“In front of the horse!” Zaysan ordered.

  “No!” Azov yelled. “They’re not a threat!”

  A blast from a cannon struck in front of the horse and knocked it off its feet. The horse landed hard on its side, pinning the wounded man’s leg, overturning the litter.

  Zaysan heard more screams from the meadow. Ignoring Azov’s angry shouts behind him, he commanded, “Again! The American’s trying to stand! Shoot close enough to knock him down again!”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  “I’ll make them pay for what they did to me!” Zaysan said. “For jeopardizing my career! And after that, Azov, I’ll teach you!”

  Another cannon roared. More ground erupted. For a second time, the American fell.

  “Machine guns!” Zaysan ordered. “Strafe their flanks!”

  Instead of machine guns, Zaysan heard the crack of rifle.

  Close. Behind him.

  He whirled in fright.

  Major Azov hit the ground, his forehead spewing blood. The major held his pistol. He’d drawn it and aimed toward…

  Me? Zaysan blinked in shock, then swung his gaze toward Sergeant Kourov, who’d fired his AK-47 into the major’s forehead.

  “Sergeant, you’ll be decorated for this.”

  “I don’t want a medal!” Kourov said in disgust. “I want a promotion!”

  “But that’s impossible. You don’t have the background to be an officer. Surely you realize…”

  Kourov’s rifle veered toward the colonel.

  “Wait!” As the sergeant’s finger tensed on the rifle’s trigger, Zaysan blurted, “Of course! If you want a promotion—!”

  A carrier exploded.

  14

  Rambo fell again. But this time the explosion didn’t erupt in the meadow. It didn’t come from a cannon shell. It came from a rocket fired from the trees behind the carriers. The blast blew a turret off a vehicle and sent soldiers flying.

  Another rocket spewed from the trees.

  Another carrier exploded.

  Muzzles flashed, rifles shooting from the forest.

  As Rambo rolled to his feet, he saw the Soviet commander shouting orders at his men. Increased shooting from the trees made the Soviet shout harder. The turrets on the carriers whirred into motion, cannons pivoting from the meadow toward the trees behind them.

  But not before…

  A third carrier burst into flames. Automatic weapons strafed the soldiers. As a cannon retaliated, trees became flaming fragments.

  15

  Akram absorbed the jerking recoil of his rifle and shouted for his men to keep firing. He emptied a magazine, dropped it, shoved in another, and squeezed the trigger.

  His premonition had been accurate. Having heard the gunships just before dawn, having looked back down the draw and seen the gunships lowering ominous bulky objects suspended from their bellies, he’d returned to the land of the out-of-control.

  But he hadn’t chosen as much as he’d obeyed. His compulsion was overwhelming. The massive helciopters wouldn’t have been setting down what looked more and more like personnel carriers unless they were planning a trap. For whom, he didn’t know. Perhaps his fellow chieftains. Perhaps the American. It didn’t matter. Loyalty compelled him.

  Destiny. The will of Allah.

  Akram had waited all morning, unseen in the trees. A gap through branches had revealed the American and his devastated group coming into a meadow.

  The Soviet armored vehicles had burst from camouflage. Cannons had roared. The American had fallen. And Akram had ordered his men to creep lower, to reach as close as they could without being noticed, to take the advantage now that the Soviets were distracted.

  A warrior shot a Soviet hand-held rocket launcher, one of the spoils that Akram had gained from the battle two days earlier. An armored vehicle exploded.

  Yes! Akram mentally shouted. Destiny!

  He kept firing his rifle. The right place! The perfect time!

  16

  Rambo didn’t know who’d attacked. All he did know was that his chest swelled with hope. We’ve still got a chance! He’d lost his rifle during the avalanche in the pass, but he still had his bow. Assembling it, he aimed and fired an arrow equipped with an explosive tip. A group of soldiers flew from the blast. He fired a second explosive arrow. A third. More soldiers flew amid roaring flames and shrapnel. He aimed until he’d used every grenade-tipped shaft.

  He rushed toward Trautman, to free him from the litter. Dimly he realized that the horse was dead, that Mousa was pinned beneath it, that Michelle lay unconscious nearby. He wanted to help them, but he needed to save Trautman.

  He reached the litter and flinched from more gunshots

  But not from the trees in front.

  Instead from in back. Behind him. Whirling toward the gunfire, Rambo saw commotion, horses, riders, holy warriors screaming Allah’s name. He shouted it louder than they did, watching them charge.

  Soldiers spun toward the unexpected second attack. Firing, they hit several galloping warriors.

  One rider landed next to Rambo. The warrior’s rifle slammed against Rambo’s boots.

  He grabbed it. He clutched the horse’s reins, vaulted onto the saddle, and galloped forward. Despite his exhaustion, he steadied his arm and fired repeatedly toward the armored column. Empty casings spewed from the rifle.

  Khalid was on his right, Rahim on his left. He didn’t know what force had brought them here. But he worshipped it and continued shooting.

  His magazine froze on empty. He threw the rifle away and continued charging. Impulse made him draw his knife. He thrust it forward as he would a sword and urged the warriors onward.

  The armored carriers loomed. Most were now flaming husks. A few soldiers bravely resisted.

  The enemy commander who’d ordered cannon fire to flank Rambo’s tortured group and punish them further was screaming in panic now, fleeing.

  Rambo slammed his heels against his horse, impelled it to the limit of the animal’s endurance, sped across the stream…

  Toward the far left carrier…

  Vaulted it…

  Seemed suspended halfway over…

  Peered down…

  Saw the enemy commander fleeing beneath him…

  Threw the knife…

  And impaled the commander through the top of his skull.

  The horse came down off balance, jerked sideways, fell, and tumbled Rambo. He bounced. Rolled. Slammed to a stop against a tree.

  Breath escaped him. Pain seized his chest. He gasped. Every muscle collapsed. But the din of combat stopped. The fight had ended.

  Smoke, flames, and moans surrounded him. He struggled to sit. Holy warriors lay all around him, gone to the paradise Allah had promised.

  A massive, bare-scalped, surly Soviet towered over him. A sergeant, he held a rifle and scowled toward the knife protruding from the enemy colonel’s skull. The sergeant squinted at Rambo, seemed ready to shoot, then threw his rifle to the ground.

  “I don’t understand,” Rambo said.

  The sergeant looked surprised that Rambo spoke Russian.

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” Rambo asked.

  The sergeant gestured toward the colonel. “The bastard ran from the fight. I always knew he’d be a coward. I was just about to kill him when you did.”

  “But I’m your enemy. Why didn’t you kill me?”

  “Because life is suffering,” the sergeant answered.”

  Rambo stared, the familiar words startling him. Reminded of the monastery in Bangkok, he felt the force of the first truth of Buddha. “Yes.”

  “I made suffering my profession,” the Russian sergeant said. “But these people made it their lives. They’re tougher than I am. Tell them I’ll fight for them.”

  17

  Rambo crawled toward the litter, struggled to push it upright, and exhaled when Trautman moaned. “Thank God, you’re alive. I’ll get you to a hospital, sir.”

  Trautman nodded weakly.

  Warriors lifted the horse and pulled Mousa out from under it. The Afghan writhed in pain. The horse had landed on his wounded leg. Rambo prayed that the leg wasn’t crushed. When he saw it move, he was thankful.

  Michelle had regained consciousness. Two moujahideen helped her to stand. The pain of her broken arm made her stoop, but at least she had strength enough to walk, as long as the two men supported her.

  Akram came over, speaking quickly.

  Rambo turned to Michelle. “I know you’re hurt. I hate to ask. But can you tell me what…”

  “He says his people will talk about these past few days, about this battle and about you, for a thousand years.”

  Rambo’s throat felt tight. “Tell him I’ll never forget him or his people and their bravery. I’ll do everything I can to help.”

  Akram nodded and gave Rambo the highest compliment, shaking his hand. When he spoke again, his tone was troubled.

  “He’s worried about the gunships.” Michelle’s pallor was alarming. She breathed with effort. “When they try to radio this column, when they don’t get an answer, they’ll come back.”

  “But we’ll be in Pakistan by then.” Rambo knelt beside Trautman. “Hear that, sir? Pakistan! I’ll get you to a hospital!”

  But he didn’t dare tempt fate. “God willing.”

  As Rambo stared toward the draw into Pakistan, he recalled what the Soviet sergeant had said.

  Life is suffering.

  I made suffering my profession.

  Yes. Everything was clear now. Rambo finally did what Trautman had wanted. He accepted his destiny.

  The thought surprised him.

  Destiny? But what exactly was it?

  The answer came at once. Although he hated what he was, God had fated him to be a warrior. As long as innocent people were brutalized, he had a purpose.

  To protect. To suffer so that others would not.

  Rambo smiled as he stared toward the draw into Pakistan, toward the future and, God willing, salvation.

  If you liked RAMBO III, then you might want to check out RAMBO AND ME: THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY.

  Award-winning author David Morrell created the character of Rambo in his 1972 novel, First Blood, which has been called “the father of the modern action novel.” Rambo went on to become one of the five most recognized thriller icons, along with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, James Bond, and Harry Potter. In this in-depth essay, for the first time Morrell tells the full story about how the novel and Rambo were created. Among his new revelations, Morrell discusses how Audie Murphy, America’s most-decorated soldier of WWII, was the model for Rambo. Morrrell also describes how the riots and anti-war demonstrations of the late 1960s had a considerable impact on his novel.

  You can buy RAMBO AND ME: THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY here!

  About the Author

  David Morrell can be contacted at his website, wwww.davidmorrell.net. He is the award-winning author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. His e-essay “Rambo and Me: The Story behind the Story” describes the events that inspired the novel and how Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier of World War II, was the model for the character.

  Morrell was born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. In 1960, at the age of seventeen, he became a fan of the classic television series Route 66, about two young men in a Corvette convertible traveling the United States in search of America and themselves. The scripts by Stirling Silliphant so impressed Morrell that he decided to become a writer.

  In 1966, the work of another writer (Hemingway scholar Philip Young) prompted Morrell to move to the United States, where he studied with Young at the Pennsylvania State University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in American literature. There, he also met the esteemed science-fiction writer William Tenn (real name Philip Klass), who taught Morrell the basics of fiction writing. The result was First Blood, a groundbreaking novel about a returned Vietnam veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who comes into conflict with a small-town police chief and fights his own version of the Vietnam War.

  That “father” of modern action novels was published in 1972 while Morrell was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa. He taught there from 1970 to 1986, simultaneously writing other novels, many of them international bestsellers, including the classic spy trilogy The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for a top-rated NBC miniseries broadcast after the Super Bowl), The Fraternity of the Stone, and The League of Night and Fog.

  Eventually wearying of two professions, Morrell gave up his academic tenure in order to write full time. Shortly afterward, his fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and died in 1987, a loss that haunts not only Morrell’s life but his work, as in his memoir about Matthew, Fireflies, and his novel Desperate Measures, whose main character lost a son.

  “The mild-mannered professor with the bloody-minded visions,” as one reviewer called him, Morrell is the author of thirty-two books, including such high-action thrillers as Creepers, Scavenger, and The Spy Who Came for Christmas (set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives). Always interested in different ways to tell a story, he wrote the six-part comic-book series Captain America: The Chosen. His writing book, The Successful Novelist, analyzes what he has learned during his almost four decades as an author.

  Morrell is a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization. Noted for his research, he is a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School for wilderness survival as well as the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security. He is also an honorary lifetime member of the Special Operations Association and the Association of Intelligence Officers. He has been trained in firearms, hostage negotiation, assuming identities, executive protection, and defensive/offensive driving, among numerous other action skills that he describes in his novels. To research the aerial sequences in The Shimmer, he became a private pilot. In 2010, he was with the first group of authors to be sent on a USO tour to a war zone (Iraq).

  An Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, Morrell is a three-time recipient of the distinguished Bram Stoker Award, the latest for his novel Creepers. The International Thriller Writers organization gave him its prestigious career achievement Thriller Master Award. With eighteen million copies of his work in print, his work has been translated into twenty-six languages.

 

 

  David Morrell, Rambo III

 

 

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