Page 6 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“Americans!” The sergeant laughed. “I thought they were all gone.”

“They must have seen my request.” Wonkoye brimmed with pride. He had been a star pupil of the American operators. Perhaps his reputation was even greater than he knew and his old friends had decided to join the fight after all, even against their orders.

The lieutenant’s radio crackled with a message from the lead vehicle.

“Sir, a Humvee is up ahead.”

Wonkoye and his sergeant shared a confident look. With the Americans at their side the jihadis stood no chance whatsoever.

Capturing the bloodthirsty enemy commander might even earn Wonkoye a promotion.

The lieutenant raised the handset to his mouth.

“Attention convoy. This is Wonkoye. Everybody come to a halt. The Americans are here. We will break for ten minutes. Food, water—whatever you need. I will confer with the American commander. Wonkoye out.”

The lieutenant pointed up ahead. The brake lights of the lead vehicle flared as soon as Wonkoye had given his order and skidded to a stop in the road. The vehicles behind Wonkoye had done the same.

“Go around him,” the lieutenant ordered. “I want to parlay with that Humvee.”

“Yes, sir.”

Just as the sergeant eased the wheel left to leave the road, the lead scout truck erupted in a ball of flame and shredded steel. A burning body leaped from the bed and dashed blindly toward the tree line to the west.

Before Wonkoye could process the fiery image, the same stand of trees erupted in a stream of streaking rocket and machine-gun fire.

Instantly, half the vehicles in his convoy were shattered. Heavy 7.62mm rounds thudded into Wonkoye’s truck. Blood splattered the rear window, his soldiers’ screams muffled by the adrenaline flooding his system.

The sergeant jerked the steering wheel hard right and headed for the opposite tree line for cover as Wonkoye shouted orders into his radio.

“Head east for the trees. Get to the trees!”

But it was too late. More anti-tank missiles mounted on Humvees hidden in the western tree line had already turned nine of the eleven trucks into burning hulks. The other two were riddled with gunfire and stood dead in the sand, their tires shredded as badly as the thinsteel of their doors. The few men who survived the initial attack were cut down in their tracks as they ran for cover.

The sergeant’s boot mashed the throttle to the floorboard. His skillful driving avoided hitting the flaming wreck in front of them, and the shattered truck behind them blocked the rocket targeting their vehicle. Wonkoye turned around to see the bloody face of a young private now pressed against the window glass, his lifeless eyes accusing him of utter failure.

Wonkoye watched a corporal in a blood-soaked uniform rack the Toyota’s Kord 12.7mm heavy machine gun with its T-shaped handle and open fire just as their pickup dove into the tree line.

Wonkoye shoved the door open and dashed for the trees just as the bleeding corporal was tossed from the truck by a burst of well-aimed machine-gun fire. The lieutenant caught a quick glance of the six lifeless bodies heaped in the truck bed like canvas sacks of butchered meat. He bolted away, his face streaked with tears of shame and rage, his sergeant hot on his heels.

Fifty feet above the treetops the hovering Black Hawk’s deafening rotor blades threw blinding clouds of choking sand. Wonkoye screamed as machine-gun bullets stitched into his spine, but it was a skull-shattering round that killed him, plowing his corpse into the sand at a dead run.

2

Aboard theOregon

The Gulf of Oman

Juan Cabrillo stood on theOregon’s deck, his clear blue eyes fixed on the distant speck in the achingly bright cobalt sky, one hand upraised to shade his face from the searing sunlight. TheOregon’s thundering tilt-rotor aircraft, an AgustaWestland AW609, had begun its descent.

A gusting wind suddenly nudged his strapping six-foot-one-inch swimmer’s frame. The blast of wind ran its fingers through his closely cropped sun-bleached hair and his vintage 1950s Hawaiian shirt snapped like a flag in a hurricane.

“Where’s that wind coming from? No storm in the forecast,” Linda Ross said in her high-pitched voice. Her green, almond-shaped eyes were hidden behind a pair of oversized aviator glasses and a black ball cap. Though strong and lean, she was battered so hard by the breeze she had to grab on to Juan’s thick bicep for stability.

“Came out of nowhere,” Juan said. “I don’t like it.”

?

Callie Cosima’s tall, athletic frame sat comfortably in the tilt-rotor’s copilot seat. Her shoulder-length honey-blond hair was pulled into a ponytail to accommodate the tilt-rotor’s headphones and Oakleywraparound sunglasses protected her eyes from the sun’s harsh glare. She wore her natural beauty with an unadorned and easy grace and her toned body bore the healthy glow of a woman who had spent a life outdoors, especially on the water.