“Corporal Hauer,” he said to the young Legionnaire. “Call the chopper and get it in here.”
“Why? What for? Foch will be back in a few minutes.”
“He’s going to be caught in a few minutes. Call the damned chopper.”
The soldier was about to protest again when his radio came to life. The volume was just high enough for Mercer to hear the whispered French.
“Foch, this is Levesque.” Levesque was the Legionnaire who had remained with the Zodiac. “I’m two hundred meters downstream from the boat. There’s an armed patrol approaching. I’m backtracking now, but if they stay along the stream bank they’re going to find the Zodiac. What do you want me to do?”
“Levesque. Hauer. Foch’s in the camp. He can’t respond.” The young Legionnaire hesitated, unsure what to do. He was a soldier, not an officer, trained to follow orders, not issue them. He was completely out of his element. “Um, ah, can you take them out?”
“Negative. There appear to be four of them maintaining good separation.”
“This is turning to shit,” Mercer said with suppressed fury. “Call in the damned chopper before it’s too late.”
“Don’t argue,” Lauren hissed when Hauer wavered. “Just do it.”
“Wait one, Levesque.” Corporal Hauer changed radio frequencies and used the helicopter’s code name. “Shepherd, Shepherd. This is Hauer. Come in. We need you. Over.”
The pilot responded instantly. “Roger, Hauer, this is Shepherd. I heard Levesque’s call and have already started engines. ETA is twenty minutes. Where’s the rest of the flock?”
“Um, all over the place. Just get airborne, we’ll figure an evac point in a minute.” He switched back to Levesque. “Helo’s inbound. Give me a sit rep.”
“They’re on me in about four minutes. I can get away but they’ll find the boat.”
Mercer grabbed the radio from the soldier. “Levesque, no matter what happens you can’t let them alert their base. If you do we’re all dead. Take out the radioman, keep them pinned for ten minutes then get the hell out of there. Head toward El Real and we’ll pick you up from the river.”
The radio clicked once in acknowledgment. The patrol must have been too close to risk his voice giving him away.
Even at a distance of a mile or more the crack of a single pistol shot was distinctive. It was answered by a rip of gunfire from an automatic weapon, and then came the smoother buzzsaw sound of a FAMAS. Levesque had engaged.
Down at the lakeshore the sound of the firefight was muffled by the trucks, but it would be only minutes before Levesque disengaged and the patrol recovered their radio and contacted the base. Foch and Bruneseau were trapped but didn’t know it yet.
Hauer began to tremble, overwhelmed with a fear that all the training he’d endured couldn’t prepare him. The others in his detachment had faced combat before. He alone was the novice and cursed that he’d volunteered to follow Foch to the lake. He noted how Lauren listened to the sounds of the battle far away and maintained her surveillance of the camp, watching to see the moment the guards were alerted.
Her presence stabilized him. He remembered the incoming helicopter.
The only place the JetRanger could get close enough to pick them up was along the rim of the mountain, an exposed area that would draw a tremendous amount of fire as soon as the aircraft appeared. And then there was his lieutenant and the spy down below. They’d never make it out. Hauer hesitated, thinking, but not finding a solution. “Ah, where do we bring in the chopper?” he asked finally.
Mercer had been considering that question since Foch and Bruneseau had slipped into the camp. “Tell him we’ll be on the lake.”
It was a calculated gamble. Once the patrol reported their contact, he hoped the last place Hatcherly’s guards would search for other soldiers was within their own perimeter. It would have been smarter just to fade into the jungle and link up with the helo later, but Mercer couldn’t abandon Foch and Bruneseau. It was clear they’d held back a critical piece to this puzzle and he was determined to find out what it was.
With no plan of his own, and seeing the conviction in Mercer’s direct gaze, the trooper relayed their intentions to the pilot, praying that the American knew how to keep them alive until the chopper could reach them.
There was a lull in the distant gun battle—an eerie moment of silence that ended with the crump of an explosion. Mercer winced, certain that Levesque had just been taken out by a grenade.
There was no going back.
Even as Lauren and Hauer watched the camp, he kept his eyes on the jungle behind them.
Movement at the edge of the underbrush caught his attention. Without waiting to see what it was, Mercer cleared his pistol and fired three quick shots. He shoved Lauren over the crest of the hill and pulled the trigger again, laying down suppression fire for Hauer to get clear. The movement had resolved itself into a three-man patrol. He pitched himself over the summit as return fire from the jungle shredded the spot where they had lain a moment ago, tongues of flame from Chinese weapons flickering in the dark forest.
Lauren fired back with her Beretta. They were trapped within the caldera and had just a few seconds before they were spotted by a keen-eyed guard watching the workers on the beach. Hauer looked to Mercer.
“Into the gully. Come on.”
At a trot, Mercer led them off the escarpment and into the ravine Foch had used earlier. So far no one had heard the gunfire, but the patrol they’d just engaged would be on the radio at any moment. In seconds, the base was going to be a hive of confusion. They ran for the dormitory tent and slid inside. It took several seconds for Mercer’s eyes to adapt to the murk and for him to realize the rows of bunks were empty. They hadn’t been detected.
He put the radio to his lips. “Foch, this is Mercer. Levesque was discovered by a patrol and the chopper’s inbound. Get back to the first tent you went through. We are leaving!”
When Foch replied, anger thickened his accent. “What are you doing?”
“We’re blown. We have to get out of here.”
Lauren moved to the front of the structure and watched the camp through a flap in the tent’s side. “Mercer, I think the call just came in from the patrol. I see the guy from the warehouse yelling orders to some of the guards. Wait. Now he’s dialing a satellite phone.”
“Calling Liu for instructions.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Do you see Foch or Rene?”
“Yeah. I think they realize the jig is up. They’re behind a pile of sand about sixty yards away waiting for the compound to clear out a little. Here comes Rene.” Lauren stepped aside and a few seconds later the spy exploded through the gap, his face red with exertion, his barrel chest pumping like a bellows.
“What ...” he wheezed at Mercer. “What have you ... done? What happened to ... Levesque and the raft?”
“We have to assume the Zodiac is so much rubber confetti by now,” Mercer answered grimly. “And I’m afraid so is your man.”
Foch raced into the tent, if anything even more angry than the spy. “I told you to wait up the hill.”
“We were just spotted by a patrol. We couldn’t wait and with Levesque dead we couldn’t go back.” Mercer wasn’t going to back down. “Chopper’s here in five minutes. I’ve ordered him to pick us up in the middle of the lake, the only clear area around us that’s out of range of the Chinese.”
Bruneseau sneered. “And the guards are going to let us swim out there?”
“The boats.” Mercer fought to keep his voice level. “There are two of them at the dock. We can grab one in the confusion and be out of range before they know we were even here.”