Bottger nodded, as if the idea appealed to him. “And just how would you attack this strike force, General Conreid?”

  “As soon as the Rebels are located Walz could send our bombers over them, dropping napalm and Agent Orange, or a nerve gas, perhaps even the old reliable mustard gas, since the anthrax bombs have failed. He could follow up with the attack fighters and HINDs. Then I will order a march on them with an armored division and infantry wearing gas masks.”

  The general came to attention and practically clicked his heels together, standing ramrod straight. “I can personally assure you that with a well-orchestrated air and land assault, we will wipe this strike force off the face of the earth.”

  For years, Bruno had trusted General Conreid’s instincts, for he was a proven military tactician with a number of solid victories around the globe to his credit.

  “Can you devise such a plan?” Bruno asked.

  General Conreid nodded. “Of course.”

  “How long will it take to designate the number and type of aircraft and ground forces, and the weaponry?”

  “A day. Perhaps less.” He glanced at Walz. “If Colonel Walz agrees to cooperate with me on it.”

  Bottger fixed Walz with a steely stare. “That will be no problem, I assure you.”

  He looked back at Conreid. “But only one day? I want this attack well thought out—”

  “I’ve been working on it for the past few days, waiting to mention it to you until I was sure of its success.”

  “Finish it immediately,” Bruno said, slamming his hand down on the desk. “Bring it to me the very minute it is ready in every detail. And I want an estimate of how long it will take to get our forces in place for an attack on the strike force. We’ll pay back this bastard Colonel Marsh, for his one-sided victory over General Mabota—if it can be called a military victory to crush a Zulu warlord armed with weapons he scarcely knows how to use.”

  “I’ll notify you later this afternoon,” Conreid said. “I’ll have every detail specified.”

  “Good,” Bruno declared. “I respect your military judgement, General. Devise the plan.”

  Colonel Walz cleared his throat. “We have ten HINDs located in Namibia. At least a dozen fighter planes ready to fly. They could be launched behind a triad of bombers dispatched from our airstrip here, bombers carrying the gas and napalm. One of our air surveillance reports indicated this woman’s battalion only had three Apache gunships in flying condition. They abandoned five more in eastern Zambia, and we presume it was because they were unable to fly. Three, or even four Apaches, should offer little resistance. We will control the skies above Battalion 12.”

  Bruno rubbed his angular chin. “We must find them first. In those rain forests it can be difficult for a spy plane to get us anything.”

  “We have an informant west of the Zambezi River,” Walz said after a moment of thought. “A local Bantu tribesman. We supplied him with a radio. I’ll see if we can contact him to find out if he has seen any Rebels. From the air it may be easy to hide from us, but moving heavy tanks and other armor is impossible without making noise or leaving signs. The Bantu will know if they are there, and in what direction they are moving.”

  “Get us that information,” Bruno said. “Do it now. We have wasted enough time as it is.”

  Colonel Walz pushed up from his chair and walked quickly to a security door. A pair of armed guards let him out.

  General Ligon spoke again. “I will see what our napalm bomb inventory is like, and I’ll check on the nerve gas. However, I am quite sure this Rebel army will have gas masks. They always seem to be well equipped.”

  “Get moving on it,” Bruno told Ligon, his mind on other things, wondering about Ben Raines and where he was now.

  Raines was an enigma, according to all reports. He had a sensitive side, and even kept adopted children along with him on many campaigns. But he was a predatory hunter when it came to fighting enemy soldiers in the field, and his own brigade was widely known for cunning and ferocity in battle. It could be an interesting meeting if the two should happen to meet on a battlefield, a game of deadly chess.

  General Conreid stood up. “If that is all, I will prepare the final touches on my battle plan for both Botswana and Zimbabwe, and we will strike this bastard wherever he may be,” he said, his face without expression.

  “Nothing more,” Bruno replied. “Get back to me as soon as you can.”

  Conreid left the underground meeting room, and now Bruno was alone with his thoughts. He was confident that his leaders could come up with a smashing blow for his New World forces against Battalion 12. But what of Ben Raines and all the other brigades moving across Africa?

  Bruno wished he could look inside the mind of General Raines to see what the Rebel commander had up his sleeve with all these strange movement patterns across central and southern Africa.

  There was a Special Forces brigade led by Jerold Enger in Namibia now, heading north and searching for Raines and his 501 Brigade, who were supposedly somewhere in Angola. Perhaps Major Enger would radio a report soon. General Ben Raines was the key to Rebel successes. If he could be assassinated, or killed during battle, the Rebel armies would fall apart....

  Seventeen

  Jersey came awake with a start, her hand reflexively reaching for her 9mm pistol on the ground next to her. She strained her eyes in the early, pre-dawn gloom, trying to see what had awakened her.

  She jumped as a howler monkey in a nearby tree gave out another high-pitched scream, calling for its mate.

  Damned monkeys, she thought, between them and the macaws, the jungle was never quiet. Traveling in Africa was a lot like living in a large city back in the states—after a while you got so used to the noise you never noticed it, unless it wasn’t there.

  Relaxing again against Cooper’s back, she laid her pistol back down on the ground and put her arm around him.

  He must have broken his fever, she thought, noticing that he was no longer shivering and shaking and his body temperature seemed more normal to her as she lay against him, spooning him from behind.

  The darkness rapidly lightened and dawn came, bringing with it a little welcome heat, relief from the chilly night air. As the daytime animals and birds began to stir, getting up for the day and making noise and calling back and forth, Cooper moved.

  “Wake up, soldier,” Jersey said, starting to unwrap her arms from around him.

  He grabbed them, holding on tight. “No, not yet,” he mumbled, still half asleep. “Just a few minutes more.”

  She relaxed against him again. “Okay, just a few minutes, you lazy slugabed.”

  He chuckled, low in his throat. “I’m not lazy, I’m just enjoying the way you feel against me, and the way you kept me warm all night.”

  Jersey’s voice got harder. “You’re not coming on to me, are you, Cooper?”

  He stiffened, turning his head to look back over his shoulder at her. “Hell no. Do I look that hard up to you, girl?”

  “OK, then.” She paused. “Then I guess I’ll let you live another day.”

  “I was just commenting that you were nice to cuddle with, no sexual innuendos intended.”

  “Well ... I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, too,” she answered, her voice getting softer. “Sometimes, the sleeping bag in a tent routine gets kind’a old.”

  “Tell me about it! And the weeks that go by with no time for any social life ... I’ll tell you, Jersey, war is hell.”

  “Coop, did you ever think about just chucking it all and going back to SUSA, becoming a normal citizen, and starting a family?”

  “Sure, all the time. I guess that’s what we’re all working toward, except for the Scouts, who’ll be the only ones disappointed when this is all over. But as long as the world’s in the shape it’s in, that would seem like the coward’s way out.”

  “Me, too. Sometimes I fear I’m going to end up forty years old, a gray-headed little old lady, still fighting in this damned war with no husband, no kids, sleeping every night with my M-16 by my side instead of a good man.”

  “Yeah. There doesn’t seem to be any end to it, does there?”

  “No, and from the way Cecil Jefferys is talking, when we finish with Bottger here and go back to the states there’s going to be more civil war there.”

  He snuggled back against her. “In that case, let’s just lie here all day and let someone else fight the war.”

  She squeezed him for a moment, then pulled away and said, “I’d love to, Coop, but we’ve got to get you back to base and get that wound taken care of, or the war is going to be over for you sooner than you want.”

  She crawled out from under their pile of clothes and stood up. Cooper started to turn over, noticed her nakedness, and turned away so she could get dressed in private.

  As she pulled her clothes on he slipped into his pants and shirt, moaning as the movement fired up the pain in his left shoulder.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah, it’s just that every muscle in my body is aching It feels as if I’m turning to stone a little at a time.”

  “That’s the infection. I think it’s spreading through your bloodstream, causing sepsis.”

  He tried to stretch, finding his left arm and shoulder were so stiff he couldn’t raise it above his head without a fiery pain shooting up into his neck and head.

  He glanced up at her, pain in his eyes. “Maybe you’d better go on without me, and come back for me when you get to Soyo and the rest of the troops.”

  “Not likely, partner. You know we never leave a team member in the field. It’s just not done.”

  “Jersey, I’m serious. I don’t know if I can go on much longer, and I don’t want to slow you down.”

  “What you want doesn’t matter, soldier. I’m senior to you by a couple of weeks, so I give the orders here. So, off your ass and on your feet, Coop. We got places to go and people to meet, and we’re burning daylight.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a mock salute.

  They gathered up their gear, Jersey carrying both weapons on straps over her right shoulder and Cooper’s right arm draped over her left shoulder, and began to walk west. They followed the river as it wound toward Soyo and the coast.

  The underbrush was thicker near the water, so they curved inland a bit to make the walking easier. Their pace was significantly slower than on the days before, with Cooper barely able to walk and completely unable to jog.

  They stopped a couple of times, to let Cooper rest and to pick bananas and other fruit from trees when they found them. Most of the fruit was partially rotted, but they were so hungry that they wolfed it down, anyway.

  Cooper gave a halfhearted smile as he chewed on a rancid, blackened banana. “Be a hell of a note if my bullet wound didn’t kill me, if I got food poisoning instead and died from it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Just don’t start puking on me, that’s all I ask,” Jersey said. “I don’t mind half-carrying your lazy butt, but I draw the line at wiping vomit off your face.”

  Suddenly, two black men appeared out of the brush on the trail ahead of them, with AK47s leveled at Cooper and Jersey.

  The pair spoke rapidly in what sounded like the singsong syllables of Bantu, motioning at Jersey with their rifles.

  Cooper said, “Do you speak English?”

  He was met with blank stares and upraised eyebrows.

  “How about French?” Jersey asked in her highschool French, trying to smile and look disarming and nonthreatening.

  The natives just scowled and motioned again with their rifles, the ritual scars on their cheeks showing them to be from one of the warrior tribes, the ones that usually sided with Bottger and his troops in the civil wars in Africa.

  Jersey took her arm from around Cooper’s shoulder and slowly, so as not to draw the men’s fire, lowered her weapons to the ground.

  As she bent low, she whispered out of the side of her mouth to Cooper, “On my mark, create a diversion, faint or something.”

  Cooper glanced at her, eyebrows raised, knowing without asking what she planned to do. That was one of the advantages of fighting for many years alongside the same team members—you began to think alike and act in unison, often without saying a word.

  “You can’t take them both on by yourself,” he whispered back, while continuing to stare at their enemies. “I’ll take the one on the right, you get the one on the left,” he said, smiling at the men and nodding his head, as if agreeing with their orders instead of planning how to kill them.

  The two men shouted angrily, aiming their AKs at the pair and jerking the barrels up and down.

  Jersey straightened up. “I think they want us to quit talking and hold up our hands. Give them a good show, partner.”

  Cooper bent over partially, a grimace of pain and distress on his face. He raised his right arm, pointing at the swollen, red area around his left shoulder, showing he couldn’t raise it.

  The natives stared at him for a moment, then grinned. One of the two looked at his partner and shrugged. When Jersey saw that, she knew it was now or never. She could tell the hostiles had decided to kill them.

  As they raised their weapons again Cooper took a step forward and stumbled, falling slightly toward the men, holding his arm and crying out loudly.

  Both men cut their eyes at Cooper, giving Jersey a chance to pull her K-Bar from its scabbard unobserved.

  In one lightning fast movement she flipped it in the air, grabbed it by its blade at the point, and threw it at the man on the right.

  The razor-sharp knife turned slowly over three times, as it was supposed to, and then imbedded itself up to the hilt in the native’s throat.

  He screamed and fell back, his AK47 firing into the trees as his finger tightened on the trigger in a death spasm.

  His partner, eyes wide with fear, pointed his rifle at Jersey. Before he could fire Cooper straightened, took one quick step, and launched himself in a headlong dive at the man.

  Cooper hit his target just above the knees, bending him over so that his AK47 fired harmlessly in the dirt over Cooper’s back.

  He and Cooper fell to the ground, and he began to beat Cooper on his back with the AK47, all thoughts of Jersey forgotten.

  Jersey took two quick steps closer to them as they grappled, leaned to her left, and flashed out her right leg in a spinning side-kick.

  The toe of her boot caught the native on the forehead, snapping his head back and making him drop the AK47. Cooper rolled to the side, exhausted by his attack and sickened by the pain coursing through his left arm and shoulder.

  Jersey stood there, feet planted firmly on jungle humus, waving at the native to get up and come and get her.

  The man grinned slowly, gingerly feeling the egg-sized knot on his forehead where she had kicked him. He climbed to his feet and held his hands out at his sides, fingers forming into claws, baring his teeth in a snarl.

  He was well over six feet tall, making Jersey wonder for a moment if he were one of the famous Watusi tribe, known for their height and for eating cows’ blood mixed with milk.

  Jersey spoke softly. “Come and get some, big guy. I promise you a dance you’ll never forget as long as you live ... which I figure will be about thirty more seconds.”

  Evidently figuring his size and strength would overwhelm her, the man charged straight at Jersey, not even bothering to feint one way or the other.

  As he reached for her throat, yelling in triumph, she stepped quickly to the side, spun on her heels once, and hit him in the forehead again with a rik-hand—her fingers curled into her palms and her fist swung with a straight elbow, like a hammer on the end of a string, and with the same effect.

  The native was knocked to one knee, where he stayed, trying to uncross his eyes and to think past the throbbing pain in his forehead.

  Jersey stepped behind him and swung a hard, placekicker type kick at his butt, the toe of her shoe catching him in the balls and lifting him to his feet with a horrible, animal-like scream.

  As he turned, holding his crotch, moaning and crying, probably for mercy, Jersey drew back and swung a knife-hand strike with the side of her hand just under his chin, crushing his larynx.

  His head snapped back and he grabbed for his throat as he sat down hard on the ground. He gurgled and tried to breathe through his broken windpipe, to no avail.

  After a moment his eyes widened in fear, frothy blood bubbled from his mouth, and he died.

  Jersey immediately went to where Cooper lay on the ground, holding his left shoulder and cursing. “Damn, that hurt like a bitch!” he snarled through gritted teeth.

  “I told you to let me handle it, dummy.”

  He looked up, grinning through his pain. “If I hadn’t saved your butt, you’d be wearing about a dozen AK47 slugs as jewelry right about now, girl.”

  “Bullshit! I could have taken him, easy.”

  She inclined her head toward the dead body lying on its back behind her. “Hell, I didn’t even work up a sweat on that bastard.”

  Cooper shook his head. “That’s typical. The man saves the maiden, and gets no credit whatsoever.”

  Jersey smiled as she examined Cooper’s arm, trying to stop the fresh bleeding his exertions had caused. “What makes you think I’m a maiden?”

  Cooper snorted in pain at her prying fingers. “ ’Cause you’re too ugly to have ever had a man.”

  Jersey, instead of getting angry, just grinned and tightened the bandage on Cooper’s arm tighter, making him moan again.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Coop.”

  He stared at her for a second, then shrugged. “Well, that is why God invented alcohol—so ugly girls could get laid, too.”

  Jersey laughed and turned away. She went over to the dead men and began to go through their packs.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A couple of canteens filled with water, and food, real food, of any kind. You need protein to hold off that infection, or you’re never going to make it to the base.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, as he struggled to get to his feet. “Don’t pretend you’re doing this all for me. I know you, too well for that, lady. You’re just looking for chocolate, ’cause you’re probably going through withdrawal from not having your daily candy bars.”