'Where is your family?' Terry asked.
'A few miles from here, in Nugaal.'
'How many?'
'Forty-two.'
‘Forty-two?'
'I have three wives and one concubine. Plus my parents. And three brothers and their families. Forty- two.'
Fuck. 'Do you need any books?' Terry asked. 'Any ledgers? Discs? Your laptop?'
The accountant shook his head and then tapped one finger to it. 'It's all here.'
Should I mention the couple of tons of gold in the basement? Dayid wondered. Mmmm . . . maybe not. They came in, probably, by air; they will leave by air. Given the weight of some members of my family, telling them about the gold might get them left behind. And no matter what I may say, I do not want to be rigorously questioned. No, let Gutaale keep the gold. Maybe it will incline him to be more forgiving of the more distant members of my sept.
D-Day, MV
'Terry reports ‘mission accomplished,' boss,' Waggoner said. 'He lost one of his translators. Dead, no dustoff required. But . . . he's got a problem.'
'Which is?' Stauer asked.
'Beyond the eleven men left in his own team, and the accountant, he needs transportation for seventy-one more people. He says, ‘no argument, he needs it.' He says most of them are skinny and some are kids and that he can pack everybody on two helicopters. On the other hand, Buckwheat does need a dustoff.'
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The essential American soul is hard, isolate,
stoic and a killer.
-D. H. Lawrence
D-Day, two kilometers south of Bandar Qassim Airport, Ophir
Somewhere up on the ridge, Buckwheat and Fletcher traded shots with some locals who, by now, had become very reluctant to show their heads much. Rattus Hampson couldn't hear the outgoing shots. But he heard altogether too many incoming ones. Still, the ridge protected himself, his patient, and Wahab, even if it didn't do a lot for the snipers.
Buckwheat had trotted into the hide position, unceremoniously dumped Babcock-Moore on the hood of the Hummer, grabbed Fletcher and headed back to the ridge. Rattus had suspected that the man was simply too out of breath to give instructions.
Hampson and Wahab had gotten the black Brit to the ground without too much trouble. Now, with Wahab holding a flashlight, Rattus attempted to staunch some pretty severe bleeding.
'Will I ever dance again?' Vic asked, through gritted teeth.
'Sure you will,' Rattus answered, cutting away torn cloth to get at the wound.
'Then I should be happy, because I never could before.'
'You know how old a joke that is?'
'Don't you know how old we are?'
Gotta save this limey, Rattus thought. Anybody who can crack jokes-even bad ones-with a bullet lodged in his femur is worth keeping.
'You know,' Rattus said, conversationally, as he probed for a lump of bronze-jacketed lead, 'the last time I removed a bullet from a femur it was a goat's.'
'Oh, fuck,' Vic moaned, 'I'm in the hands of a veterinarian.'
D-Day, PZ Robin, formerly Beach Red, Ophir
In theory, the MI-17 could lift twenty-four combat equipped troops. In practice, if one were determined enough, and willing to pack men in like animals in a stockyard, and didn't carry the potential extra fuel tanks, or machine gun or rocket pods, it could lift forty. Neither they nor the helicopter would enjoy it, but it could be done.
Mooo, Cruz thought, as the double lines of twenty former Marines on each side fed themselves into the cargo bay through the rear clamshell doors. He expected it, but laughed anyway, as the first of his passengers sounded off, loudly, 'Mooo.' Pretty soon the entire load, forty men, was mooing, too, and enthusiastically.
Cruz glanced to his right at his Russian copilot. Sure enough, the Russian understood perfectly well the joke and laughed right along.
'And awayyy we go,' Cruz announced, as soon as his crew chief gave him the thumbs up. In his intercom he heard the Russian humming 'Ride of the Valkyries' as the chopper lifted.
Ah, American culture, Cruz thought. Such as it is.
The three Hip helicopters started in line abreast. As they lifted, they shifted to a trail formation. Great clouds of sand swirled up around them as they left the beach, deserted, behind. They flew low. There was no sense in going high when the first stop, to drop off the mortars, was less than fifteen minutes away.
Cruz's Hip came down to a bouncy landing. Got to expect that when you're this overloaded. In the rear, the crew chief kicked open the clamshell doors and then got out of the way as six men unloaded, lugging a very heavy mortar with them. To the left and the right, other men, lugging other mortars, did the same. They dropped their
