'It'll be okay! You guys keep the gun, like Huerta said. You may still need it if… when things go down.'
'Good God, man, how do you expect to get out?'
For answer, Coyote walked over to a wooden beam, one of a dozen along the walls of the building which supported the roof. He ran his hand over the age-roughened, splintered wood and smiled. 'Someone get that SEAL knife and I'll show you.'
Huerta pressed his eye to the rubber eyepiece of the starlight scope. 'They're taking someone now.' The whisper did not carry beyond the confines of the SEAL hide. Four other men, including Lieutenant Sikes, lay in the hollow, watching the camp below them through night sights and IR gear. The other SEALS were invisible in the rapidly gathering darkness, spread out along the hillside.
Sikes took his turn at the scope. 'One man, two guards. Think he broke?'
Huerta shrugged silently. They'd not been able to hear what was going on in the camp, but it was clear something out of the ordinary was happening. A sentry outside the POW building had vanished inside for a moment, then left at a run, returning minutes later with help. Now a prisoner was being escorted across the compound toward the structure already identified as an HQ.
Jerry Kohl, one of the team's two snipers, shifted, following the men through his G3 rifle's Varo image- intensifier sight. 'They're taking him past the fence.'
'Keep cool, everyone,' Sikes reminded them. 'There's nothing we can do for the poor bastard now.'
Coyote deliberately slowed his pace as he passed the ten-foot, concertina-wire-topped chain-link fence which ringed the camp. It was almost fully dark now, but he could see the lights of a village in the valley below the ridge-top saddle in which the camp was built, and the dark masses of surrounding mountains rising on either side, still faintly visible against the darkening sky.
'P'palli!' one of the guards barked. The order to hurry needed no translation.
Now what, Coyote asked himself. His pleas to see Colonel Li had been answered at once. Presumably, that was where they were taking him now, flanked by two flint-eyed North Koreans with AK assault rifles dangling from slings over their shoulders and Soviet-manufactured hand grenades on their belts.
And Coyote's only weapon was surprise, and the wooden stake he had tucked up his left sleeve.
It hadn't taken long to carve the makeshift blade from a flat sliver of wood peeled from one of the Wonsan Waldorf's roof supports, whittling it to wicked sharpness. With no cutting edge the thing wasn't much as a knife, but it would be deadly as a stabbing weapon if aimed at a soft target. It would give Coyote a single strike, no more, and a few seconds of surprise and confusion. He would have to get it right the first time.
But it appeared he had overestimated his own chances… or underestimated the alertness of his guards. The camp perimeter was well lit here, and Coyote could see the shadows of guard towers behind the lights. Everything depended on surprise.
Deliberately, he staggered, clutching himself across his belly. The guards turned, then closed in. 'Irona!' one snapped. 'P'palli ose yo!'
Coyote straightened, the improvised knife firmly grasped in his right hand as he drew it from his sleeve, slashing out and up. The stake entered the guard's throat at the angle beneath his jaw and rammed through into the back of his mouth. The man gave a strangled cry and clawed at his face. Coyote's thrust hadn't been deep enough to kill, but the guard lost all interest in Coyote.
And Coyote was already grabbing for the guard's rifle.
Coyote had guessed that the rifle would be charged ? no guard walked into a room occupied by almost two hundred angry prisoners without chambering a round first ? but with the safety on. He didn't bother to take it from the Korean, but dragged his hand down over the selector switch, then closed his finger over the trigger while the weapon was still slung from its screaming owner.
He fired, a flat burst that stabbed flame into the night and shattered the silence of the camp with hammering autofire. Driving his left shoulder into the guard's chest, he pivoted gun and man together, dragging the flashing muzzle into line with the second guard. The man pitched backward, arms spread, as Coyote smashed the first guard with all the strength at his command before he could pull the wooden knife free. The soldier went down, stayed down.
Coyote could hear excited shouts as he untangled the AK-47 from the guard's body. He had his surprise. Now he needed to make the most of it.
Stooping, he unhooked one of the grenades from the guard's belt. It was a Soviet RGD-5, bright apple-green in color with an oversized cotter pin ring and a tall, thin detonator rising from the round body. He yanked out the pin, sent the grenade bouncing toward the fence, and hit the dirt facedown.
'Chogi!' someone yelled. Searchlights swept across the compound now, and the thin, ragged howl of a siren was starting to wail. There was a brief stab of gunfire from the darkness, then another. 'E yop e ult'ari!'
A long burst of autofire blasted from one of the towers a hundred yards away. Coyote felt something like a hammer blow in his leg, halfway up his thigh. The impact was hard enough to slap his leg aside but, strangely, there was no pain. Then the night erupted in flame.
'What in the hell is that crazy bastard doing?' Sikes pressed his eye to the night-vision device, straining to gather more information from the oddly flattened, monochrome image it gave him. The flash of the grenade had seared the device's optics for a moment, leaving a fuzzy blind spot which slowly cleared. He could see the bodies of two guards on the ground, could see the American POW scrambling forward on his belly, an AK clutched in his arms. The grenade had twisted the chain-link fence, punching it out from the base enough to offer a determined man a way out.
'He's making a break!' Kohl said, his face still pressed close to his Pilkington scope's eyepiece. 'He's trying to wiggle under the fence!'
'Shit!' Huerta said, 'He's hit…'
Sikes had only seconds to make a decision which could well spell disaster for his team. If the SEALs tried to help the POW, there was every possibility that the North Koreans would discover their presence.
But he also knew there must be one god-awful important reason for the man to be trying to escape.
That decided him. 'Kohl! Give him cover!'
The G3 was fitted with a sound suppressor, and the shots would not be heard over the shouting, gunfire, and sirens sounding in the camp now. The wound inflicted by the 7.62-mm NATO round would be close enough to that caused by an AK-47 round that the Koreans would never know the difference ? certainly not without an autopsy. By the time the Koreans got around to that it would be too late.
Kohl held the sniper rifle steady on its bipod for a moment, then squeezed the trigger. Even with the suppressor, the shot sounded unnaturally loud among the rocks, and Sikes had to tell himself again that, if the camp guards heard it, they would never be able to tell where it came from.
In the camp, a guard pitched headlong from one of the wooden guard towers. Kohl selected a new target and fired again. A North Korean guard, running full-tilt toward the disturbance, staggered and dropped.
'Huerta!' Sikes snapped. When the SEAL faced him, the lieutenant signaled, pointing down the slope. Huerta nodded and slipped over the rim of the hide. Kohl took aim once more.
CHAPTER 21
Coyote fired the AK-47 again, a wild spray directed in the general direction of the gunfire probing toward him from the advancing Korean soldiers. He had no idea whether he hit any or not. His single hope was to make them keep their heads down long enough for him to get through the gap under the fence.
