He had gone about a quarter of a mile along the stream when the truck engine kicked and caught in the distance, roaring steadily this time. Dixon dropped to one knee, scanning with the viewer in the direction of the noise. A broken tank lay near the western edge of the small plateau. He couldn’t see anything else.
Dixon moved a few hundred yards further east. Stopping, he saw figures moving beyond the shell of another wrecked vehicle. A few yards further and he had several more wrecks in view. Finally, he saw what must be the truck, back near the road. He was three-quarters of a mile from it, about ten degrees to the west of due south. Dixon turned carefully and scanned the area where he thought the helicopter should be; he finally found it further to his left than he thought, but much closer, only a few hundred yards away. The rotor and the very top of the motor housing were the only parts visible because of the topography.
He scanned around in a complete circle. Nothing else was moving. Stooping, he retreated further south before turning back in the direction of the helicopter and Leteri.
He began considering contingencies. If the Iraqis put up a flare, what would he do?
Throw himself face first on the ground, push up his M-16 and kill them all.
Yeah, right. He would keep his head. Firing first would give his position away. More than likely they wouldn’t even know he was there. Even if they did, the flare wouldn’t necessarily give him away.
He would hit the ground and wait for them to make the first move. And the second. Firing his weapon would be a last resort.
Dixon walked and trotted toward the helicopter, going slightly uphill, for what seemed like an eternity— though by his watch it was barely ten minutes. He crossed a dry irrigation ditch, climbed back up and finally had the helicopter in good view. But now he couldn’t see the Iraqis or the truck, though he heard its motor still coughing away.
The Little Bird looked unharmed, sitting as if it were waiting for its pilot to hop in. Even if it were in perfect working condition, it wouldn’t make any difference to him — the only thing he knew about flying a helicopter was that it was a lot different than flying a plane.
Maybe he ought to blow it up, to keep the Iraqis from getting it.
Right.
So where the hell was Leteri? Dixon scanned down from the helo’s cockpit, in front and around the aircraft and then behind it, without seeing him. He took a few steps to his right and looked again. He was now less than twenty yards away, and could see fairly well without the NOD. He used the binoculars but still couldn’t pick out Leteri.
Shit. Had he even been there at all?
Dixon took another step, still scanning, hoping the whole thing hadn’t been a hallucination. As he took a third step, he heard the truck motor cut off. He ducked instinctually, catching a shadow he hadn’t noticed before on his left and to the north across another ditch. He brought the NOD to his eyes slowly and saw there were four Iraqis there, two pointing their weapons in his general direction.
They hadn’t seen him, but if he stayed here they would. Dixon began moving slowly, as quietly as possible, hoping to get on the other side of the helicopter, which he figured was what they were interested in. He took three steps and tripped, skidding face-first down the ditch, which he hadn’t realized was so close. He bounced against the stones and dust of the dry creek bed, lost his gun, and found it again as he threw himself against the bottom.
The amazing thing was, the Iraqis didn’t start shooting.
The NOD and the binoculars had fallen somewhere along the way. Dixon left them, crawling and then walking sideways along the ditch, which came halfway to his chest. The enemy soldiers hadn’t reacted in any way that he could tell. When the tail end of the AH-6G hulked about twenty yards away, Dixon stopped and rested on his haunches, trying to get his eyes to see more and his heart to stop pounding so he could hear if the soldiers were following him.
The Iraqi truck started up again, revving in the distance, smoother now. It roared, then backed off, then started revving wildly; as if it were stuck in the sand. He hoped that the men he had seen had gone back to help get it free.
But where the hell was Leteri? Assuming he hadn’t been hallucinating, the trooper must have heard the Iraqis playing with their truck earlier and taken cover. He couldn’t have gone all that far; it was just a question of finding him.
The truck screeched and ran steady. It sounded as if it were coming toward him.
Dixon gripped the M-16 tightly and continued along the dried streambed. It got progressively deeper and wider, angling away from the helicopter and battlefield. Debris had been piled in several spots; finally he moved around one and saw a shadow ahead. It moved and realized it was a man.
“I figured you had to be around here somewhere, Joey,” he said.
The man answered with an incomprehensible shout in a language that definitely wasn’t English.
CHAPTER 55
There was a moment when he saw him clearly; saw the confusion, the question and the plea, the hope, dreams, small comforts and desperate wishes welling in the man’s eyes. The next second Dixon had pulled the M-16’s trigger, holding it there long enough for the three rounds to smoke through the Iraqi soldier’s stomach and chest.
The 5.56 mm slugs streaked through his vital organs so quickly that it took a moment for the blood to actually flood into the holes they had made. The man stumbled back, dropping his Kalishnikov, aware he was going to die, aware of it long enough to begin to shake his head.
Dixon caught his breath somewhere down around his stomach. His legs began to buckle, and only the sound of Iraqis shouting behind him kept him from collapsing. He threw himself on the side of the ditch, waiting for something to shoot at. At the top edge of the dry creek a shadow appeared; a leg that looked like a thick cornstalk. He pushed the trigger of his M-16. The man went down, but Dixon realized he had actually missed, and now he had to move, and quickly— the creek side began boiling with lead.
He threw himself back and ran to his right, nearly tripping over the Iraqi he had killed. As his foot kicked the man’s rifle, he heard a fresh burst of machine-gun fire behind him. Dixon fell against the ground. He crawled a few feet; realizing the shooting had stopped, he hauled himself up the embankment, rolling onto the nearly flat ground behind it.
As he tried to figure out where his enemies were, they did him a favor, firing off a flare from behind the truck. He froze as it ignited; willing his body to become part of the dirt he was splayed against.
The flare began dropping above and behind the closest Iraqis. It seemed designed to help Dixon instead of them, though of course the Iraqis couldn’t have known where he was, nor that they were facing only one man and not an entire platoon. Eight or nine shadows moved forward across the open ground toward the creek bed where he’d killed the first soldier. They moved at glacier speed, obviously unsure of their enemy.
He edged backwards, but dared not move too quickly or much further. When they were at the lip of the dry creek, the Iraqis split into two groups. One held their ground; the others moved off to his left, probably intending to roll up the flank of the creek bed. He guessed they thought he was hiding in one of the piles of debris.
The men on the other side of the creek bed were all fairly close together. He could nail them and then the ones in the creek itself with the M-16s grenade launcher.
Assuming he could figure out how to fire the damn thing.
He knew how to do it. It was easy, like a shotgun.