Three hundred yards behind them was the road out of the mine. A wire security fence manned by four Chinese barred unauthorized vehicles from gaining entry. Because the gate was so distant and the hour so late, none of the commandos gave it any thought until the sound of an approaching truck grew louder than the racket of the excavators in front of them. As one, they turned and saw that a 6x6 military truck had passed through the gate and was headed straight for them. As the team scrambled to the far side of the hill, the truck stopped less than thirty yards away. Two waves of soldiers peeled from the back of the soft-topped truck.
Unlike the other guards stationed at the mine, these men were Panamanian. Lauren could tell by the cut of their uniforms and the M-16s they carried.
Two unforeseen events, the alarm raised at the bunker and the arrival of reinforcements, had rendered the rescue operation a disaster and made their retreat questionable. The Panamanian soldiers quickly assembled in a sweep line, with each man no more than twenty feet from two comrades. At a command that didn’t carry to the French, the troopers began a steady march across the graded valley floor.
The commandos had just a couple minutes before the sweep line reached them. If they ran in the opposite direction, they would run into a sweep line being formed by the Chinese soldiers. They were trapped. The mound shielding them was like a blister on the hard-packed ground a hundred feet from the base of the terraced cliff. Maybe one of them could cover that distance without being detected, but not all six.
“
“Top of the hill,” Foch ordered. The team scrambled up the loose mound of mine waste, giving them a twenty-foot height advantage and an open field of fire. From a clandestine rescue, their mission was about to become a desperate last stand.
“Pick your targets. Officers, NCOs.” The lieutenant’s words were unnecessary. Those under him, and Lauren, knew what was expected. The Panamanian sweep line was twenty yards off, the Chinese a bit farther.
In a hopeful inspiration, Lauren said, “Concentrate your fire on the locals. They won’t have the level of training as the Chinese. If we can punch a hole through their ranks, we might be able to steal their truck.”
There was a precious second when it appeared that the skirmish line would walk right past the hill, but then a Panamanian sergeant shouted at one of his troopers and the man angled toward the mound. Lauren couldn’t believe this was happening. In another thirty seconds she was about to enter a fight for her life. Even Kosovo hadn’t been this bad. She bit into her lower lip and watched the Panamanians approach over the sights of her machine pistol.
“
By some sixth sense, Foch waited to fire until the very instant the rear gate on a dump truck slammed closed with a sound that covered the single shot. The soldier twenty feet from the base of the hill crumpled, his M-16 falling from his already dead fingers. There was a short pause, a moment in which his comrades waited to see if their buddy was kidding around. The French ended the moment with a deadly barrage. Seven of the twenty-five Panamanian troops went down before the first returned fire.
“Vic, Gerard,
The two Legionnaires swiveled around in time to stop a sudden surge of Chinese soldiers approaching from their rear. The top of the hill became a redoubt with a commanding view. There was no cover for either the Chinese or the Panamanians and both groups quickly retreated before either side lost enough men to allow the French to escape.
“They’ll regroup and be back,” Lauren shouted, her ears ringing from the short but intense cross fire. Her gun was hot when she changed out its depleted magazine.
For five minutes, the Chinese and Panamanians sniped at the top of the hill, pinning the Legionnaires but not drawing the return fire they hoped would waste what they knew would be a limited supply of ammunition. The French picked their targets well, single shots that either killed outright or seriously injured. They knew, though, that this stalemate couldn’t last.
“Options?” Foch asked.
His men replied in sullen French, too tense to care that Lauren wouldn’t understand. Not that she couldn’t follow what was happening. She knew their options. None.
From across the compound she saw that the siege was about to end. A camouflaged pickup truck careened from around an office trailer. In its bed was a heavy machine gun. A.50 caliber if she wasn’t mistaken by the distance and the artificial lighting. The small arms the French carried were enough to keep ground troops at bay, but the machine gun could shred the top of the hill from a range they’d never be able to match. She also spotted an enormous front-end loader lumbering across the mine toward their makeshift breastwork. Its deep scoop looked like an enormous scythe.
She shouted a warning as an arc of fire reached up and out from the machine gun like water from a hose. The top of the hill came alive with bullets and ricochets and dirt kicked up by the fusillade. With the Legionnaires pinned by the sustained fire, the ground troops once again advanced on the hilltop. The top of the mound was coming apart, shredded by the heavy bullets so that the slight depression at its summit that shielded the commandos was about to be exposed. The Frenchman, Gerard, raised his FAMAS rifle to fire back blindly and had the weapon torn out of his hands by a blast from the machine gun. He lost half of his trigger finger as well.
The pickup lurched to a halt, which gave the gunner a more stable platform from which to direct his fire. Using the.50 caliber like an excavation tool, he concentrated his aim at one spot just below the crest of the hill. The heavy rounds began ripping a wedge out of the soil. It would take a few seconds, but once a breach was formed the commandos trapped on the hill would be exposed to the deadly stream of bullets.
The Chinese and Panamanian soldiers halted their advance to watch the inevitable.
No one paid any attention to the Caterpillar 988 bucket loader wheeling across the facility like a rampaging animal. It appeared that it was going to drive straight for the French position, but at the last second the driver spun the articulated machine and aimed it at the Chevy pickup truck.
At sixteen feet, the immense bucket was wider than the truck was long. With an easy touch on the controls, the unseen operator lowered the blade as he careened toward the pickup. The bucket scraped away the top inch of dirt as it slid under all four of the Chevy’s tires. The Chinese driver screamed as the view out his window became a solid wall of steel. The gunner was a moment too slow trying to jump clear. Once the truck was tucked inside the bucket, the operator effortlessly hoisted the vehicle off the ground. The big Cat had barely slowed as it lifted the pickup.
Snarling, the loader raced across the mine, a smear of thick smoke belching from the turbocharged six cylinder. Because the bucket was held level, the gunner managed to scramble to the pickup’s tailgate, but at a height of seventeen feet and moving at nearly twenty miles per hour, he balked at jumping clear. Then he understood what the operator intended and steeled himself. His foot slipped as he leapt, and he fell right in front of the six-foot-tall tire. The fifty-ton loader crushed him into the hard-packed soil as easily as a footfall smears an insect.
In the cab, the operator had raised the bucket high enough so he could see under it. He slowed the vehicle as he neared the working face of the open-pit mine. Just before the bucket sliced into the mountain, he tipped it forward. The pickup began to slide out as the machine crashed into the hill. The bucket’s open mouth carved into the hillside like a cookie cutter, taking a bite out of the earth. The force of the impact crushed the pickup and drove its mangled remains into the mountain. When the loader backed away, the truck was left embedded fifteen feet off the ground. A mixture of fuel and the driver’s blood drizzled from its shattered body.
On the mound, the French had reacted to their salvation much quicker than the Chinese and Panamanians. They opened fire, clearing a path for the loader to reach them. The mine’s defenders scrambled from the renewed counterattack. A few tried to shoot the Cat 988, but their rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the bucket the operator had lowered like an armored shield. Other rounds that hit the tires or body of the rig were absorbed without causing damage.
