around the hillside to intersect the trail along the Dandera river. Soon
they must send a patrol up here to secure their flank before they could
sweep on. Yes, there they were. Eight, no, ten men detaching from the
main advance, and moving cautiously up the slope beneath him.
'I will let them get in close,' he decided. 'I would like to get them
all, but that is too much to hope for. I would settle for four or five
of them, and it would be good to leave a few squealers in the scrub.' He
grinned cruelly. 'Nothing like a man screaming with a belly wound to
take the fire out of his comrades, and make them keep their heads down.'
He looked across the rock-strewn slope, and saw that his RPD light
machine gun was perfectly sited to enfilade their advance up the slope.
Salim, his machine gunner, was an artist with that weapon. Perhaps,
after all, he could hope to put down more than five of them.
'We will see,' thought Mek, 'but I must time it right.' He saw that
there was a gap in the ridge of rock just below him.
'They will not want to expose themselves by crossing the open ridge,' he
judged. 'They will tend to bunch up and sneak through the gap. That will
be the moment.'
He looked back at the RPD. Salim was watching him, waiting for his
signal. Mek looked back down the slope.
ly 'he thought. 'Their line is bunching. 'The big one es, on the left is
already out of position. Those two inside him are angling across towards
the gap.' Nogo's men's camouflage blended perfectly with the of their
weapons were wrapped with scrub, and the barrels rags and scraps of
camouflage netting so that they threw no sunlight reflections. They were
almost invisible in the bush;
it was only their movements and the skin tones that se now that Mek
caught betrayed them. They were soCIO
of one of their eyeballs but he still the occasional gleam could not
pick out their machine gunner.
He must silence the gun with his first burst. 'Ah, Yes,' he thought with
relief. 'There he is. On the right flank. I nearly missed him.'
eavy shoulders The man was short and thick-set, with ily on his hip.
carrying the gun eas and long arms, simian, from it was a Soviet-made
7.62mm RPD. The wink of brass ed over those the cartridges in the
ammunition belts festoor, great shoulders had given him away.
Mek eased himself down and inched around the base He slipped the
rate-of-fire ered him.
of the rock that cov cheek on the selector on his AKM to rapid, and laid
hi wooden butt. it was his personal weapon. A gunsmith in barrel for
him, action and lapped the Addis had trued the stock. All this as well
as glass-bedding the barrel into the rove the accuracy of this
notoriously had been done to imp inaccurate assault rifle- It was still
no sniper's weapon, but ct to place all his with these modifications he
could expe shots within a two-inch circle at a hundred metres.
The man carrying the RPD up the slope was now only fifty metres below
where he lay. Mek glanced to his right to the to make sure that the
three others were moving in gap where Salim could take them out with a
single burst;
sight in the entre of the then he settled the pip of his fore
