The rebels swarmed forward either side of the vehicle. There were no guards at the sentry box to the side of the archway. They had been deliberately withdrawn to one of the gun pits at the rear of the stronghold. Part of the trap the team had set, designed to lure the enemy into a false sense of security. The Machete Boys would see the abandoned guard post and think the building was poorly defended. They wouldn’t spot the soldiers on the rooftop, not at this distance.
Not until it was too late.
‘Wait,’ said Mallet.
The last of the rebels glided past the treeline. The men in both columns were closely grouped together, Bowman noticed. Which was a big mistake. A professionally trained unit would have advanced to the target in a loose formation. Massed ranks of infantry were easier to cut down than individuals spaced far apart from one another.
The Boys cantered on alongside the technical as it came bouncing down the approach road towards the archway. Then they broke across the clearing. They moved five metres beyond the treeline. Then ten metres. Fifteen.
Twenty.
Mallet waited another second.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Twenty-Eight
The gunshot thundered across the breaking dawn.
Bowman looked through his scope as the half-inch-thick round struck the front of the technical, cratering the radiator and the cylinder block, killing the engine. Which was the smart move, from a tactical point of view. Kill the vehicle first, instead of the guys on foot. Disable the main threat. Specifically, the machine gun mounted on the back of the technical. Bowman couldn’t identify the weapon from this distance, but he assumed it was a DShK or similar. Something Russian, in the heavy machine-gun family, with an effective range of about two thousand metres. A much more serious threat than the AK-47 rifles the foot soldiers were packing. The team didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a burst from the technical.
The pickup jerked to a sudden stop in the middle of the clearing. Smoke gushed out of the sides of the bonnet. Bowman heard a sharp ca-rack as Webb took aim and fired the AWC. The smaller calibre sniper rifle. Chambered for the 7.62 × 51 mm NATO round, lethal up to a range of eight hundred metres. The bullet starred the front windshield, killing the driver before he could debus. Webb cocked the bolt in one smooth motion and fired a second time. The rebel on the back of the truck tumbled away from the machine gun. Three quick shots and the technical was out of the fight.
The thirty Machete Boys either side of the truck froze.
The suddenness of the attack had shocked them. Like getting punched in the face by a stranger in the street. They were experiencing sensory overload. Three of their mates had just been wiped out in a few seconds. No one knew what to do. The Boys had no plan B. They had walked straight into an ambush. Everything had gone to shit.
‘Open up with the Gimpys!’ Mallet shouted. ‘Now!’
Smoke was still pouring out of the engine block as Bowman aimed at the close grouping of rebels to the right of the knackered technical. His left hand rested on top of the GPMG’s plastic stock, his right clasped the grip, creating a stable firing platform. A few metres away, Loader was standing in front of the parapet wall, pointing his weapon at the massed group of figures to the left of the stationary pickup. No need for the operators to shelter behind the parapet itself. The Boys were going to get dropped before they could loose off any rounds. No more than two seconds had elapsed since Mallet had fired the first round from the .50 cal.
The rebels were thirty metres from the perimeter fence. Seventy metres from the wooded area to the north. No man’s land.
The kill zone.
Bowman fired.
A gout of flame spewed out of the Gimpy snout. Spent link and cartridges pinged out of the ejector on the right side of the receiver, tinkling against the cement floor as Bowman emptied two bursts at the Boys to the right of the technical, cutting down five of them in a storm of hot lead. At his nine o’clock, Loader was letting rip with the second Gimpy, poleaxing the rebels to the left of the approach road.
Both soldiers fired again. Two more five-round bursts apiece. The industrial duh-duh-duh of the machine guns filled the air. The bullets tore through the targets at a downward angle and punched through the guy immediately behind them before they smacked into the soil, flinging clumps of dirt into the air. Every fifth round was a red tracer, to help the shooters see where the bullets were falling. Several of the tracers on both sides of the truck ricocheted off the ground and fired upwards into the lightening sky, like rockets at a firework display.
More than half the targets in both groups were dead on the ground. Sixteen or seventeen bodies.
The surviving Boys instantly scattered across the exposed terrain. Running in different directions in a frantic search for cover. Every man for himself. Bowman heard the clipped report of the AWC, the deeper boom of the .50 cal as Webb and Mallet joined in with the fighting. They were taking down opportune targets while the two GPMGs dealt with the larger groups. One guy in an animal-print jacket and shades leaped onto the rear of the technical in a desperate attempt to take control of the machine gun. The AWC ca-racked. The man toppled backwards from the gun, limbs flailing as he dropped to the ground. To the left of the technical, another rebel wearing a beanie hat started to raise his AK-47
