The Devil’s Fortress by Dale Brown

Author:Dale Brown [Brown, Dale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

on the landing pad

that same time

Kondakov mopped at his brow with a handkerchief while following the hunter-killer team out from under the helicopter’s still-turning blades. He’d started sweating profusely the moment he stepped into the heat waves shimmering off the landing pad’s asphalt surface. He frowned. It had been years since he’d been in the field himself. He was far more used to pulling other men’s strings from the comfort of a climate-controlled office.

Still dabbing at his forehead, he straightened up at the edge of the pad and glanced back at the grounded Mi-8. As soon as his team was inside the SUVs waiting for them and ready to move out in pursuit, he would order the helicopter into the air again. Once aloft, it could scour the highway north along the Nile for any sign of those two Western agents as they undoubtedly scrambled to escape.

Kondakov nodded in satisfaction. His plan to box the enemy agents in from the air while closing around them on the ground wasn’t complicated. Then again, he decided, it didn’t need to be. No matter how skilled or desperate these operatives were, he and his men already held the winning hand in this little game. It was just a matter of time―

And then his eyes widened in horrified astonishment as the Mi-8’s cockpit canopy shattered—blown inward by a massive, high-powered bullet. Hit squarely in the chest, one of the Sudanese pilots disintegrated in a spray of bright red blood and bone fragments, pulped by the enormous impact of a round capable of piercing steel. Half a second later, a second shot killed the other pilot.

For a moment longer, Kondakov stood frozen in disbelief, staring at the helicopter’s smashed cockpit. But then, with a low growl, Stepan Makeyev knocked him flat. He smacked into the tarmac with a startled yelp and lost his grip on the small case containing his specialized torture devices. It spun out of his hands, landing a couple of meters away.

“Keep your damn fool head down, Colonel,” the big man snarled from beside him on the ground, reverting to Kondakov’s old GRU rank in the heat of the moment. Around them, the other Raven Syndicate hunter-killer team members had thrown themselves prone, too. They were already frantically clawing at their slung weapons and equipment bags.

Only meters away, a third heavy rifle round slammed into the front end of a parked SUV. Splinters spalled away from its smashed engine block. The next SUV rocked on its wheels, punctured by a fourth armor-piercing bullet that struck its fuel tank. The sickly-sweet smell of leaking gasoline permeated the air.

Pressed flat against the blisteringly hot tarmac, Kondakov craned his head to the side, desperately scanning the desert beyond the perimeter to pick out the enemy sniper who was methodically picking off targets. A sudden flash of movement off to his right drew his eyes. Only a few hundred meters away, a white Toyota Land Cruiser sped straight toward the coiled razor wire fence guarding the gold processing plant.

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