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accident.
Gradually they moved beyond the sound and light show of the ongoing firefight.
The invaders pushed to the west-northwest, angling inland from the river. Xia
had led her infiltration team north and east, swinging wide around the main
thrust.
Now they turned back toward the river and the headquarters the Brazilian
commander shared with Sir Iain and his men. They began to advance by impulses.
One squad hunkered down, rifles ready, covering as the other moved. Then the
group that had just advanced would go to cover and keep watch while their
comrades leapfrogged out ahead of them.
Xia raised her hand. Her five followers sank into a stand of brush. Annja
raised her rifle and snugged its padded butt to her shoulder as Isis got her
people up and led them forward.
Annja peered through her sights. She had been checked out with the weapon at
the armory that afternoon. It fired semi-or full-automatic, quite silently. It
reloaded from the top with blocks of fifty projectiles. The chief armorer told
Annja the rifles used electromagnetism, whatever that meant in this context.
Atop her rifle, conventional night sights glowed ghostly in the darkness. With
a pressure of her right thumb she was provided with infrared vision.
At once she saw big blobs of yellow so bright they were almost white, right
ahead. "Isis, get down!" she hissed, knowing the communicator woven into the
fabric of her suit would transmit the warning.
The night was ripped apart by white fire and horrific noise.
Chapter 32
Helpless, Annja watched as a pair of Isis's squad members, silhouetted against
a colossal muzzle-flare, were shredded by a burst from a machine cannon. The
rest of the armored car's 20-mm shells cracked over the heads of Annja's squad
to rake the jungle line forty yards behind them.
Lesser flashes lit the night as soldiers fired their assault rifles. A second
armored car opened up from thirty yards or so to the left of the first.
"Stay down," Isis seemed to whisper in the back of Annja's skull. "They're not
shooting at us."
She was right. The shots all passed over the heads of the now totally prone
Promessan team. Isis's two people had been blown away by a cruel accident, by
a foe who had no idea they were even there.
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Diesel engines throttled up with a noise like dragons clearing their throats.
The armored cars rumbled forward.
A curious buzzing sound passed over Annja from behind. A brilliant flash lit
the wedge-shaped snout of the vehicle that had shot up Isis's team. The
vehicle stopped. A moment later orange flame roared from the driver's and
cupola hatches. A figure wrapped in flames climbed screaming from the cupola,
fell to the ground and rolled. Smaller white flashes started strobing through
the black smoke pouring from the stricken machine like firecracker strings as
the ammo storage went up.
"Here they come," came Patrizinho's voice in Annja's skull. It soothed her
back from panic's raw edge. "Stay low and don't move unless you have to."
Two vehicles rolled on, a dozen yards to either side of the wreck. In the
garish light of the flames Annja saw soldiers coming toward her, heads hunched
forward beneath their camo-mottled boonie hats, prodding the night before them
with their rifles.
The skirmish line passed. One man came so near to Annja she might have grabbed
his right ankle as he went by. Not daring to breathe, keeping her eyes
slitted, she tried to remember the lessons Xia and Patrizinho had given her
the past two days on stealth, among a myriad subjects. Try to think as little
as possible. Envision yourself a part of the landscape  a fallen log, a bush.
Breathe shallowly but remember to breathe. Never look directly at an enemy.
He'll sense you.
Men she had known who had seen combat, especially special-operations troopers,
had told her exactly the same thing, about trying to think like a bush and
never looking straight at anyone.
The hardest part, she found, was remembering to breathe.
Then the oblivious enemy was past, shouting and shooting. But to Annja's
renewed terror a fourth armored car appeared, swerving around the blazing
wreck. It headed straight for her.
She stared at it. It got bigger, big as a moving mountain. Its three
independently suspended right tires would all roll over her in series if she
didn't move. Yet she was terrified of moving prematurely, lest the crew spot
her.
The metal monster loomed above. She tried to roll left, out of its path, only
to fetch against the stout central stem of a bush. Panic blasted through her.
The bush refused to yield. The cleated front tire crunched toward her face.
With a desperate heave she rolled to her right.
The backward-sloping lower plate of its snout brushed her shoulders. She
moaned aloud in fear as the car rolled over her, blotting the stars. Its tires
crunched deafeningly mere inches to either side of her.
After it passed, Annja lay quivering. She felt a touch on her shoulder and
gasped. She struggled to bring up her rifle.
A strong, gentle hand caught her arm. "Easy, easy," said Patrizinho, kneeling
beside her. "You're okay, yes?"
She drew in a deep breath. Then she nodded convulsively.
He touched Annja's shoulder again. "Let's go. "We're almost to the real
danger."
The uproar of the Brazilian advance or patrol or whatever it was, receded as
the strike team's surviving members moved on. The Indians who had ambushed the
soldiers with an antitank rocket and rifle fire had long since melted into the
jungle.
After the Promessans had gone twenty or so yards a pair of explosions behind
them, unnoticed by anyone else in the awful night's battle sounds, marked the
self-destruction of their dead friends' bodies.
As they crouched they could see the nimbus of light above the trees cast by
the base camp the invaders had established near the ruined plantation house.
It marked their objective. There waited Publico and the Brazilian army officer
in command. And there also lay tents and trailers containing the invaders'
command and communications gear, as well as stations monitoring the enemy's
sensors.
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If the Promessans and Annja could destroy that equipment and kill the leaders,
the whole invasion would lose momentum and quickly mire down. Annja didn't
believe that could win them any more than a temporary reprieve. But her
friends assured her that a little breathing room was all they needed to secure
the safety of their city and its tribal allies. All she could do was swallow
her doubts and do her best. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]