jinxing around toppled lighting towers and mountains of overburden. Though the rain had stopped, the sky was thick with clouds. The heat and humidity made his dash slow, and his bruised chest protested every breath. The knife wound in his leg was a sharp throb. Suddenly, the sky directly overhead exploded. A pressure wave of air slammed him to the earth, the concussion blasting against his eardrums. He rolled to his back and began scrabbling across the ground.
Two hundred feet above him, the flaming carapace of the Apache gyrated out of control, streamers of greasy smoke belching from its engine, its tail rotor assembly coming apart like a shrapnel bomb. One of the rebels had fired a surface-to-air missile into the helo and scored a direct hit. The gunship crashed close enough to throw Mercer again, fiery sheets of aviation fuel raining around him, but incredibly none landed on his clothes or skin.
When he stood, the ribs that had first taken a pounding under Hofmyer’s fists and later by Mahdi and the tunnel walls had finally given out. He felt a sharp stab of pain that reached all the way to his heart, and the agony of the broken bones forced him to his knees. He had taken so much physical abuse that he wondered just what he hoped to accomplish. The Marines were here. They would handle the rebels. He was putting his life in danger for absolutely no reason.
Deciding that maybe it was best to wait this one out, he was searching for a good place to hole up when bullets kicked up erratic fountains of dirt at his feet. Clutching his ribs with one arm, Mercer ran as best he could, reaching cover behind a big portable generator. He squinted into the haze created by the dozens of smoke grenades, their clouds of smog cutting visibility to almost nothing. He didn’t see who had opened up on him, but spotted a Sudanese ambush set up for a squad of patrolling Marines. The American soldiers were alert and moved well, but they were about to be diced in a surprise cross-fire.
The AK bucked in his hands, stitching two of the guerrillas and then the clip ran empty. Mercer fumbled to slam home a fresh one, dodging to the other side of the mobile generator as rounds pinged off its metal hide. The Marines dropped to the ground, entering the melee and killing three more Sudanese. Mercer was joined a second later by the four young Americans.
“Thanks, pal,” the leader of the patrol wheezed, slumping against the Ingersoll-Rand.
“My pleasure. Can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”
“You’re Mercer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We were briefed to look for you when we landed, but weren’t you buried or something?”
“I was until about ten minutes go.” Mercer took a protein bar the Latino corporal offered and devoured it in three bites. “What’s the situation?”
“Shit, you know more than we do. Briefing said about fifty armed troops guarding this camp with minimum equipment and arms. Bastards capped an Apache just a minute ago with a portable SAM, and there seem to be a lot more than fifty.”
“The number’s about right,” Mercer countered. “But these guys have been fighting for years in the Sudan. They’ve got combat experience to spare, and their former commander was one mean son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, we’ve taken heavy losses. If it weren’t for all the civilians mixed up with the bad guys, the captain would’ve called in some close air support and bombed the shit out of this place.”
Any chance for a continued conversation was shattered by a chain of detonations at the fuel tank farm. The eruptions of flame and smoke towered into the leaden sky, building and blooming like deadly flowers. The ground shook so hard that Mercer felt his teeth were going to loosen from his jaw.
As he was recovering, the Marine seated on the far side of the corporal jumped spastically and the paintwork of the generator behind him splattered with clots of blood and the back of his skull. The Marines reacted even before they knew where the shot had originated, sending out a scathing return fire and racing from their cover. Mercer had no choice but to follow. He ran in a doubled-up position, aiming the AK behind his hip and unleashing a fusillade of his own.
They slogged up a mound of overburden, the soldiers slowed by the pounds of equipment each carried and Mercer by his own condition. Another shot blew a geyser of dirt just an inch to the left of Mercer’s shoulder, grit lashing his face as he clawed his way to the summit. In the protection of the artificial hill’s flat peak, he realized just who was shooting at them and why.
The Israeli team was still here. The two shots were so accurate that they could only come from a sniper rifle. They were either firing to add to the confusion so they could slip into the mine or they were planning on an evacuation and wanted to keep the combatants occupied while they escaped. For Mercer, both options were unacceptable.
Chancing a look over the parapet of their earthen fortress, he could survey the entire camp and the clusters of men fighting below. It looked as if the Sudanese’s numbers were greatly diminished. He could see a few holdouts near Gianelli’s big transporters. In the distance, there were figures running away from the battle, but he guessed they were Eritreans. Of the bodies he could see littering the ground that weren’t dressed in American desert BDUs, two were white, but from this range he couldn’t tell if either was Gianelli.
“Say again?” the corporal was shouting into the radio built into his combat helmet. “Roger that, Sky Eyes. Keep us posted.”
“What’s happening?” Mercer clipped his last banana magazine into the well of the AK-47.
“AWACS plane circling off the coast reports a low-level contact about six klicks east of here and moving in at a hundred miles an hour.”
“Shit!”
“What is it?”
“There’s a team of Israelis in the area. They’ve been after this mine for a while, but I think they’re cutting their losses and bugging out.”
“Well, they’re going to make it,” the Marine said, not really interested in another enemy with his hands so full of Sudanese. “We don’t have any more gunships to go after it, and if that AWACS only now just spotted it, you can believe it’ll disappear just as easily.”
Mercer knew the soldier was right. Flying nap of the earth, a good chopper pilot could evade even the most sophisticated airborne radar systems. He got an idea. “How’d you guys get here?”
“Blackhawks. There are a half dozen of them on the ground about ten miles north. We hoofed it the rest of the way in.”
“Can you radio for one to pick us up?”
“Yeah, but it won’t do any good. Those birds are just troop ships. No guns.”
“Just get one. We’ll be the firepower.” Mercer tapped the corporal’s M-16A1 with the butt of his AK.
The corporal switched the channel on his radio. “Captain Saunders, this is Chavez. I’m with Mercer. He says the bogey Sky Eyes just painted is an evac chopper for some uglies. I want permission to go after it in a Blackhawk.” He paused, his gaze on Mercer. “Yes, sir. I know. We’re on top of a hill, and it looks like things are dying down in our sector… Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye on him… No, sir, I’ll ask him. Dr. Mercer, where are the rest of the Eritrean nationals?”
“Still trapped in the mine. There’s a woman in the main tunnel who knows exactly where they are.”
The soldier nodded and activated his mike again. “In the mine, sir… Yes, sir, we’re standing by.”
“Well?”
“The captain’s calling a chopper. We’ll pop some green smoke when the bird gets here. We’re going to drop you at our staging area and go after the Israelis ourselves. It’s not my place to ask, but what kind of international situation are we getting ourselves into here?”
“Think of the deepest pile of shit you can imagine and then double it,” Mercer grunted. “Only bright spot is, we’re the good guys for a change.”
The soldier carrying the heavy Squad Automatic Weapon spotted a target and ripped off about fifteen rounds, empty brass arcing from the 5.56mm in a tight necklace. Chavez and the other Marine scanned the camp for more targets but only indistinct shapes moved in the smoke and they couldn’t chance a friendly-fire kill.
“Whad’ya have, Moose?”
“Two of them with AKs at ten o’clock, moving clockways. They’re behind that ten-wheel truck.”
“Keep ’em pinned,” Corporal Chavez ordered. Moose gave the SAW’s trigger another long pull. “But watch your ammo discipline.”
“How long till the chopper gets here?”
