its horns forward.
“I don’t think that’s a good sign,” Encizo whispered to himself. He was inching closer to the edge of the precipice when the goat suddenly lunged forward, lowering its head still further.
Just as quickly, Encizo lowered himself over the side, seeking out the first available niches and protuberances for support. He’d make it a few yards down when the goat appeared at the edge of the precipice and stared down at him. Encizo stared back momentarily, then glanced over his shoulder, watching a handful of loose stones clatter down the side of the cliff before crashing against the hardpan below.
“Not good,” Encizo muttered. “Not good…”
“HELL, I FEEL like I’m trying to fly that damn supertank,” David McCarter groused.
“It’s no Cobra, that’s for sure,” Gary Manning conceded.
When the two men had landed at the airstrip two miles from where they’d jettisoned their teammates, they’d discovered that the two promised Cobra gunships had been deployed elsewhere. In their place, McCarter had found himself at the controls of a Sikorsky CH-54S Tarhe. Better known as the S-64 Skycrane, the Sikorsky was a forty-year-old hand-me-down that had first seen service in the early years of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In fact, beneath its sun-faded layers of paint, the Skycrane still bore the insignia of the U.S. 478th Aviation Company. One of the largest helicopters ever built, the S-64 was an unarmed workhorse, designed primarily for lifting of up to ten tons of cargo: anything from 155 mm howitzers to the 4536 kg long-fuse bombs used create instant LZs in the Vietcong heartland. In this case, the chopper’s tailboom was rigged with a service pod containing a surgical operations facility. Also riding in the pod were six well-armed members, not of the militia—which was on its way up into mountains by foot and Jeep—but rather Spain’s special forces. Weighed down with such a heavy load, the chopper lumbered slowly through the air.
Manning had his M-14 at the ready as he scouted the ridge-line of the mountain range they were flying over. In their haste to drop to their insertion point, none of the other Phoenix Force commandos had brought along communications gear, so McCarter and Manning had no idea what kind of situation they would find once they reached the meadow.
“I’m glad we’ve got some backup in the belly of this sucker,” McCarter said, “but I’d trade them in a second for some bloody rocket pods and a nose gun.”
“Maybe next time,” Manning said.
Soon they cleared the peak and were within view of the meadow. At first, the only signs of disturbance they could see were the slain dog and a couple bullet-riddled sheep lying in the tall grass. Then Manning noticed several bodies lying amid the rocks on the south side of the mountain they’d just flown over.
“Over there,” he told McCarter, pointing at the bodies.
The Briton nodded, banking the chopper and coming in from a closer look. “Looks like our guys have been busy.”
“Yeah,” Manning said, “but where are they?”
The Skycrane’s shadow drifted across the meadow as Manning continued to scout for other signs of activity. He was about to point out a few more bodies near the fallen chestnut when the young shepherd boy raced out into view from beneath the canopy of the other trees. He waved wildly as he stared up at the chopper.
“What the hell?” Manning murmured.
“Let’s check it out,” McCarter said, slowly easing the Sikorsky downward.
The boy backpedaled as the chopper’s rotor wash swept over him, flattening the grass around him. Even before the Skycrane had set down completely, the pod doors swung open and the Spanish troops crowded the opening. Once the landing wheels had touched ground, the men piled out, crouching over as they made their way clear of the rotors. Two of them beelined to the boy and began to question him; the others, most of them armed with MP-5 subguns, quickly fanned out in all directions, seeking out the enemy.
“Those lads don’t waste any time, do they?” McCarter deadpanned as he killed the engines and unstrapped himself from the pilot’s chair.
“Reminds me of us,” Manning observed, still scanning the surrounding meadow. “I still don’t see the guys.”
“I don’t like it,” McCarter said, worry creeping into his voice. He reached for his holster, drawing a 7-round, .380 ACP EA-SA Compact.
Once they’d deplaned, McCarter and Manning made their way to the two soldiers interrogating the shepherd boy. One of the men was the unit’s leader, Captain Raul Cordero, a tall, ruggedly handsome officer with dark eyes, thick brows and an equally thick mustache that only partially obscured his pronounced harelip. He was fluent in seven languages, including Basque and English.
“He says they fought off the BLM, but one of your men was shot a few times in the side,” he reported to McCarter. “He says his father is ill, as well.”
“Where are they?” McCarter wanted to know.
“There,” the boy interjected, pointing in the direction of the shaded stone hut.
“The wounded man,” McCarter asked the boy. “What does he look like?”
“He is African,” the boy responded. “He was shot in the side. We can’t stop the bleeding.”
“Go ahead and check it out,” Manning told McCarter. “I’ll get a couple stretchers.”
Cordero told his subordinate to lend Manning a hand, then followed McCarter and the boy toward the hut. On the way, McCarter had the boy once again describe what had happened. He found out that Hawkins was with James, but that Encizo had last been seen chasing after an ATV carrying some kind of large wooden crate.
“I’ll take the bird back up once we check on things here,” McCarter told Cordero.
Once they reached the hut, the boy led the two men around back. There, Calvin James lay at the base of the rear window, several yards from the man the boy’s father had shot. Hawkins was crouched behind James, pressing a blood-soaked towel against the black man’s rib cage. Nearby, the old shepherd sat with his back to the stone wall, hunched over slightly, his ashen-faced glistening with perspiration. He fanned himself with his beret, barely able to muster the strength to look up at his son.
“I’ll check the old man,” Cordero told McCarter.
McCarter nodded, then crouched alongside Hawkins. James was unconscious, lying on his side, arms and legs stretched out at odd angles.
“How does it look?” he asked Hawkins.
Hawkins shook his head. “He got nailed twice, maybe three times. Must’ve hit something, because he’s bleeding out on me. We need to get him looked at, quick.”
“Maybe being stuck with that Skycrane was a good thing after all,” McCarter muttered.
“What’s that?”
“I flew in in a Sikorsky,” McCarter told him. “It’s outfitted with one of those OR pods.”
“Decent,” Hawkins said. “Did a medic come with you?”
McCarter called over
