A voice came over the walkie-talkie in Arabic, and Saunders said, “The tail vehicle is disabled! Fuck it! I’m going around them!”
Saunders tried to back around the Syrians jumping from the damaged truck, but as he accelerated in reverse, machine-gun fire raked the hood of his white pickup. The noise in the cab where Court sat was cataclysmic. Heavy chunks of lead traveling well above the sound barrier tore through the hood and engine. Oil, radiator fluid, and steam sprayed the windshield.
The pickup jolted to a halt. Saunders ground the gears for just a second before shouting, “It’s dead! Bail out!”
CHAPTER 30
Court Gentry opened his door, fell out onto the highway, and then hustled in a low crouch with his rifle in his hand to the back of the pickup. Here he knelt behind the right rear tire for a moment, just long enough to wait for Saunders to join him. The Brit might not have been any kind of real ally, but in this fight Saunders was Court’s battle buddy, and both men knew that they needed each other to increase their chances of survival.
In battle Court played second fiddle to no one, but he had the presence of mind to maintain his cover. He was a merc in the field working with a more senior employee of his company, so he’d operate as the second man in a two-man team.
Saunders appeared at the back of the truck, then he peered over it to the east, scanning the hills to both the north and the south. He shouted over the ungodly fire, “We’ve got shooters on both sides of the highway!”
Court popped his own head over the concealment of the truck bed. He saw gun smoke in the trees to both the north and the south, and most of the fire seemed to be at least forty yards to the east of where he knelt. Off to his right, he noticed a small rocky depression just off the highway, almost hidden because it was overgrown with weeds. He looked back at the puffs of smoke. “They’re set up wrong! The ambush is centered on where the IED went off, so it’s still to our east. If we can get in this runoff ditch on the south side we might find a little cover from both hillsides!”
Saunders couldn’t see what Court was talking about from his position at the opposite end of the tailgate, but he apparently didn’t have any other options near him. “Go!” Saunders ordered, and Court took off across the wide-open highway, across the shoulder, and towards the low brush and grass.
All the while the roar of gunfire continued in all directions.
He covered fifty feet of open ground, a few bullet strikes tore through asphalt and dirt around him, and then he dropped and rolled onto his chest in low brush and rocks in the slight depression by the side of the road. Stones cut into his knees and forearms as he slammed into the ground. Here he shouldered his rifle again, scanned the hill above him, and called out to Saunders, still at the truck. “Move!”
Court kept his cheek tight on the stock of his AK, searching for targets through the old iron sights. Saunders tumbled on top of him a few seconds later, rolled into a prone firing position, then immediately began scanning up the hill right next to Court.
Court looked back to the highway now. The Desert Hawks were still on their technical, but no one was on the machine gun, and one of the four militiamen hung halfway out of the truck bed behind the weapon. In front of the Desert Hawks’ technical, the sedan with the Mukhabarat officers was burning and smoking, smashed against the back of the second Russian vehicle. The first Russian truck had turned around on the highway and was in the process of moving back to the west, but the driver seemed to be waiting for orders before taking off. Court was glad they were still around, because the half dozen soldiers in the open back were all firing their weapons up towards the wooded hills.
But there still seemed to be more fire coming in than going out. From the bullet strikes on the highway, Court estimated that more than a dozen weapons were raking the convoy from high ground.
Saunders rose and fired a burst up the hill, more to Court’s right and less to the east. “They’re tryin’ to flank us to the south!” he said as his weapon emptied.
Court himself saw movement in the trees almost directly in line with their position, and he knew they’d be exposed here in the gully once the enemy repositioned on the hill above them.
He realized the entire convoy was in danger of being wiped out, himself included.
And back to the west, from the direction the small loyalist cavalcade had come from, civilian cars began rolling up the highway, unaware of the gun battle happening around the turn. Some tried to reverse out of danger, and others tried to race on past the fight, a disastrous decision because through the smoke and chaos the civilian drivers found that the road was blocked by a blown-out bridge. As Court watched, two civilian vehicles slammed on their brakes at the IED crater and got caught behind the indecisive Russian soldier behind the wheel of the GAZ.
Court scanned back up to the southeast and saw his first enemy now, as the smoke trail from an RPG revealed a man a hundred yards up the hill. He lined up his rifle’s front post on the bearded man, who immediately began reloading the weapon.
Court shot the man through the chest, with absolutely no consideration as to what side of the civil war he fought on.
Three Syrians from the truck that had been disabled just behind the white pickup made a run for the gully where the two mercenaries lay. They ran too close together, and they left no one behind to cover for them. Court saw their mistake when they were almost to the shoulder of the highway, and he shouted to Saunders, “Covering fire!”
Court sent bursts from his AK to the northern hillside, while next to him Saunders emptied a magazine into the trees on the southern hillside. When Court’s weapon emptied he reloaded with blinding speed, using his fresh magazine to flip out the spent mag before snapping the fresh mag into the magazine well. While he did this he looked back to the Syrian soldiers in the road.
None of the three had made it into the gully. One lay dead on the shoulder; a second rolled around wounded in the tall grasses by the highway, lying in plain view of all the shooters on the hill. And the third man had turned around and run back to the poor cover of the unarmored Syrian ZIL truck in the center of the road.
When Saunders stopped firing to reload, Court could hear that he’d taken his handheld radio with him, because excited Arabic transmissions crackled from inside a pocket in the British mercenary’s load-bearing vest.
As Court dumped rounds into the trees at puffs of smoke, the shouting through the radio switched from Arabic to Russian.
Court translated the broadcasts for Saunders. “Two enemy technicals inbound from the east.”
Saunders looked over to Court. “You speak Russian?”
Normally he wouldn’t have let on about the languages he spoke while adopting a cover legend, but there was no denying this. “Just enough to know to pull my head down.”
Saunders leveled his weapon on the north side of the hill and fired off a short burst. “Well, I bloody well knew that without an interpreter!”
A torrent of rifle fire tore up brush just a few feet from where Court and Saunders lay. “Shit!” Court said, firing at a flash deep in the trees to the southeast.
Men in Arabic spoke over the net now. Saunders was occupied with a target, but Court asked, “Anyone saying who these assholes are?” So far none of the Russians had identified the adversary over the radio.
Saunders fired again. “Nobody around here gives a toss but you, Wade!”
Court squinted into the distance through smoke to the east, and he could just make out the approaching pickup trucks now. They weren’t on the highway but moving along thick brush on the steep hillside just below the tree line. They advanced on the wrecked convoy at a reckless clip. To his horror, Court saw what looked like two long and fat barrels protruding from the beds of each of them, larger and thicker than the barrel of a machine gun.