whipped back the blanket, jumped to his feet, and leveled the sub-gun at the thief.

  Franklin came up a second later, his gun trained on the man as well.

  "No, no, don't shoot!" the man pleaded in Farsi.

  Franklin moved forward quickly, pushed the man away from the car, and told him in Farsi to sit down on the ground.

  He sat and began talking so fast, and with such emotion, that Franklin had a hard time keeping up with him.

  Douglas stared at him, then waved to Franklin. He came back and whispered.

  "Says he's just a prospector like us, but not as well set up. He's a poor man who owes everyone in town, and he can get no supplies. He has to steal what he needs."

  "Ask him where his car is, and how far this road goes."

  Franklin sat down across from the man, who had lost some of his fear since he hadn't been shot. Franklin talked to him gently in Farsi, and gradually learned the rest of his story.

  Franklin relayed the story, now speaking in English openly. "Says his car broke down, engine blew up. He ran out of oil. He was going to steal what he could from us and hide it, and come back for it later."

  "Ask him how well he knows these hills."

  Franklin nodded at the answer. "Says like his own backyard. He's been prospecting for chromium up here for ten years."

  Franklin nodded to himself, and asked the man if he knew where the big construction site was where the big trucks went.

  His eyes grew wide, and he nodded. "Yes, but it is a bad place to go. The soldiers shoot at anything that moves. The helicopters fly out and shoot at anyone they see. Very bad place to go."

  "How far from here?"

  "Oh, twenty kilometers, maybe thirty. Long ways."

  They all heard the sound of a plane about the same time. It was a propeller aircraft, moving slowly. All three ran under the tent part of the camouflage canvas. Franklin had forgotten his blanket. He dashed out and pulled it under the tarp just as the small plane came in sight over one of the mountains. It was a high-wing spotter-type aircraft.

  "Looks like a Piper Cub," Franklin said. "He's at least four thousand feet over us. If we don't move, he'll never see a thing out of the ordinary down here. One nice thing about these hills. They keep the spotters up high."

  "Unless they decide to scoot and shoot down through the valleys," Douglas said.

  They held their places as the plane vanished to the north, and the sound slowly faded.

  "Can you take us where we can see this huge plant that the soldiers guard?" Franklin asked the man in Farsi.

  "Why would I do that?"

  Franklin showed him six 10,000-rial notes. The man leaned forward and had to hold himself back from reaching out.

  "We have money," Franklin told him. "Could you lead us to where we could see the place?"

  "I might. You have food, could we eat while I think about it?"

  "He's hooked," Franklin said. "With some persuasion, and some cash, he'll take us through this maze of roads, trails, and hills to the damn nuke site."

  "Good, let's eat. We feed him, we watch him, we tie him up every night so he doesn't steal our car, and all our gear. Then maybe he'll do what he says he can."

  They ate fruit and bread for breakfast.

  "How far is the plant?" Franklin asked.

  "Far, maybe thirty kilometers, maybe twenty. Roads go up to about, maybe… oh eight kilometers. Walk from there."

  "Six miles from the end of the road," Franklin told Douglas.

  "Can we trust him?" Douglas asked.

  "Hell yes, as far as I can spit. We watch him every minute. We make him take us to his stash, and see what he has. Then maybe we let him lead us toward the place. Shouldn't take more than two days. We could even promise to give him our prospector's rig if he gets us there without any problems."

  Douglas grinned. "Now, there is a payoff this guy would love to get. Talk with him."

  The two talked for an hour in the shade of the tent. They drank water, and ate figs, and at last shook hands.

  An hour later, the man, whose name they learned was Nard, a Persian name meaning the game of chess, led them toward his supplies. They were only half a mile away, in the start of a tunnel someone had dug six feet into a mountain before giving up.

  From his gear, and his lack of food, they decided he must be who he said he was. A bargain was struck. They would pay him well to take them as close to the big plant as was possible.

  The rest of the daylight hours they slept. One of the SEALs was always awake to watch Nard. He made no move to leave. He had his sights set on the car, and all of the supplies. Douglas was sure the man would kill both of them to get it.

  When dusk came, they took down the canvas, stowed it, and moved forward to pick up Nard's gear, then he angled them down another track deeper into the mountains, north and east.

  All three of them rode in the front seat of the car as it edged along slowly in the dim light. Twice they stopped to move rocks from the trail, and once they almost slid off the track into a ditch.

  The hills loomed over them.

  They drove until midnight, then stopped and let Nard look over the land. The full moon was still out, and he nodded.

  "More to the east," he told Franklin, and they swung down another small gully between the brown, dead hill
s.

  "He could be leading us into a trap," Franklin said.

  Douglas didn't agree. "Why would he? He's got nothing to gain by killing us now. He can take us where we want to go, and then bargain with us for the rig. He gets paid either way. It isn't like he's going to run into a dozen buddies at the next gully who will mow us down with shotguns."

  They came to a fork in the road about 0400 and decided to call it a night. Before they sacked out, they covered the Citroen with the camouflage canvas, stretching it out on both sides.

  Then Franklin explained to Nard why they had to tie him up. He agreed, and let them tie his hands and feet.

  Douglas awoke the next morning when the sun blasted into his eyes. He rolled over, then came up in a rush. It was 1006. Franklin snored softly. He looked where they had left Nard, The Iranian prospector was gone. The ropes they tied him with were in a neat stack.

  Douglas came to his feet in a rush.

  "Franklin, our friend has escaped."

  Franklin came awake at once and brought up his submachine gun.

  A shrill laugh caught them both by surprise. Nard stepped from behind the vehicle eating a large piece of bread and some fruit.

  "You see, I did not run away. You can trust me. Neither did I slit your throats. I am poor, but honorable. We made an agreement; I will honor that pact. We eat more, then sleep again. It will be a hot day."

  The spot they had stopped was where two small valleys came together. They had pulled the car into the lee of the tallest hill, and now the morning shadows covered it. By noon it would be in the direct rays of the sun.

  The sun scorched everything in sight. The three men stayed under the shade of the canvas, and hoped for a slight breeze up the canyon. They cooked the last of the fresh meat they had been sent, and made instant coffee over the butane burner. Douglas had listened on the SATCOM at noon, but there were no messages from Don Stroh.

  Before two that afternoon, Douglas lay down on his blanket, and tried to think cool. The throbbing sound of a helicopter brought him out of his dreams of a swimming pool.