He knew that a line of observation posts overlooked the minefield and that there were hundreds of troopers within rifle shot and thousands more on the secured base, yet for all practical purposes he was virtually alone.
He wriggled forward, trying to detect movement. The wind was gusting. Sometimes he could see little further than the hand in front of his face, and then the wind would ease for a moment or gust in a different direction and he would be given a brief, tantalizing snapshot before the image was lost again.
He moved his right hand forward and felt flesh.
Pain screamed up his arm. He was being bitten.
The sky lit up and showed a face in front of him. The man's teeth were embedded in his hand.
Fitzduane lashed out with his left hand and caught the terrorist on the side of the head. The man's mouth opened in shock and Fitzduane felt his right hand come free. The cessation of pain as the man's teeth relaxed their grip was immediate and overwhelming.
He tried to grab his rifle, but his right hand would not seem to do his bidding.
The terrorist leaped forward as Fitzduane was rolling to one side.
The attacker missed Fitzduane but lashed out with his knife as he landed. The blow cut into Fitzduane's webbing and made a long thin diagonal cut across his torso.
Fitzduane unclipped a grenade and, using both hands, smashed the metal sphere into his attacker's face.
The man grunted and fell back.
Fitzduane raised himself over his attacker and hit him again and again in the face with the grenade. He could feel the man's bones breaking and the grenade getting slippery with blood. Each blow made his injured hand hurt agonizingly, but the intensity of the pain made him hit all the harder.
He dropped the grenade, found his rifle, put the muzzle against the side of the terrorist's head and pulled the trigger. The man's body jerked and he was completely still. Half his head had been blown away.
Fitzduane lay back panting. He flexed his right hand. It hurt, but his hand would now work. Compared to the intensity of the agony of the terrorist's bite had inflicted, the duller pain was almost welcome.
A figure rushed out of the swirling sand to Fitzduane's left. He was running hard. Fitzduane caught the silhouette of a Kalashnikov and fired two rounds from his rifle. The 5.56mm rounds hit, Fitzduane was certain, but the terrorist kept on coming. Adrenaline and desperation drove him. Waiting for days to break through the cordon of paratroopers, his body was now nearly unstoppable.
Fitzduane fired two three-round bursts and the terrorist stumbled and fell to his knees.
There was a vivid flash of flame and the terrorist was flung backward as a. 50 explosive round hit him.
Fitzduane saw Lonsdale slumped against a rock, the Barrett wavering in his hand. Half his face was obscured with blood. Fitzduane moved forward and as Lonsdale began to collapse, then helped him to the ground. Brock appeared and slid into the observation post. He took one look at Lonsdale and pulled out a field dressing.
'Oshima?' said Fitzduane.
Brock made a gesture. 'At least two of them got through on the right,' he said. 'Thirty meters away. Cochrane and a fire team have gone after them.'
The storm was easing. As suddenly as it had started, it was vanishing.
'I'm calling in a blocking force,' said Brock, 'if this fucking this now works.' He keyed the radio.
Fitzduane was gone.
Dawn was breaking.
As he ran, Fitzduane tried to put himself in Oshima's position. She had broken through, but where would she go?
The electrical storm had passed and communications were now working. Cloud cover was still low, and rain was forecast. The air effort was cranking up, but it would be hampered.
Scout Platoon was spread out in a loose V. The lead runner, Specialist Tennant, had sworn that he could see two people running up ahead, and Fitzduane was following. Personally, he had not seen anything, but in the absence of any other lead, Tennant's certainty was as good an option as anything else.
They were running east. This meant they were running into the rising sun, and that one thought alone persuaded Fitzduane that Oshima could well be up ahead. She left little to chance, and the fact that any pursuers would have the sun in their eyes as they followed would be something she would think of.
There was a good case to be made for abandoning the search and continuing it later on by air, but the sheer scale of the terrain made Fitzduane reluctant to concede Oshima any advantage. The Tecuno plateau consisted of thousands of square kilometers of brutal terrain, and if Oshima really did manage to shake her pursuers, she could hide indefinitely.
It had occurred to Fitzduane that his assumption that Oshima would move from the air base tunnel to a cache might well be oversimplifying. If Oshima had prepared a series of underground hides, then locating her would be well nigh impossible. There was too much ground to cover. A hide could be stood on by a searcher and still not be detected.
All Oshima had to do to gain was to elude her pursuers for a few hours, and then the advantage would pass to her.
The light increased, and Fitzduane strained to see what was up ahead.
Suddenly, he thought he could see something. He wiped the sweat from his face and tried again. This time he was sure. Over a thousand meters ahead, he could see the faintest shape of a running figure. There were supposed to be two, but he could detect no sign of a second figure.
It was running down an open, boulder-strewn valley. The hills on either side looked as if they had been made by some giant dumping buckets of jagged rocks at random. The nearest incline was about eight hundred meters away.
It went against all of Fitzduane's training to move exposed through such terrain, but if they wanted to keep up with their quarry there was no other option.
He longed for the reassuring shapes of a couple of Kiowas, but several had sustained damage in the storm and one was not due for another half hour.
Up ahead, Tennant stumbled and fell. Two seconds later, the second runner collapsed.
'SNIPER!' he shouted.
As he fell to the ground, he saw that the man immediately in front of him had been hit by the third shot. He crawled forward. The trooper had been struck at an angle below the breastbone. His face was gray, and as Fitzduane approached, blood frothed from his mouth and he died. The man's name was Zalinski. He was one of Scout Platoon's snipers. His M24 lay beside him.
Fitzduane searched the high ground. The wound on the dead trooper looked as if it had been made by a 7.62mm. Three shots and three hits suggested a custom sniper rifle and a shooting talent enough to yield a world of woe. The angle suggested the hills to the left.
The jagged rocks offered endless options.
All around him paratroopers were firing single shots at possible firing positions in the rocks. Using iron sights at that range, they would be lucky to score a hit even if they could see a target. But a round could get lucky. At least it would help keep the sniper's head down.
If they did nothing, they were going to get picked off one by one.
Bent double, using the cover of the return fire, Brock ran up.
'Shit!' he said quietly when he saw Zalinkski. He looked at Fitzduane. 'I hope that damn woman's worth it.'
Gallo was about twenty meters away. He studied the distant rocks, then closed his eyes.
Brock said nothing. He watched the performance and then crawled toward Gallo. The man's eyes opened. 'Got him?' Brock asked.
'Think so,' said Gallo. 'The tall butte is my twelve. Go to ten, drop twenty meters and look at the ledge below the skyline.'
Brock had picked up the dead paratrooper's M24 and was studying the rocks through the telescopic sight. 'Negative,' he said.
