Line of Honor Read online

  South Kurdufan

  “TWO MEN?” YELLOW MNAN stood over his fallen man as he turned his mirrored gaze on the small sea of dead men. The jackals had run off at the approach of Mnan’s forces. On the other hand there were no braver vultures than those of the great plains of the Sudan. The scavenger birds had eyed Mnan and his horsemen and technicals warily, then continued feasting. “On motorcycles?” Harun looked up at his commander through a haze of pain and fear. Mnan wasn’t physically imposing, but he was scary. He was gaunt to the point of emaciation, and his French jungle fatigues hung from his bones as if they were on a clothes rack. His features were Dinka, and by Dinka standards he would have been a remarkably ugly man no matter what the color of his skin. In direct sunlight his skin was a blotchy, whitish yellow. One hardly ever saw Mnan’s skin in direct sunlight. Day or night he wore a wide black cowboy hat that kept his face in shadow. Day or night he work black gloves and French mountaineering sunglasses. If he had any attractive feature it was his hair. His albinism had given him hair color of corn silk. Mnan’s women took great pains to flatiron and relax it for him, and the American General George Armstrong Custer would have admired the way Mnan’s blond hair spilled in curls out from under a cowboy hat. “At first we thought it was a lone man. Some fool. Easy pickings. The other had laid his motorcycle down, like a horse, behind him. They had rifles with scopes. It was an ambush.” Mnan squatted on his haunches and adjusted his Uzi on its sling. “Describe them.” “One was an American. The other was a black. From the south.” “South Sudan?” “South Africa. I recognized his accent from the movies.” “I see.” Mnan smiled kindly. “How do you feel, Harun?” Harun had a pair of bullet holes in his chest that somehow had managed to miss his heart and lungs. “It hurts, Commander.” Mnan reached into his pocket and pulled out a morphine auto injector. Harun sighed happily as warm, syrupy goodness filled his veins and eclipsed his pain. “You fought well. You will be avenged.” “Commander, I—” Harun’s eyes rolled as Mnan gave him a second ampoule. Mnan pushed the selector switch on his Uzi to semiauto. Mnan’s second in command watched from his imposing height. Makur was just under seven feet tall. “You are merciful, Commander.” “Mercy for my warriors,” Mnan intoned. “None for our enemies. Are we assembled?” Makur extended a huge spatulate hand at the assembled technicals. The nine Toyota and Ford 4x4s all had the roofs of their cabs cut off and light and heavy support weapons mounted in their truck beds. “Your technicals sped to you as soon as you called. Two broke down on the way but only need minor repairs. The horsemen follow as quickly as they can without killing their mounts.” Mnan pressed the muzzle of his Uzi to Harun’s temple. Harun’s eyes continued to roll. Mnan’s Uzi cracked once and Harun collapsed like a boned fish. “These mercenaries.” Makur scowled. “Whom do they fight for?” “They are not mercenaries.” Mnan rose. “They are adventurers, and their adventure in my Sudan will end in horror.” Mnan’s head snapped around. “You brought my babies?” Again Makur stretched a huge hand. One of the pickups contained four 2XL dog kennels bolted to the bed rather than support weapons. Mnan smiled and whistled. The alpha bitch of Mnan’s personal troop of hyenas chuckled at him and her three littermates cackled in response. Most Africans from Tripoli to Durban considered hyenas extremely dangerous vermin. While hyenas resembled dogs, they were actually more related to cats, but like dogs, they were eminently trainable, and by a strange twist of the Holy Koran, Mnan thought, unlike dogs, they were not considered unclean. He strode toward a technical with quad-mounted antiaircraft guns. “Makur, my brother. Let us go meet the American.” 7 Kurdufan “Technicals,” Kurtzman said. “On your trail, armed and driving hard. It’s a pretty good bet they belong to Mnan.” Bolan rode shotgun in Rover 1 with Lkhümbengarav and Ceallach. It had been a lovely afternoon jaunt across the Sudan until now. “How many?” “Nine, and there are horsemen about forty klicks behind them.” “How many?” “Resolution is difficult with the bird I have on line, Striker, but I’m guessing about sixty.” Lkhümbengarav shook his head. “Shit.” “Bear, can you get me resolution on the technicals? What kind of firepower are they mounting?” “Resolution isn’t what it could be, Striker. Looks mostly like support weapons, but having spent the time working for you that I have? One looks like a flatbed with a quad-mounted AZP-23 installation.” “Bloody hell!” Ceallach snarled. “That outranges everything we have!” The Russian 23 mm autocannons were designed for air-to-air combat between jet fighters and low-level surface-to-air defense, and had an effective range in the ground mount of two and a half kilometers. One would be bad enough. In a quad mount it would chew any vehicle in the caravan to pieces with one burst. Bolan’s Land Rovers and bikes could race ahead and escape the modified civilian vehicles with ease, and leave the horses foaming and shuddering in their dust. The Unimog was the mitigating factor. It could do distance about as well as a Russian half-ton, and Mnan would use that to leapfrog his lighter vehicles ahead to pin the convoy down and bring up his big guns to finish them off. Bolan rose in his seat and clicked his com link as he cut his hand in a circle overhead. “Convoy! Full stop!” The Unimog and Rover 2 ground to a halt. Tshabalala was riding ahead and he spun his bike around. Bolan’s team spilled out of their vehicles for a conference. “Listen, Mnan didn’t take the hint, but it looks like he took the bait. He’s coming after us,” the Executioner stated. “With bloody antiaircraft guns, Striker!” Ceallach angrily reiterated. “Our 87 mm is the biggest thing we’ve got, and you’ll be lucky to get any accuracy at all beyond five hundred meters! Mnan’s 23s can shoot a bloody English mile, then, can’t they!” Ceallach waved his arms at the brown, Martian-looking landscape. “And I don’t see much in the way of bloody cover, either, Striker!” Bolan turned his attention on the Briton. “Are you done now?” Ceallach recoiled slightly under the soldier’s cobalt gaze. “Well…yes.” “Good. Scotty’s right. We’ve got nothing to match up to an AZP, and we have to plan on them having half a dozen heavy machine guns and RPGs. We’re outnumbered, outgunned and outranged.” Nelsonne gave Bolan a sunny, expectant smile. “So what do you propose?” Bolan had been thinking about that. “Simple.” “What have you got, hot rod?” Lkhümbengarav asked. “You ain’t shooting horsemen out of the saddles on this one.” “Good point. So we’re going to use the same ambush but reverse the tactics. T-Lo and I took Mnan’s cavalry out at range because we had rifles with optics and they didn’t.” Ochoa’s brow furrowed. “So you’re going to reverse it by…?” “We’re going to ambush Mnan’s technicals at close range.” Onopkov chain-lit another cigarette and did some math. “Nine of them. Three of us. We ambush them at close range?” “Yeah.” Nelsonne just kept smiling. “How do we do that?” Bolan pulled a shovel out of the brackets on the Rover 1’s tailgate. “We dig.”