Aswan Hellbox by Gar Wilson & Thomas P. Ramirez & Rex Swenson

Author:Gar Wilson & Thomas P. Ramirez & Rex Swenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_action

10

The Black Cobra army was in bivouac in an end-of-the-world wadi approximately twelve miles east of Abu Hamed. Massive camouflage nets spread over the cluster of Unimogs, trucks and command cars provided relative shade for the two-hundred-sixty-odd troops sprawled everywhere, recuperating from their last eighty-mile run.

Though it was 0100 hours, and Blackwell should have been sleeping, the Cobra leader felt sleep was out the question just then.

Alternately pacing the gravelly sand of the Nubian desert and hanging over the shoulder of Attilo Malwal, the officer responsible for their communications net, he was beside himself with rage. Not only were they behind schedule in their march to the sea, but there was the more nagging problem of the two missing search parties he had sent after that blasted bedouin tramp.

Lieutenant Malwal was not having any more success getting something out of his alleged radioman than Blackwell had. Hovering over the shortwave radio in what had been Ochogilo's command car. General Blackwell ground his teeth in frustration.

"Nothing, sir," Malwal said, raising his hands in apologetic gesture. "We cannot raise anybody in Munzoga. No one is manning the radio, apparently."

"Lazy bastards," Blackwell stormed. "They should have checked in by now. What in hell are we paying them so-called counteragents for?"

He pushed back his elaborate dress cap, the bill emblazoned with outrageous tangle of gold braid, and stared up at the mottled camo net. "Where in hell did them bastards get to?" he said to nobody in particular. "One of the squads should be reporting back by now."

The tall, almost emaciated black, his cheekbones gaunt, his eyes haunted, commenced his impatient loping again. His lips moved nonstop while he contemplated.

And suppose those men did not come back, he speculated. What could it mean? Did they get lost in the desert? Highly unlikely. Aboud and Nyamahanga were good men; they had been with him from the earliest days.

What, then? Desert? Hell, no. They were as high on the program as he was. They were in to the bitter end.

Native resistance? That set-to in Al-Rashad, maybe? An ambush by the locals? Hardly. They didn't know one end of a rifle from the other. Scratch that notion.

Suffocatingly hot as it was under the netting. Blackwell was nevertheless whipped by a sudden chill. He stopped in midstride. Was there someone out there? Another attack force? The Chad outfit? Coming after him?

He shrugged that one off, too. Who, then? Who had the firepower, the knowhow to knock out three dozen of his best men? The chill grew stronger, pierced to the marrow of his bones. He could let nothing, no one stop him now — not when he was so close to achieving his pivotal mission, that first big step. Bring this one in, and he was halfway home.

The CIA, he mused. Could it be? They were always poking their noses where they were not wanted. Had the supersnoops somehow got wind of his plan? Had they enlisted a gang of mercs, put them on his tail? God knows there was no shortage of guns-for-hire in Africa these days.

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