'He's right, Colonel, you're taking a knife into a gunfight--'
The stern look from Collins made Mendenhall close his mouth quickly.
'We don't let children die when we're around. No diplomacy and no red tape, clear?' he said as he looked from man to man.
Both nodded.
Down below in the camp, the search continued for whatever it was the mercenaries were looking for. The students were cowering against one another, and the African leader was still holding the small woman by the throat, only by now he had stopped shaking her. Just as Jack was about to move off to the far side of the encampment, from which he would make the initial strike, there was a ringing coming from the vicinity of the leader. As they watched, the large man dropped the woman and she sprawled to the sand and just lay there holding her throat. He reached into his vest and brought out a cell phone. Everett strained, trying to listen.
'Yes?' the man said in English.
Everett slowly brought back the slide of his Beretta and chambered a round as he listened.
'Nothing like you described. I'll take pictures on my phone and send them to you. How am I to know the period of the piece if found?'
Everett turned to Will and whispered, 'Whatever happens, we try and get that cell phone, we may just have gotten a break in finding out who's paying this dickhead.'
Mendenhall nodded as he clicked off the safety of his 9-millimeter and took aim on the man nearest the students who held an AK-47.
The leader angrily slammed his cell phone shut and pocketed it. Then he screamed a question at the cowering woman at his feet as he slowly raised his machete. Everett had just taken aim but he held his fire, per his orders, and forced himself to lower his weapon.
The leader got a strange look on his face as he looked at the river. He tilted his head, listening, and then gestured for two of his men to move toward a thumping noise coming from the water.
'Oh, shit,' Mendenhall said as he looked at the Nile and saw the diversion Ryan was attempting to pull off.
'Un-fucking believable,' was all Everett could say.
The loud sound of the motor was nothing compared to the amplified music emanating from the boom box that Ryan had fixed with wire to the tarp support. The 1970s band the Eagles blared out their hit 'Take It Easy' as Ryan tied off the steering wheel and placed the boat in a slow circling spin in front of the Ethiopian encampment. All eyes were on the small, shirtless man in Bermuda shorts standing on top of the boat's awning with his arms splayed before him as he balanced himself as if he were surfing the boat. It spun crazily in the river to the sound of the rhythmic song written about hitchhiking through Arizona. The former naval F-14 Tomcat pilot had lost nothing of his sense of the dramatic since joining the Group. He was still just as crazy as the men who had recruited him.
The mercenaries were stunned by the sight. This American fool was obviously drunk and playing games with them.
'Shoot him!' the leader screamed out in Dinka as he brought the machete back up to strike the cowering girl.
Before the man could act on his murderous thrust toward the prone woman, something burst from the brush and slammed into the Sudanese leader. Jack brought down the small pocketknife with tremendous force directly into the man's neck. The blow immediately froze the machete in midair. Once the killer started to fall, Jack turned and threw the knife at the nearest armed man he saw. The knife, though not a lethal blow, struck the merc in the chest just below the collarbone, but it caused enough injury and shock that the man dropped his weapon.
On the river, Ryan heard the first distinctive AK-47 reports coming from shore and had the audacity to continue balancing himself for a moment on the boat's tarpaulin cover. Then, with the better part of the show over--
Everett sighted the first of his targets. A tall, very thin man was just turning to take aim at Jack and the young woman he was hurriedly helping to her feet. The 9-millimeter round caught the man between the eyes just to the right of his nose. At the same moment, Mendenhall outdid Everett by dropping two men who were already firing on Ryan. Both rounds struck the men in the backs of their heads. Others had turned their attention to their leader and were starting to take aim at Jack.
Carl and Will opened fire in earnest, hoping to drop as many as possible, but they were torn between the men with rifles and those who were starting to turn their attention, and their machetes, on the Ethiopian students.
Jack pushed the small woman away and charged the nearest man threatening the students. As others started to succumb to the withering fire from the knoll, Jack struck the nearest man and drove him into the ground, pounding at him with his fist. One of the young students tried to reach for a fallen machete to assist Collins, but immediately another mercenary got between him and the weapon. Then the assailant was brought down by a round from Everett.
The leader, who had been the first man dropped in the makeshift assault, started crawling away unnoticed. The killing blow that Jack thought he had inflicted guaranteed only a slow death--too slow to stop the man from doing what he needed to do. As he stumbled and tried to stand, he brought out the cell phone and struggled to his knees, just as Mendenhall and Everett shot down the last of his men. He opened the cell phone and, with his wound bleeding nastily, smashed it against a rock. Then he raised his arm to throw the remains into the river; but he hadn't noticed the changing sounds from the river as the angle and loud sounds of 'Take It Easy' had changed direction.
Unknown to everyone, a stray bullet had finally found its mark and struck Ryan. The heavy round had only grazed his temple, but it was enough to leave him dazed and to send the large boat straight to the riverbank. The bow struck the small rise of sand and sent the boat full speed into the air. It rose over the scrambling students and the shocked face of Collins, who was pulling a machete out of the hand of the man he had just killed.
'What the hell?' Everett started to cry as the large boat, its motor screaming with exertion and traveling at thirty-five knots, went airborne by thirty feet.
As they all watched, the boat came down with a crash right onto the Sudanese leader, catching him in midthrow. The boat crushed him underneath as it split in two, sending the unconscious Ryan flying into the top of the nearest tent. Just like that, the assault was over, as quickly as it had started.
Collins rushed over to see if Ryan had survived his improvised diversion. Everett came down from the knoll with Mendenhall covering him and started checking the bad guys for life.
In all, the assault by the Event Group security team had taken less than two and a half minutes.
Half an hour later, as the sun was just dipping below the Ethiopian horizon, Jack, Everett, and Will Mendenhall, with the help of the Event Group dig team, assisted the stunned Ethiopian students. In the distance came the gentle thump of helicopters coming from Addis Abba, to the south.
Collins was kneeling beside a bandaged Jason Ryan and was angrily shaking his head.
'When I say 'improvise,' it doesn't mean to stand on top of a boat and have people shoot at you, Ryan.'
'Did you like the choice of music? That's all that matters, Colonel.'
Jack smirked and shook his head as he stood. 'Yeah, as a matter of fact I did.'
Ryan then grimaced, as he allowed one of the women of the Event Group to assist him to his feet.
'Jack, the doc says that we have four army Blackhawks inbound to take everyone out, courtesy of the American consulate. The Ethiopian government has been notified about the assault on their university students and the doctor also said that Niles was quoted as saying, 'Leave those idiots in Ethiopia, I have no need for them back in Nevada,' ' Carl said.
'The director's not happy with our choice of vacation spots, huh?'
'Not exactly.' Everett started to turn away and then stopped. He tossed Jack a small black object. 'The head asshole was using this just before you started to play Tarzan with your knife. It's broken, but with a little bit of Event Group magic it may lead us to whoever was running this team of mercs.'
'Colonel, I have someone here who would like to say thank you,' Professor Leekie said as she placed her hands on the shoulders of the young African student who had put up the brave front against the leader of the
