Bob slipped, and at that moment a bullet came. Swagger’s luck, the shooter missed by inches, and Swagger felt the push of the atmosphere as the bullet knifed through. He dropped and began to slither.
Too old for this shit.
“Did you get him, Three?”
“No, dammit, he went down just as I fired. I had a real good sight pic on him; goddamn, he is a lucky sonovabitch.”
“Do you see him, Five?”
The chopper, hovering four hundred feet over the hilltop, floated this way and that. “I have a visual, Blue Leader. He’s low-crawling among the boulders, maybe a hundred feet ahead of you. I don’t know where he’s going; there’s no place to go. If I were armed, I’d have the shot. But he’s stuck up here for sure.”
“All right, any police activity?”
“Negative. No reports, no dispatches. It’s all clear on that front, over.”
“Good. I need you to retire to point one now. We don’t need you hanging overhead, attracting attention.”
“Check and commencing.”
The chopper veered off, headed for an orbit a mile away, out of range.
“Blue Team, listen up, mates. You guys on the flanks, I want you to move laterally. Locate at each hard- ninety compass indicator and hold up. I want to come at him from four directions. I don’t want any chance of him evading us and making it off this hill alive, do you read?”
Affirmatives came back at him.
“You are cleared to fire if you get a clean shot. But I think this is shaping up like fire and movement and then an up-top rat hunt.”
“Got it, Blue Leader.”
The three high-speed operators scurried away to their holding spots. Blue Leader crouched, did an equipment check, then took out a smoke and lit up. Always time for a butt. He’d been doing hilltops for about twenty years, sometimes trying to hold them, sometimes trying to take them. It was all the same. Old hand, lots of war behind him, presumably lots of war ahead.
He waited, enjoying the cigarette, an English Oval, a thick blunt fag unlike the scrawny filtered candy tubes the Yanks smoked. When he was done, years of military experience in rank and officers’ mess demanded that he carefully peel the paper, rub the remaining tobacco and ash away between his fingers, crumple the paper, and put it in his pocket.
“Blue Leader, this is Blue Two, I am set at due east and ready to rock.”
“Three?”
“Due west, holding.”
“Visuals?”
“Got nothing but rock and brush. No movement. He’s hunkered down solid.”
“Ditto that.”
“Ditto again.”
“Okay. Let me try a thing.” Blue Leader rose. “Swagger, mate,” he shouted. “Make this easy, go out with dignity. No point in squealing like a pig in the bush as we hunt you down, shot a dozen times, bleeding out in pain. You’re an old bastard, you’ve seen this game a thousand times, you knew your day would come. Dignity, chum. A cigarette, a laugh, a sip on the canteen, I’ve even got some damn fine Scotch aboard, and it’s over clean and painless.”
No response. Of course not. Swagger wouldn’t give a location indicator. He’d play hard to get.
“All right.” Blue Leader spoke to his team via the throat mike. “One and Three, move out. Two, with me on the cover fire, do it.”
He rose, rocked a MK48 burst across his front, and watched the bullets blow lines of dust spasms and rock frags up where they hit. On the other side, Two put in his two cents’ worth.
Then it was Blue Leader’s turn to move, and he went low and hard, hearing the cover fire against the hilltop from the two other points on the compass, got to a nest of boulders, and slid in. He looked and, in the jumbled landscape ahead of him, saw nothing. There wasn’t much area left unpenetrated. Swagger was running out of hilltop.
“Okay, nice and easy, Blue Team, one at a time, you move in twenty or so feet, scan, and hold. He may have an ankle piece on him or a knife. Use your corner discipline, be aware of blind spots. I’d go to M-6, for better movement; he’s just a few feet ahead now.”
Blue Leader let the heavier MK48 fall to sling support, pushed it around to his backside, and deployed the shorter M-6 carbine, stock locked in short, cocked and unlocked, Eotech on and turned to ten so a bright red circle displayed his aim point to either conscious or subconscious.
“One in.”
“Two in.”
“Three in.”
He scurried in, movements smooth, fast, practiced, the gun locked to shoulder, scanning for threat, finger riding the light trigger, ready to put a burst into anything ahead.
He could feel them. They were so close. The shout from the leader, some Brit tough guy, Mick Jagger on steroids, followed by fusillades from all points on the compass that filled the universe with bad news and drove him down so he felt he could shrink into the earth, the cold blade of fear that maybe this time was the time. Then it passed; he had his war brain back and knew exactly how it would work. They’d close the circle, driving him back, and there’d be no place to go. Then it would be over.
He slithered around a rock, forced himself (tasting dust, feeling pain to knees, elbows, and skin) through the low tangle of brush, found a path between more low rocks that seemed to reach center, and scurried ahead.
He saw it.
A red-orange hunting vest, crumpled but vivid, the only primary color in a landscape that ran from dull to duller brown, even with the sun above. He scrambled to the signal, dug behind it until he encountered a canvas strap, and pulled. Fifteen pounds of canvas gun case emerged from hiding. A quick unzip.
It was the Thompson M1A1, thirty-round mag, like the gun with which his father had shot his way across the Pacific. Nick had gotten it here from Aptapton’s widow just in time.
Thank you, Nick. Once again, you save the old man’s bacon. Thank you, Aptapton, for your love of guns, especially the old tommys.
He slid the bolt back, locking it, admitting a .45 ACP to position to be swept up and fired as the first round in a burst. Six other loaded stick mags lay in pouches on a belt curled into the case, and he pulled the belt around him and cinched it tight.
At that moment, a young man – perfect commando, from Oakley tactical boots to green-brown face paint – enough firepower on him to take out a platoon, crept into the space between two boulders not twenty-five feet ahead. They felt each other in the autistic Zen of predators, made a flash eye contact, and got down to business. Swagger beat him on the action curve by a tenth of a second, jacking a ten-round burst into his legs, knocking him down and askew, tearing up limbs and hips but not spending bullets against the armor vest. The guy went down hard, and in a second his twisted lower extremities were wet and red to the world.
Swagger slipped back into the brush.
“Fuck, fuck, he has a tommy gun, a goddamn tommy gun!” screamed Blue Two.
“Are you hit?”
“He blew my goddamn legs off, oh, shit, I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“You hold, Two, don’t panic, use your clotting agent and tie it down to stop the blood flow, we will be with you soon. Hold on, mate.”
“Ah, fuck,” said Two.
Blue Leader had recognized the sound of the .45s instantly and knew it was of the Thompson declension because the rate of fire was well above grease-gun speed. He was not surprised, disappointed, stunned, or
